Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee
Today I chair my first full meeting of then Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee which “advises the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in establishing criteria and procedures for identifying recipients of grants under the Digital Divide Elimination Act“. If you have an interest in these topics topics, consider coming to one of the next two:
- Tuesday, August 12, 2014 @ 10:00 a.m.
- Monday, November 10, 2014 @ 10:00 a.m.
History
A great part of my day job is that I get to work with people who are on the front lines of delivering digital skills to the people of Chicago. Since 2011 at Smart Chicago, I have worked directly with librarians, trainers, and other practitioners. These are the people who meet with new patrons every day, helping them get email accounts, find information about their health, and otherwise improve their lives with technology.
In the summer of 2003, I taught a course of 15 elementary and high school students in a week-long “computer camp”. This was entry-level stuff for low-income youth who had never tried to make a website; ever.
WeblogConsultant and InternetLifeServices
From 2002 – 2007, I had up two projects that sought to teach every day people how to use the Internet to make their lives better. One was WeblogConsultant, where I made inexpensive and powerful for websites for churches, schools, and nonprofits so that they could get the power of the Internet in their hands. Here’s a case study I did in 2007 on my parish website: http://www.
This is a website I made in 2004 to hold my lesson plans for a concept that I had back then: that everyone loves poetry, and everyone loves technology, and they could be taught at the same time effectively.
I created and led a number of bilingual computer training sessions for the large (but mostly invisible to the Caucasian population at the Church) Spanish speaking community at a parish in the North Side. I saw the need, designed tools to fill the need, and conducted the training myself.
In 2006, I developed a custom 9-hour course taught in three-hour stretches over three days. This was open to the public and I taught all comers. Almost everyone had very low skills. Many had never had an email account before.