Cook County Higher Education hopes to expand its capabilities to offer events such as this April 7, 2011 emergency preparedness training event with Myrlah Olson: Social Media: Using Technology to Communicate During an All Hazard Emergency.
Thanks to a $25,000 Innovation Grant from the Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation, Cook County Higher Education (CCHE) has a large part of the funding needed to offer training workshops for the broadband initiative. “It was touch and go for a while,” stated Paula Sundet Wolf, executive director at CCHE. “There has been more demand for the broadband trainings than we anticipated, and while we were extremely grateful to receive a $2,841 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight foundation to help fund some of the workshops, it did not begin to cover staffing and facility costs.”
The “Innovation” project addresses our community’s broadband initiative and the potential for new business ventures. CCHE will offer training workshops and degree programs that will provide entrepreneurial opportunities at a critical point in time – we are on the cusp of obtaining broadband. Currently, only a fraction of the county has high-speed access, and the remainder depends on dial-up or satellite, which is insufficient for most business and education activities.
CCHE is also one of the recipients of Cook County’s Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities funding. CCHE was awarded $10,000 to increase the capacity of the computer lab so that the workshops can be hands-on. Sundet Wolf said, “Thanks to five generous local residents, the tables and chairs we ordered for the computer lab were assembled in record time.” CCHE has five laptops on order, and will also be receiving 10 computers from PCs for People, an organization that is partnering with MIRC to help our community gain quality access to the Internet.
“The grant support entails a lot of exciting collaboration with the other MIRC partners, and is giving us an opportunity to reexamine the services we provide to the community” stated Sundet Wolf. “We want to start offering public access to the computer lab. Right now it is only available for student use.”
Currently the CCHE web page is getting an overhaul, and some of the workshop events, such as video use, will help incorporate student testimonials into the web page. Sundet Wolf observed, “This is an exciting time for our community. We are an innovative community, and it will be fascinating to see how we use broadband in new and creative ways that celebrate the North Shore.”
If you would like to attend one of the training events, contact CCHE at 387- 3411 or email highered@boreal.org.
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