During the month of April, we've been administering the post-assessments to gain feedback from participants about their experience in the program. Allyson will be providing a report at our May 15 meeting on the data gathered.

The call center at RSTA has been busy. Most of the calls have been related to hardware problems, but others have been network related. The network issues have had to do with the fact that some residents may not be leaving their nodes plugged in during the day. This has impacted other residents' ability to connect to the network.

There are only a couple of people who have not been able to connect to the Internet at all. My understanding is that some people might be out of range of the main gateway. In this case, additional antennae will need to be set-up in order for those participants to receive access. I believe Ty is planning to provide more information on the status of the network at our next meeting. read more...

Earlier this week, Gabriel Fishman treated fellow VISTAs to a rooftop tour of the open-mesh WiFi network at the Castle Square Tenants' Organization.

read more...

On June 2, the city is hosting an event at City Hall to celebrate the success of the digital divide pilot program.

During the event, students at Rindge School of Technical Arts who refurbished the computers and provided technical support for participants, as well as the collaborators who worked so hard to design the program, will be recognized for their contributions. We also welcome participants from Newtowne Court who participated in the program to attend the celebration.

After the event at City Hall, we hope that you will all join us back here at CCTV to continue the celebration!

More information on the time of the event and other details will be provided soon.

(photo above by Elizabeth Thomsen available under a Creative Commons license)

Claire sent this article to me this morning about internet service providers around the country pulling out of their municipal wi-fi agreements:
Click here to see the article

The line that made the biggest impression on me was "But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks."

In our pilot, it was also clear that many more routers were needed to ensure that the mesh network would function well - so, I think giving out a node to each participant is really critical. (If you missed the meeting last week - the report is that almost all of the pilot participants are getting internet access!)

Today marked the final week of computer trainings at CCTV, as outlined in the program proposal.

8 more participants received their computers at the end of the training session today. However, many of the participants felt that more computer training would be very helpful. Particularly for those with little to no previous experience with computers and the Internet.

Therefore, I hope that at the Steering Committee meeting this week we can discuss ways to make sure that participants receive the additional trainings they need. As I'm sure others would agree, it's necessary that participants feel comfortable with their computers and confident that this program helped them get closer to achieving their stated goals.

(Photo above by Tim Plenck for CCTV available under a Creative Commons license)

17 more Mac and PC computers were distributed today at the end of another successful week of training sessions at CCTV!

There is one more week of computer training for our digital divide project, an effort with the City of Cambridge, Cambridge Housing Authority, Tutoring Plus and other local organizations.

Students from the High School were also on hand today to shoot video footage for a short documentary they are producing about the project for Cambridge Educational Access.

Participants pictured above learned about their PC computers in CCTV's television studio. Training Coordinator, Matt Landry led the session with Selma Nane providing support. read more...

It was another busy Saturday in Central Sq. this past weekend as our second week of digital divide computer training sessions continued. Here's a breakdown of what happened:

8 participants attended their first week of PC training at the Community Learning Center's Brookline St. computer lab.

14 participants attended their second week of PC training at the 119 Windsor St. computer lab.

5 participants attended their second week of Mac training in computerCENTRAL @ CCTV.

7 participants came to CCTV for a one time only two-hour PC training session. At the end of this session participants went home with their new (i.e., refurbished) computers.

It was a very successful day! I look forward to our 3rd week of trainings this coming Saturday.

(Photo above by CCTV available under a Creative Commons license.)

I'm excited to announce that computer training for the digital divide project officially begins tomorrow!

Following the success of last weekend's orientation, 16 residents of Newtowne Court will begin their first of three basic computer training sessions at both the 119 Windsor Street and CCTV computer labs. An additional 3 participants will receive their Apple eMac computers and Meraki mini wireless mesh repeaters to use for connecting the City's wireless network.

Thanks also to Matt Landry (Cambridge Educational Access) for his work putting together the training materials and training the trainers.

(Photo above by lietk12, available under a Creative Commons license)

30 families came to CCTV today to participate in the first intake for the Digital Divide project. Workshops will start next weekend and trainers and participants share the excitement! Here, intake workers Selma and Delores describe the project to one of our applicants.

Matt gets excited about the Digital Divide project as a young participant looks on.