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I N S I D E
Immigrant Prep
pso contest
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t.e.c.h.t.i.p
cool iris
Cooliris is cool little web browser add-on which provides a 3D cinematic way to enjoy images, video, and content on the web. You can also create your own photo slideshow using their PicLens Publisher. If you have a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation you can import it to Cooliris. Check it out and tell us what you think.
l.i.n.k.a.g.e
Games for Change (G4C) provides support, visibility and shared resources to organizations and individuals using digital games for social change. The site includes links to free online games and downloadable games about social issues like Against All Odds, which helps players understand what it’s like to be a refugee. It’s available in multiple languages.
What’s in the fine print? Eulalizer looks at those software agreements for unusual words and phrases. It picks up on what you may have missed. Free for educational and personal use.
Cyber Book Reviews: Each month, the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies publishes book reviews and author responses. November’s books are Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights and Democratic Media Roles and Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art. This was started by David Silver.
World TV Day: See the United Nations declaration proclaiming November 21 as World Television Day. Or learn fun TV facts and world records like game show contestants, see Guinness World Records.
Largest TV Sculpture: Pictures and description available on Sharenator.
archives
Back issues of Brainstorm including techtips and linkage are now available in our online archives. Previous TechTips and Linkage are also available. Click to revisit all previous issues.
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Greg Nickels, Mayor Department of Information Technology BILL SCHRIER chief technology officer GARY GIBSON director, office of electronic communications DAVID KEYES manager, community technology program staff  D.H. CASS MAGNUSKI editor |
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int'l district housing alliance
preps immigrants for citizenship
The International District Housing Alliance (IDHA) provides citizenship tutoring to Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants and refugees. With $9,500 in funds from the Technology Matching Fund in 2007, they launched the Citizenship Exam Preparation project to augment these services with technology. The basic program offered students instruction in their native language, assistance navigating the application process, and opportunities for mock interviews and rehearsing test responses in English. Additional funding through the Technology Matching Fund allowed staff to travel with laptops and teach with multimedia educational materials.
Over the course of the year, 24 immigrants and refugees, 46 percent of whom were seniors, received instruction on citizenship exam preparation. IDHA tutors used a PowerPoint curriculum translated into Chinese and Vietnamese. They taught through group classes and in home tutoring using laptops and computer software. The majority of the participants were low-income Vietnamese and Chinese residents living in Yesler Terrace, Rainier Vista and High Point communities.
“In doing this project, we realized just how much of a technology gap there is,” said Tien Duong-Le, Outreach Program Manager. "One key to the success of the project was improving technology training to staff early on. Many of the tutors needed to be taught how to use basic computer programs in order to use the laptops and provide technology-based instruction. Computer knowledge was a challenge for the participants as well, since many of them had barely touched a computer before the project, particularly those who were homebound. Only two students had computers in their homes."
Overall, the project helped to overcome the many language and educational barriers faced by low-income residents seeking to obtain citizenship. In time for this election year, six of the students had passed the citizenship exam, and the rest had been scheduled for testing. For more information on this project, contact Tien Duong-Le.
cto bill schrier blogs to help
citizens understand gov and tech
Chiefseattlegeek.com is the personal site of Bill Schrier, Chief Technology Officer for the City of Seattle. In it, he expresses personal opinions and tests Web 2.0 technologies. The focus of Bill's blog is to better tell the story of how technology and government intersect, specifically how technology influences Seattle's government, but also to examine and show how Seattle's government uses technology on behalf of residents, citizens, and visitors. Bill firmly believes that "government exists to do for people what they cannot easily do for themselves, or purchase on the open market. Accordingly, cities run parks, provide water and take away wastewater, have police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians, and, in Seattle's case, operates a municipal electric utility. Cities also have technology to make all these jobs and services more effective. And I want to tell the stories of how this happens."
Bill Schrier, along with select CIO/CTOs nationwide, was selected to be featured as a regular blogger for Govtech.com, a web site providing solutions nationally for state and local government in the information age. Read it here.
The opinions expressed on these blogs are solely those of Bill Schrier and do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of the elected officials or residents of the City of Seattle. The official website of the City of Seattle is Seattle.gov, and the official website for the City's Department of Information Technology, which Bill directs, is seattle.gov/doit.
free digital television conversion presentations at your organization
Staff from the Office of Cable Communications are happy to come out to your group to provide information about the digital TV transition and to sign people up to get the free coupons from the federal government. If interested in such a presentation or for more information about the digital TV transition, please call Brenda Tate at (206) 386-2989.
Some background information: On February 17, 2009, television broadcasters are required to switch how they broadcast TV, from analog to all-digital broadcasting. By this date, all viewers who use “rabbit ears” or an outdoor antenna to get a TV signal, will need to take action to continue to receive free television service. Choose one of three options:
- purchase a digital-to-analog converter box (see below);
- buy a digital television; or
- subscribe to cable or satellite service.
You can now get two $40 coupons towards buying a government approved converter box, which cost between $50-70. The coupons must be used within 90 days. You can buy these converter boxes at Radio Shack, RiteAid, Circuit City, and other local electronics shops. For more information call the City of Seattle’s Office of Cable Communications at (206) 386-1989, or 1-888-DTV-2009, or go here or here.
2009 pacific northwest digital inclusion summit slated
One Economy Corporation, with support from the City of Seattle and Communities Connect Network will host the 2009 Pacific Northwest Digital Inclusion Summit in Seattle on January 28, 2009. Topics to include Rural Initiatives, Municipal Inclusion, Youth and Technology, Media Tools for Change, and Technology and the Economy. You don't want to miss it. Keynote address will be delivered by One Economy Corporation CEO Rey Ramsey. More information to come soon.
Want to watch a show on Seattle Channel? You can always tune in to Channel 21 on cable systems Comcast or Broadstripe, but there are many other ways to access SEATTLE CHANNEL's award-winning programming. First, the website offers streaming video of all our shows. We recently switched over to Adobe Flash Player, which has improved our connection quality and allows you to watch full screen. Also on the website, you can subscribe to audio and video podcasts of your favorite Seattle Channel show for your MP3 player or portable video player. Many Seattle Channel shows like City Inside/Out with C.R. Douglas, Art Zone in Studio with Nancy Guppy, Seattle Voices with Eric Liu, and CityStream are also available in the On Demand section of Comcast. Visit Comcast On Demand/Get Local/Northwest TV and Radio/Seattle Channel to see what's available. Happy watching!
Seattle Channel Goes Flash
The City of Seattle's Office of Information Security publishes an information security newsletter that will soon feature RSS. In order to help you understand this technology and be ready to subscribe to the RSS feed for our information security newsletter, they have provided the following tip, which you can also access here. The acronym RSS stands for either "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary" depending on who you ask. In any case, it is basically a Web format used to publish frequently updated content. If you subscribe to an RSS feed, you can get notices about new content as soon as it is published. In the case of newsletter such as the one put out by the Information Security Office (and other blogs, etc., that use RSS) each new article is listed with a few lines of text. You can then click the link to that article and read it. To set this up, your first step is to sign up for an RSS reader. There are many places that offer these, such as Google. To sign up for that, just go to Google, find "Reader" under their "More" list, and sign up. Yahoo and others also offer similar readers. Once you are signed up for a reader, it will gather up all the RSS feeds to which you subscribe, and you can simply go to your reader to see what's new. Cool, eh!? The next step is to subscribe to RSS feeds. In the case of the Information Security Office newsletter, look for the RSS logo on the newsletter page (coming soon) and click on it. The logo is an orange square with a dot in the bottom left corner and two semi-circular lines radiating out from that dot. When you click on the dot, you will most often be taken to an XML page. This looks a little scary to the uninitiated but never fear. All you need is the URL or web address in the address bar on top. Highlight that address and copy it. Then open up your reader and find the 'Add Subscription' command. Click on that and simply paste in the address you copied. Voila! You are now set to go and your reader will let you know every time a new item is added. Here's a little secret for you. You can have your reader populated with all the information security sites, blogs, etc. That is how you can learn all about the latest and greatest scams that published every week in the information security newsletter. This is a great tool. So far at least, no one has seemed to figure out a way to use it for scamming people. It's probably only a matter of time, though.
s.e.c.u.r.i.t.y
rss feeds
d.o.l.l.a.r.s
You Tube for Nonprofits
Deadline: Ongoing
Offers premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity on your You Tube channel, the option to drive fundraising through a Google "Donate" button, and listing on the Nonprofit channels and the Nonprofit videos pages.
Mitsubishi Electric Foundation Inclusion Champion Award
Deadline: December 1
Accepting nominations to honor individuals who have made significant efforts to promote the full inclusion of youth with disabilities in society. The focus of the efforts may include helping to create a culture of inclusion within an organization or community or developing innovative strategies for inclusive programming in school activities, afterschool programs, community service, and leadership development.
Tech Soup Stock
Deadline: Ongoing
Offers donated and discounted technology products for nonprofits and public libraries. Choose from over 340 products from companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, and Symantec.
sub/unsub
To subscribe or unsubscribe to Brainstorm, please email us, and we'll add you to our email notification list, or subtract you per your request. If you have ideas for future stories, please let us know and we'll try to accommodate them. We encourage you to visit the City of Seattle's Community Tech pages, seattle.gov/tech.