Denver Open Media

The Open Media Globe
Submitted by erin on Thu, 07/30/2009 - 17:45
Contact Information
Individual Applicant Name: 
Erin Yepis
About the Center
1. Does your organization currently have a public computer center?: 
No
2. What is the goal of your public computer center? If it currently is not set up do you have organizational capacity for one?: 
Our primary focus in this project will be achieving increased outreach to Denver Metro neighborhoods with under 40% broadband adoption rates.  A new Education & Outreach Director will engage the community in outreach activities, including computer giveaways through our partnership with Community Computer Connection.  Concurrently, we will be expanding our public computer lab and developing a new website and network for local community technology centers, developing a comprehensive map of available community computer labs, a shared calendar for classes, and an online system for curriculum sharing.
3. What percentage of content submitted to your station is posted online?: 
100
4. Will your organization's public computer center be available to all members of the general public or a specific population?: 
The outreach and education portion of the project focuses on reaching communities in the lowest-income neighborhoods of the Denver Metro area.  These neighborhoods, which also have the lowest broadband penetration, are primarily African American and Latino/a, and our focus will be largely on youth, ages 15-25. Our computer giveaways through Community Computer Connection will target households with no history of internet or computer use, encouraging them to pursue any affordable internet options available in their area. Publicly available wireless access will be provided only to our immediate neighborhood which consists of only a few hundred families, primarily latino/a under the age of 40.  Though this project will serve only a very limited geographic area, the effort will serve as a pilot project, to be replicated by local partners, or expanded through additional funding. The network of local community technology centers and public computing labs will directly target organizations serving communities who have no computers or internet in the home.  The primary users of these labs vary from organization to organization, and include a wide demographic.
5. Do you charge membership dues or other fees to the population you are proposing to serve?: 
Yes
6. What is the disabilities status for members in your area? Check all that apply.: 
What little human resources and operating capacity we have as an organization is always devoted entirely towards serving communities in need of additional support in a technical environment, including persons with disabilities and individuals from households or communities across the digital divide.  The current space we use for a computer lab is wheelchair-accessible.  With secured funding for our proposed computer center we would be able to offer a lot more in terms of computer software that would assist hearing- and sight-impaired community members.
Center Capacity
7. For the following questions regarding your center's capacity, are the values current or proposed?: 
Proposed
Public computer center name and type.: 
Deproduction, City Facility
How many broadband-related equipment units (e.g. computers, wireless devices) have you/do you intend to purchase overall?: 
30
Center's Broadband Connection Speed (MBps): 
5
Number of Persons served per 120-hour business week?: 
100
Number of Persons served per 48-hour weekend?: 
25
Center Demographic Information
8. What is the estimated population size of your service area?: 
2715000
9. What is your service area identifier?: 
Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area
10. What age distribution(s) will your center serve?: 
5 to 19 years
20 to 29 years
11. What ethnicity(s) will your center serve?: 
Hispanic
Non-Hispanic White
Non-Hispanic Black
Non-Hispanic Other
12. What gender(s) will your center serve?: 
Male
Female
13. What is the median household income for the population your center will serve?: 
$35,000 - $44,999
14. What education levels will your center serve?: 
Secondary - Grade 8 to Grade 12
College
15. What is the unemployment rate for your service area?: 
8
16. What describes the language preference of your service area?: 
English - Primary
17. Please describe your center's outreach strategy and how can you reach communities lacking broadband access. : 
Deproduction and Denver Open Media recognize that a root cause of low-demand for broadband in low-income neighborhoods is the fact that the interests of low-income communities are under-represented in online content.  Our vote-driven programming schedule for Denver Open Media is designed to increase awareness and demand for home internet use by providing incentives for community members to get their communities to visit the Denver Open Media website and vote on the content from their neighborhood.  This project directly reaches over 200 members each year, and indirectly reaches hundreds of neighbors through word-of-mouth and thousands of viewers across our three Cable TV channels.  These numbers will be tracked by memberships, website views, and through interactive TV broadcasts (call-in shows). Our new Educational and Outreach Coordinator will promote and manage our internal computer lab, which we expect to reach at least 200 individuals annually.  He/she will also help promote existing services and resources, such as Denver Open Media.  These numbers will be tracked by computer lab usage and by new memberships from communities targeted for outreach. The establishment of a new website and resources to chart all public computing labs and computer training programs will also help individuals find training and resources in their area.  With at least 20 local organization expected to participate, each serving hundreds of individuals per year, we anticipate reaching several thousand people with additional information about the resources and training available in the community.  These numbers will be tracked through website hits, class enrollment, and any reporting offered by the member organizations.
18. If you provide a computer checkout or giveaway program, how many users do you expect to provide equipment or computers?: 
For Deproduction's computer lab, each computer would have access to: a computer station with the following peripherals: CD-RW/DVD-RW drives, flat-screen LCD monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, scanner, copier, projector and projector screen.
19. How will you measure the program's impact in reaching disconnected communities and increase broadband adoption?: 
For Deproduction's computer lab, each computer would have access to: Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office Suite, and a media player.  Atleast one out of every 15 computer stations will be able to accomodate disabled persons with audio/visual transcribing software, such as SAMI or Qtext, and screen-reading software synced to a TTS (text-to-speech) sythesizer or refreshable braille display.
20. Please describe your primary training and educational programs, including curricula, student certification programs, etc.: 
Our educational programs are currently managed by three Director-Level staff-members: Ann Theis, former Director of Education at Manhattan Neighborhood Network with over a decade of experience in technology training and hundreds of courses taught; Tony Shawcross, Executive Director of Deproduction, who has also taught hundreds of courses for local organizations and schools; and Deb Lastowka, who has managed Denver Open Media's programs for two years.  We also employ 20 college interns each year, five contract educators, and over 250 hours of volunteer service from local professionals in the field.   With funding for this program, we would hire one additional staff memeber to serve as an Education and Outreach Coordinator. Through the technology training classes currently offered, we dedicate at least 6 hours of training to each member per program.  Our planned computer literacy program will consist of eight 1-hour classes. With a computer technology center network in Denver, we plan to offer an open learning curriculum online to be circulated with all members, enabling self-training in the home. This local open learning framework would be modeled after existing networks that offer similar services, such as OpenMich.edu, which shares a database of courses from participating educational institutions worldwide.
Other Information
21. Is there evidence that less than 40% of your service population has broadband web access?: 
Yes
22. How will your center provide a $10,000 match of funds?: 
Deproduction receives up to $200,000 in capital equipment from the city of Denver's capital budget; $10,000 of that budget would be allocated to purchase capital equipment for this computer lab if we were able to fund a Deproduction computer center.
23. Does your center currently have an online component or plans for an online component?: 
Yes
26. Are you interested in enabling your community to directly schedule any portion of your programming schedule?: 
Yes
27. Are you interested in sharing content with other public access TV stations?: 
Yes