Faculty Member Awarded Grant to Support Web-Development Effort

A faculty member at Pennsylvania College of Technology recently received notice that her funding application for an in-class project was approved by a Lewisburg-based economic and community-development agency.

The $2,000 mini-grant to Patricia Coulter an associate professor in the School of Business and Computer Technologies' information technology department comes from the SEDA-Council of Governments' Promoting Technology Adoption for Progress program, which encourages college faculty and students in its 11-county service area to help nonprofit organizations advance their adoption of technology.

Coulter's proposal is to utilize her Spring 2006 Multimedia Fundamentals class,which teaches the concepts of multimedia used in Internet sites and allows students to work with, evaluate and apply multiple utilities from various vendors, to a set of community nonprofit organizations' Web projects.

Small teams of students each will work with a local nonprofit organization that wants to develop a multimedia Web site. Some groups already have signed on for assistance, and Coulter is seeking other organizations to take part.

The clients interested in this service so far include Road Radio USA, a 501c3 charitable corporation that presents a message of "prevent underage drinking" to primary- and secondary- school audiences across Pennsylvania.

The students assigned to this project which is supported by the Appalachian Regional Commission would revise Road Radio USA's current Web site to support additional multimedia types, and improve the site's appearance and functionality. Class members will visit and videotape materials from the organization; create a Flash-enabled Web site that incorporates graphics, video and sound; and add actual video during the latter half of the semester.

The students will meet with their clients on several occasions during the semester and provide a set of progress and final reports. Operating under real-world deadlines, students will be expected to produce a well-designed and fully functional Web site by semester's end and to conduct a series of internal and external professional presentations of their outcomes.

Coulter also plans to conduct a presentation, in cooperation with the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce,that would demonstrate her students' work in technology.

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