Double Helix Corporation, dba KDHX Community Media

The Open Media Globe
Submitted by bhacker on Mon, 08/10/2009 - 14:21
Contact Information
Individual Applicant Name: 
Beverly Hacker
About the Center
1. Does your organization currently have a public computer center?: 
Yes
2. What is the goal of your public computer center? If it currently is not set up do you have organizational capacity for one?: 
The mission of KDHX is to build community through media. We do that by operating a full-power community radio station, two public access television stations, a media arts program and a media education program. We are set up to do classes in audio and video production, as well as operate after-school and summer programs for youth. We are currently not set up to teach internet literacy, due to lack of equipment. We have the space, in-house expertise and the ability but we don't have sufficient equipment, broadband capacity or instructors.
3. What percentage of content submitted to your station is posted online?: 
15
4. Will your organization's public computer center be available to all members of the general public or a specific population?: 
It will be available to all members of the public. Our only requirement is that everyone must take an orientation course to learn more about community and public media, the history and mission of our organization and their opportunities and expectations in using the center. A few of our classes are free and all are discounted to members. The regular price for classes is nominal. All equipment usage is free and is available for class time, lab time and media production projects.
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.: 
Blindness, Deafness or a severe vision or hearing impairment.
A condition that substantially limits one or more basic physical activities such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying.
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.: 
KDHX Media Center - Media production, media literacy Internet literacy instruction & equipment
How many broadband-related equipment units (e.g. computers, wireless devices) have you/do you intend to purchase overall?: 
11
Number of Persons served per 120-hour business week?: 
25
Number of Persons served per 48-hour weekend?: 
15
Center Demographic Information
8. What is the estimated population size of your service area?: 
347181
9. What is your service area identifier?: 
City of Saint Louis, Missouri
10. What age distribution(s) will your center serve?: 
5 to 19 years
20 to 29 years
29 to 39 years
40 to 49 years
50 to 59 years
60 to 69 years
70 and above
11. What ethnicity(s) will your center serve?: 
Hispanic
Non-Hispanic White
Non-Hispanic Black
Non-Hispanic American Indian
Non-Hispanic Asian
Non-Hispanic Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
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?: 
$25,000 - $34,999
14. What education levels will your center serve?: 
Middle - Grade 6 to Grade 8
Secondary - Grade 8 to Grade 12
College
15. What is the unemployment rate for your service area?: 
11
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. : 
The KDHX Media Center will serve as an extension of current educational and outreach programs. The City of St. Louis operates a Community Education Center program, where all City residents have access to educational programs; however, technology education programming in these programs is underdeveloped district-wide. Media and computer skills programming is seen as a gap in current job development and k-12 education programs of the largely under-served communities in St. Louis. By expanding KDHX's current relationship with the St. Louis Public School district and non-public schools, new Internet literacy and media literacy programs will give residents access not only to training, but also to a medium for publication and sharing of their work. The result of this combination is typically increased learning transfer through heightened motivation and greater community awareness. The City of St. Louis's Community Education Program course guide reaches every household in the city borders, and KDHX Media Center's programming would be published at no cost to KDHX. In addition to partnering with the SLPS public education programs, KDHX will invite members of local non-profits, faith-based groups, and community organizations to enroll their members into media education programs in the interest of producing new video programming from members of low-broadband adoption demographic members beginning in 2009. These offerings will be communicated over the air as public service announcements on 88.1 KDHX, an FM community radio station with an 80 mile listening radius (which includes the City of St. Louis) with not cost or loss of revenue.
18. If you provide a computer checkout or giveaway program, how many users do you expect to provide equipment or computers?: 
All computer checkouts are on premise
19. How will you measure the program's impact in reaching disconnected communities and increase broadband adoption?: 
Broadband is universally available in the City of Saint Louis because of the universal build-out provisions of the cable franchise agreement with the incumbent cable provider (Charter Communications), even though the State of Missouri adopted a state-wide cable franchise ordinance in 2007. For this reason, the primary impact that our program could have in encouraging broadband adoption in disconnected communities is to raise the awareness of both the availability and the array of uses that are available with broadband connection. By training community members to make better use of the Internet, we will increase the use of broadband technology.
20. Please describe your primary training and educational programs, including curricula, student certification programs, etc.: 
Our current training and educational programs are centered on audio and video media production. We use project-based learning and incorporate media literacy concepts in all of our classes. Our training programs are designed primarily to teach volunteers and community producers to use the production and computer equipment to produce programming for radio and television. these classes include a skill certification evaluation at the end of the class that gives the student access to the equipment on which he or she has been certified. Courses are broken into basic, intermediate and advanced sections with the basic classes concentrating on a particular part of the production process such as camera, lighting or editing. The intermediate classes put it all together in community-based projects such as Neighborhood in Focus, in which the students create a 3-minute documentary about a local neighborhood, which is then presented on KDHX TV and on the kdhx.org website. Advanced classes upgrade to the pro-sumer grade equipment and incorporate studio production on longer, group productions. The educational programs are geared to both young people and adults. These programs operate with curricula similar to the training programs, but also include instruction on blogging and students are required to blog about their experiences in the class. The youth programs are typically done in after-school or summer camp sessions with 60 contact hours per student. The adult classes are done in both single session (basic) and multi-session classes (intermediate and advanced). The multi-session classes range from nine to 30 contact hours per student.
20a. How many hours of training do you/expect to provide per person on average through training programs(s)?: 
30-50 hours per student
20b. How many full-time instructors/facilitators do you/will you employ for broadband and digital literacy training purposes?: 
2
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?: 
We will match the grant funds with a combination of current operating funds and major gift solicitation.
23. Does your center currently have an online component or plans for an online component?: 
Yes
24. How do you plan to maintain a public computer center?: 
We currently have space for the computer center as well as in-house expertise in hardware, software, media production, Internet and web 2.0 applications.
25. How do you plan maintain a website for your station or for the public computer center?: 
We currently have a media-rich website that is built on the Joomla content management system. We received a grant for a Vista volunteer to work on a comprehensive update of our website through an upgrade to Joomla 1.5. This project started August 1, 2009 and will run through July 2010.
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
28. How many total new home subscribers (households) to broadband do you expect to generate over the entirety of the program?: 
n/a
29. How many total new business and/or institutional subscribers to broadband do you expect to generate?: 
n/a