Month: March 2015

Dan O’Neil on WBEZ re: the Limits of Open Data

Christopher Whitaker

WBEZ LogoOn Monday, Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil went on WBEZ’s Tech Shift to talk about what the Homan Square story says about open data in Chicago.

Dan wrote a blog post on both the Smart Chicago blog and his own personal blog with his thoughts on the issue.

Dan spoke about how he’s been a big fan of the open data policy, but that we’ve run right against the limits of open data. Some things are just not publishable, and data that does get published has limited utility. The crime incident data, for instance, has always been limited and the city’s always been upfront about it. (More here.)

Dan also spoke about how the Open Data movement has had the general idea that if we release data, steps 2-10 (the civic innovation) will occur all on it’s own and how this may not be true.

Dan stated that we can’t have a data-first solution for civic tech. We have to start with people and with what they know.

Boohood also asked about the recent discovery of missing crime data on the data portal that was uncovered by the Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown blog.  Dan responded by stating that the people who ran the blog did a great service – they used the portal to find a specific case – spoke out about it – and resulted in more data being added.

Here’s the whole interview:

A discussion about Local School Councils at OpenGov Chicago

Smart Chicago

opengovchicagoAt OpenGovChicago this year, we’ve been focusing on learning about and helping grassroots groups that interact with official government functions. This time the focus was on Chicago Public Schools and Local School Councils. Local School Councils were first created in 1988 from the Chicago School Reform Act. Local School council members are elected and receive training from Chicago Public Schools. Local School Councils are elected boards that serve at each school. Contract and charter schools do not have Local School Councils. Local School Councils (LSC) are responsible for three main duties:

  • Approving how school funds and resources are allocated
  • Developing and monitoring the annual School Improvement Plan
  • Evaluating and selecting the school’s principal

Local School Councils include the following members:

  • 6 parents
  • 2 community members
  • 2 teachers
  • 1 non-teacher staff
  • school’s principal
  • And in high schools, a student representative

To start off the meeting, we heard from Jill Wohl who is a former Local School Council member. Here’s her introduction:

The meeting then went on to a roundtable discussion regarding a variety of different topics. We started with the Open Meetings Act and how it impacts LSCs. The Open Meetings Act is a law requiring governing bodies to give notice of when meetings are going to occur. It was designed to prevent governing bodies from meeting in secret, but it can impact how LSCs use technology.

Here’s the discussion below:

The next point of discussion was the state of technology at the LSCs, which is poor, by default. It’s difficulty to allow the public access to basic information like who serves on the LSC and how to reach them. Calling the school is often an issue— people answering the phone are not necessarily (and usually are not) associated with the LSC.

Here’s the video of the discussion:    

 

The next point of discussion was on the lack of sharing of best practices, which could be done with adequate technology. There’s nothing to orient LSC members to their roles and no templates or methodologies for carrying out their their responsibilities – they make it up as they go along.

 

This created a good pivot point for Josh Kalov – who spoke about the work that’s been done so far to try and connect Local School Councils together.  Here’s Josh:

 

You can see the Google Drive folder here. Work on connecting Local School Councils will continue in the Education breakout group at Open Gov Hack Night. In addition to the discussion in the room, there was a lot of discussion online. Here is a sampling of tweets:

You can find out more information about local school councils on the Chicago Public Schools website.

5 Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech

Laurenellen McCann

Over the last several months, I’ve been researching community-driven processes for the creation of public interest technology.

What distinguishes community-driven civic tech from “civic tech” more generally is the extent to which the humans that a tool is intended to serve literally guide the lifecycle of that tool. In other words, community-driven civic technologies are built at the speed of inclusion — the pace necessary not just to create a tool but to do so with in-depth communal input and stewardship — and directly respond to the needs, ideas, and wants of those they’re intended to benefit.

In order to guide discovery and analysis of projects that follow this “build with, not for” approach, I developed a series of Criteria for People First Civic Tech to determine the degree to which tools, projects, and programs prioritize people and real world application above production. You can read more about the criteria here.

PeopleUsing this criteria, I analyzed dozens of “civic technology” projects, mostly, but not exclusively within the US. I disregarded whether or not the projects or creators identified with “civic tech,” looking instead at whether or not the “tech” in question was created to serve public good. (Our interest, after all, is to explore the “civic” in “civic tech.”)

Those projects that fit the People First Criteria were diverse in terms of the technologies developed, the benefits yielded, and the communities that were (and, in some cases, still are) in the driver’s seat. But there are a great number of similarities, too — consistent, proven strategies and tactics that other practitioners of (and investors in) civic tech can learn from.

Over the next two months we’ll dig deeper into these approaches, which I’ve rounded up below as the “5 Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech,” a series of engagement strategies listed along with common tactics for implementation, that I encountered in my research. We’ll also jump into case studies of some of the civic tech projects that have successfully implemented community-driven processes wielding these modes and hear from leading practitioners on the forefront of “bottom-up innovation.”

We know the landscape of existing community-driven work is far more expansive than we can discover on our own, so I encourage you: If you’ve got a project that fits the People First Criteria, don’t hesitate to .

5 Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech

  1. Utilize Existing Social Infrastructure
    • Pay for Organizing Capacity in Existing Community Structures
    • Partner With Hyperlocal Groups With Intersecting Interests
    • Offer Context-Sensitive Incentives for Participation
  2. Utilize Existing Tech Skills & Infrastructure
    • Remix, Don’t Reinvent
    • Use One Tech to Teach Another
  3. Create Two-Way Educational Environments
    • Start with Digital/Media Skills Trainings
    • Co-Construct New Infrastructure
  4. Lead From Shared Spaces
    • Leverage Existing Knowledge Bases
    • Leverage Common Physical Spaces
  5. Distribute Power
    • Treat Volunteers as Members
    • Train Students to Become Teachers
    • White-label Your Approach
    • Be a Participant

Continue reading →

KIPP New Jersey Talks School Data at OpenGov Hack Night

Christopher Whitaker

kipp-new-jersey-sq110At this week’s OpenGov Hack Night, Andrew Martin and Juan Pablo-Valez from KIPP New Jersey spoke about the usage of data in schools.

KIPP New Jersey operates nine charter schools in New Jersey and is part of a national network that includes four schools in Chicago.

The talk was described as an anatomy lesson in school data. The entire talk is posted here:

Here are some points as well as some pointers to relevant data in Chicago.

The School Information System (SIS) and the information they hold

A School Information System is a software platform that allows school districts to manage student data. School districts also use these systems to report information about enrollment, student performance, and other information back to their authorizing authorities. This system also holds personal information about each student such as their name, grades, and what classes they’re enrolled in.  This information is heavily protected by rules and it can make getting data from schools difficult because of the need to protect student privacy.

Data researchers, such as those inside the Office of Accountability at Chicago Public Schools, use the data to answer questions regarding school population. Chicago Public Schools information to make decisions about where resources and funding should go, and about what types of supports to provide to teachers.

Schools also collect information on behavioral issues so that they can track disciplinary infractions and their outcomes.

The grade book and the challenge of comparing students to students 

Martin also spoke about the difficulties of comparing students across the board. It’s relatively simple to aggregate data from all the gradebooks in one grade and determine their average GPA. It’s much more difficult to try and compare students from different schools – particularly if they’re in different states.

With the No Child Left Behind Act, all states must develop assessments (standardized testing) at select grade levels to receive federal funding. In Illinois, the current test is called the ISAT test – but the state is now moving to to PARCC test.

Because each state test is different, it can also be difficult to compare one state test to another. Because of this, a ‘Common Core’ set of standards were put in place by forty states – including Illinois – to provide guidance on what students are expected to learn.

Another way of evaluating outcomes are college admission exams like the ACT and SAT. However, those tests are administered fairly late in a students career when it can be too late to take any corrective action.

Education Apps 

The presenters also talked about the proliferation of ed tech apps like Khan Academy. There are a number of civic startups centered around education in Chicago including several from the Impact Engine accelerator program. The presenters also pointed out that it’s sometimes easier to track a student activities as they play games.

Here’s some education data in Chicago  

  • Illinois State Board of Education School Report Card Site: An interactive site that includes test scores and other factors.
  • Illinois State Board of Education School Research Site
  • School Report Cards from Chicago Public Schools
  • Chicago Public Schools Data page
  • Schoolcuts.org: Comprehensive information on schools that closed or received students from closing schools.
  • University of Chicago Urban Education Institute: The mission of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute (UEI) is to create knowledge to produce reliably excellent urban schooling.

 

Smart Chicago to Host Civic Design Camp

Christopher Whitaker

CSmart Chicago is set to host Chicago Civic Design Camp on April 25th at the offices of kCura.

Chicago Civic Design Camp is a one-day gathering of practicing designers of all stripes with local government officials interested in using design to improve the services they provide to citizens. Partly structured session format for skill shares and case studies, and partly un-conference format for free exchange of ideas and challenges, the day will cover topics ranging from user research to service design to citizen engagement.

This will be the third Civic Design Camp. The previous events being held in San Francisco and New York City.

Cyd HarrellThe event is being run by Code for America’s UX Evangelist Cyd Harrell. Harrell is a highly versatile and collaborative user experience expert with 12+ years of success improving online and software products. As Code for America’s UX evangelist she works with fellows and staff to ensure Code for America is creating inventive and cost-effective solutions to serve the needs of real users.

You can find out more information about the event here.

How to Livestream an Event

Christopher Whitaker

New gear for Smart ChicagoNote: here at Smart Chicago, livestreaming events on our YouTube Channel is a core activity. We do this because we want people around the county to be able to see all the civic innovation going on in Chicago and because we feel that this knowledge is useful past the actual event itself. We have hundreds of hours of videos about civic innovation in our archives. Christopher Whitaker is the King of the Stream over here, so I asked him to document how he does it. Here’s his take. —dxo

We’ve broken this down into three parts. First, We’ll talk a little bit about how to do this on the cheap. Next, we’ll go over about how to do things if you have a budget to spend, and finally the equipment that we use to do the livestream.

First, some pre-requisites

Before we get into how to do the livestream, we first need to take care of a first housekeeping items. Mainly, making sure that you have a YouTube page setup for live streaming. If you don’t have a YouTube channel for your organization then you’ll need to create one. Once you do that, you can set yourself and other team members as managers. (If you’re also on Google+, it’ll take you to that page.)

Here’s a short video to show you the process.

Livestreaming: The quick and easy version

YouTube allows you to conduct live streaming from it’s Google Hangout interface without any other special equipment. Do keep in mind is that you’ll want the fastest internet connection possible. The faster the speed, the higher quality the video will produce. We also strongly recommend using a wired connection using an ethernet cable – particularly at larger events. If there are too many people on the wifi, Google won’t get a good feed and it’ll end your video.

To create an event go to your channel page. You’ll notice that there’s a section called live event with a link called “create live event.” Click that and name your event. You can set the start time, end time, description and tags for the event. Once you’re ready to start your live stream – press “go live” and it will bring up the Google Hangout screen.

Once it’s up, you can press the ‘gear’ to get to the settings. While you can use your computer’s internal webcam – having an external webcam does make a significant difference in quality. (We use a Logitech HD webcam.) If you have an external microphone, you can also select that as well.

At the bottom right corner of the page, you’ll see a chain icon that says ‘links’ when you hover over it. You can use that to share your livestream through Twitter or embed the video stream inside a web post.

Once you’re ready, hit “Go Live” and the hangouts will start to stream. When you’re done, simply click the ‘End’ button to stop the broadcast.

Here’s a video to show you the process.

Livestreaming with Wirecast:

If you have a budget and do live streaming often enough, it may be worth it to invest Wirecast. With Google Hangouts on Air, the computer is having to send everything to YouTube and YouTube is doing the work crunching the video into a format that YouTube can send out to the universe. This means that the quality isn’t the best it can be and the delay can be somewhat long.

With Wirecast, your computer is doing the encoding and sending it upstream. This means you can get a much better picture and have a number of different features you can play around with.

Wirecast for YouTube can be a bit pricey, but the Wirecast for YouTube (found by clicking here) is a less expensive version.

To create a live streaming event that you intend to use for Wirecast, follow the same steps to create an event as before – but this time choose “Custom” encoding. That will give you a new tab called “Ingestion setting” that will let you choose your recording rate. This will largely depending on your computer and your internet speed. The faster your computer, the more bitrate you can produce. If you have a fast internet connection, you can then send higher bitrates to YouTube. Generally, we stream at 480p when on location and 1080p when we’re at the Chicago Community Trust (which has a gigabit connection.)

Once you set it up, you can then go to the “Live Control Room” where it will immediately yell at you for not being able to find your stream. That’s OK. It’s now time to open up Wirecast.

Wirecast can be intimidating for the uninitiated and it’ll take some playing around to get comfortable with it. The first thing you’ll want to do is to click “Layout” and uncheck the preview button. You’ll then go to “Switch” then “Autolive.” That should give you a picture of whatever is going through your camera.

Below the video, you’ll see several bars. One of them will have a small picture of whatever is going through your camera. This is probably your internal webcam. If want to use an external camera, you’ll need to add it. To do so, hover over the ‘plus’ icon next to the small picture and click the camera icon to add your camera. You can also add a desktop presentation as well if you want to show information from your computer.

Once you do that, you can also click the gear icon to change settings – including telling wirecast you want to use an external microphone is you have it.

Wirecast also lets you use chyons – those little text boxes that you always see on the news. To add one, hover over the plus ‘above’ the bar with the camera shots. Click the ‘paper’ icon to add a new shot.  (Not a new camera shot – just new shot.)

For now, click the gear icon and click edit shot. Once you’re here, click ‘fullscreen view’ and apply. Under “Attributes” you’re going to see three icons. Click the “T” icon and you’ll see a gallery of different graphics. We use either the “Royal Title” or the “Tab Title” when we want to show somebody’s name. Once we pick one, we then click the “T” icon to the right of Attributes. Once we get there, it’ll give use four different lines of text. I usually use the first one for the social media hashtag or the name of the event. For the second, the persons name and third line for their organization. Once we’re done, we can close the window.

That was a lot of work right? What if we have to do that for a bunch of speakers?

If you click the “gear” icon on the shot we just created, it will give you an option to duplicate the shot.

Once we’re done, go to File and Save. Now, all of the settings that you just created have been saved – so you won’t need to do this again.

To switch between shots, simply click on the shot from the bars. The shots at the higher bars go on top of the lower bar. So, if you select you external camera and the chyron we created – it will produce a feed showing both. If we want the chyron to go away – we simply click ‘blank shot’ and it’ll go away.

The next thing we’re going to go over is social media. If you’ve ever watched The Voice or American Idol, then you’ve seen your tweets show up in the broadcast. You can do that too! Go to “Social” in the menu and click “Settings.” It will have you log into Twitter and ask what do you want to use as your message feed I usually click “Search” and enter in the hashtag for the event we’re covering such as #chihacknight. Once you do that, you should then be able to click “create shot” and “message feed.” Once you do that, you’ll see a new shot show up at the top bar. Clicking this will bring out a chyron that shows the twitter bird. When you clicked on message feed it showed you a window with tweets. Clicking on one of these tweets will cause that tweet to show up in the social media shot. To broadcast it, simply click on the social media shot.

To be fair, this takes some getting used to and it’s recommended you allot at least an afternoon to play around with it.

Once you’re ready to broadcast, we’ll need to go to the gear setting next to the “Record” button near the top of the application. It’s going to ask us to pick an output destination. Pick “YouTube” and hit OK. It’ll then show you a button that says “Authenticate” – click that and log into YouTube.

Once you do that, it should automatically bring up the event that you just created. From there, close that window and hit the “Stream” button. It should light up red.  We can then go back to YouTube where it should show us a “Stream Status OK.”  If your connection is slow, it’ll give you warning message and you may need to go back and use a lower bitrate. If everything looks good, click on preview. If it still looks good, you can click on “Start Broadcast” to start your event.

If you go to “View on watch page” you can then share the video just like you would on a normal YouTube using the “Share tab”

Here’s the video demonstrating broadcasting with Wirecast.

Our equipment

While you can do a live stream with just your computer – we use a few pieces of equipment to make the quality of our livestream better.

Logitech HD Pro C920 Webcam: 

Untitled

Even a year after our initial purchase, this camera is still one of the best out there for what we need. The camera has microphone inside and it’s small size makes it easy to carry. The picture quality is great. If you’ve watched our live stream and noticed some pixelation – that’s coming from a bad connection through Google Hangout – and not the camera.

The camera comes with a microphone, although if a room is too noisy the microphone tends to pick up on those sounds more than the speaker. Moving the camera to a position away from attendees and closer to the speaker generally keeps this issue to a minimum. However, the sound is one of the bigger issues we have. When we edit the videos, a lot of the time we’ll boost the sound. There have been a few times – for example, when the room gets super crowded or the AC is on – that we’ve been unable to use a video because we can’t get the sound right.

That said, the Logitech HD Pro is still one of the best cameras that are out there. We actually purchased two more of these cameras as part of our upgrades.

Vista Portable Tripod

It’s best to film speakers at eye level. In order to do this, we use a Vista Explorer 60 inch lightweight tripod ($25). It features a quick-release fitting for the camera and can be set up and broken back down in less than 2 mins. This tripod is also very light with me being able to commute with it on the CTA with little issue. You do have to remember to loosen the top ring to make swiveling the camera easy. If you keep it too tight, the camera can hear the tripod squeaking as you move the camera.

The issue with this tripod is that it isn’t tough. We carry this around to a *lot* of places and it’s gotten a little banged up. Pieces have fallen off the tripod (such as the light plastic handle) and the bag has been torn in some places. Of course, at $25 bucks you can consider this tripod an expendable item.

We’ve now gotten three smaller tripods that can fit into a messenger bag. This should cut down on wear and tear since we’re not lugging them on our back.

Ethernet Cable

While not required, ethernet cables can make for a better broadcast. Wifi networks can be spotty and if the connection is dropped Google Hangouts will interrupt the broadcast.

Blue Yeti Microphones

One of the biggest weaknesses of our old setup was the sound. We now have three Blue Yeti Microphones – microphones that made Wirecutter’s Best USB Microphones. These mics have multiple modes: Omnidirectional, single direction, and bi-direction. While these microphones are pretty big, they are still fairly portable. The Blue Yeti microphones pick up much more sound that the webcam does. We also bought USB extenders so that we can have the mic set up right near the speaker. (Blue recommends about 6 inches.)

The one downside to the Blue Yeti is that it’s almost too powerful. We have to be careful not to put it on the same table as somebody who is typing because it will pick up on that. We normally have it on it’s own table/stand and bring it close to the speaker. The closer it is to the speaker, the less gain I need to use – which helps cut down on background noise.