St. Louis WizKids

Nothing But Net Education and Tech Fair- GIS Day Activities

On Saturday, July 8, 2006, St. Louis WizKids held an Education and Tech Fair to inform the COVAM neighborhood about the diferent ways in which technology can benefit their families. One of the components of that event was a "GIS Day" booth.

What is GIS, you ask?

GIS stands for geographic information system; it's basically a high-tech map that can show all kinds of information about an area. If you've ever used a service like MapQuest, Yahoo!Maps, or Google Maps, that's an example. The uses of such technology don't stop there, though; this rapidly expanding technology is also used to analyze environmental issues, enhance economic development planning, and improve emergency response during disasters.

At the event, we engaged participants in individual and small-group discussions about this technology and demonstrated a free software program, Google Earth, that is to the planet what a web browser is to the Internet. It is a 3-D browser that allows you to find locations on Earth by name, plot routes between different locations, and find points of interest (restaurants, shops, parks, etc.) near a given location. We also gave a demonstration of GPS (Global Positioning System) where participants had a chance to find out exactly where they were on Earth and go out to find some hidden "treasure".

Thanks to Bob Coulter, Katie Harris, and Virginia Winters for helping to make our GIS day a success!

Fall Classes

The families participating in the WizKids program have completed their classes for the fall session. They seemed to have enjoyed the Internet class and the E-mail class very much. In the E-mail class they set up their own email accounts and have had great fun in using it. Now that the classes have ended I would like to issue a challenge to the parents to continue using their email. Contact your family and friends to get their email address so you can communicate with them on a regular basis. Check your email daily or at least weekly.

Family Classes Going Great

During July, we are holding three (3) classes for St. Louis WizKids families:  Computer Basics, Internet Safety at Home, and Keeping Your Computer Running Smoothly.  We've had two (2) classes so far and both have been well attended.  Last night all families except one were there.  Our fabulous instructor, Shirley, continues to get rave reviews for her easy-to-understand instruction. 

Last night Shirley asked the class about why they want to use the Internet.  Several moms said that the Net has been invaluable to them for finding information to help them address serious health problems in their families.  One mom talked about how chatting with other families of children dealing with the same illness helped her feel less alone.

In the Internet Safety class, Shirley covered NetNanny which is the software families will be using to help protect their children while they are are online at home. Here's a picture of the family class (Click on the small picture to see a bigger one).

New Website

Our main website for St. Louis WizKids is now ready! The main site has links to this weblog and to the WizKids' portal and provides a quick and easy way for folks to contribute money to St. Louis WizKids with a simple URL: www.stlwizkids.org

The music and lyrics from the raps that the WizKids created are on the new site. Please contribute if you can and download the music! Tell your friends about the new St. Louis WizKids new site!

Presentation at White House Conference

On Wednesday, September 15, Sue Beckwith presented the WizKids projects to participants in the White House Conference on Faith-based and Community Initiatives. The conference was held in our home city of St. Louis, Missouri and was attended by representatives of faith-based organizations from around the Midwest. Here is the presentation of St. Louis WizKids in Powerpoint format.

As part of the presentation, Sue also presented our worksheet for identifying healthy partnerships. We call it our Get-Give worksheet and here it is in Word format.

If you need these files in another format, please email us at sue@@theyouthandfamilycenter.com and let us know.

Antenna is here!

The antenna for our bulding has arrived. We will install it as soon as we get the rest of the pieces. Our volunteer crew has been busy with their paying jobs and our access point is on back order. We're very happy though that we are progressing as you can see from this picture!

A Productive 2 Weeks

You know how sometimes you wonder if the week will be productive or if it will be one of those weeks where you seem to be spinning your wheels as you try to accompish things? Well, we have accomplished more in these past 2 weeks than I had hoped!

We found out that the Sprint antenna will work on our building which firmed up our partnership with HITEC for digital educational video programming.

We have received twenty-four (24) inquiries and twelve (12) applications for the Education Coordinator position and will begin interviews the week of January 5.

We got our stlwizkids.org domain hosting set up for a very reasonable cost at FatDays with Brian Marston who did a superb job setting us up.

Our community portal software is installed. This software from BuildACommunity.com is central to our project and will be the portal through which St. Louis WizKids work.

Scott, our hero from Networkz Consulting Group, Inc. has ordered the antenna and wireless access point for our building so we can begin to build the wireless neighborhood network. Isaac, our fabulous building guy, has installed the cabling from the roof to the wiring closet to connect the rooftop antenna.

Yesterday we had a site visit from Tony Streit, the national Director of YouthLearn and a St. Louis WizKids Advisor. YouthLearn is an incredible resource for using technology for aducational programs.

So all-in-all, it's been a terrific 2 weeks! Thank you all for your continued support.

New partnership with HITEC

The Youth and Family Center (TYFC), which runs the St. Louis Wizkids project, is happy to announce our new partnership HITEC to focus on media literacy.  We are very excited about this opportunity to bring media literacy issues to the fore in St. Louis and particularly to the participants in TYFC after-school programs.  Thank you to HITEC Executive Director, Brian Marston, for including us.

Thank you to Harry Miller of Sprint and Isaac Parker of TYFC who got up on our roof today to test the antenna to make sure we could get a good signal at our North city location.

Overheard in the Lab

Nov, 2003: A young woman, about 14 years old to a young man about the same age, (I'm paraphrasing):
Hey, don't hassle me because I'm trying to expand my vocabulary!

St. Louis WizKids Gets National Exposure

Sue Beckwith presented this overview of the St. Louis WizKids (in Powerpoint) to civic leaders and Mayors of cities from the United States and around the world at the Summit on Municipal Wireless Internet in Atlanta on November 20, 2003. There was great interest in our project from civic leaders as well as corporate leaders including Intel.