Red Hook Initiative launches mobile digital literacy program w/ $35K grant

Young people in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood are going to have an easier time learning to be media producers rather than media consumers thanks to a new grant from Time Warner Cable that paid for multimedia equipment. An announcement about the lab’s opening earlier this month is shown on NY1.

Anthony Schloss, Director of Media Initiatives at the Red Hook Initiative, the home of the new lab, told Technically Brooklyn that the company gave the organization a lot of latitude in terms of what they could choose and what programs they could use the equipment for.

He said: “In making my choices, I wanted to have equipment that would support student learning with resources that they weren’t likely to have at home.”

Schloss explained that the flexibility Time Warner Cable gave in offering the grant was helpful. He opted, for example, to go with laptops and make the program mobile. The center already has a computer lab, so they needed the flexibility of mobile devices. The $35,000 grant supported the purchase of the following:

• 15 HP Pavilion laptops
• Samsung monitors for their all purpose rooms
• An Optima projector
• A ProTools Studio Kit
• Digital cameras and digital audio recorders
• Adobe media software
• Additional robotics kits for their robotics team
• Access to Time Warner Cable programming

The center was also able to turn the set up of the labs new multimedia equipment into a professional development opportunity. The equipment was installed by the Red Hook Initiative’s Digital Stewards (the young adults we covered earlier who are building a mesh network). The work was overseen by Dan Monti of Architectural A/V, but completed by the networking team. More photos of the stewards at work on the installation here.

Students work at the Red Hook Initiative Center from after school to around 8 p.m. Many students have homework that is best done on computer, without the necessary equipment at home to complete it on. Schloss told us that the organization plans to have internal discussions soon, to help teachers and facilitators on staff find ways to use the equipment to enhance instruction.