Introduction to Site
From Martin:
Hi guys,
The site survey with Salem Baptist is being postponed one week. As luck would have it, I ended up meeting with Rev. Bogin for about 30 minutes on Saturday at Landscape Recycling Center in Urbana. Long story short, he is willing to work out the details to allow us to collaborate on the lab space and so it is a good fit for the DCEO grant I mentioned, which has funds to purchase new equipment. He would like for us to meet with both he and the Pastor at Salem, though, and that won’t be possible until the 30th at 11AM. This Saturday when groups are getting together to compare notes regarding their projects based on information garnered at their site surveys, I’ll take a few minutes to fill you in a bit more about the grant. In the meantime, I’m cutting and pasting the budget as it had been proposed, and also the introductory text for the grant. Ignore the last column of the budget – that’s a running total for expenses for hardware and software for all sites. We have flexibility in adjusting exactly which hardware and software is purchased, as long as it is reasonably similar in purpose to what is proposed. That’ll be part of your research work.
– Martin
Budget:
Dell Optiplex 360 w/ 17″ monitor Prairienet $674.12 7 $4,718.84 $20,474.33
Dell Optiplex 760 Desktop w/ 22″ monitor Prairienet $1,137.10 1 $1,137.10 $21,611.43
Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 Prairienet $89.99 1 $89.99 $21,701.42
iMac 24″ Prairienet $1,953.00 1 $1,953.00 $23,654.42
Synology DS209+ 1.5 TB NAS Prairienet $749.97 1 $749.97 $24,404.39
InFocus IN2104EP LCD Projector Prairienet $584.99 1 $584.99 $24,989.38
Canon Powershot SD1100 IS, Case, 8GB Prairienet $169.99 1 $169.99 $25,159.37
Canon ZR950 Camcorder Prairienet $269.99 1 $269.99 $25,429.36
Canon MiniDV Camcorder Starter Kit Prairienet $64.99 1 $64.99 $25,494.35
Firewire cable Prairienet $10.99 1 $10.99 $25,505.34
Azden WMS-Pro Wireless Mic System Prairienet $169.99 1 $169.99 $25,675.33
Proline ST-400 Tripod Prairienet $27.99 1 $27.99 $25,703.32
Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 Prairienet $124.99 8 $999.92 $26,703.24
Comic Life Magiq Prairienet $44.95 1 $44.95 $26,748.19
Final Cut Express Prairienet $179.00 1 $179.00 $26,927.19
Introduction to Grant Application:
The proposed project is a partnership of four Community Technology Centers located in East St Louis and Prairienet (Community Informatics Initiative), a CTC at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. East St Louis is a low income community where 67.6% of students in the area are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The project in part is dedicated to expanding basic training for youth and homeless veterans. The veteran training will especially focus on job preparedness and search skills. The grant also proposes purchase of, and training on, accessibility hardware and software to facilitate network access for veterans who have returned with disabilities that inhibit digital content access. Basic training for youth will focus on common technology terminology and training, productivity tools, and Internet access. But with the increasing prevalence of higher performing computers and network bandwidth, Internet content has moved beyond static web pages and one-way interactions to dynamic, multimedia, interactive content that empowers individuals to participate in broader communities to meet both individual and local community goals. To bridge the digital divide today, it is important to provide the tools that enable multimedia and interactive content creation. Further, access to these tools, the skills to use them, and a physical environment that helps communities intersect with virtual communities are needed to most effectively meet individual and community goals. The proposed computer equipment and software will help provide such tools for the five partnering CTCs. With these tools, the general public can use the video and image manipulation software to meet their own specific goals. These range from editing home photos and videos to editing and publishing historical documents about their community to producing print and online media advocating for justice within the community. In addition, the project will focus on advanced training for youth in the multimedia arts. As a result, youth will be trained on high tech tools and applications to become “citizen scientists/journalists/ planners”. Such training is in direct response to requests by neighborhood associations for training of local residents to better enable them to provide direct technical assistance to the associations. It is the goal of the project to expand cross-generational social networking within the community which could lead to greater community development. At the same time, youth are provided with skills which they can use in future employment and/or utilize in higher education. Prairienet will lead the project and develop appropriate training modules. The local partners will be responsible for delivering the basic computer training. Prairienet (UI faculty/staff) will conduct train the trainers sessions and present the advanced training for youth media skill building. Prairienet will also collect lessons learned through implementation of these advanced training sessions and implementation of new technologies at CTCs. These collections will be made available more broadly through web-hosted technical guides providing CTCs throughout the state with better practice guidelines.