Youth-Led Tech

Youth Led Tech Curriculum: Typing Club

Christopher WhitakerJuly 27, 2015

As part of our Youth Led Tech Program, we’re teaching various classes on digital skills. We’ve open sourced our curriculum through a series of blog posts. As we’ve progressed into the program, we received numerous requests from instructors and youth on activities to improve typing skills. To do this, we used a program called Typing Club which we’ll discuss below. We’ve featured this app before as part of our Connect Chicago work.

As we developed the curriculum for Youth-Led Tech, we hadn’t fully considered the basics. We drove through our lessons, which are focused on how to use WordPress to make websites for yourself and others. But we found that many youth needed more work on keyboarding skills. Since we had previously learned about TypingClub from our friends at Connect Chicago, we started an account there and set up the youth there and we now include practice nearly every day.

Introduction to TypingClub.com

TypingCub is a program that allows staff to monitor how the students are doing in real time so that staff can move over to help if they needs to. The app also keeps track of students progress throughout the course. Here’s Rene Paccha from the Spanish Coalition for Housing explaining more.

How TypingClubs Works

TypingClub is a free online program anyone can register for regardless of if they’re in a training course or not. The course has a hundred different lessons aimed at improving the users typing skill to 90 words per minute. Users can take the lessons as many times as they like with the goal of getting three ‘stars’ per level.

For schools and digital skill trainers, Typing Club has additional features to help trainers manage their programs. While students can use the software for free, to use the tool as a trainer you pay for the cost per students (about $2.60 annually per student license.)

When you sign up as a school, you get a custom domain address ( yourschool.typingclub.com) that you can send your students to. When your students arrive at your page they can register to take classes and access the content you’ve provided. As an administrator, TypingClub allows you to set up lessons plans, assign additional instructors and set up typing tests. The software also allows you to view your students progress in real time so you can walk over to the student if they’re having issues.

How to get Typing Club

For individuals, they can simply start working right away on typingclub.com without registering for the site. Registration is only necessary to be part of a class or to keep track of progress.

For schools , you can register for a free trial on the TypingClub School Page.

In practice as part of Youth Led Tech

Every day the youth spend about one hour on Typing Club. We tend to do this in the middle of the day to allow staff a chance to catch up on things. At least one staff member will monitor the youth’s progress on Typing Club to make sure that the youth are on the right site.

Digital Learning Environments: Association House in Humboldt Park

Smart ChicagoJuly 27, 2015

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.

Association House of Chicago at 1116 N. Kedzie Ave. Chicago IL 60651 is a large connected complex of services in the heart of Humboldt Park.

Here’s how they describe themselves:

Association House of Chicago serves a multi-cultural community by providing comprehensive, collaborative and effective programs in English and Spanish. We promote health and wellness and create opportunities for educational and economic advancement.

Service areas include El Cuarto Año High School, a technology center (run by longitme Conenct Chicago member Stephen Pigozzi) with classes in English and Spanish, and a comprehensive Family Literacy Program.

The Smart Chicago Youth-Led Tech program is run from the large cafeteria of Association House. It’s a huge area set off from the rest of the building, which gives us lots of bust-out room for creativity and learning.

Youth-Led Tech at Association House of Chicago

There is lots of space to store food, which makes it easier to manage breakfast and lunch five times a week.

Morning Time, Youth-Led Tech, Humboldt Park

The chairs and tables are easy to move. Lots of instruction occurs in presentation and discussion format. We have our own projector. Youth-Led Tech, Humboldt Park

The Association House partners with Americorps to deliver all sorts of digital skills training.

Americorps | Association House of Chicago

They run dozens of programs throughout the year:

Association House of Chicago

The enormous park across the street provides lots of bust-out room when it’s time to turn off computers!

Portraits, Youth-Led Tech, Humboldt Park

Bonus: here’s a video I made of my visit:

Youth Led Tech: Using video to blog

Christopher WhitakerJuly 24, 2015

Smart Chicago YouTube Page

As part of our Youth Led Tech Program, we’re teaching various classes on digital skills. We’ve open sourced our curriculum through a series of blog posts. The overall goal of the program is to have youth create their own WordPress sites. In this lesson, we go over how to use YouTube and Google Hangouts to add videos to our blogs.

Over the last few years, we’ve created a lot of blog posts covering a variety of topics – which ends up being a lot of words. While words are great for conveying ideas, when you’re trying to explain an action or demonstrate a site it’s sometimes easier to show instead of tell. It’s also useful if you’re trying to show something that’s happening live.

We use a variety of tools to help bring video to our WordPress blogs. In this lesson, we’re going to show you how to use Google Hangouts to generate video. We use Google Hangouts because it’s free and we don’t need a ton of equipment to do it. To get Google Hangouts, you’ll need to create a YouTube page like so: (Note: During the class, we’ll actually do this part live.)

Now, Google Hangouts is used to do video conferencing between other people. What they don’t really advertise is that you can also broadcast your hangout live so that anyone can watch. When you do that, it will record the video and put it on your YouTube page.

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.

Once the video is finished, you can go to your YouTube Channel and find your video. You can then use YouTube’s embed feature to put the video in your blog post. Just copy and paste the embed video code. It’ll look something like this:

When you put the code inside the text tab in WordPress, it’ll generate this:

Akya Gossitt: My Path to Being An Instructor for Youth-Led Tech

Akya GossittJuly 21, 2015

My name is Akya Gossitt, I’m 29 years old, I’m an Assistant Instructor for Smart Chicago’s Youth Led Tech Program in Englewood, and I am Chicago.

I say that because growing up in some of the most destructive and volatile parts of the city has made that statement more true then I would like it to be. Growing up as a child was hard. I come from a man that up until this point in my life more than half of my age years has been spent in a prison from convictions of petty theft to murder.

My mother was a severe substance abuser and chronic alcoholic as well as verbally abusive at times. Although I love both my parents dearly, as a child I can’t say the respect factor was ever there and my idea of doing well in school or putting forth effort to do anything came and went.

Akya Gossitt, Assistant Instructor, Youth-Led Tech | Summer 2015, Smart Chicago Collaborative

If I participated in school groups it was only to avoid the real life situations I was facing at home. Once high school came they became my escape, my coping mechanism to Chicago lessons of living the struggle. I went to 3 elementary schools and 3 high schools.

During my sophomore year I met my guardian angel Kimberly Moore. She was the first person outside my family that really showed an interest in knowing me and what I was going through and how she could help me be the bright person she knew I was. Imagine my surprise to hear these good things— she barely knew me— nonetheless over the years she is the one who I think saved my life. Her and the streets to some extent. She’s who made me find my calling in social work and who I always admired to be. She was a successful black woman who spoke so highly of everyone— she always saw the good in you. She was a great mom. Everything I aspired to be in the future as a black woman.

Over time as my connection grew with her a light bulb went off. Everything that I had ever wanted or needed she gave me. Attention, motivation, hope belief. That’s when I realized that I wanted to help kids who were like me. I wanted engage with youth that experienced the same trials and tribulations I did and show them a way out. I wanted to be their guardian angel. Give hope that better is attainable, not impossible. I can’t say that I didn’t make more mistakes along the way, because I did. But eventually I started making better choices. I went to the military, gained some insight on living life on a schedule, being self-accountable and gaining self-discipline as well as setting a financial foundation for myself as a newly single parent. I moved back to Chicago and entered college studying social work.

My last semester of community college I interned at a nonprofit organization called Youth Guidance. During my internship I received an email blast from a colleague who wanted us to let our children know about the youth-led tech program and that they were looking for instructors as well. I applied for the position as instructor, interviewed, and here I am.

What I’d like for people to understand is that not only did my good and greater choices get me here but also my bad— sometimes you have to fall and soak in the sorrow before you realize you’re ready to get up and play the game. That’s what I did. Was it hard? Absolutely! Could I have did thing the “traditional” way or just listen? Of course— but that wasn’t the reality of my life and as far as I’m concerned that applies to all young and old.

Akya Gossit Leads a Poetry Session at Youth-Led Tech, Englewood

Every decision I made got me to this point and if one doesn’t know all the steps I took to get to where I am now then I’m just another person standing in front of them preaching to the choir. They have to relate and that why I have a clip of my past so that people who read my biography know that yes I am in a good position and platform to do great things but that I came from nothing and had to go through every single stage to get where I am and I’m still pushing to do better.

Kamal Williams, Isaiah James, and Akya Gossitt of the North Lawndale Youth-Led Tech | Summer 2015 Team of the Smart Chicago Collaborative

I’m dedicated to the youth and the communities that want my help in showing them their vast potential of not being or becoming statistic. Just because you are doesn’t mean you have to stay one nor just because someone say that you can be doesn’t mean that you have to be.

LinkedIn | Twitter

Digital Learning Environments: Chicago Youth Centers ABC Polk Bros in North Lawndale

Smart ChicagoJuly 19, 2015

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.

Chicago Youth Centers ABC Polk Bros at 3415 W. 13th Pl. Chicago IL 60623 is a bustling place with meeting rooms, a gym, a stage, a computer center, a community garden, and a world of joy inside and out.

Chicago Youth Centers ABC Polk Bros.

Here’s how they describe themselves:

The mission of Chicago Youth Centers (CYC) is to empower children and teens to recognize and experience their possibility and promise. Chicago Youth Centers (CYC) is proud to be part of this community. Named after one of its largest supporters, the Polk Bros. Foundation, CYC – ABC Polk Bros. Youth Center was one of the original three centers to form CYC in 1956. Well-trained youth-development specialists give individual support to nearly 400 children and teens each year to help them reach their potential, academically, socially and professionally. The center also runs a food pantry on the first Saturday of each month in partnership with New St. John Missionary Baptist Church. CYC gives members the tools, support and guidance they need to reach their full potential through the following age-specific programs: Early Childhood Education, School-Age Child Development, Teen Leadership Development, and Summer Fun.

The Early Childhood program is of special interest to those of us at Smart Chicago, since we created and run the Chicago Early Learning portal.

Chicago Early Learning!

Here’s their detail page, and an excerpt:

CYC ABC Early Childhood mission is to invest in youth in underserved communities in Chicago to help them discover and realize their full potential. Our program specialty is in the area of science. Children enrolled in our program will participate in a Green Living Recycling Project to protect the environment. Children will utilize their school readiness skills in all areas inclusive of math, science and literacy as they embark on creating and implementing a recycling station in their classroom community. Children will learn about how packaging waste, including glass, aluminum, plastics, metals and paperboard contribute significantly to annual waste totals, along with yard trimmings. Children will learn recycling involves taking materials that would normally be discarded as waste and giving them a new life. Children will use their problem solving skills to create their own toys and inventions through recycling. Family Engagement in the program supports the involvement of parents and community partnerships toward achieving the school readiness outcomes.

The Smart Chicago Youth-Led Tech program is run from a basement office that is cool and inviting when the hot summer sun is shining bright.

Youth-Led Tech, Summer 2015, North Lawndale

The 24 youth in our program gather around three tables and a bench. We have plenty of outlets and room for our daily breakfast and lunch deliveries. Each of the participants have their own brand-new laptop, which are secured each night in a cabinet we had delivered to the site. We try to be as self-sufficient as possible while using as few of the resources at the location as we can. The gym is a huge resource— the kids love it and they’re able to use it after their morning lesson and right before lunch.

Gym Time, Youth-Led Tech, Summer 2015, North Lawndale