SPU#16 E-Tools for Citizen Participation
From:
Jonathan Barrentine
Date:
May 01 20:59 UTC
Short link
Today is the first day of May, which means the beginning of our new "Intro to
Online Tools" workshop series. Meant to be enjoyed either as an eight-week
class or eight individual classes, this workshop series is designed to
introduce participants to the communication, collaboration and advocacy
opportunities presented by the Internet. Our next workshop, the first in this
series, is E-Tools for Citizen Participation. It is a great introduction to
the series and to the variety of tools available online, so I encourage you to
attend and to recommend it to others. Keep reading this week's St. Paul Update
for more information about this and other topics.
---MAY-JUNE SESSION STARTING---
First of all, let me go into a little more detail about our new workshop
series. Rather than treat each of our workshops as a discrete event, we will
be running our May-June session as a single eight-week class, with the earlier
sessions building into the later ones. Of course, there's no reason you can't
just show up for the ones that interest you. But, that being said, we're
trying to get some new faces to commit to the full eight weeks (or a
significant portion thereof), and if you know anyone who'd be interested,
please pass along a copy of our schedule. Also, since Rondo's electronic
classroom has limited seating, we are now recommending that audience members
tell us they're coming ahead of time. This way we can make sure everyone has a
seat, and we can plan accordingly for the more popular workshops. Be sure to
check out our new schedule online:
<http://pages.e-democracy.org/Rondo_Workshop_Schedule> for a web-only version,
or
<http://pages.e-democracy.org/images/d/d3/2008_Rondo_May_June_SPED_schedule.pdf>
for a printable pdf, or
<http://pages.e-democracy.org/images/1/18/2008_Rondo_May_June_SPED_flier.pdf>
for a printable half-sheet pdf.
---UPCOMING WORKSHOP: E-TOOLS FOR CITIZEN PARTICIPATION---
Our May 5 workshop is E-Tools for Citizen Participation. As the first workshop
in our May-June series, this workshop serves as an introduction to e-tools and
as such is a great time to start attending. Participants will learn to use the
Internet to become more informed and more involved with their community. Tools
covered will include discussion forums, community-built reference sites,
citizen journalism, blogs, social networking and government websites. We will
also provide some examples of how these tools are being used, and give a brief
overview of how you can go about making use of some of these tools yourself.
This is a great overview workshop, and a great introduction to our workshop
series, so I hope to see a lot of you there.
E-Tools for Citizen Participation
FREE WORKSHOP
Date : Monday, May 5th
Time : 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Location : Rondo Community Outreach Library
461 North Dale
University & Dale, St. Paul
As always, the workshop is free and all are welcome to attend.
Full workshop schedule available online:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/SPED-Outreach
Contact <email obscured> with questions.
---DAILY PLANET WRITERS' GROUP---
In other news, The Twin Cities Daily Planet (tcdailyplanet.net) has an ongoing
writers' group at Rondo Library during our regular tabling time, starting at 4
pm. According to the Planet's website, you can "bring something you’re working
on to share with the group, or just come to get ideas and/or assignments." I
would also like to add that the writers' group is frequently done by 5:30 or
so, making it very easy to go to both the writer's group and our upcoming
Outreach meeting.
---E-DEMOCRACY WORKSHOPS FOR YOUR GROUP---
Finally, St. Paul E-Democracy would like to widen our audience by doing a
couple of our workshops each month "off site." If you have a group that would
be interested to host one of our workshops, please contact
<email obscured> . A rough list of workshops is available at
http://pages.e-democracy.org/SPED-Outreach .
Thanks for reading, and see you Monday.
-Jonathan
