Community Internet - from volunteers to meta-data

RAIN Community Internet quickly worked through a sustainable Framework which represented a model of what a “community internet network” should be.

That first Framework for Community Internet was made of these parts:

•Services to Small Farms, (early Ag-Tourism efforts, Small Farm online marketing)
•Services to community non-profits and community government
•Distance learning services for public schools, charter schools and home schools
•Telemedicine services for rural and chronically underserved urban seniors, families, and youth.
•Services to community Small Business to build new e-commerce skills
•Community Technology Literacy Skills development
•Services to non-English language speaking community residents

RAIN hosted technology skills classes and provided online access at Farmers Markets using the Network’s Internet Bus. The Internet Bus was developed through USDA funding, designed to provide a mobile Computer learning lab with solar panels on the roof of the bus providing power and a satellite dish on the roof providing Internet connectivity.

This early “Community Internet Framework” provided the meta-data for the first GIS datasets we would build to help model how the Network would grow and evolve for the Community.

Along with the new Technology and “Framework” there co-existed, in the very early days of the Network, our core group of Volunteers who spent time every week working to help host community and neighborhood level Internet / Technology Literacy Skills classes.

Early adapters to the Internet seemed to have a desire to teach the community, to share their new knowledge and technology literacy skills. It was a really good, strong energy that helped drive the very first efforts at teaching folks in the community at large how to use email, ftp, newsgroups and listservs. I enjoyed that stage of the Net’s growth, when we all shared a need to let everyone know how to use these new technology tools and folks volunteered their time to teach others. It was a whole new Literacy beginning to evolve. This effort to make the new technology literacy available to anyone in the community reminded me of an early namesake, Professor John Tyndall who lived in England in the mid 1800’s and worked with Thomas Henry Huxley to teach miners and workers in London about Science. You can visit the Tyndall Center in England, or online, to learn more. Go to: http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/ to visit the Tyndall Centre.

RAIN Community Internet was working very much like a new type of Public Library at this point, providing free public access to the Internet, free public literacy classes and hosting a Community Technology Center that made books and computers available. The idea of "Community Technology Centers" became an active part of the new Internet build out.