Head to our new home, COMMUNITY EXPRESSIONS: http://community-expressions.com

As my work has evolved away from setting up centers for community digital exploration and into the heart of storytelling approaches for community building, the Digital Explorations website, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t quite capture the feel and scope of Community Expressions. And so, I am moving all new posts and links to a new website home, Community Expressions, and hope you will visit me there. I will keep this site up in case you want to get some ideas about setting up third spaces of the Digital Explorations sort.

Watch the video:

Storytelling for Community Planning – Training Video from Orton Family Foundation on Vimeo.

Watch the slideshow:

Let’s build the infrastructure… … …

OK, now the signal/connection exists, but how do we ensure individuals and communities are connected/connecting? Is it necessarily helpful? Is it sustainable? Are people becoming more isolated as a result of hunkering down on their computers; are they now leaving the town for better employment opportunities? If so, what happens to the traditional industry – can it sustain itself if the next generation won’t or can’t participate? What new industry replaces the old? The list could go on, continuing to reveal the development issues rural communities confront with or without technology and internet access. Too often, though, technology is defined as being superficial, scary, or, worse, irrelevant, and, so, the opportunities that web connection can provide are overlooked.

What do you hear when people talk about technology in rural communities? What are the assumed pitfalls of increased connectivity through the web or cell phones?

In a recent post, we profiled Shustir – an online business that provides local, small businesses with an online storefront where their products can be connected to larger markets. Shustir is successfully enabling small business owners to stay put while allowing them to market and sell outside their immediate surroundings. Here, we see an innovative, web-based solution that can be used to sustain business and local, traditional industry and, simultaneously, prove that the rural to urban migration is not a necessary path for success. In India, Babajob is using cellphone technology to connect informal sector workers – cooks, maids, drivers, guards, etc. – and employers. And, organizations like Kiva are using the connectivity of the web to alleviate poverty by creating a person-to-person micro-lending platform for individuals and communities around the world. Technology can be personal, direct, and useful. And, really, this is only taking a quick glance at innovative web-based solutions through the lens of changing the employment landscape in rural communities.

What are some websites that you can point to that address employment in an innovative way – a way that may decrease the migration from rural to urban landscapes?

Now, considering the aforementioned websites, there are companies and organizations creating and providing services on the web that indirectly or directly address development and small business issues – they show how access to broadband can be quite a positive tool in changing the employment landscape in urban and rural communities. The key to growing a sustainable broadband infrastructure – plugging individuals and communities into the web – may very well lie in the development of an educational component that works alongside the physical building of broadband access. We can do both: provide the connection and the education.

An educational program that localizes the way technology is introduced and then applied to the daily lives of individuals (professional and social) is very much an essential part of connecting people to and with technology. Offering relevant educational programming around broadband access can support the sustainability of any initiative to connect people in meaningful ways. A local gardener who seeks a strategy to rid his vegetable garden of pesky rabbits may post a request for solutions on an online forum and benefit from the collective wisdom of people within and outside his community. (Yes, pepper spray and mint! Any others?…)

Keeping “internet education” in mind, what classes would you like to have provided? What are some issues in your community, or communities that you have lived in or have visited, that broadband access could or does address?

Being the daughter of a historian who spent his life researching, writing, and teaching about the early days of this country, I’m naturally thinking back today as I look out over the fields I call home…to the rich history of Vermont and its role in the country’s story, its public figures from Ethan Allen to Patrick Leahy, its deep land ethic, its commitment to social justice, its hardscrabble farmers then and now. I’m thinking about the Champlain Valley where I live, celebrating this month the quadricentennenial of Samuel de Champlain’s voyage and our connection to New France and Quebec.

Read the rest of the post.

SO, how, and who is taking a stab at it?

The Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) is one group that is building knowledge through communication — using hi and low-tech efforts to engage youth on a global issue. ACE has developed a dynamic presentation for schools that focuses on explaining what climate change is and how youth can become part of the solution in their communities. A school assembly that is cool? Really? YES! Check it out:

What’s most impressive, is the way ACE utilizes social media in a presentation that is fun, informative, hands-on, and digital. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, ACE is informing and keeping the lines of communication open, and striking a balance between giving and getting information on the digital and keeping it real in the person-to-person.

Is ACE scheduled to do a presentation at your school – let us know how it goes. Are you using digital and social media in your work to further engage youth inside or outside the classroom on an issue or a project? Videos, photos, blogs, what are you using? What’s your approach, or where are the opportunities?

We’re going to add a ‘DigEx’ twist to the storytelling contest — create a story about where you live (home, town, city, state, country… you decide what “where you live” means) and introduce us to something or someone that you immediately think of when you hear the words “where you live.” Send us a link to your stories, we would love to see them!

Is anyone using this Shustir tool? What do you think is the best way to weave this into your business, your work? What’s the value to the business, the people, the town?