Digital Arts Service Corps - communitynetworking

Just how smart IS your rural community?

Colleen Kelly — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:33:37 +0000

Just How Smart IS Your Rural Community?

Creating People-Centered Community Knowledge Networks
http://lone-eagles.com/smart.htm
To survive in a world of accelerating change, all communities must quickly learn how to effectively create community learning programs to keep as many citizens as possible up-to-date on that new knowledge which creates new opportunities - on an ongoing basis. Community learning programs can start with something as simple as "live" online presentations of the best replicable innovations from other communities. As more new knowledge is put online for convenient access by the community, common sense use of appropriate knowledge sharing tools can have a dramatic impact by providing a means for everyone to contribute to keeping the whole community informed. In the knowledge age, fueled by an innovation economy, the quality of our community knowledge networks will determine the adaptability and survivability of our rural communities.

Inexpensive community knowledge networks are one easy way that everyone can work together to gather and share that new knowledge which creates new opportunities. Below are recommended first steps that do not require outside funding. As citizens and community leaders become aware of the replicable innovations already working in other communities, as included in the self-quiz and web tour below, the benefits for supporting ongoing community learning will become clearer. At issue is nothing less than preservation of our cherished rural lifestyle.

The following very short non-technical self-quiz on community "smartness" is recommended as a first group activity for community leaders. Consider "What’s the best your rural community can do for itself based on new knowledge of the best successful innovations already working for other communities?" As you review the suggested innovations below, make a list of which innovations make sense for your community and consider the potential benefits of routinely gathering and sharing the best innovations from other communities as they emerge, on an ongoing basis. At the very least your community can save hundreds of hours by simply borrowing the gathered links from other community sites.

Following the quiz is a short web tour of examples of great community knowledge networking innovations, and a recommended reading list to better understand what your community can create, even without grant funds. You'll find extensive community planning resources such as community action plans written as grant templates, K12 community service projects, and many more useful resources. Lone Eagle Consulting provides all the following resources for unrestricted use to support creation of more lone eagles and sustainable rural communities.
Creating community learning programs is everyone's responsibility and our challenge is that we have so many diverse communities within each community that could, and should, be players: K12, Higher Education, elected community leaders, unofficial community leaders, business leaders, parents, youth, disabled, faith-based organizations, non-profit organizations, etc. Each "community within the community" has their own agenda and typically none of them are yet focused on Internet empowerment or community learning. Each such community needs to understand how they will benefit by supporting a community knowledge network that integrates knowledge sharing across our "community of communities."

Quiz:

1. ___Y/N Do You Already Have Local Web Business Directories?
Are all local business web sites listed on one web page to support local online shopping and to generate awareness as to which local businesses are now doing business on the Internet?

Bethel, Alaska Business Directory
http://www.deltadiscovery.com/Shopping/shoppingalpha.html
An elegantly functional business directory to facilitate local online shopping. All local businesses are displayed on one page with all businesses with web sites easily identified by their names as blue hyperlinks.

Joseph, Oregon business directory
http://www.josephoregon.com/business_directory.htm
A database is one way of presenting a business directory but this model doesn't lend itself to convenient browsing and it can be tedious to shop around town.

2. ___Y/N Do You Already Have Your Local Media Engaged Raising Ecommerce
Awareness?

Does your local media regularly celebrate local Ecommerce success stories,
- or are they ignored?

Bethel, Alaska
http://www.deltadiscovery.com
Citizens regularly share their news on this regional community network. One can quickly see than many citizens are directly involved in regularly generating local news for this community information site.

Caithness, Scotland
http://www.caithness.org
An exceptional model of a community web site that is well maintained. This community makes sure all local businesses receive help establishing an ecommerce web page and that new information appears daily. A review of the diverse array of information reveals that this community truly "owns" the responsibility to make this site a true reflection of the community's spirit and citizenry.

3. ___Y/N Do You Already Have Local Peer Mentoring Programs?
Are local experts and community mentors celebrated for the value they bring to the community and engaged in local peer mentoring programs?

Ask A+ Mentoring Roster
www.vrd.org/locator/alphalist.shtml
A simple model for a local mentors roster. While this national mentors site is dedicated to K12 students and educators, this serves as a simple mentoring model any community could easily use to connect those with specific skills with those needing friendly mentorship to attain new skills. Mentors should be listed both by topic and by name, and by free mentoring offered and/or for-profit mentoring services. A mentoring program is described at
http://lone-eagles.com/mentoring-mission.htm

4. ___Y/N Do You Already Have An Integrated Ecommerce Incubator?
Are all local Ecommerce support businesses listed on one web page so anyone can easily find the expertise they need to bring their business online?

Lone Eagle Self-Employment Incubator
http://lone-eagles.knet.ca Inexpensive open source content management systems (CMSs) can streamline the flow of essential information in communities and serve as the public hub for skills mentoring and the proliferation of fast-track web-based self-employment businesses. Offering robust content and peer-training resources, this incubator was created to support peer mentoring for the “Montana Choice” five-year demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment policy as described at http://lone-eagles.com/montana-choice.htm One innovation for emphasizing the people-centered focus of this project is demonstrated through the photogallery slideshows of co-op crafters in Idaho, aboriginal artists in Australia, Jamaican visionaries, Alaskan Natives and soon, many others.

5.___Y/N Do You Already Provide Accessible Ecommerce Training?
Are entry-level Ecommerce education training opportunities (such as eBay) and peer mentoring programs readily available online in your community?

A Beginner's Guide to Profiting from the Internet
http://lone-eagles.com/ecom.htm
A train-the-trainers program to support local peer mentoring programs with ten two-hour hands-on lessons to raise awareness on "what's working for others like you." Lesson one includes an overview listing of many other Ecommerce online courses and resources. Provided through the Idaho State University College of Technology Workforce Training Office, this course is being used in Idaho and for the "Montana Choice" project described at http://lone-eagles.com/montana-choice.htm.

6. ___Y/N Do You Already Have Ongoing Access to the Best Innovations as They Emerge?

Are successful innovations from other rural communities readily gathered
and shared locally by any means?

Association for Community Networking http://www.afcn.org If you have innovations to share, please feel specifically invited to do so, and join the Association for Community Networking for $25. Register online.

Lone Eagle Consulting http://lone-eagles.com/articles/articles.htm
A regular short newsletter focused on rural knowledge network innovations is planned for 2005.

Community Networking Best Practices

Colleen Kelly — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:39:54 +0000

LINKS

http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/data

http://www.cbcmedia.net/

http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/

http://www.ctcnet.org/

del.icio.us links

Research Reports International's The Growth of Municipal Wireless report: The 1st Edition of Research Reports International's The Growth of Municipal Wireless report is a comprehensive 90-page overview of municipal wireless. The report provides a look at the forces driving development of municipal wireless networks, the issues that municipalities have to address in developing wireless networks, and the current status of efforts to implement these networks.

view all del.icio.us links

Best Practices and Models

Four Models of Community Networking
1. Provide Community Internet Access
2. Community Internet Skills Training
3. Community Internet Content Publishing
4. Community Internet Interaction - Collaborative Capacity

The Four Levels of Community Networking
Consider the learning curve of communities as the following four levels of Internet community applications.

Level One: Create a community information portal web page to promote the community.
Presenting your community as you’d like to be seen can include announcing your community as “smart,” connected, and tech- savvy. One or more persons can create a one-way information page on behalf of community and maintain it at minimal cost. It is important for a community to develop the vision for how they’d like to be portrayed, but there’s more to being smart than announcing you are a smart community. Communities are realizing there are costs to not-knowing how to truly be a smart community actively engaging infrastructure at the highest levels possible in every day practice.

Level Two: Creating web pages for all businesses and organizations.
Many communities have encouraged all businesses and organizations to create web pages, but often these are not maintained and are not interactive so the real collaborative potential for ongoing sharing of information and development of new ideas has been minimal. There is a growing awareness that ongoing learning and development of web-based resources and collaboration results in new opportunities.

Level Three: Building a Learning Community
As understanding grows how better collaboration is increasingly instrumental to creating most modern success stories, it is being recognized that smart communities are the result of as many citizens as possible learning new skills to develop this powerful new collaborative capacity. Creating mentor rosters to facilitate sharing of expertise, gathering and posting locally the best online training resources from global sources, developing train-the-trainer peer mentoring incentives, and listing Ecommerce success stories - all serve to upgrade the status quo as to how people understand how they might benefit from Internet infrastructure - by working purposefully to grow their intellectual and collaborative info-structure. Community technology centers focusing on developing online self-directed learning and collaborative skills will logically result in effective online community networks leveraging the efficiencies of online collaboration and online knowledge sharing for everyone.

Level Four: Enlightened Expectations
Kate McMahon, past president of the Rural Telecommunications Congress stated “We all need to understand that the value of a network, and the collaborative capacity of a community, grows with the number of users. There is a big difference between having IT and using it effectively.” As any knowledge-worker will tell you - global change is accelerating. Internet infrastructure is an accelerator for progress or for disorganization, depending on how it is used. Staying current is the difference between riding the crest of the wave of change, and being overwhelmed as the wave crashes over you. Acknowledging that “less is more” in the age of information overload requires effective collaboration with emphasis on the quality of online summative information. We find ourselves seeking resources that summarize key trends in order to stay current.

We can expect to see digital storytelling of community successes grow as the dynamic by which communities learn from each other which strategies are working and which are not. We can expect to see increasingly inventive ways that communities will demonstrate just how tech-savvy they really are. Consider what story your community would like to tell and how this story can begin to become your template for collaborative action. Communities will see that by sharing their innovations with others, we’ll all have access to all our knowledge. Creating “communities of communities” will become an important survival strategy.

Community Networking Best Practices Models

La Plaza Telecommunity
http://www.laplaza.org
A successful model for a rural small town! "Bringing People Together" from educational, government, business, publishing, technology, library, and health care arenas, Taos, NM. Wireless innovations, a Community Wellness database and much more.

The Blacksburg Electronic Village
http://www.bev.net
Student activities, online newspaper and essays from Montgomery County, VA. Very high bandwidth to many home and reportedly 86% community participation make this a one-of-a-kind testbed model!

Boulder Community Network
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/
Boulder has years of development experience.

Prairienet
http://www.prairienet.org
700 local businesses and organizations have web sites posted.
Includes text-based conferencing in a web-accessible format.
Source of many innovations, such as their new asset mapping project led by Ann P. Bishop: http://www.prairienet.org/membercenter/ipservices/cl/assets

Metropolitan Austin Information Network (MAIN)
http://www.main.org
A successful large urban community network.
www.tincan.org

Gene Crick's http://www.telecommunity.us
A new CN handbook is planned.

Native American Community Network Visions and Models
- A summary of the best KNET CN innovations. http://lone-eagles.com/indigenous_resources.htm (See their flash page and videos) This is postnuke-based and the Lone Eagle Self-Employment Incubator site is at http://lone-eagles.knet.ca

- See the Aboriginal Fully Integrated Technology community flyer at http://lone-eagles.com/FIT.pdf

Aboriginal Voice - From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity
http://knet.ca/documents/Aboriginal-Voices-Final-Report-Vol5_Doc_051122.pdf 30 pages. The last three pages provide a summary.
From the home site at www.crossingboundaries.ca/aboriginalvoice

Exceptional Readings

What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business
Models for the Next Generation of Software, by Tim O'Reilly.
http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228

Community-based networks and Innovative technologies, New Models to Serve and Empower the Poor
http://propoor-ict.comunica.org/

The Dynamics of Technology for Social Change
http://technologyforsocialchange.com
If you feel the book merits other people reading it there is a press
release you can point people to or cut and paste in e-mail at:
http://internautconsulting.com/book/press.shtm

A 16 minute video on the Grameen Foundation's Micro Loans and ICTs Program Well Worth the Time!
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/newsroom/gfusa_video/
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/

“The Future of the Internet: Open or Closed?”
http://www.creativevoices.us/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=119
The link to his project: Capaciteria may be of most interest to AFCN members. It includes listing and link to AFCN.

Common Cause:
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=489469

Best Drupal CN
http://civicspacelabs.org/home/

Four languages - interesting CN project from Brazil
http://catcomm.org

Today eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Google and other large corporations are beginning to focus on providing localized services—free collaborative tools (groups.yahoo.com), free ecommerce web sites (tripod.com), free resume-building with local job searches (monster.com), local searches (google.com), local sales (froogle.com), local maps (mapquest.com), local classified ads (Craig's List), local satellite images and GIS mapping tools (earth.google.com), and even local dating (eharmony.com).

E-Commerce

Colleen Kelly — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:37:05 +0000

Training for Essential Skills Development and Entry-Level E-commerce

Resources selected for CTC VISTAS are at http://lone-eagles.com/ctcvista.htm

A Seven Successive Skills Model
http://lone-eagles.com/essential-skills.htm
Briefly, as Email skills are developed, citizens become more connected to the community. As searching skills are developed citizens gain the ability to gather resources of benefit to themselves and the community. As basic web-authoring skills are developed, citizens gain the ability to share these resources with the community in a convenient public manner. As mentoring skills are developed, citizens gain the understanding of how to combine email, searching, and web-authoring skills to share knowledge effectively to make a real difference in the lives of others. As value is demonstrated, the entrepreneurial potential of instructional entrepreneurship, as well as opportunities for traditional Ecommerce, will become dramatically clear. Learning to record cultural wisdom via multimedia will serve to preserve it for future generations and will allow it to be shared as appropriate. Finally, leadership and innovation skills will create role models for productive social behavior and creativity to assure future survival in a changing world.

Seven Essential Survival Skills
1. Email Skills as Essential for Electronic Citizenship
2. Search Engine Skills as Essential for Self-directed Internet Learning
3. Web Self-publishing Skills as Essential for Local and Global Ecommerce and Expression
4. Mentoring and Teaching Skills as Essential for Sharing Knowledge in Your Community
5. Entrepreneurship Skills as Essential for Individual, Family, and Community Sustainability
6. Cultural Preservation and Expression Skills as Essential for using technology to preserve the knowledge of our elders and culture for future generations.
7. Leadership and Innovation Skills as Essential for Becoming a Role Model for Your Community for Adapting to Change.

Easy E-commerce Web-Raisings
A brief example community event:
Sept. 22nd, 2005, in a community of 200 (Winnett, MT) a community web-raiser event was held, and after a 1-1/2 hour presentation... 30 adult attendees created a beginning community website with 16 free ecommerce sites...in only 45 minutes. (At tripod.com) After this initial ecommerce awareness event everyone can now continue to develop their own free password-protected ecommerce web sites. The community website is http://winnett-webraiser.tripod.com The tripod tutorial is at the end of the Ecommerce successes webtour at http://lone-eagles.com/pcna1.htm

Suggested next steps would be to engage citizens in online learning via online lessons designed for rural citizens that have never taken an online class before. “A Beginners Guide to Profiting from the Internet” http://lone-eagles.com/ecom.htm Ten two-hour lessons provide a hands-on overview of what’s working for others like them with Ebay, Ecommerce, and Telework. The only skills necessary for these lessons are “point and click.” The first lesson lists multiple other online ecommerce courses to choose from.

Lone Eagle Entry-Level E-commerce Resources
http://lone-eagles.com/future-proofing.htm Extensive resources.

Techsoup, everything you need to know about Web 2.0 http://www.techsoup.org/toolkits/web2/

Additional Lone Eagle Curriculum for Collaborative Skills and Web Authoring
http://lone-eagles.com/webdev.htm
http://lone-eagles.com/collab.htm
http://lone-eagles.com/curr4.htm
http://lone-eagles.com/articles/tencollab.htm
http://lone-eagles.com/teacherstools.htm