Field Reports
Notes from the Digital Inclusion CorpsLibrary Services and Technology Act Certification in Port Lions, AK
The Alutiiq Museum has been working with AMERIND Critical Infrastructure to help the Native Village of Port Lions (NVPL) Tribal Library certified as a LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) eligible entity. Being LSTA eligible also makes the library E-rate...
Minnesota Technology Literacy Collaborative
The Technology Literacy Collaborative (TLC) started in South Minneapolis as a resource for community technology centers and digital literacy instructors. It truly is a collaborative of various organizations focusing on technology and service to underrepresented...
Port Lions “Service” Upgrade
My friend Alvin, who knows me from my digital inclusion work in the village of Port Lions, asked me what I thought was the best choice for an Internet plan for his family. The list of plans he showed me on his iPhone was heart breaking. The village had had high hopes...
Minnesota Literacy Council
I’ll be using some of my remaining posts to highlight organizations around Minnesota that are working on digital inclusion. I’ve collaborated with them as a Digital Inclusion Corps member and/or on projects I’ve worked on at the Minnesota Department of Education. Each...
Techie Camp Magic: Computer Hardware Workshop for Students
With our community partners at Arizona Students Recycling Used Technology (AZStRUT), we were able to host a Techie Camp at the San Xavier Education Center Library in Tucson, Arizona. The Techie Camp is a hands-on introductory workshop to computer hardware...
Broadband in Rural Minnesota
Minnesota has been working on digital inclusion at the state and community levels for quite a while, yet, as a recent article pointed out, 10-20% of Minnesotans still are underserved by broadband access. The article certainly is worth a thorough read, but I wanted to...
PCs for People
The idea for PCs for People came about when Andy Elofson was a social worker in Blue Earth County, Minnesota. He gave one of his clients a computer the county wasn’t using anymore, and the young man was able to start a business creating websites for local businesses....
Six Months Later, I Still Believe in Hotspots
First, let’s just take a moment to appreciate how incredible public libraries are. Library services are driven by the needs of the community, and this extends well beyond lending books. They can lend all sorts of non-traditional items, from power tools and telescopes...
Broadband 101 toolkits as a conversation starter
So far, we’ve facilitated three of the six broadband toolkit site assessments in Arizona as part of Internet2’s “Toward Gigabit Libraries” pilot program (I wrote about the pilot program in an earlier post). The first two were facilitated by James Werle of Internet2...
Need for Access – Forgotten Towns
Because someone cared City of Boley was first brought to my attention back in February of this year. The City of Boley had not had access to a library and computers for over a decade. Today thanks to a donor they have a working media center with four desktops....