Madonna Scholars + Smart Chicago

madonna-foundation-logoToday Smart Chicago and The Chicago Community Trust hosted a number of Madonna Scholars of the Madonna Foundation. The Madonna Foundation was established in 2001 by the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, and is a public charity that increases access for young urban women to attend Catholic high schools in the Chicago area.

In addition to financial aid, the Foundation is dedicated to support the academic, psychological, spiritual and social needs of young women. These needs are addressed through a series of unique and innovative programs and service learning opportunities that provides young urban women the opportunity to build a meaningful, productive and successful life for themselves and leaders for future generations.

Today we talked about Smart Chicago, our founding partners, the CUTGroup, Connect Chicago, and Youth-Led Tech. Most of all, we’ll be listening to them and hearing how they use technology to make their lives better. 

This is just one of the ways we seek to strengthen ties between their neighborhoods and the robust public technology scene here in Chicago.

Here’s a set of pics from our day together and a group pic, below:

Madonna Scholars at Smart Chicago

 

Digital Inclusion Meets Civic Tech: Remarks at Code for America 2015 Summit

Today I will take part in the Digital Inclusion Meets Civic Tech panel at the 2015 Code for America Summit. It’s great to talk about such a timely issue with Deb Socia of Next Century Cities, Demond Drummer of CoderSpace, Chike Aguh of EveryoneOn, and Susan Mernit of Hack the Hood.

Since important conversations like this never seem long enough, I wanted to share my thoughts here.

Slide01

I’m the new Program Analyst at Smart Chicago managing the Connect Chicago initiative and other projects like the Chicago School of Data. I care about open data, Internet access, faster networks, and improving digital skills. A question I’m particularly interested in is this:

Slide02

I’ve noticed that a lot of common answers involve versions or combinations of the following:

Slide03

Do we think these answers are enough? When the White House released its analysis of the digital divide in the U.S., they defined being on the right side of the digital divide as having Internet access in your home. While increasing at-home subscriptions is certainly a desirable trend, is it enough to declare victory in a city?

I would say no — not in 2015. Since Internet access has become more essential and its place in our hierarchy of needs has shifted, we should expect that percentage to increase naturally, even without policy interventions. We should acknowledge that, in 2015, Internet access in your home does not necessarily give you equal opportunity in the digital economy. Things like speed, type of online activity and skill are just as key to unlocking the potential of a connection.

Also an increase in citywide broadband adoption doesn’t speak to geographic and demographic gaps in Internet access; rather, the disadvantaged or historically underconnected people and neighborhoods that see that increase are the marginal successes we care about.

We need to go further:

Slide04

Getting more people online in a city, getting a faster network, or having a robust nonprofit sector does not necessarily mean that city is digital inclusive. We should care about gaps in skill and use in addition to gaps in adoption. We should acknowledge that connections themselves are not the end game— rather, educational attainment, technology sector growth for all, workforce development and increasing civic engagement are the true outcomes. As program managers and policymakers, we should plan our evaluations around these truths.

Also, faster networks alone are not enough to make a city digital equitable. It’s what you do with the network that matters. Last year as a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, I wrote, “A Data-Driven Digital Inclusion Strategy for Gigabit Cities.” You can see a summary one-pager here or read a blog post about it here. One thing I observed was that some high poverty urban census tracts had very high connectivity. Why? Because they tended to be dense, walkable, and house several community anchor institutions – schools, churches computer labs or community centers. While digital inclusion programing is often built on top of these trusted neighborhood institutions, cities should care about digital deserts – areas with low connectivity and low access to digital assistance.

Another question of interest:

Slide05

Here are the “almost” answers – a vision of the civic technology movement that is admirable, but arguably incomplete:

Slide06

The answers below go one step further. Much of this sentiment is captured in the great work of Laurenellen McCann in Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech and Sonja Marziano in the Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup).

Slide07

The benefits of civic technology do not travel in one direction. Civic hackers have as much to gain from including diverse, non-expert and non-technical residents in their work as the residents themselves do. Residents seek ways to learn about solving social problems with technology, data or mobile applications. Civic hackers seek to create tools that solve relevant problems and truly work for everyone.

Slide08

Despite the way we talk about them, civic tech and digital inclusion are not separate movements with separate missions. Both seek to make residents’ lives better through technology. The differences lie in the method and associations. When a resident thinks of a civic hacker, they might think of a person who seems smarter than them coding away at a hackathon. When a resident thinks of a digital trainer, they might think of the volunteer in the library public computing center. Wouldn’t it make both jobs easier (and the city better) if the civic hacker could also talk to the library trainees and the digital trainer attended the hackathon? Let’s make that happen.

Slide09

Digital inclusion professionals have a lot to offer the civic tech community. These trainers and program professionals are experts in community outreach, skilled in training, and are the boots on the ground in their neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, digital inclusion professionals are not always paid to or encouraged to think about civic tech. I feel lucky in this respect because I work for Smart Chicago – an organization built for Chicago specifically to care about both civic tech and digital equity. The only thing I have to do to form a digital inclusion-civic tech partnership is Slack Sonja Marziano or wheel my desk chair three feet behind me to her work station!

These are her people:

Slide10

These are my people:

Slide11

This is just one place where civic tech meets digital inclusion in Chicago.

Slide12

We’re thinking of ways Connect Chicago (a network of aligned programs, public computing centers and trainers across the city) and the CUTgroup can work together to make Chicago the most connected, skilled, digitally dynamic city in America.

One idea? Let’s get feedback from CUTgroup’s 1000+ testers on the digital skill offerings in the city. How easy is it for them to learn what they want? What resources are lacking? What resources exist that they don’t know about? We want to collect all the unknown unknowns. Chicago can better understand the “user experience” of its residents, not in relation to a new application or website, but in relation to the digital access and skills ecosystem in their city and community. As it turns out, a significant chunk of our CUTgroup testers rely on mobile and public Wi-Fi:

Are there other creative ways digital inclusion projects and the civic tech community can partner and strengthen one another? We’re confident. Let’s have that conversation. If you have ideas, we want to hear about them.

Talking to each other is fun, but doing stuff is better. Here are actionable items we can take home after the Summit:

Slide13

Civic hackers, pledge to involve five people you don’t currently know in your next project. Embrace civic user testing groups as opportunities to learn, teach and inspire; measure success not only the number of apps created and tested, but in the number of people engaged. Digital trainers and digital inclusion program managers, go to a hackathon or civic tech convening, present a specific wish list, and take your trainees and co-workers with you.

Slide14

To follow the panel on Twitter, see our hashtags #CfADigInc and #CfASummit and follow me at @DKLinn.

Here’s the presentation as a download:

Smart Chicago + Literacenter

literacenterlogo-310Smart Chicago is happy to announce that we are becoming a member of Literacenter  We expect Literacenter to be a key collaborative partner and convening location for our Connect Chicago efforts.

About Literacenter

Literacenter is the 1871 of literacy work in Chicago. It opened in May 2015 and is the country’s first co-working space for literacy programs. Literacenter cares about literacy at all levels – from children in Chicago Public Schools to adults seeking better lives and job prospects.

Literacenter is a flagship project of the Chicago Literacy Alliance. The Chicago Literacy Alliance’s mission aligns with Smart Chicago – especially the Connect Chicago initiative:

From reading an early picture book all the way through acquiring essential computer and communications technology skills, literacy is the key to a successful and independent life, and to a vibrant and sustainable city…

Other cities have shown the powerful partnerships that can come from uniting digital skill building work and traditional literacy work. We hope to forge a similar, strong alliance by joining Literacenter. Since basic computer literacy is pivotal to accessing jobs, education, and basic public services, it makes sense that innovative literacy  groups would begin to emphasize digital learning, too. Smart Chicago expects to both learn from and contribute to the Literacenter community.

Literacenter Tour 2

To read more about the history of Literacenter, see this  story on the Chicago Community Trust’s website.

To get a virtual tour of Literacenter, click here.

Smart Chicago and Literacenter

Membership at Literacenter will advance Smart Chicago’s work in the several ways. First, we will have access to more conference space for Connect Chicago Meetup events, CUTgroup tests and Health Navigator gatherings. As one might expect, Literacenter’s space is puntastic:

Literacenter Tour 3

Most importantly, Smart Chicago will be in league with existing Literacenter member organizations. Some of these organizations have explicit digital learning components. Others might seek to incorporate more digital learning into their literacy and educational missions. Who are we excited to collaborate with? Infiniteach is high on the list. They build learning apps for children with autism and special needs. Literarily, another Literacenter member, builds apps and online games in addition to traditional literacy  tools for educators. We also look forward to building with and learning from the Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition, AARP Experience Corps, and Hooray for Learning – just to name a few.

Follow Literacenter and Smart Chicago on Twitter to hear about upcoming events on digital literacy and skill-building.

Connect Chicago Meetup Recap: Youth-Led Tech Program Lessons & Comcast Internet Essentials

Members of Chicago’s public computing and digital learning community come together every month to hear a presentation from a Connect Chicago Corporate Partner and a Connect Chicago featured program. Join us! Sign up at Meetup.com.

On September 3rd, the Connect Chicago Meetup group convened for a session on Youth-Led Tech Program Lessons & Comcast Internet Essentials. We learned about expansions to the Internet Essentials program from Comcast’s Director of External Affairs, Joe Higgins. Then, Smart Chicago gave a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at Youth-Led Tech Summer program – sharing everything from catering records to detailed curriculum.

CC Meetup 9.3.15

Meetup attendees hailed from LISC Chicago, the Chicago Public Library, Accenture, the Adler Planetarium, Microsoft Chicago, Comcast, Smart Chicago, Englewood Blue, BLUE1647, Hive Chicago, Galvanize Labs and United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, reinforcing the idea that connectivity and digital skills touch so many types of people and institutions across Chicago. 

Comcast Internet Essentials is a program serving low income families with children eligible for free and reduced lunch. The goal is to tear down the barriers to broadband adoption by offering training, reduced cost computers, and $9.95/month Internet access. In Chicago, Internet Essentials serves about 55,000 families – 26% of eligible families in Chicago. 

In his presentation, Joe outlined several new components to the Internet Essentials program:

  • Eligibility Expansion. Any student attending a school where over 50% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch will automatically be enrolled in Internet Essentials
  • Faster Speeds. Internet Essentials download speeds will be 10 Mbps – up from 5 Mbps
  • Wi-Fi. All current and future Internet Essential customers can get a free Wi-Fi router

In addition to these expansions, Comcast is experimenting with a pilot senior technology program in San Francisco, CA and  Palm Beach County, Florida. The company also invested in a study evaluating the impact of its Internet Essentials Program which you can read here. 

After Comcast’s presentation, Smart Chicago’s Youth-Led Tech program organizers gave detailed overview of their open online documentation. These items would be of interest to anyone hoping to replicate or build on this youth summer program:

  • How do you recruit the youth that would benefit most from a program like this? Flyer, use SlideShare as a platform, and use tools like Wufoo and Zapier. It also helps to have program partners like Get IN Chicago
  • How do you hire neighborhood instructors that will resonate with and inspire the recruited youth? Read all about the Smart Chicago hiring process here
  • How do you feed 140 kids 2 meals each day over 6 weeks? See a spreadsheet of thousands of meals from dozens of vendors. This food fueled learning at 5 sites across Chicago and no doubt contributed to the >90% participant retention rate. You can read a longer blog post about catering from Smart Chicago’s Chris Walker
  • How do you implement 170+ hours of training, ultimately empowering and teaching youth to imagine and build their own websites? Youth-Led Tech’s day-by-day, hour-by-hour schedule is published online in pdf and word for other to use and improve on. See it here on SlideShare. 

You can watch the whole Youth-Led Tech graduation ceremony on YouTube. 140 students completed the program and earned their own laptops. Microsoft hosted the ceremony.

YLT grad ceremony 1As you can see from the highlights above, from the beginning of Youth-Led Tech, the program set out to document everything and share everything. We hope other digital skill-building programs in Chicago will adopt similar practices, ultimately strengthening the City’s entire digital learning ecosystem.

Access the entire Connect Chicago Meetup presentation here on Google Slides. You can access the meeting notes here.

Digital Learning Environments: Christ The King High School in Austin

Note: this is part of a series of posts in our Connect Chicago program where we describe in detail digital skills learning environments throughout the city.

Christ The King Jesuit College Preparatory School at 5088 W. Jackson Blvd Chicago IL 60644 is a Catholic Jesuit secondary school using the Cristo Rey model to serve young men and women from the Austin neighborhood and surrounding communities of Chicago’s West Side.

The building, opened in 2010, is impressive— full of light, well laid-out, and in pristine condition.

Christ the King, Austin Christ the King, Austin, Chapel

Sessions are held in room 105, right at the entrance. It’s named after Steven Biko:

Christ the King, Austin: Classroom 105 / Steven Biko

The classroom is equipped with a projector and laptop, great desks, and whiteboards. Youth-Led Tech, Austin

Each of the youth has their own laptop, provided by Smart Chicago through funds from Get IN Chicago.

Youth-Led Tech, Austin

There’s a great enclosed, outdoor space for busting out.

Christ the King, Stations of the Cross, Austin A great cafeteria space and a gymnasium, all on the same floor. Lunch at Youth-Led Tech, Austin

IMG_0733

Christ the King was a great location for Youth-Led Tech in Austin. Bonus: here’s a video I made of my recent visit: 

Youth Led Tech: Introduction to how the web works

Arpanet_logical_map,_march_1977

As part of our Youth Led Tech Program, we’re teaching youth digital skills. We’ve open sourced our curriculum in a series of blog posts. This particular lesson plan was adapted by Christopher Whitaker from the “Brief History of The Internet” from the Internet Society. 

Introduction to How the Web Works

This module will teach students the basics of how the web works including the concept of ‘The Cloud”, the World Wide Web, DNS/Web Addresses, and how content appears in the browser.

Part One: The History of the Internet

Let’s say you wrote a really cool song on your computer. Without the internet the song would just stay on your laptop. To share it, you’d have to have somebody come over and look at your laptop – or you’d have to download it onto a floppy disk (What they had before USBs) and physically carry it over.

This is how computers used to work. And it was a bit of a problem for scientists trying to work collaboratively. Instead of shipping documents from universities on the east coast to the west coast, it would be a lot easier if one computer could just pick up a phone and call the other.

Which is exactly what they did.

In 1965, a professor at MIT used a phone line to call up a computer at UCLA and send information back and forth. This was the first (very small) network. The government saw value with this and funded an experiment called ARPAnet. Computers from across the country were added to the network becoming a ‘web’ of computers.

But, this network had a problem. It began to grow large enough to where one computer couldn’t find another specific computer. Imagine that you’re wanting to visit a friends house for the first time, but there are no street numbers. You’d get lost pretty easily.

To solve this, Vincent Cerf and Robert Kahn created the TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It had four ground rules:

  • Each distinct network would have to stand on its own and no internal changes could be required to any such network to connect it to the Internet.
  • Communications would be on a best effort basis. If a packet (information) didn’t make it to the final destination, it would shortly be sent again from the source.
  • Black boxes would be used to connect the networks; these would later be called gateways and routers. There would be no information retained by the gateways about the individual flows of packets passing through them, thereby keeping them simple and avoiding complicated adaptation and recovery from various failure modes.
  • There would be no global control at the operations level.

The protocol also had a system for giving each device connected to the network an address called an IP Address.

Activity

Everyone take out their phones or laptop. Google “What’s my IP address”

Now, notice that if you’re not on the wifi your address is different from the one on your computer. Every internet connection has it’s own address. Every website also has an address too.

Now, go into the address bar and enter 173.252.110.27

See, it really works – that’s Facebook’s address on the Internet

DNS

The problem with the IP address is that nobody can remember all the numbers needed to get everywhere on the web.

So, they developed services called “Domain Name Servers” that give addresses like 173.252.110.27 names like “Facebook.com”

DNS servers act like Google Maps for your computer. It works like this:

  1. You tell your browser that you want to go to “mikvachallenge.org”
  2. Your computer calls up a DNS server to ask for directions to mikvachallenge.org
  3. The DNS servers looks through all the addresses in all of the internet and find: 67.202.93.0
  4. The DNS tells your browser where to find the site. Your browser then points itself to 67.202.93.0
  5. www.mikvachallenge.org pops up in your browser!

Web Hosting

The other problem with the early network is that those computers had to be on and connected all the time to work. It also became hard for a lot of people to try to access the same file on a single machine all at the same time.

Could you imagine 500 people trying to call you at once? Doesn’t work that well.

The people who were building the Internet needed a way to serve the information to a lot of people at once. The answer became dedicated computers that would ‘serve’ people information called servers.

YouTube has hundreds of server room that hold thousands of cat videos. When you point your browser to the funny video of your choice, the server ‘serves’ your video to your web browser.

Not everyone has to have a server room to host their websites. Expunge.io uses a service called “Amazon Web Services” to borrow their server. (Yes, you really can order everything from Amazon.”

Conclusion 

This should give you a basic idea of how the web works. There’s a lot more complexity to it, but for those interested in learning more should check out these resources.