Digital Arts Service Corps - priority area

Digital Media Group - November Updates

danielle martin — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:20:02 +0000

Sorry for the delay, but here’s the notes from the last Digital Media group call on November 3rd. As a whole, a lot of our conversation centered on the challenges of working with youth media projects, such as lack of equipment, youth motivation, developing handouts and guides. Subsequently, AJ followed up by volunteering to gather any curriculum and handouts people are willing to share. [Check out the archives of the discussion list at http://www.ctcvista.org/forum/] In future calls, we plan to center on topics such as web design techniques (Dreamweaver or Drupal), video editing help and youth development. Our next call is scheduled for Friday, December 15th at 2pm EST.

Here's some individual highlights:

AJ & Kevin (Home Inc) - working on after school programs with little to no video equipment; HOME Inc is evicted from office space and moving to BNN Roxbury; developing Final Cut materials for youth; challenge of distributing tasks out to large group of youth (8-22 youth) to do one video project; meeting challenge of no equipment by improvising and using cell phones; offered to gather some of CTC VISTAs curriculum and handouts
Colleen (Project Think Different) - see article for Digest about new Media Literacy Series program (Media Watch Teens she trained in the summer now lead 4 months of trainings for other org's like Roxbury B&G Club; office dynamics and personnel changes at PTD adding to her workload;
Dina (Project Think Different) - now that PTD electronic community projectthinkdifferent.org/civic/ ("a socially conscious My Space") is in it's final stages (where she edited Drupal/PHP modules by hand) with radio, forums, and podcasts - its soft launch on 10/31, working on some print materials for PTD and CTC VISTA and re-organizing the PTD filing system
Gariet (Portland Community Television/OLLIE) - getting hardware soon for MNN's Digital Distribution project and continuing to work with schools; requests more time in the day!
Jeff (UTEC)- switched to TANP group; we’ll miss you!
Jessica (Center for Digital Storytelling) – participated train-the-trainer in Ukiah, now she's trained to do those workshops (future workshops include foster youth and domestic violence); research about who's doing storytelling in Berkeley area is now on hold because they don't have time to support; working on content for the StoriesforChange.net portal; working on redesigning some promotional materials and a Final Cut Xpress handout update (will try to share shorter version)
Lashanda (Benton Harbor African Arts and Culture Council) - programs are going ok but working with supervisor to get updated computer equipment.
Lauren (Media Bridges) - getting some content for the youth channel but needs more!; in process of setting up youth film festival with schools (old name "Sprockets") as Youth Channel kickoff and more established programs for youth such as an 8 week project based workshop in January; interested in doing collaboration to go to conferences;
Ray (Computers4Kids) - developing workshops and writing them up; 10-15 workshops developed so far - digital photography, 3d modeling with Bryce, photoshop composites, web page design, silent movies with imovie, remix in GarageBand;
Richard (MOLLIE) – working on video projects in schools, where the subjects of the videos match the school curriculum, such as astronomy – challenged by lack of hard drive space for editing; wants to set up an audio production track but need to survey the community
Shaneka (WYTEC) - attending an Entreprenuership conference in AZ; developed a tshirt business/marketing plan with youth; continuing to develop a girls program; also developing an adult computer literacy program (created her own manual) based on resources on GCF Global learning (will check about sharing the .pdf)
Tony (BGC AZ) - Techathalon this weekend; he's been doing the setup with getting teams organized and working behind the scenes; posted AYW animations (with video and sound); lack of real programming for teens, so he's trying to do movie/video projects but teens don't like the more structured programming;; got his motorcycle going as a form of transportation;
Will (Reel Works) - been working on Benefit 11/14, documentary about the program; helps with classes, guides people through the editing process; working on using MySpace to recruit new youth, and putting movies and films up on there;

Resource Portal Main Page

danielle martin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:56:52 +0000

Welcome to the draft frontpage of the new CTC VISTA Project resource portal. These resource portal pages are merely aggregators of content created, posted, and bookmarked by CTC VISTAs and supervisors.

Content will include:

Blog entries by VISTAs and Project HQ staff
Project newsletter, the Digest, and ComTechReview articles
Sites bookmarked by CTC VISTAs on Delicious
Photos uploaded on Flickr tagged "ctcvista"
Videos submitted by CTC VISTAs on Blip.tv
And more!

Why the resource portal? Check out our proposed "vision statement."

How do I contribute?

Blog, blog, blog! Not just your day-to-day accomplishments, but also resources you've created/collected and want to share.
Post to Flickr, Delicious, and Blip.tv, always tagging with the "ctcvista" tag.
Check in with your VISTA Leader to find out who else in your priority area wants to collaborate.

Community Networking - Priority Area Home

danielle martin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:55:14 +0000

Community Networking area includes infrastructure or service projects, such as community ISPs or wireless community networks, and information focused projects such as community portals (websites that connect people with community resources and encourage civic participation).

Community Network basics:

A community network can be anything 2 or more people who do something with technology
Technology is used in CN to gather and disburse content to meet local needs, a.k.a community knowledge networks. How is this better than more conventional methods (word of mouth, physical rallies)?
CN has a physical infrastructure (providing internet access, email and web servers, blogs/wiki's) that enables an intellectual infrastructure with collaborative potential (need example here).
Benefits to pooling collaborative capacity of community organizations using technology, such as avoiding recreating the wheel, incorporating different skill sets, and increasing empowerment overall
Challenges to collaboration in community networking, such as ignorance of possibilities, information overload, or need for content to be too specific.
Four levels of community networking: (1) create community portal webpage for community promotion, (2) create subsequent pages for local business and organizations, (3) build learning communities online, and (4) create effective collaborations, "communities of communities", with emphasis on the quality of online summative information.
Community networks give citizens roles such as: infoscout, telementor, reference librarian, town crier, and discussion leader.
Multimedia as a ICT tool to give individuals and communities a visual web presence or initial Cyber-identity
Mentoring/volunteering and Civic participation as an essential elements of community networks
Impact of ecommerce on community networking and best practices for e-citizenship and e-community.
What new technologies are being used for community networking (such as cell phones for learning or ICT Advocacy Resources)? What are the challenges of staying current with technological advances (budget, skillsets)?
What are the skill/practices of CN that need to be taught to community members to have beneficial products? How do we articulate and publicize these benefits?
How can we connect existing CTC's better with communities to effectively share resources and best practices?

Technology Assistance for Nonprofits - Priority Area Home

danielle martin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:51:46 +0000

Technology Assistance to Non-profits: projects which develop tools or provide services which help small non-profits use technology to build their capacity.

CTC VISTAs working in area will consider challenges such as:

Technology assistance models/approaches
Range of services provided by TA to NPs
Difference between TA for organizations vs. for individuals
Decision making process for CTCs to consider providing TA to nonprofit organizations
Steps to successfully provide technology assistance to a community technology center, including assessing need, understanding impact on community, and management challenges that affect tech integration
Ability to assess an organization's stage of technology capacity: infrastructure, integration, or innovation.
Technology benchmarks for organizational technological literacy.
How do you use the IT Service Capability Maturity Model to assess an TA Provider's place on the spectrum from ad-hoc services to continuous improvement?
Approaching technology assistance in a holistic/transformative way (as a coach) rather than just in a symptomatic/transactional way (like a doctor), by tackling technology programs by addressing the health of the whole organization, with a holistic focus on solving a problem but creating/building/supporting excellence overall.

Digital Media - Priority Area Home

danielle martin — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:41:15 +0000

Digital Media focused projects include programs that empower individuals and organizations to effectively communicate their values using media and advocate for their communities. These projects engage both youth and adults in media making as means of providing technology training and media education.

CTC VISTAs who are focused on digital media projects are building the capacity of programs that strive to:

Use new, inexpensive and good quality digital video, animations, and web tools to engage community members and groups
Discuss media literacy topics, including copyright and fair use, censorship, and social activism
Increase computer literacy, including the necessity to stay current with constant developments in technology
Focus programs based youth development research, including characteristics as age, social development, and life experiences, shooting for core youth needs and positive outcomes and ways to assess these levels and use this knowledge to shape curriculum.
Identify instructional techniques to build upon the interests of each participant to motivate/enrich projects and encourage use of digital media as a form of self-expression, such as project-based learning or digital storytelling
Identify techniques of quantitative and qualitative assessment and evaluation to benefit program development

Community Organizing - Priority Area Home

danielle martin — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 19:15:18 +0000

Community Organizing activities involve bringing people together to act in common self-interest, in the pursuit of a common agenda, with populist goals that build upon the ideal of participatory democracy.

There are a few central questions for CTC VISTAs as we focus our work in community organizing:

How do we define "community"? What are the power centers and interest groups?
How does government work, in relation to organizing the community?
How are civic values at the core of community organizing?
What are the ongoing, central issues at a local and neighborhood level?
How can the Internet be used as a resource to engage community members civically? What can we do as community activists online?

These resource portals are collaborative efforts to organize existing information and build new tools for VISTAs (and the organizations they serve).