Digital Arts Service Corps - work

Week 3

Marilyn Taylor — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:56:39 +0000

The 3rd week had more updating for the www.4people.org website. I completed updating the county listings for Eastern Washington and started on the county listings for Western Washington (Clark, Clallam, Grays Harbor got done -- started on Island county on Friday).

My eyes are swimming and I sure do wish I had Kedit. It's so much more powerful than Notepad and doesn't screw up the href links to websites like other editors do. I'm still considering buying a license since the test version only allows me to edit files containing no more than 75 lines of text.

While the work has been tedious, it's been necessary. Our I&R system is getting cleaned up in this process.

Week 2 of My Vista Year

Marilyn Taylor — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:15:09 +0000

Week 2 of my VISTA year was more of the same from the first week. I'm still working on cleaning up the service listings for the counties on the 4People website. While tedious, it's rewarding knowing that when people look at the county listings, they'll be more accurate with regard to the exterior links. (www.4people.org)

One nice thing is that much of the work is done by telecommuting. Last week I went in to the office only two days: one to collect the mail, the other to discuss how the clean-up project was going. Misty (the other Vista) collected the mail 2 other days.

On a personal note, I found out my horse has laminitis. It's a good thing I brought her home -- she had been put on pasture for too long, too soon (one of the causes of laminitis is too rich a diet, such as too much pasture right after being on hay only). Now she's on dry lot and can't go onto the pasture all summer (bummer). I have to find a source of hay since I can only buy so many bales from my neighbor.

First Two Weeks

Victoria Edwards — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:02:56 +0000

So I've been here for a little over two weeks. It's very interesting, I'm working on researching the digital divide. My first project has been to visit different communty computer labs and have them fill out surveys. I'm creating a database of all of the computer labs in tri-county area of Southern Florida. So far I've gotten about three organizations to fill it out and libraries have been taking them (and they have the capacity to get all of their branches, up to 50 in one pop, at a time). I'm still waiting for a lot of these surveys to come back though. I'm learning a lot about computers. I think I'm realistically on the wrong side of the digital divide. I hardly know anything at all but I'm learning. My favorite part of this job has been dealing with people and feeling like I can really help some of these non profits. We're not only creating a databse of computer access but also pinpointing computer lab needs (i.e. funding, grants, volunteers). There is one senior citizen computer lab who really wants a playstation, I think the request is kind of funny and I'm not even sure if it falls in my jurisdiction, but I'll see what I can do about helping them out. I've been working closely with Kevin Bulger, another VISTA at the Collins Center. And he's really helped to integrate me into the workforce. I got to meet with my supervisor for the first time last Thursday night and that helped me a lot with deciding which tasks to utlize my energy and focus towards. Still, there is alot of down time sometimes, and sometimes I wonder how efficent I am being. There is also a lot I still don't know, so I think I've got to be patient. Still all in all I'm really enjoying my first two weeks here.

Week 1 (or my eyes are swimming)

Marilyn Taylor — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:51:56 +0000

I've completed my 1st week of work, all done by telecommuting. The work has been tedious -- I've been updating the county service listings and directories in the 4people database, www.4People.org . In the process I learned a little bit of HTML and more about MS Word. Boy, are my eyes swimming!

Good morning CTC VISTA Project

Richard T. Anderson — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 13:07:05 +0000

Good Morning,

Well, the sun is rising here in Michigan on chilly Friday. My computer is now by the window, so I can look out on the sky, the trees, the road, and the apartment complex office.

Yesterday, Jeanne, my supervisor, said, "It's the last good day for a bike ride." She was probably right. It was unusually nice yesterday and it's supposed to get colder starting today. But you never know. There could always be a 60 degree day in December. This is Michigan, after all.

Work has been keeping me pretty busy, the last couple weeks. MoLLIE was out at a school nearly every day for two weeks. Now we're settling back into a lighter schedule. And I really want to focus on developing an audio class. We don't have surveys in yet telling us that that is specifically what the community wants, but I'm starting to think I should just proceed as if we have. Not having the survey's is just a way of procrastinating on doing something that I've never done, and thus is scary.

So, I'm going to go over my syllabi (syllabuses?) from my audio production class at Grand Valley and think about what would work for a beginning and advanced class. Seems like a good starting point.

In life news; I got a car. I've been without a car since July. And it really is no good in Grand Rapids. The public transit has improved over the years, but it's still not great for much besides going to and from work, and even then only if you are on a bus route (which fortunately I was).

Having a car means I can go out some nights. Especially nights when there are open mics for me to go and play my guitar and sing some songs.

My roommate and I are finally having a "house"-warming party. Which also doubles as a post Halloween, post-election celebration. And it's seems to have a six degrees of seperation aspect as well. If any VISTA's are in GR on Saturday, let me know, I'll give you directions.

Well, I'm probably already going a bit long for a blog. So I think I'll say adu.

Peace,

Rich