Digital Skills – Archive of Smart Chicago Collaborative Work

Mayor Emanuel Launches Connect Chicago Initiative to Help Close the Digital Divide in Chicago

adminApril 16, 2016

Brenna Berman speaks at the launch of Connect Chicago.

Today we launched Connect Chicago, our initiative to make Chicago the most skilled and connected digital city in America. Following is a roundup of the day.

Here’s the compete text of a press release from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

MAYOR EMANUEL LAUNCHES CONNECT CHICAGO INITIATIVE TO HELP CLOSE THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN CHICAGO

Initiative Will Make Digital Skills Training Available at Nearly All Chicago Public Libraries

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a coalition of public and private partners today launched Connect Chicago — a civic leadership initiative to make Chicago the most skilled and connected digital city in America. Connect Chicago will expand digital skills training throughout the city, and to nearly all Chicago Public Library locations.

“By teaching digital skills, we give Chicago a stronger and more dynamic economy,” Mayor Emanuel said. “Connect Chicago will allow us to expand digital skills training throughout the city and benefit residents of all ages in every neighborhood.”

Connect Chicago will expand digital access and training resources across the city by expanding evidence-based programs in partnership with trusted institutions with a history of serving low-income Chicagoans. Initial investments announced today include the citywide expansion the Chicago Public Library’s CyberNavigator program, which provides computer tutors who help provide access to information resources for adults and youth. The expansion will take CyberNavigators from 48 public library branches to nearly all of the 80 branches across the city, creating an additional 350-400 new training hours per week across Chicago.

“The Library has made it a priority to provide critical tools and resources for adults to learn digital skills,” said Chicago Public Libraries Commissioner Brian Bannon. “This exciting collaborative approach will allow CPL to serve as an access point to digital skills in every neighborhood, through our 80 locations across the city.”

Connect Chicago will also fund the integration of digital skills training into Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Chicago Financial Opportunity Centers’ programming. Under this investment, LISC Chicago projects to train 1,000 more residents in digital skills during 2016 – 50 percent more than their current capacity. In 2011, LISC Chicago found that patrons who participated in digital skill training alongside other support services at financial opportunity centers were 50 percent more likely to get a job than those that didn’t.

Connect Chicago is the next chapter in Chicago’s commitment to digital access and skills. It is rooted in two recent citywide plans created under Mayor Emanuel’s leadership: the City of Chicago Tech Plan as well as World Business Chicago’s Plan for Economic Growth & Jobs.
“Through investments in coordination, programs, and innovation, we believe Connect Chicago will expand and sustain a thriving digital ecosystem that unleashes Chicago’s economic potential and improves the lives of its residents,” said Jeff Malehorn, President and CEO of World Business Chicago.

Connect Chicago brings together the public and private sectors to focus on neighborhood economic development. Private sector partners include Cisco, Clarity Partners, Comcast, Get IN Chicago, Gogo, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility Foundation, The Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute, and Sprint. Over the next three years, Connect Chicago aims to raise at least $10 million to strengthen Chicago’s digital foundations and expand this network of programming.

“By bringing these partners together, we are able to do something unique for Chicago,” said Dan X. O’Neil, executive director, Smart Chicago Collaborative. “It allows an unprecedented alignment and coordination of the city’s technology assets.”

“Internet access is important, because it helps kids succeed in school and families participate more fully in their communities and in the economy,” said Matthew Summy, Comcast’s regional vice president of External and Government Affairs. “Comcast is deeply committed to closing the digital divide and to that end in 2011 launched the nation’s largest broadband adoption program for low-income families, Internet Essentials. Since then, nearly 35,000 Chicago families – or about 140,000 individuals – have gained access to the Internet at home through the program.”

“Connect Chicago is a shining example of Chicago’s commitment to digital access and skills,” said Shelley Stern Grach, Director of Technology and Civic Engagement at Microsoft. “We’re proud to be a founding supporter of this innovative initiative to expand 21st century resources across our city.”

For more information on Connect Chicago, visit connectchicago.org.

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The citywide expansion of CyberNavigators through Connect Chicago builds on the support of the Chicago Public Library Foundation, which has supported the CyberNavigator Program since 1998. There is high demand for CyberNavigator assistance across the city. The expansion will take CyberNavigators from 48 public library branches to over 75 branches, creating an additional 350-400 new training hours per week across Chicago.

Here’s a complete set of royalty-free photos to use in relation to the launch.

Here are posters we used to show the top-level goals, our current investments, and other facts about the program:

Here’s some of the new stories written about the launch:

Emanuel touts plan to expand cyber use in city

By Marwa Eltagouri, Chicago Tribune
In 2013, broadband adoption on home computers and devices was lowest in neighborhoods such as West Garfield Park, Burnside and Brighton Park, as well as other African-American and Latino neighborhoods where poverty rates are high, according to the study. While the majority of people without broadband still connect to the Internet with their smartphones or public computers, the research showed they’re limited in their Internet use and are far less likely to use online courses or access online job applications.

City Launches Connect Chicago Initiative To Expand Digital Skills Training

By Mike Krauser
“It’s not dependent on your zip code, it’s not dependent on your neighborhood, it’s not dependent on your race or income,” Emanuel said. “Everybody will have the access to be part of the 21st century in the sense of what technology is and be conversant.”

Digital Learning Environments: Teamwork Englewood

adminAugust 8, 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.

The 2015 Youth-Led Tech program was delivered in a second-floor space of Teamwork Englewood, which was formed in 2003 as part of the New Communities Program, sponsored by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and the MacArthur Foundation. Its goal is to unite the many organizations serving Englewood residents and work toward the common goal of building a stronger community.

The room was spacious, with ample tables and chairs to accommodate the youth and their computers.

We had a whiteboard:

And we were able to bring in a projector to do group work:

Plenty of room to spread out for projects:

Outdoor space for breaks:

Here’s a full set of photos:

Digital Learning Environments: Dr. Elzie Young Community Center in Roseland

adminAugust 1, 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.

We conducted our Youth-Led Tech 2015 program in a portion of this community center in the Roseland neighborhood. The space was large, cool, and well-configured for group learning.

The youth were able to make the space their own:

And the parking lot was good for breaks:

See a complete set of photos here:

Youth Led Tech: Introduction to how the web works

adminJuly 27, 2015

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:

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

Digital Learning Environments: Association House in Humboldt Park

adminJuly 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.

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

The chairs and tables are easy to move. Lots of instruction occurs in presentation and discussion format. We have our own projector.

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

They run dozens of programs throughout the year:

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

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

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

adminJuly 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.

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.

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.

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.

There’s also a stage for performances.

Breakfast and lunch is delivered daily and any extra is shared with other programs in this busy facility.

There is a long, lush garden in the lot just to the east of the center, and some of the youth love to roam it over their breaks.

Chicago Youth Centers ABC Polk Bros provides a rich and diverse learning environment for digital skills in Chicago.

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

This Morning: Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee Meeting

adminMarch 11, 2015

seal-of-the-state-of-illinois This morning, Wednesday, March 11, 2015, at 10AM, I will be chairing a meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee in the Director’s Conference Room of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) in Suite 3-400 of the State of Illinois Building at 100 W. Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60601. If you want to dial in, you can do so at 1-888-494-4032 / Access #: 2828938287.

Here’s the agenda:

Meeting Agenda

Call to Order
Program Update
Other Business/Public Comment
Adjournment

Here’s a helpful cache of public documents about the work of the committee and grantees of the program.

Under the “Other Business/Public Comment” portion of the meeting, I’ll ask for clarification from DCEO about the discontinuation of the Eliminate the Digital Divide Program. Here’s an excerpt from page 58 of the Illinois State Budget, Fiscal Year 2016, July 1, 2015 – June 30, 2016:

In order to restructure the state’s limited resources to core priorities and to provide funding for an overall budget that the state can afford, the fiscal year 2016 recommended budget discontinues funding from the fiscal year 2016 maintenance request: the Office of Coal Marketing and Development and its programs ($25 million); the state add-on to the federal LIHEAP ($165 million); the Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standards Program ($100 million); the Renewable Energy Program ($10 million); the Summer Youth Jobs Program ($10 million); and the Eliminate the Digital Divide Program ($5 million).

Since inception, this program has invested circa $30 million in the digital lives of Illinois residents. All the way up and down this state, these funds have led to tens of thousands of people (page 254) getting trained in digital skills at Community Technology Centers.

If you believe in the power of technology to improve lives, if you think we should support the essential work of front-line trainers in this state, if you care about equity in opportunity for all residents of Illinois, this is something that matters to you.

Resources and Reading Toward a Digital City

adminAugust 30, 2014

One of our programs is Connect Chicago, a loose network of more than 250 places where you can use a computer for free. It is a central part of our work around both access to the Internet and digital skills.

I also serve as the chair the of the Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee of the State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development Eliminate the Digital Divide Grant Program.

In measuring the impact of the work of Connect Chicago members, we spend a lot of time gathering research. Here’s a look at some of the publications we look to for guidance.

Digital Citizenship: The-Internet society and Participation

Continue reading →

Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee Meeting

adminMay 12, 2014

Join us this morning at the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee.

Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee
James R. Thompson Center 100 W. Randolph St.
Ste. 3-400 (Director’s Conference Room)
Chicago, IL 60601
Monday, May 12, 2014 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Meeting Agenda
I. Call to Order
II. Approval of Committee Meeting Minutes from February 10, 2014 meeting
III. Program Update
IV. Other Business/Public Comment
V. Adjournment

If you can’t make it today, the next two meetings are as follows:

Monday, August 11, 2014 @ 10:00 a.m.
Monday, November 10, 2014 @ 10:00 a.m.

Benchmark: Chicago Public Library Cyber Navigator Program

adminFebruary 25, 2014 1 Comment

“Establish a smart community benchmark and toolkit for broadband access and use” is Initiative Four of the City of Chicago Tech Plan. The Connect Chicago program is an essential component of that initiative. As part of this, we’re highlighting programs that are quintessential programs that we consider crucial to having a connected city for all.

One of the first comprehensive technology training programs in the city, the CyberNavigators program at Chicago Public Libraries has led the way in bridging the digital divide in Chicago.

About the CyberNavigator Program

CyberNavigators are computer tutors that work in 44 libraries across Chicago, where they served almost 90,000 library patrons in 2011. Through technology training and mentoring, one-on-one assistance and public classes, CyberNavigators work with library patrons to teach computer basics, resume writing, word processing, internet searching and more.

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