Project Mission
To create a web portal for the Native Language Community Coordination (NLCC) Training and Technical Assistance (T/TA) Center that provides resources, training recordings, and a virtual venue location. The web portal is both a private and public site.
The private site for the NLCC recipients includes a personal log-in, access to NLCC Cohort call meeting minutes, registration, and access for the NLCC semi-annual meetings with attendance through a virtual venue. Additionally, a forum is provided for the recipients to exchange information or to discuss issues that affect the completion of their projects, such as COVID-19.
The public site holds resources for anyone interested in Native American language revitalization and allows the user to download resources (e.g., teaching tools, language learning, immersion techniques) see upcoming grant announcements, register for upcoming webinar training, sign-up, and view bi-monthly newsletters, and view past training recordings.
Business Statement
The Administration for Native Americans (ANA) established the Native Language Community Coordination (NLCC) Demonstration Project in 2016 to support communities that can demonstrate success in offering a continuum of Native language instruction from early childhood through post-secondary education.
The purpose of this demonstration funding opportunity is to build upon the successes of ANA’s short-term, project-based Native Language funding. This effort was intended as a place-based demonstration that addressed gaps in community coordination across the Native language educational continuum. Projects funded under this initiative ensured high-quality Native language instruction from early childhood through post-secondary education.
The Process
In the first month of the second year of the contract, the project manager of the NLCC contract contacted Vexing Media to upgrade the current web portal to a more user-friendly site for the NLCC recipients. She noted that not everyone has access to high-speed internet and the web portal needed to be structured to meet the needs of the recipients. The project manager hired Vexing Media because of our previous experience with and the understanding of Native communities and their needs due to their remote locations.
After establishing the restructured website’s goals and expectations, we then determined the need for resources that needed to be distributed to the recipients and the public. The client wanted to update information internally and with the ease of accessibility for external website users.
The restructured website worked great. In the fourth year of the contract (our third year with the client), the project manager contacted Vexing Media for a refurbishment of the web portal. Vexing Media worked in collaboration with the NLCC T/TA Center team and project manager to come up with a new goal and objectives for the web portal. Originally, the web portal was to be fashioned as an example of a learning language website for anyone to “copy” for their own use in teaching Native languages. However, the web portal became a combination of both a learning language website and a repository for Native language revitalization per ANA’s request.
The web portal used the same branding and utilized the colors a little differently. Also, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vexing Media moved towards providing access to a virtual venue for the NLCC Semi-annual meetings in 2020 and 2021.
Vexing Media worked in partnership with the NLCC T/TA Center team and project manager to create from scratch a virtual venue that hosted the event with web pages such as How to Attend (provided information on how to access Zoom, how to register, where to find training for attending), Detailed Agenda (provided links to each workshop that had descriptions of the learning goal and objectives, presenter information, Zoom room link, handouts for the workshop), and pages that explained the purpose of some of the activities (Cultural Mindfulness, Peer-to-Peer Networking). The Vexing Media team assisted in the production of each of the 3-day events with recording and post-production services for editing, close-captioning, and streaming the videos through the web portal.
“The goal of the NLCC T/TA Center is to maximize the recipients’ effect on their respective communities’ language revitalization efforts from pre-school through college, and community-wide.”
An important element of the NLCC T/TA Center’s outreach is the web portal. The web portal allows delivery of training via announcement and registration for upcoming webinars and access to recorded webinars, sharing of Native language resources, tools, and materials. With the web portal, the NLCC T/TA Center provides the information that the NLCC cohort needs to develop and enhance their language revitalization programs.
The Results
Over the past three years, Vexing Media has produced work for numerous webinars, four virtual and four face-to-face semi-annual meetings, 16 e-Newsletters, managing the NLCC listserv, and adding information about COVID-19 to the web portal and its effect in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
We have provided traveling camera training used for filming presentations videos to be released to Native communities who were unable to attend language conferences.
Because of the quick turnaround time and effective collaborative effort from the client and the Vexing Media team, executing the website with resources and training support during the pandemic led to a helpful response for the Native communities.
What's Next
We view collaboration and community involvement as critical elements for our clients and our company’s success. We are thankful to have worked with the ANA NLCC contract.
We look forward to future website maintenance, semi-annual meetings, providing production services for virtual training, and digital or physical copy collateral services we can provide to organizations who want a freshness representing their voice and mission.
See other organizations we have worked with here and contact us for a free consultation!
