|
Dear Members of the GIIP Community,
 It is with great pleasure that I write to you as the Associate Director for the Global Information Internship Program. I have managed GIIP through the 2006-2007 academic year with the fantastic help of coordinators Shelley McCoy, Breanne Simmons and a dedicated group of Fellows. Ben Crow provided a great deal of support of the Fall and Winter GIIP classes and Professor Paul Lubeck has returned from sabbatical this Spring to teach our course on field methods and grant writing.
Last summer we had students in Nigeria, Kenya, Mongolia, Honduras, and Santa Cruz work on everything from youth empowerment, computer literacy, technology and community-led organizing, to women's rights and democratic governance. This outstanding team of students continues to help run GIIP, teach classes and organize new projects.
We're continuing to develop new projects and partnerships by expanding our collaboration with the Progressive Technology Project (progressivetech.org) to include two summer Community Organizing “TechCamp's” both in Minnesota and Santa Cruz (more info or to register visit: http://progressivetech.org/Program/Training/TechCamp_description.htm) as well as a series of intensive trainings with environmental justice organizations from across the United States. We're in the midst of organizing our Summer of Service Technology Institute with the Center for Multicultural Cooperation (cmcweb.org), which will bring 22 Fresno high school students to the University of California. The students will use four days at UC Santa Cruz to make educational videos targeted at helping Hmong, undocumented, and other under-served students and families from around Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley learn about getting into the University of California system.
GIIP students and fellows are continuing to travel and network with like-minded groups. So far this year GIIP attended the Non-profit Developer Summit (Oakland), the Mobile Persuasion Conference (Stanford), Non-profit Technology Conference (Washington DC), and Joomla! Day (Mountain View, Google). These events are leading to new project ideas, jobs for GIIP graduates and promising student internships.
GIIP Enterprises (GIIP-E) was officially launched fall quarter. GIIP-E is a dedicated group of highly skilled students that are taking on paid technology projects with campus groups and local partners. The funds that the students raise by putting their web, database and planning skills to work will help fund ongoing and new student projects.
I have run out of room to enumerate on all of the exciting projects that GIIP will be tackling this year but I encourage you all to stay connected and lend your invaluable support. Onward!
Best regards,
Adam Thompson
Associate Director for Programs and Instruction
Global Information Internship Program
GIIP Offers Labs That Train Students for the Future
 Spring GIIP classes are well underway, complete with four outstanding student led technology sections: Digital Story Telling, taught by Katie Roper, Linux taught by Adam Thompson, Advanced Web Design and E-Advocacy, taught by Maira Sutton and Jon Madden, and, the honors lab, PHP and MySQL, taught by Jon Madden and Elliot Collins. Each GIIP student is required to enroll in at least one tech lab, and some are even going even beyond that by taking an extra honors lab.
Students in the Digital Story Telling section are learning the skills behind documentary film. By planning a short digital story and editing of footage, students will learn the tools of the trade. Katie Roper, who just returned from a GIIP internship in Kenya and also acquired her first film experience through GIIP, is the instructor this quarter.
Already this quarter the digital story telling section has had the chance to work with award winning filmmakers. A long time friend of GIIP, Alicia Dwyer, and her brother Michael Dwyer came to give the GIIP students a quick lesson on film work, sound, and lighting.
In the Linux lab, taught by Adam Thompson, students began with the basics by disassembling computers and putting them back together. They learned how to install Ubuntu, a version of Linux, on both desktop and laptop computers, and learned how to use the popular operating system. The course culminated on June 6 at the Linux Install Fest, hosted by Linux Lab students in the Namaste Lounge at College Nine. Students and community members showed up to learn about open source software and install it on their computers.
Advanced Web Design and E-Advocacy is the second lab of a two-quarter series. This lab focuses on the aesthetics of web design and the importance of having a well-designed site so people will use it. Students began by using Photoshop to design their templates and will continue to put their sites online using Joomla!, an open-source content management system.
Fellow of the Month: Jon Madden
 Whether it is teaching, organizing, directing, promoting, or learning, GIIP fellows do it all. This month we shift our attention to one particular fellow, Jon Madden, who deserves recognition for the excellent work he has done for GIIP over the past year.
Technology has played a major part in Jon's life. At a young age Jon taught himself Dreamweaver in order to build a website for his father's entertainment business. He continued learning web design and coding when he joined GIIP his sophomore year at UCSC. He has since applied these skills to teaching various GIIP sections on web design, like the Joomla! technology labs offered fall and winter quarters this past academic school year. This quarter he is co-teaching the Advanced Web Design and E-Advocacy lab along with the Honors PHP and MySQL lab. The skills he learned through GIIP have also helped him get a job writing and editing CSS for a technology consulting firm in San Francisco.
Jon has a gift and a passion for teaching. When asked about his experience teaching technology labs he explained, “I enjoy sharing technology with people and watching them do things with it that I wouldn't expect." According to Jon, such a commitment is worth the time investment because, "Knowing the technologies that we work with is often limited to the privileged and what we are doing is sharing it and promoting it with people who otherwise wouldn't have access to it."
Jon is happy to be a part of GIIP because he feels that unlike other campus programs GIIP accomplishes things that are tangible outside of the university. When asked about his future with GIIP, he said that he plans on continuing to work with GIIP for years to come.
Two UCSC students win award from CITRIS
By Jennifer McNulty, UC Santa Cruz Currents
 Two undergraduates have won a top award from the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
The CITRIS White Paper Competition 2007 was organized by Tom Kalil, special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology at UC Berkeley, to tap the creativity of UC students who want to help translate basic research into projects that have a direct positive impact on society. Six proposals were recognized with a prize, including a cash award.
Christina Hamill and Julie Caso, both fellows of UCSC's Global Information Internship Program (GIIP), won the Special Prize for Best Use of IT for Rural America for their proposal to offer a joint summer institute on information technology and social enterprise for underrepresented students at UC.
Their $5,000 cash prize will help fund their proposed Summer of Service Technology Institute, a five-day tech camp for youth leaders from the Digitally Abled Producers Project (D@PP) of the Central San Joaquin Valley. Participants will receive an introduction to college life and hands-on instruction in technical skills for social change.
"Christina and Julie were the only women who won a top prize, so we at GIIP are doing our part to bolster gender equity in technology," said GIIP director Paul Lubeck, a professor of sociology.
The Summer of Service Technology Institute is a collaborative effort of UCSC undergraduates, GIIP, and the Center for Multicultural Cooperation (CMC). Hamill and Caso developed their proposal in collaboration with UCSC alumni at the CMC, which was founded by two former GIIP coordinators, Maryjane Skjellerup and Brandon Wright.
The awards were presented May 7 at a ceremony at UC Berkeley during which students each gave a 5-minute overview of their proposal. Other winners included a proposal to help motorized wheelchair users achieve universal access, a proposal to use telemicroscopy in disease diagnosis, and a proposed direct person-to-person charity for natural disaster relief.
|
newsletter 
