Cleveland Digital Vision
Saturday, March 26, 2005
WIRELESS NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORKING IN HOUSTON: Check out this project recently unveiled by Houston's "Technology For All" in collaboration with Rice University. (Real geeks need to look at this related journal article.)
Will Reed, TFA's president, says he's definitely going to be in Cleveland in June for the 2005 CTCNet Annual Conference.
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Sunday, October 24, 2004
MAYOR PROMISES FREE WIRELESS INTERNET TO ALL SAN FRANCISCANS: From Reuters News Service Friday:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has set a goal of providing free wireless Internet activity in his city that sees itself as a vanguard of the Internet revolution.First Philadelphia, now San Francisco. Will Los Angeles be next?
"We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service," he said in his annual state of the city address on Thursday. "These technologies will connect our residents to the skills and the jobs of the new economy."
"No San Franciscan should be without a computer and a broadband connection."
Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn announced the creation of a special panel of telecommunications experts to create a plan to extend wireless Internet access to every Los Angeles resident.Seems like it's time to start thinking about Cleveland's place in this race. A good place to start will be...
"I want Los Angeles to remain at the leading edge of innovation and creativity," Mayor Hahn said. "We need wireless access to the Internet everywhere in the city - not just in select locations. I believe that Wi-Fi and next generation technologies will help us bridge the digital divide."
DIGITAL VISION'S ANNUAL MEETING this Tuesday afternoon at Tri-C Metro, with speakers Lev Gonick and Scot Rourke of One Cleveland. The meeting is in the Metro Campus Theater (building E on this campus map) from 3 to 5 pm. Also speaking: Carl Powell, Tri-C's Vice-President for Technology and Patricia Mintz, the college's Dean of Academic Affairs. You're invited!
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Lots of things happening this week. Check out the website for our new clickable map of Cleveland community tech centers. And here's some other breaking news...
MAYOR SAYS "DIGITAL COMMUNITY INITIATIVE" WILL BE PART OF POVERTY WAR: Speaking at the second gathering of her "Poverty Summit" yesterday, Mayor Campbell made a public commitment to push the city's long-planned Digital Community Initiative into action. A first DCI project will be launched in Hough in the next few months, tied to a "lighted schoolhouse" program at Daniel Morgan Elementary. Here's the Plain Dealer coverage. Digital Vision's staff and affiliates have been active for the past year in the planning process for the Initiative, which is based partly on our five-year program adopted in October 2003. For an overview of the Digital Community plan see this Power Point presentation.
ONE CLEVELAND TO BE FEATURED AT DV ANNUAL MEETING: Digital Vision's 2004 Annual Membership Meeting will take place on Tuesday, October 26, from 3 to 5 p.m. at Cuyahoga Community College's Metro Campus. Scot Rourke and Lev Gonick of One Cleveland will be featured apeakers. More details here soon. Meanwhile, you might want to check out this recent column by Lev in Cool Cleveland.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES: Angela Stuber of the Ohio Community Computing Network is the new Board President of the national Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet), which is bringing its national conference to Cleveland next June. CTCNet represents more than 1200 affiliated community technology programs across the country. Angela takes over the board presidency from Errol Reese of RTPNet in Raleigh-Durham, NC, who's held the post since 2001.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
MAGIC JOHNSON OPENS $250 K UPGRADE OF UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT COMPUTER CENTER
Major congratulations to Kevin Cronin and the rest of the folks at University on their new "Inventor Center"!
Here's the Channel 3 video...
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
NEIGHBORHOOD BLOGS: I've thought for a long time that blogging could be a great format for community groups that need a web presence with personality and dynamic content, but can't afford (or do) constant html rewrites.
So a couple weeks back, George Nemeth came to a Digital Vision Community Technology Council meeting to talk to neighborhood technology center staffers about blogs. One of the folks there was Charles McDowell of the Thea Bowman Center in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood.
And now, without further warning... here's Thea Bowman's new weblog!
George shoots and scores. Now who'll be next?
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
2005 CTCNET CONFERENCE COMING TO CLEVELAND: It's official... the Community Technology Centers Network will hold its 2005 Annual Conference at Cleveland's Intercontinental Hotel next June.
The decision was announced June 12 at the organization's 2004 Conference in Seattle.
The CTCNet conference is the main national event in the community technology field, bringing together 600-700 community technology practitioners, community leaders, funders, and other activists from across the U.S. (and a few other countries).
Digital Vision and the Ohio Community Computing Network, CTCNet's Ohio affiliate, worked together on the successful effort to bring the conference here. Now we have to organize a local planning committee. Stay tuned to the Digital Vision website and this blog for updates.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Thursday, April 15, 2004
PLUG IN CLEVELAND: Digital Vision and Computers Assisting People are throwing a party to raise some money and celebrate the successes of Cleveland's community technology activists. It's PLUG IN CLEVELAND 1.0 at the Cleveland Midtown Innovation Center on May 12, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.
Plug In Cleveland will feature the first annual "Visionary Awards", plus live music, refreshments, great people to hang out with, and a chance to take a look at the Midtown Innovation Center, home of some of northeast Ohio's fastest-rising high-tech businesses. Event sponsors include IBM and Tri-C, among others.
Tickets for Plug In Cleveland are $25, which you can pay on line here courtesy of NEOSA.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
OHIO HOUSE BILL 413: Cleveland-area Representative James Trakas is among eight sponsors of Ohio House Bill 413, a new proposal to use telephone company service penalties to fund a state Community Technology Center Grant Fund.
The bill is the brainchild of the Ohio Community Computing Network and State Representative Jon Peterson (R-Delaware), its chief sponsor. It has been referred to the House Committee on Economic Development and Technology, chaired by Rep. Thom Collier (R-Mount Vernon). Initial hearings are expected in the next month or two. The only Clevelander on the committee is Democrat Michael Skindell, who represents part of the city's West Side along with Lakewood.
You can e-mail Rep. Trakas here to thank him for co-sponsoring this important legislation. Rep. Skindell can be contacted here to encourage his support.
P.S. Here and here are pictures of Cleveland community computer center folks at the Statehouse press conference unveiling HB 413 on February 11.
Friday, March 19, 2004
FREE LANE ON THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY? From today's New York Times op-ed page: The director of New York University's Center for Advanced Social Science Research calls for free, universal wireless Internet access.
The WiFi revolution is here. With the technology known as wireless fidelity, laptop users can get onto the Internet and download e-mail, photos and other electronic files from places once well off the information superhighway — parks, truck stops and cafes, to name a few.
That's a wonderful thing, but what's better is that WiFi holds the promise of bridging America's much discussed digital divide — if we make it ubiquitous and free to use, like the public library system. After all, just as roads and bridges were among the most important public investments in the industrial period, wireless access to the Internet is arguably the most crucial public investment of the information age.
Read the rest here.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Winter/Spring issue of the CTR is on line and worth a look. Among other things, the University of Massachusetts has begun offering a BA degree in community media and technology. And Andrew Cohill says we're entering "The Third Age of Community Networking":
The "first age" was the early days of CN projects that had a key focus on access, and offered dial-up in many communities where there were no or few ISPs. As commercial dial-up services became more widely available, a "second age" CN focus emerged to provide training, education, and local services, as appropriate. During the second age, infrastructure issues were left largely to the private sector.
But the infrastructure job is not done. One thing that has been lost in recent telecommunications deregulation is the notion of universal access, ensuring that every household and every business has affordable broadband access and affordable services (e.g., email, Web hosting, videoconferencing, blogging, community directories, etc).
The "third age" of community networking will blend some "first and second age" infrastructure solutions with successful communities developing public/private partnerships to get affordable access to more households and businesses. Most community wireless projects will need commercial ISPs to make them viable over the long term. Communities can now make modest investments to help attract commercial wireless providers. They can also make modest wireline investments (e.g., duct, dark fiber, co-location facilities) that will also attract commercial ISPs to light the fiber and bring advanced business and commercial services into the community.
What is really exciting about the "third age" of community networking is that Community Networks can now provide inexpensive, very sophisticated services, including online learning, civic governance forums, "safe" chat rooms for kids, videoconferencing, audio and video streaming of community events, and collaborative work environments for community boards and local committees/commissions, just to name a few. In short, the "third age" of community networking is being characterized by mature computer hardware, mature broadband access, and mature services.
Cohill's "first age of community networking" began right here with the Cleveland Free-Net. Now the One Cleveland project is giving our city a unique opportunity to pioneer the "third age", too.
More from Cohill: The CTR article quoted above was mostly reproduced from Andy Cohill's "news log" posted at his company's website. But the weblog entry goes on to make this interesting point:
Some economists are predicting that as many as 40% of U.S. jobs will be home-based by 2030. This has profound implications for the way economic developers do their jobs. An exclusive focus on business parks and incubator buildings will minimize the effect of ED efforts and marginalize the ability of home-based entrepreneurs and businesspeople to grow their businesses. ED investments in infrastructure have traditionally been oriented toward "big company" needs--water and sewer connections to business parks, highway improvements to faciliate heavy manufacturers, and other types of "big business" improvements. But as more and more business transactions are facilitated by the Internet and goods and services are being delivered by a stream of electrons rather than a stream of tractor trailers on the interstate, community economic development efforts must change to reflect the new realities of the Creative Knowledge Economy.
Is anyone in Cleveland thinking hard enough about home-based businesses as a source of new jobs and income for our neighborhoods? Is this a missing link between "community economic development" and the idea of a "wired city"?
Thursday, January 29, 2004
COMPUTER CENTERS AND JOBS: In his weblog, PD technology reporter Chris Seper looks at yesterday's op-ed column headlined "New computer skills -- but no job". (The op-ed isn't online at the PD site, but here it is at the Washington Post.) The author, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is in favor of widespread computer training for poor and unemployed workers, but cautions that it won't get workers into well-paid skilled jobs in an economy that isn't creating many of those jobs. Chris accurately recaps the column's argument, but then concludes:
Tufekci's opinion is something to consider as Cleveland continues trying to improve the city's computer IQ with the help of local community centers, businesses and other non-profits.
The title of Chris' entry is "Computer Centers: Building Confidence, Not Jobs". But the op-ed doesn't say a word about community technology centers -- only about a local job training program focussed on office applications, email and job search skills. No one who's been through a similar program in Cleveland will be surprised that the Austin trainees ended up in low-end jobs or still unemployed, because there just isn't much of a demand for inexperienced office workers in this still-jobless "recovery".
This point is underlined by the experience of hundreds of Clevelanders who used Workforce Investment Act grants to take A+ computer tech certification training when it was booming in 2001 and 2002 -- only to discover that they had prepared for non-existent opportunities in a slack market for entry-level IT skills. Digital Vision's five-year program speaks directly to this experience when it says: In the near term it will be counterproductive for Cleveland’s workforce training programs to keep recruiting hundreds of new trainees for low-end IT certifications such as A+ and Cisco Networking. Throwing a glut of inexperienced job-seekers into competition for the few such positions now open in the regional economy is unfair to all concerned.
So do we conclude that computer training for thousands of poor and unemployed Clevelanders is a poor investment -- a distraction from the serious business of job creation, or at best, just a "confidence building" exercise?
It should be obvious that the answer is "no", for at least three reasons:
1. Basic computer literacy has become a foundation skill for all kinds of jobs, not just a path to a specific employment cluster. Cleveland's IT industry offers far fewer entry job possibilities than health care, insurance, and various manufacturing areas where computers have become ubiquitous tools. Even upward mobility in low-end retail, hotel and service jobs -- from clerk to supervisor, for example -- often depends on IT competency. So a city full of IT illiterates is a city full of permanent low-wage workers, no matter how fast or slowly the job market expands.
2. Basic computer literacy is a foundation skill for all other kinds of learning. Cleveland has the lowest proportion of adults with college degrees among the fifty biggest U.S. cities, and one of the highest percentages of adults lacking high school diplomas. Nothing good is going to happen to this work force without a whole lot of people going back to school. A computer-literate population will be far better prepared to rise to this challenge.
3. Eventually all the huffing and puffing about entrepreneurship, tech transfer and venture financing may actually result in new employment opportunities. Maybe the regional IT sector will really add 60,000 jobs, like NorTech was saying before the bottom fell out. Maybe bioscience and nanotech firms will get to be significant employers. What's the likelihood of low-income, inner-city residents getting any of those jobs without a foundation of basic technology skills? Just about zero.
Of course basic computer training isn't a short-term ticket to a great job, in Cleveland, Austin, or most other places. (Aside from a few job training outfits, nobody makes that claim -- certainly not CTCs and their supporters.) Training of any kind doesn't create job opportunities where they don't exist. Cleveland desperately needs a real national recovery in the short run, and lots of new enterprise growth in the longer run, to get our people into decently paid employment. But we also need workers to be ready for those opportunities when they arrive... ready to read, write, do math, learn, plan, communicate, collaborate -- and compute.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
CTCNET DIRECTOR FEATURED AT FIRST "VISIONARIES" SESSION JAN. 26: Kavita Singh, the Executive Director of the national Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet), will speak at Digital Vision's first "Visionaries" gathering. The session, scheduled for 11 am Monday, January 26 at the Tri-C Metro Campus Theatre, is the first in a series of quarterly get-togethers for DV member organizations and other supporters of Cleveland's community technology movement.
More information is posted on the Digital Vision website.
Monday, January 05, 2004
ANOTHER PD ARTICLE: Chris Seper says: "A new citywide effort to give Clevelanders a technology upgrade represents a fundamental shift by the city's tech community".
This morning's article is mostly about the growing consensus, reflected in the City discussions, that we need to begin teaching to a more unified and more challenging standard like the IC3 and ICDL basic skills certifications. Digital Vision's five year program calls for this change, and we've been working with the School District's Office of Adult Education to develop an IC3 certification project in several of our member centers. (The City of Philadelphia has just begun road-testing a common certification effort based on the competing ICDL program.)
Also in today's article:
Basic computer classes are a springboard, said Cathy Horton, an attorney at Roetzel & Andress' Cleveland office who helped the British government add e-government services and spread technology to citizens.
"This is the beginning of a process that closes the digital divide," said Horton, who is part of Cleveland's new group. "By starting the transfer of basic skills, you can go on to develop additional technology and additional information technology skills."
Cathy, who just returned to Cleveland after almost twenty years in England, knows a lot about e-government and universal access strategies, having had a big hand in the development of UK Online.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
DIGITAL VISION YEAR-END SURVEY: Over 1,500 adult Cleveland residents got basic computer training at neighborhood computer centers in 2003. That's one of the findings of Digital Vision's survey of local CTCs, new on our website. Twenty-one centers participated in the online survey about beginner classes in computer skills for adults.
Monday, December 29, 2003
NEW CITY TECH LITERACY INITIATIVE: Crain Tech's Shasta Clark has a story up today about the new City-led computer literacy collaborative.
Melodie Mayberry-Stewart is spearheading, on behalf of the city of Cleveland, a project that aims to make available to every Cleveland resident computer technology, Internet access and computer training.
"We want to ratchet up the computer skills of the city of Cleveland," Dr. Mayberry-Stewart said. "Every Clevelander has the need and the right to have access to technology for enhancing everyday life and for improving the ability to compete in a global society."
Dr. Mayberry-Stewart acknowledges that including "every Clevelander" is a huge undertaking, but she said the city doesn't want to exclude anyone. The project, called Creating a Stronger Digital Community, is for "every neighborhood in the city," she said.
The second half of the story deals with Digital Vision's planned Household IT Users Survey and how the City initiative will use its results.
Sunday, December 28, 2003
CAP'S YEAR-END REPORT: Our friends at Computers Assisting People have just sent out and posted this report on their 2003 donations of recycled computers to Cleveland nonprofits. They had a banner year, with over 500 PCs going out to more than fifty organizations.
We're grateful that eight community computer centers affiliated with Digital Vision benefited from CAP's donations this year.
Soon to be announced: CAP and Digital Vision are teaming up with a local bank, two CTCs and a high school to create a unique training and access partnership. Watch this space...
AND SPEAKING OF PARTNERSHIPS: On Christmas Day, the PD's Chris Seper broke this story about a new collaborative, led by City of Cleveland CTO Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to take the city's computer literacy and access programs to a much higher level of impact and funding. The initial planning meeting on December 11 at ShoreBank included DV member reps Tiffany Barnes (Tri-C), Stanley Miller (NCA), Amy Eiben (Famicos), Wanda Davis (ASC3), Melodie Allen (Esperanza), Dan Valerian (CSP), Diane Euchenhofer (Growth Assn), Tom Furnas (ideastream) and Phil Star (CSU's Neighborhood Link). Also involved: CAP, the Cleveland Housing Network, One Cleveland, and the PC Users Group, among others. The planning group is chaired by Cynthia Andrews of the local IBM office.
Look for a lot more news about this initiative in the next couple of months.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
FCC COMMISH IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps was in town Friday to speak at the City Club about media concentration. But first, he made a detour to the North Broadway neighborhood for a special meeting with Cleveland's community technology activists and high-speed network developers.
The meeting at University Settlement started an hour late due to a plane delay, so it was short but action-packed. Copps went away educated and impressed. (He made a point of how impressed he was when he spoke at the City Club later.)
The participants included Kevin Cronin of the University Settlement computer lab, who set up the meeting with Digital Vision's support; US's new Executive Director, Tracey Mason; Dan Valerian of Cleveland Scholarships Program, a DV Board member; Melody Allen of Esperanza; Victoria from Famicos Foundation's Park Village; Mike Fait and Dejuan Perrymond of the Cleveland Housing Network; Dell Klingensmith of One Cleveland; Tom Furnas and Mike Gesing of IdeaStream; Tim Wilson and Pat Vitone of SkyLAN, who are working with Channel 45/49 on an ITFS wireless network in Akron; and Steve Finegold of Tremont WiFi. (Oh yeah, I was there too.)
Dell and Tom described One Cleveland and Idea Stream's planned ITFS wireless project, and all the applications they foresee for education, community development, etc. Tom and the SkyLAN guys got to talk with Copps for a while about ITFS issues that may be looming at the FCC. Then the community tech folks talked about our programs, how we collaborate, the importance of IT literacy to urban neighborhoods, and why the high-speed network development is important to us.
Our basic message was that we're working together in Cleveland; we have a real plan for community broadband; this is vital economic and community development work for the city.
Copps had a lot of questions, and was very interested in the links between network development and digital literacy efforts. He made a pitch about the need for a national broadband policy, but allowed as how Cleveland might be one of the few places that didn't actually need it.
Thanks to Kevin for putting this together, to US for hosting it, and to all the folks who turned out.
(For a look at Commissioner Copps' thinking on Internet issues, see his recent speech to the New America Foundation.)
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
MORE ABOUT RAINBOW TERRACE: The Cleveland project is featured in a September study published by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, called The Computer as a Household Appliance in the Subsidized Housing Arena (pdf file). The stuff on Rainbow Terrace begins on page 22, but the whole paper is interesting.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
NICE ARTICLE ABOUT THE RAINBOW TERRACE LEARNING CENTER in today's Plain Dealer. The Rainbow Terrace center, opened a year ago, is the flagship project for Tri-C's "Technology and Information Literacy Initiative" (TILI), which is also working with existing or new computer programs at Arbor Park Village, West Side Ecumenical Ministries, the Spanish American Committee, and the Famicos Foundation's Park Village. TILI is led by Tiffany Barnes, District Director of Learning Resources at Tri-C Metro Campus and Digital Vision's new Board President. (You can contact her here for more informaton.)
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
COMPUTER OCCUPATIONS "FASTEST-GROWING" IN CLEVELAND AREA: A new report by the state's Department of Jobs and Family Services says that eight of the ten fastest-growing occupations in greater Cleveland through 2010 will be in computer technology. Average pay: Anywhere from $13 to $29 an hour.
Here are the area's ten top high-growth jobs, as projected by the state's just-released Ohio Job Outlook.
Monday, November 17, 2003
ULTRAFAST INTERNET FOR ALL IN UTAH? From today's New York Times...
SALT LAKE CITY - When it comes to the Internet, residents of Utah are taking matters into their own hands.
In a 21st-century twist on Roosevelt-era public works projects, Salt Lake City and 17 other Utah cities are planning to build the largest ultrahigh-speed digital network in the country.
They call it "Utopia", of course. Here's the whole article.
NEW DIGITAL VISION OFFICERS ELECTED: The Digital Vision Board today elected officers for 2003-2004. They are:
President -- L. Tiffany Barnes, District Director of Learning Resources, Cuyahoga Community College; Vice-President -- Don Slocum, Executive Director, Cleveland Neighborhood Leadership Institute; Secretary -- Dan Valerian, Vice-President, Cleveland Scholarships Program; Treasurer -- Charles MacDowell, Executive Director, the Thea Bowman Center.
See a list of the whole 2003-2004 Board of Directors here.
Friday, November 07, 2003
FIRSTGOV EN ESPANOL: Sister Alicia Alvarado just sent this out on the "Comunidad Latina" mailing list:
In an effort to make government more accessible to the nation's 28.1 million Spanish speakers, the General Services Administration (GSA) has unveiled "FirstGov en Espanol," a portal that allows users to access tens of thousands of pages of federal and state Spanish-language Web pages. Using FirstGov en Español, the U.S. Spanish-speaking population can obtain information on a wide variety of topics such as health, education, housing, benefits, citizenship and voting. Visitors can also perform various online transactions, all in Spanish, and can phone in or email questions, all answered in Spanish.
To access the new website, click on www.espanol.gov.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
CLOSING CLEVELAND'S DIGITAL OPPORTUNITY GAP: Digital Vision's Board of Directors met on Monday and gave final approval to our "Program to Narrow Our City's Digital Opportunity Gap, 2004-2008".
The five-year program makes concrete proposals for action by the City of Cleveland (along with the School District, CMHA, and other leaders) in four key areas: household computer ownership and network access; neighborhood technology training, support and leadership; a community-wide standard for basic computer literacy; and educating more city residents for opportunities in tech-driven sectors.
You can download a PDF copy by right-clicking here.
Friday, October 17, 2003
WIRELESS WAFFLES: Tremont Scoops at 2362 Professor Ave. is throwing a pancake breakfast on Sunday, October 26th to raise money for Tremont WiFi, Cleveland's first "neighborhood wireless network". The price is only five bucks, the Belgian waffles are guaranteed to be outstanding, and the money will go to buy more access points and wireless cards for the neighborhood. See the flyer here. And... bring your laptop and 802.11 card, if you have one, because Scoops is TwiFi's first community hotspot! What could be better?
DV DAILY LINK: If you don't know what the heck this "WiFi" stuff is about, look here for an introduction.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
COMMUNITY TECH ADVOCATES AT THE STATEHOUSE: Yesterday was "Ohio Community Technology Day", and forty community technology leaders from all over the state travelled to Columbus to participate in OCCN's "Community Technology Education Day" at the Statehouse. Digital Vision's five-person delegation managed to meet personally with Senator C.J. Prentiss and Representatives Annie Key and Claudette Woodard, to introduce the work done by community technology programs throughout Cleveland.
DV DAILY LINK: OCCN's "Resources" page features a new list of sites for older adults, along with a lot of other useful stuff. (But I have to tell them to add two Cleveland senior sites: Dan Hanson's clevelandseniors.com, and the Cleveland Public Library's SeniorsConnect.)
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
BDPA OPENS NEW COMPUTER CENTER IN LEE-HARVARD:
A Lee-Harvard neighbor checks out one of the new workstations
The Cleveland chapter of BDPA IT Thought Leaders unveiled the city's newest neighborhood technology center at the Harvard Community Services Center last evening.
The grand opening took place at the Lee Harvard Community Association's monthly meeting, complete with tours of the new center for the fifty neighbors in attendance. Featuring ten new workstations with flatscreen monitors and a wireless network, it was installed with a grant from the City Council / Adelphia Neighborhood Technology Fund.
This is the second BDPA technology center in the neighborhood; the first was opened two years ago at nearby John F. Kennedy High School. Chapter President Beverly Peterson got an enthusiastic round of applause from last night's meeting with her remark that Lee-Harvard is on its way to becoming "a technology hub."
Friday, October 10, 2003
IC3 CERTIFICATION: Representatives of six Cleveland community computer programs met this afternoon with the Cleveland School District's Office of Adult Education to discuss a collaboration to train neighborhood residents for "IC3" certification.
"Internet and Computing Core Certification" is "the world's first global, validated, standards-based training and certification program for measuring fundamental computing and Intrnet knowledge and skills". The Adult Ed office has set up an authorized IC3 testing center, and is just starting its second certification training class at Max Hayes. Folks from Famicos Foundation, Esperanza, the Empowerment Center, ASC3, the Eastside Ecumenical Consortium and CEE-GES -- along with Digital Vision and Computers Assisting People -- met with Adult Ed's Lori Brito to talk about setting up a training system that can prepare residents for the IC3 tests at neighborhood CTCs.
It was a good start, and all the participants are ready to move forward. Watch this site for progress reports.
DV DAILY LINK: Certiport IC3 page
Thursday, October 09, 2003
OHIO COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY DAY: Governor Taft has declared October 15, 2003 to be "Ohio Community Technology Day". That's next Wednesday, when a Digital Vision delegation will join community tech advocates from all over the state for an "education day" in the State Capitol, visiting legislators and explaining what we do. Want to join us? There's room... email me.
DV DAILY LINK: Neighborhood Link at CSU's Center For Neighborhood Development... bookmark it!
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
DV DAILY LINK(S): With Microsoft looming on its economic skyline, it's not surprising that the City of Seattle has had information technology on the agenda for a long time. One result: A City Office of Community Technology that supports neighborhood computer access and literacy efforts thoughout the city and publishes a monthly webzine called Brainstorm to tell the world about them.
Our own City Hall has been thinking hard about technology for only a couple of years. Along with email for City staff and a "tech czar" to search for Knowledge Industry business opportunities, the Campbell Administration has brought us a vastly improved City web site. It includes today's second "DV Daily Link" -- the Planning Commission's interactive map of the city that lets you make maps -- of wards, neighborhoods, etc. -- with all kinds of color-coded information. Have fun!
