Tag Archives: Digital divide

SmartRiverside Receives Award for Excellence in City-Business Relations

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SmartRiverside was awarded the Helen Putnam League Partners Award for Excellence in City-Business Relations by the League of California Cities on September 5, 2012 at the League of California Cities Annual Conference & Expo held in San Diego. The award recognizes SmartRiverside’s collaborative efforts to engage with the leadership of Riverside’s private, nonprofit and labor sectors to address issues in the community.

Established in 1982 by the League of California Cities, the California Cities Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program recognizes outstanding achievements by California’s 482 cities. These winning cities have made unique contributions to community residents and businesses, contributions which have resulted in lower costs or more effective delivery of services.

The purpose of the Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program is to recognize and promote the outstanding efforts and innovative solutions by city governments to:

  • Improve the quality of life in local communities.
  • Implement efficiencies in service delivery and operations.
  • Provide services responsive to the local community.

Through the innovations of SmartRiverside, the City is providing free internet service citywide, bridging the digital divide by providing low income families in Riverside with free PCs and free technology training, and attracting & retaining graduates and high tech businesses in record numbers. SmartRiverside has already provided 5,500 free PCs and plans on giving away 11,000 by 2015.   Its members are collaborating on global business opportunities, incubating start-ups, commercializing ideas and inventions, and providing mentoring and funding to new businesses. Through their outstanding work, SmartRiverside has demonstrated its commitment to serving as a catalyst for innovation in our community and promoting the City of Riverside as a location of choice to live, work, and play.

Read more about the Helen Putnam Award for Excellence.

SmartRiverside Awarded $25,000 Grant for Digital Inclusion Program

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SmartRiverside.orgIn June, 2012 SmartRiverside was awarded a $25,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation State Giving Program to advance the Digital Inclusion Program in it’s goal of helping 10,000 low-income families receive free technology training, PCs, and internet access by 2014.

Through the State Giving Program supports organizations with programs that align with its mission to create opportunities for people to live better. The Foundation has four core giving areas: Education, Workforce Development/Economic Opportunity, Environmental Sustainability, and Health & Wellness, and encourages funding requests that align with these four areas of focus.

The Digital Inclusion Program is designed to bridge the Digital Divide in our local community and allows low-income families who do not have the available resources to take advantage of new technologies that can assist in improving their education, communication, and overall quality of life. The Program is built on a platform of reinforcement from public and private sector collaboration including Dell Computer, Microsoft, Cisco, Salvation Army, United Way, Riverside area school districts and county government.

It also strives to increase workforce capabilities by investing in the educational development of the youth who have yet to enter the workforce, as well as providing valuable retraining and learning opportunities for citizens of every generation that seek to upgrade their employment qualifications.

The emphasis on youth development is shown best through Project B.R.I.D.G.E. (Building Resources for the Intervention and Deterrence of Gang Engagement) which works within Digital Inclusion to provide valuable skills for at-risk youth while promoting gang deterrence.

Under the guidance of a full-time professional management team, at risk youth receive valuable technical training in an apprenticeship-style atmosphere. Participants acquire marketable skills that make them eligible for A+ certification and an opportunity for employment that can help them avoid a return to gang life. A total of 12 young men have worked part-time with the Digital Inclusion Program in the past year and three of those have already taken their new expertise beyond the program, through the classroom, and into the workforce; being hired by local companies as a computer technicians. Two former Project B.R.I.D.G.E members now co-manage the Digital Inclusion Program.

The $25,000 awarded through the Walmart State Giving Program will help to advance the program’s ability to provide free computers, training and internet access to low-income families and offer an array of discount options to assist moderate income families that do not qualify for a free computer under the financial guidelines.

Digital Inclusion is vital to the community because it provides access to the equipment and skills that give residents the ability to successfully compete in a quickly evolving, economic environment and will help to ensure that Riverside has a workforce prepared to fill the jobs that the City is already beginning to attract.


Learn more about SmartRiverside and the Digital Inclusion Program here.

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Riverside Magazine Highlights How Riverside Breaks Through the Digital Divide

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This month’s issue of Riverside Magazine covers several of Riverside’s wins including the combined efforts of the City, non-profit organizations, and technology corporations towards becoming an intelligent community. 

The following is an excerpt from the article discussing technology integration throughout the city and in the classroom. 

Smart, By Design

Written by Jesse B. Gill, Photos by Gabriel Luis Acosta

Riverside has many of the ingredients necessary to compete in a smarter, more advanced and connected 21st century economy: tech-savvy elementary and high school students, research-based centers of higher learning, forward-thinking business leaders, engaged city leadership … and now those elements are coming together to improve Riverside’s national — and even global — standing. We take a look at some of the highlights:

Digital education

Visit any campus in the Riverside Unified School District and you’ll likely see a familiar sight: students fiddling with smartphones, iPod Touches and laptops. But you’ll also discover an important difference: students are encouraged to use their electronic gadgets in class. Many of them are even given the gadgets by the district.

It’s part of an effort to make those devices an integral part of the education experience, according to Jay McPhail, RUSD’s director of instructional technology. “We’re trying to use current technology to extend learning in the way it’s extending communication and gaming in the non-educational world,” he said. The concept behind the district’s digital endeavor is that learning can occur 24 hours a day instead of only while school is in session. Since many students — especially the older ones — spend so much time on their smartphones anyway, district officials decided to try to inject education into those devices too. “Our students can learn 24/7 or they can play 24/7, but they shouldn’t need two different devices,” McPhail said.

From pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, the district is encouraging students to learn using different gadgets, including iPod Touches, iPads, Android tablets and laptops. Thanks to grants from Apple, Target and Verizon, plus state and federal governments, and partnerships with 20 companies, the district has been able to provide 12,500 electronic devices to students in all grades.

Teachers also invite students to bring their own devices to class. At Bryant and Pachappa elementary schools, kindergarteners are using iPod Touches and iPads to improve their English and math skills. And last fall, Ramona High School went digital — becoming the first comprehensive public high school in the state and the third in the nation to make the leap.

Students were issued Android tablet computers to access all of the learning materials they need for every class, making it unnecessary to carry a backpack stuffed with heavy textbooks. Even lessons that teachers present in class can be automatically uploaded to each tablet. “We encourage students to personalize the devices because they take better care of them if they do that,” said McPhail, adding that students are responsible for the tablets just like they used to be for the textbooks. There are plans for the district to fully integrate digital devices at each school site and make sure that every student has access to them. Said McPhail: “We’re trying to bridge the digital divide.”

(To view to the full article, click here)

Riverside strives to be a leader in access and integration of technology in the community. The efforts of SmartRiverside, Innovative Economy Corporation, and the School Districts to use of digital resources in the community is a reflection of the City of Arts and Innovation’s commitment to technological advancement.