RHE 309K (43920)
Fall 2005
Jim Brown
Due Dates
•2/1: Organizational Description Due (posted to blog by Wednesday 2/1, 10:00pm)
•2/9: First Submission Due
•2/23: Second Submission Due
Paper Description
In October of 2005, the Austin City Council allocated $90,000 for the Grant for Technological Opportunities Program (GTOPs), a program designed, “to support digital technology projects that show promise of benefiting the community” (here’s the Press Release and here’s the GTOPs website).
Applications for grant money were due on January 20, and city council is currently reviewing grant proposals. However, we will use this situation as a role-playing activity and for your first paper assignment. For this paper, you will be representing a local non-profit organization. As a representative of that organization, you are charged with speaking at a City Council meeting. Your appearance in front of the City Council allows you to request grant money and describe a project that your organization would like to pursue.
Your presentation to Austin City Council will be in the form of a 4-6 page paper. You should consider your audience to be city council - more information on Austin City Council can be found at their website. You might also consider watching part of a city council meeting to get a sense for what the format is like (meetings are broadcast on cable access). You should also review the application and the selection criteria that the city council provides for the GTOP program (all of this informaiton can be found at the GTOPs website). While you won't be able to address everything required in a full grant proposal (a full grant proposal might be 20-25 pages), this information will give you a sense of what the city council is expecting of those applying to this program.
Organizational Description
Your first task will be to choose a local non-profit organization (NOTE: you cannot choose Austin Free-Net, which is the group we'll be working with at the end of the semester). You will have to research this organization to find out what they do and what kind of technology project this non-profit might propose. A list of local organizations can be found at: http://www.main.org/. This description should be one page (double-spaced) and should describe the organization you've chosen and the project you envision this organization proposing. Your proposed project can change, but you should at least be thinking about what you will propose to city council in your paper.
As I have noted above, this description must be posted to your blog by Wednesday, 2/1 at 10:00pm. It should be posted as a blog entry, not as an attached word file. This is important because other students in the class will be commenting on your description.
Submission Guidelines
You will be submitting your organizational descriptions as blog entries. You will also submit your papers via your blog; however, your paper will NOT be in the form of a blog entry. You will submit your paper as an attachment to a blog entry using the "attach new file" function. As noted at the top of this sheet, your first submission is due on 2/9 and your second submission is due on 2/23.
Please note that first submission does not mean "rough draft." Your first submission should be a good-faith attempt at completing the assignment. I will comment on first submissions using Microsoft Word Commenting. These comments will help you to approach a thoughtfully revised second submission.
Format Guidelines
Your final draft should be 4-6 pages long, typed, double-spaced, and carefully proofread. Any references to articles or other research must be in MLA format. REFER TO THE SF EXPRESS HANDBOOK. THE PAPER VERSION OF YOUR DRAFT SHOULD LOOK LIKE THE MODEL PAPER ON PAGES 87-98 of SF Express. If you don't have the SF Express handbook, you must use some other MLA manual.