Digital skills for all is one of the three main areas of our work at Smart Chicago. Our vision is that there is a cohesive trainer network in Chicago that delivers the right training at the right time to the right person. We have a number of programs that support digital skills, including Connect Chicago, the Chicago School of Data, CUTGroup, #CivicSummer, and all of our work under the Hive Learning Network.
On Thursday, the Englewood Codes program had their first demo day where 25 students showed off their hard work. Smart Chicago was proud to be the demo day sponsor and we look forward to more great work from Englewood students.
Here’s a Storify we’ve put together around demo day.
Englewood Code students working on their projects, photo by Demond Drummer
Tonight, 25 teens from Englewood Codes will demonstrate their websites at Kennedy King College. Englewood Codes is a 10 week summer program run by Demond Drummer of Teamwork Englewood. The program teaches kids not just web development, but teamwork and leadership.
Last week, Demond dropped by the OpenGov Hack Night to talk about the program, what the group was able to accomplish, lessons learned and the future of Englewood Codes.
Here is a handy spreadsheet of all Eliminate the Digital Divide grants going back to the inception of the program, showing all grants, grants by year (2007 – 2012), all Chicago grants, and all Chicago grants by year. All of this data is pulled from http://granttracker.ildceo.net/. You can also knock around with the data in this custom view on the State’s data portal.
Here’s a breakdown:
ALL GRANTS STATEWIDE
Year | # of grants | Avg. amount of grants
2007 | 16 | $756,156 $47,260
2008 | 103 | $5,060,661 $49,133
2009 | 91 | $5,079,129 $55,815
2010 | 101 | $4,944,877 $48,959
2011 | 124 | $5,065,137 $40,848
2012 | 88 | $4,102,117 $46,615
TOTALS” 523 grants for a total of $25,008,077 with an average grant of $48,105.
ALL GRANTS IN CHICAGO
Year | # of grants | Avg. amount of grants
2007 | 11 | $460,505 $41,864
2008 | 60 | $3,327,602 $55,460
2009 | 59 | $3,303,522 $55,992
2010 | 60 | $2,519,574 $41,993
2011 | 66 | $2,728,243 $41,337
2012 | 50 | $2,228,595 $44,572
TOTALS: 306 grants for a total of $14,568,041 with an average grant of $46,870.
This is a weekly feature that will highlight what’s happening at the Chicago OpenGov Hack Night. The Chicago OpenGov Hack Nights are weekly events where technologists and community members come together to work with open data and build tools that improve the civic experience. The events are held at 6:00 pm each Tuesday at 1871.
Majuros is an app by Code for America alumni Nick Doiran. The app lets you create detailed, interactive maps with open building data. You can then download the maps for Google Earth or any other program that takes KML files.
A good example is the Historic Chicago map. You can use the Majuros.js tools to draw a blue square over the are you are interested in. Say, for example: The Loop
You can then choose to view the map in several different formats. For our example, I selected web map.
You can make your own map by using visiting the Majuros.js website. And this map isn’t just limited to Chicago – you can build maps in any city that’s made building data available. From Honolulu to Boston!
Englewood Codes is a Kickstarter project by Demond Drummer with Teamwork Englewood where teens will learn how to code their own websites using a Raspberry Pi computer.
Raspberry Pi is a small $35 computer that’s designed to teach programming.
Teamwork Englewood will work with students over 10 weeks to teach them the basics of Raspberry Pi, before moving on to HTML and CSS.
The students will then form teams and enter a competition to revamp local organization websites.
Now, the Teamwork Englewood has already met it’s Kickstarter goal of $5,000. But that’s no reason to slouch. This project that Demond and Team Englewood is doing is extremely important. (We are not kidding: Smart Chicago kicked in $1,000 to make sure this happens!)
Demond’s right. If Chicago is going to compete in the global economy, then we have to do more than attract talent – we have to grow our own talent. From everywhere
If Chicago is serious about civic innovation, we must support civic innovation in every Chicago neighborhood. A technological revolution in the way that government and citizens interact that fails to benefit the entire city would be a hollow victory.
The Kickstarter project has over a month remaining. The more money they can raise, the more kids they can enroll in the program. And it’s not just money they’ll need. We’ll need volunteers from the community to help teach HTML and CSS.
This is important work. Kick in some support if you can. (Note: Smart Chicago Collaborative is a $1,000 backer of Englewood Codes on Kickstarter).
