November, 2009

The Center for Accessible Technology (CforAT) and California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) named TechSoup Global one of three winners of the 2009 California Digital Inclusion Program Award. The award recognizes nonprofits, government agencies, and corporations responsible for raising awareness of and improving web accessibility for Californians with disabilities.

After last week's great webinar, Tech Training Made Simple with Online Videos, which focused on using Common Craft videos for technology training, I thought it would be interesting to look at how one library is creating their own short videos to market their services, including techie ones!

From Amber Slaven:
"The King County Library System (KCLS) is creating short videos to describe various services.

Isn't it difficult to explain complicated technology concepts in a simple way that’s easy to understand? Imagine how helpful fun, quick videos would be in tech training sessions for patrons or staff. Well look no further, Common Craft creates explanatory videos "In Plain English" that cover topics like green, money, society and technology.
 

On October 8th I presented at the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services (ABOS) annual conference in Everett, Washington. The presentation was about Techlab, the King County Library System’s mobile computer lab. Techlab is King County Library System’s fully equipped mobile classroom with eight laptop computer workstations, a full productivity software suite, broadband internet access, and a screen projector for group instruction!

Enter our contest! Read this post, take two simple actions, and complete a quick survey! Read on for more info.

Part 1 of this series listed the 5 actions we recommend that you take to reduce the power use of your computer. This post (part 2) explains two of those actions in more detail and tells you how to complete these two actions. Parts 3 and 4 will offer more detail about how you can make the other three changes.

Reduce Your Energy Use at No Cost and Save Money Instantly

1.    Set power management on your computer(s)

Light green: easy individual actions

All major operating systems released in the past ten years come with power management built in, but not necessarily turned on. What is power management? It's the ability to set your computer and monitor to automatically go to sleep or shut down after a period of inactivity. Climate Savers Computing are the experts at this and have all the information you should need to accomplish this task. They even have step-by-step guides. We urge you to sign up for CSCI membership either as an individual or affiliate: it's free and it's a way to build momentum for IT energy conservation. They can keep you informed about the latest ways to reduce your IT footprint. They even have a wonderful, searchable list of energy-efficient hardware and software products that help with IT energy reduction.

Whether you're a regular TechSoup for Libraries user or haven't heard of us til now, we've got a free webinar coming up that will likely show you something new about how you can get more out of the variety of (free) services we offer to nonprofits and libraries.

Learn How TechSoup Can Help Your Organization

Join TechSoup.org content creators, community leaders, and customer service support on November 12 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Pacific for a tour of how your library can use all that TechSoup has to offer to improve your technology and help reach your mission. TechSoup, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is working toward a time when every nonprofit, library, and social benefit organization will have the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential.

We'll walk you through the process of registering and requesting donated and discounted products from more than 35 donor partners like Microsoft and Adobe. We'll also take you on a virtual tour of other resources in TechSoup's tech arsenal including;

WebJunction's November focus is on Networking, and all month they are collecting your burning library networking questions. Then, on December 2, WebJunction and TechSoup for Libraries are teaming up to bring you a panel of library technology experts to field your questions.

Welcome to TechSoup GreenTech's Unpower Yourself! campaign. We're having a contest to encourage you to reduce your computer's energy comsumption. Read this post, take two simple actions, complete a quick survey, and you'll be eligible to win!

Global warming is happening because of a buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, most of them produced by power plants that burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Information and communications technology consumes a good deal of electricity, much of which is wasted as heat, consumed by computers and monitors needlessly left on, or used to cool hardware that is not running efficiently.

More than half the electricity used by IT is outside the data center and it is very easy for you to make small changes that will have a significant positive impact on both the environment and your wallet. It's not always easy to get a significant number of individuals to take these easy actions, but we can reach more people with your help.

Here are five things you can do quickly to decrease your IT energy use:

Tomorrow, November 4th, TechSoup Talks and Microsoft will be conducting two free webinars which will help nonprofits and libraries learn how to reduce the environmental impact of their information technology and how to effectively use IT to improve their organizations’ efficiency. We’ll discuss ways that greening IT can help reduce energy, resource usage and costs.