Dialogues in Methods of Education (DIME) is a group of educators who have been meeting twice a year since 1980. Members include teachers at all levels, specialists, administrators, museum and library educators, researchers, and others.

Look for details in the Spring; it will likely include dinners on  

Friday & Saturday, a 10-4 meeting on Saturday at the Library &  Information Science building, and early Sunday brunch.

Want to experience a community-based library-in-progress?
Dying to learn more about Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park?
Have time to offer?
Hidden desire to meet some new people?
You have come to the right place!

Saturday, November 19
Saturday, November 26
Saturday, December 3

From 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., 2739 W. Division Street, Chicago (near the corner of Division and California)

The Community Informatics Corps has been working with community residents and students to catalog a donated collection of 4,000 volumes in the Andrés Figueroa Cordero Library at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. The goal is to get this library functioning and open. With your help, it can happen! It’s fun, it’s social and it can make a difference.

Please volunteer to do final shelf checks during these days and times—no experience needed and drop-ins are welcome.

For more information:
Contact Ann Bishop (abishop@uiuc.edu) or Nalani McClendon (nmcclen2@uiuc.edu)

Andrés Figueroa Cordero Library
http://www.prcc-chgo.org/afc_library.htm

Paseo Boricua Community Library Project
http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/pbcl

To reach the Library at the Cultural Center on the work days, phone 773/342-8023 or Ann’s cell: 217/369-0014.

We are pleased to announce that Gardner Rogers, the Project Supervisor of Ethnography of the University Initiative, will be presenting at the next Fall semester CITES Educational Technologies brown bag. His talk "The Challenges of Archiving Student Work for Multiple Audiences" will be held on Wednesday, November 16, in Wohlers Hall, room 130 from 12:00 to 1:00. As always, we will have cookies and drinks.

The Ethnography of the University (EOTU) Initiative promotes undergraduate student research across disciplinary boundaries. Students in EOTU classes follow a rubric of invention, composition, and revision derived from John Dewey as they use iLabs. This talk discusses the challenges and pleasures of archiving this work on a web site for viewing by future EOTU students (so they can extend prior research), EOTU faculty and potential faculty, other campus units, and a broader academic audience outside the University boundaries.

Attend the Illinois Community Technology Conference, November 16-17, 2005.
This event will bring together organizations and advocates promoting
digital literacy, access and equity in rural and urban communities... Ann Bishop
and Paul Adams of the CII are among the speakers.

Bagels with Randal Pinkett for GSLIS faculty, staff, & students

10:00-11:30 in 126 LIS

Dr. Pinkett presents: "Bridging the Innovation Divide: Advancing the Diffusion of Technology Innovations in Underserved Communities"

ABSTRACT: This presentation will highlight and offer strategies for bridging the Innovation Divide, or the lack of infrastructure and support for creating, developing, and disseminating information and communications technology innovations in nonprofit organizations and underserved communities. The Hewlett-Packard Microenterprise Acceleration Program, which targets nonprofit microenterprise development agencies that serve clients in low-income communities, will serve as a case study. The goal of the program is to foster innovation both within these agencies as well as across the microenterprise development field at-large. In presenting this work, the constituent steps to innovation creation and use, as well as the factors, or necessary conditions for disseminating innovations will be described. The presentation will conclude by laying out an agenda for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to ensure that nonprofit and community technology innovations are more widely shared and disseminated.

A live audio feed will be available starting at 10:00am central time (you will get a generic pre-recorded message if you access the link before then).

Real player is required for the live stream, and is freely available.

An archive will be available after the event for those who cannot listen live.

“Belief, Wonder, and the Open Secrets of Nature”

Art Show by Janie Paul 
Opening with remarks by the artist
Tuesday, November 8
7:00-9:00pm
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
805 W. Pennsylvania

Merging her acclaimed "River" series, a collection of
silicone intaglio prints meditating on Henry David
Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,
and recent oil paintings, charcoal sketches, and
multi-media works contemplating the aesthetics of
wonder, Janie Paul's "Belief, Wonder, and the Open
Secrets of Nature" asks viewers to think about the
histories of the nature, our means of representing our interactions with natures, and the ways we use different conceptions of nature to construct beliefs that justify our daily existence. Unabashedly gorgeous, deeply historical, and slyly political, these works invite readers to wade into some of the most pressing issues of postmodernist art production while also revelling in the sheer beauty of works that recall the splendor of the luminists.

"Art, Activism, and the Fight Against the Prison
Industrial Complex"

A talk by Janie Paul
Monday, November 7
7:00pm
South Rec Room of Allen Hall
1005 W. Gregory, Urbana

Janie Paul is Assistant Professor and Director of
Community Relations at the University of Michigan
School of Art and Design. For the past ten years she
has co-curated an annual exhibit of art made by
prisoners in Michigan; working in conjunction with the
Prison Creative Arts Project, she has taught in
prisons across the state. She is one of the founders
of Detroit Connections, a project bringing art and art education to inner-city public schools, where young people learn to make community-based art while building political consciousness. In addition to these projects, Paul is a renowned artist who has shown her work in solo and group exhibits across the nation.

Entitled "Art, Activism, and the Fight Against the
Prison Industrial Complex," Paul will show slides of
work made by Michigan prisoners and will talk about
her artistic, pedagogical, and political work with the
Prison Creative Arts Project, one the nation's largest
and most successful groups mobilizing art against the
prison industrial complex. Thus merging art and
activism, this will be an inspiring call to action and
a celebration of the fight for social justice.

Prof. Mimi Wagner from the faculty of the Dept of Landscape Architecture,
College of Design, at Iowa State University will be visiting campus this
week.  She will be presenting a seminar about her research on Friday, 9:00
am in 121 Huff Hall.  Her research interests are linked to designing
communities that balance ecological, social and economic needs of community
members.  She is currently working on a regional design project that
focuses on understanding community perceptions about landscape and
integrating these perceptions into design, with particular interests in
marginalized communities and those who traditionally have lacked voices in
planning processes.

The seminar is open to all.  Bagels and juice served.

Desa Informasi, or Information Village, is a project to integrate library, museum, and archives resources in Surabaya, Indonesia. Aditya Nugraha will present the work on Desa Informasi in LIS 590PT (Pragmatic Technology) on Wednesday, September 16, at 9:00-10:30 am, in room 109 LIS. The class session is open to all.

CII Minutes
September 6, 2005
11:30 pm

Introductions
~present: Ann Bishop (iLabs and CII), Karen Fletcher (IP Coor.), Paul Park (G.A. on Digital EsL), Cindy Welch (Jackie-Joyner Kersee Center outreach initiative), Mike Twidale (webpage usability), Paul Adams (Prairienet), Camilla Fulton (G.A. in pnet member services and CNI Training)
~useful websites: www.prairienet.org/pnetwiki, www.digitalesl.org, www.prairienet.org/helpcenter, www.prairienet.org/mailman, www.teensread.prairienet.org, www.inquiry.uiuc.edu

Tech Support
~more time slots for available help with pnet and ilabs suggested
~organized approach necessary
~set up meeting times with people for hands-on help (with whoever would be most helpful)

PNet Space
~renovations to the Prairienet space are underway! Be on the lookout for new computers, furniture, and carpeting...

CII websites coordination, intergration, usability, bugs...
~prob: webspaces not really integrated at the present
~K would like a place to highlight all of the current projects
~suggested to make up a profile of a group that would be better off with iLabs than a webhost
~K would like a more user-friendly way to set up pnet websites (Ann suggested looking at http://civicspacelabs.org)
~is there a way we can automate installation? can we give the organization complete flexibility over their website?

General
~suggested to offer a hands-on review of iLabs to CIC students
~start submitting events/news to the GSLIS website (i.e. Paul\\\'s upcoming trip to Africa)
~suggested to start adding "marketing" to meeting announcements
~CII Staff mailing list underway
~suggested to make a more rigorous way of documenting tasks (esp. G.A. tasks) so that there is no "loss" of crucial information whenever someone leaves

~close of meeting at 1:30pm~

Community as Intellectual Space:
Symposium

June 17-19, 2005

Puerto Rican Cultural Center

2739-41 W. Division Street
Chicago, IL

Presented by:

Puerto Rican Cultural Center
http://www.prcc-chgo.org

Community Informatics Initiative
http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/cii
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
http://www.lis.uiuc.edu

For further information, contact Alejandro Molina (alejandro@prcc-chgo.org) or Ann Bishop (abishop@uiuc.edu) and see http://www.conferences.uiuc.edu/CIS

Registration will be limited to 40 people - registration info coming soon to the symposium website at http://www.conferences.uiuc.edu/CIS

Communities as Intellectual Space:
Symposium Overview

Studies in community are moving from deficit- to asset-based approaches, with an emphasis on how communities conduct inquiry to investigate and take action on their realities. Such approaches seek to build upon the unique capabilities, history, culture, and lived experiences in local settings, with the understanding that problems must be articulated, and solutions made workable, within the lived experience of actual communities. The concept of “community as intellectual space” is based on the premise that if individuals are to understand and create solutions for problems in complex systems, they need opportunities to engage with challenging problems, to learn through participative investigations, to have supportive, situated experiences, to articulate their ideas to others, and to make use of a variety of resources in multiple media.

Paseo Boricua provides one of the world’s leading examples of melding collaborative action and research across university and community settings. A mile-long section of Division Street in Chicago\\\\\\\'s Humboldt Park area, it is a vibrant neighborhood characterized by strong, multi-generational, multi-institutional community activism, where about 70% of residents are of Latino origin, and 30% of families are living below the federally defined poverty level.

The Puerto Rican Cultural Center (http://www.prcc-chgo.org) has served as an institutional anchor in Paseo Boricua for thirty years, galvanizing neighborhood residents around issues such as poverty, gang violence, AIDS, destruction of cultural identity, lack of educational resources, and racism.

Organizations affiliated with the PRCC include the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS), an alternative school that pursues a critical pedagogy while providing a safe place for; the Centro Infantil pre-school; the Family Learning Center, which grants high school diplomas to young women while providing daycare for their children; Vida/SIDA (an AIDS/HIV education center); Batey Urbano Café Teatro, which provides Latino youth with an outlet for expression and community action; the Division Street Business Development Association, a community-based economic development nonprofit; and the National Boricua Human Rights Network.

With this symposium, we invite students, faculty, researchers and others interested in community research and action to participate in the life of Paseo Boricua, gaining first-hand experience with community as intellectual space. Symposium participants will attend panels and workshops that highlight the intellectual work of communities like Paseo Boricua, in addition to engaging in local activities—including youth performances at Batey Urbano, community-curated art and culture exhibits, and the Puerto Rican People’s Parade.

Hosted by the Community Informatics Initiative, Graduate School of Library and Information Science (UIUC)

Opens May 7, 2005 and continues throughout the month

Main Library (1st Floor)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL

The opening reception will be held from 2:00-3:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 7 at the University YMCA at 1001 South Wright Street, Champaign. Alberto (Che) Guevara and Janeida Rivera, winners in Chicago's 2005 citywide poetry slam, will perform. From 3:00-5:00 p.m., everyone is invited to walk one block to the Main Library to view the exhibit. (Parking is available at streetside meters. In addition, there may be some vacant numbered spots at the back of the YMCA parking lot - but do not park in #5 or you will get towed.)

Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public.

Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the imprisonment of political prisoners: Oscar Lopez Rivera and Carlos Alberto Torres.

http://www.boricuahumanrights.org/prisoners/art_exhibition.html

The exhibit is the result of a national effort that will tour 10 cities in the continental Unites States and Puerto Rico and will countries like Mexico, Venezuela and Canada. It is presented by the National Boricua Human Rights Network, sponsored by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, and partially supported by a grant from The Crossroads Foundation.

Local Co-sponsors: Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort (AWARE); Activist Forum; African American Studies & Research Program (UIUC); La Casa Cultural Latina (UIUC); Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society (UIUC); Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (UIUC); El Centro por los Trabajadores; Critical Research Collaborative (UIUC); University Library (UIUC); Illinois Disciples Foundation; Latina/o Studies Program (UIUC); The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement (UIUC); Parkland College Community Education; SisterNet; Sociedad de Estudiantes Puertorriquenos (UIUC);Uni High School Activism Club; Urban League of Champaign County; Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center Radical Librarians and Books to Prisoners; Vietnam Veterans Against the War (Champaign-Urbana Chapter

Donations: Checks should be made out to Prairienet/UI (and identified as for exhibit) and mailed to Prairienet, 510 East Daniel, Champaign, Illinois 61820.

For further information: contact Ann Bishop, Local Organizing Committee (217.244.3299; abishop@uiuc.edu); Alejandro Luis Molina, National Boricua Human Rights Network Coordinating Committee (alejandro@prcc-chgo.org); or Jorge Felix, Curator (773.486.8345; FelixJorge@msn.com)

Thursday, May 5, 2005

2:00 p.m.

Room 131 LIS Building

501 East Daniel Street

Champaign, IL

Michael Maranda (President, Association for Community Networking; President, CTCNet Chicago Chapter; and
Co-Chair, Illinois Community Technology Consortium) and Paul Adams (Director, Prairienet Community Network) are hosting this meeting for individuals interested in community technology. We will be talking about forming a statewide association, the existing tech legislation and how we can get support in Springfield for funding.

Related Links:

Prairienet
http://www.prairienet.org

Association for Community Networking
http://www.afcn.org

Chicago CTCNet
http://www.ctcnetchicago.org

Illinois Community Technology Consortium
http://www.ilctc.org

Saturday, April 9, 2005
Room 131 LIS Building, 501 E. Daniel, Champaign, IL

** ENTER via the stairs on the East side of the LIS Building **

Agenda

9:00-9:30 a.m. Welcome and introductions (continental breakfast provided)

9:30-10:00 a.m. Community Informatics Initiative: Overview and status

10:00-11:30 a.m. Campus, local and regional goals and strategies

11:30-12:30 p.m. Lunch (box lunch provided)

12:30-1:30 p.m. National and international goals and strategies

1:30-2:00 p.m. Wrap-up and next steps

 Community Informatics: Local, National and International Opportunities for the University of Illinois

Join us for a day of learning and discussion. All events are held in LIS Room 126, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL and are free and open to the public.

10:00-11:00 a.m. William Patterson. I Remember: Archiving Community Through Living Reflections of Self Identity.

Patterson presents an innovative project that teaches young people how to use media tools to archive their community as well as instigate social change.

11:00-12:00 p.m. Doug Schuler. Community Networks and the Evolution of Civic Intelligence.

Civic intelligence describes the collective and distributed capacity of society to consciously adapt to its environment and shape a future that is healthy, equitable and sustainable. Schuler employs a theory of civic intelligence to account for the changing influence of digital community networks in society.

3:00-5:00 p.m. Panel and Discussion. Community Informatics Initiative: From Champaign to Chicago and Beyond.

The Community Informatics Initiative (CII) positions the University of Illinois as a campus, regional, national, and international hub for CI study, action, and policy. Panelists Ann Bishop (GSLIS faculty member and CII Co-Founder), Michael Gurstein, Joan Durrance, and Doug Schuler (CII Advisors) lead discussion on how CI is incorporated in research, teaching, and public engagement at UI and beyond, and opportunities for new activities.

5:00-6:00 p.m. Reception and Open Poster Session.

Everyone is invited to bring posters and handouts representing their CI activities - easels, wall space, and tables are available.

GUEST SPEAKERS:

William Patterson: Associate Director of the African American Studies & Research Program, UIUC.

Doug Schuler: author of Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Action/Global Interaction; program director for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility’s Public Sphere Project; faculty in Evergreen State College’s Computers and Society Programs

Dr. Michael Gurstein: honorary professor at Central Queensland University in Australia; serves as the Chair of the Community Informatics Research Network and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Community Informatics

Professor Joan C. Durrance: founder of the Community Information Corps at the University of Michigan, Co-PI of the Information Behavior in Everyday Contexts project. Recent publications include Online Community Information: Creating a Nexus at Your Library.

For more information about CII Day, contact Ann Bishop (abishop@uiuc.edu)