Virtual Get-together via Videoconferencing

Topic: Organization Meeting for TOPS Grant Proposal

Monday, January 28, 2002
4:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Presenter: Galen Godbey, CAPE Staff

Galen Godbey, CAPE's Executive Director, invites all CAPE member institutions to consider joining a proposal he is developing for submission to the NTIA TOPS program.

“The Arts, Humanities, Public Affairs, Healthcare and Workforce Training: Using Technology to Bring the ‘Right Stuff’ to Under-Served Populations”.

Abstract: This proposal will bring high-quality programming in the arts, humanities, public affairs, health care and workforce training to underserved populations in rural sites and urban centers in Pennsylvania. It will employ both synchronous and asynchronous technologies, i.e., videoconferencing and a variety of web-based strategies, i.e., chat rooms, e-mail, streamed videos, and websites, to prompt interaction and advance learning in each of the above fields. Public libraries, with web access and equipped with digital video communications equipment, will provide the “core” venues for the project’s formal programming. In addition to CAPE staff and public libraries, participating organizations being invited include the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Library Association, Pennsylvania Citizens for Better Libraries, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, schools, colleges and universities, Lehigh Valley Hospital, and healthcare organizations. The project will build human, social, and relationship capital in the process of facilitating interactive programming for underserved populations. Programs will not be viewed as ends in themselves; rather, they will be viewed as platforms for building continuing relationships among participating organizations and individuals.

Specific goals include:

  1. helping public libraries reposition themselves as community-based learning centers;
  2. creating on-going agile learning communities by helping people with common needs and interests discover each other for the purpose of sharing resources and collaborating, whether formally or informally;
  3. strengthening the emergent partnerships among Pennsylvania’s arts and humanities organizations, public libraries, and schools and colleges;
  4. using multiple technologies to build audiences for the arts and humanities;
  5. creating new opportunities for civic education and citizen involvement;
  6. strengthening the Commonwealth’s workforce via programs offered in the psychologically safe environment of public libraries;
  7. providing access to high-quality, prevention-oriented health care information;
  8. provide rich professional development opportunities for K-12 and postsecondary faculty; and
  9. promoting the organizational paradigm of “agility” – speed, flexibility, collaboration, customization, geographically-distributed work context - - as the theoretical framework for the project and its replication elsewhere.

CAPE would administer the grant. The “feds” are encouraging three-year projects, which sounds right to me. The budget will approximate $600K, and will include videoconferencing equipment and ISDN lines for four public libraries, with attendant room design, installation, and training of technical staff; one, half-time project director and CAPE staff services; honoraria for presenters/support for programs for which there is no money currently budgeted by participating organizations; training on agility and systems change for participant organizations and institutions; technology training for all interested presenters; project evaluation and dissemination, general overhead.

To schedule your campus for this event, please contact your campus CAPE Operations Committee Representative who can Register Online for your site to participate.

CAPE contact person: Thya Riley at rileyt@acape.org.