St. Louis WizKids

Home Computers Ordered

The home computers and the one for the lab will ship on July 8 or sooner.  Justina and Sue will receive and inventory them as soon as they arrive on or about July 12 and will begin delivering them to homes.  Sue will get in touch with the families to schedule installations and will also schedule the wireless installs with O2connect.  The computers are Dell desktops with 3 year on-site support, Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz (fast), 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drives (small but OK), Ethernet cards, 15" LCD flat screens, CD burner, printers.

4-H Partnership and ESRI grant

St. Louis WizKids and The Youth and Family Center are now partners with Missouri 4-H! The 4-H folks have been working for several years now to include include urban programs focusing on information technology. So it seems that 4-H isn't just cows anymore. Through this partnership, St. Louis WizKids will have access to the large educational software library and the incredible wealth of knowledge and resources that the 4-H staff have to offer. The Missouri 4-H website is full of detailed curricula that would be useflu to any education-focused community techology program.

St. Louis WizKids will also be participating in the 2004 4-H National Technology Leadership Conference in July at Washington University. During the conference, we will also be working with other young people on a (GIS) mapping project in Forest Park, one of our many fine parks in St. Louis.

New Education Coordinator!

Our new Education Coordinator, Tonya Hutchinson is on board. Hoo-ray! Tonya is a St. Louis native who brings to our project a wealth of experience in social justice work and K-12 education. As you may know, Tonya was selected from a pool of twelve (12) applicants by our interview panel which consisted of 3 adults and 2 teenagers (link to picture). As you can see in her resume (in PDF format), Tonya holds a Master's in Social Work from the University of Missouri. We are thrilled that Tonya is bringing her experience with young people to the St. Louis Wizkids program.

Tonya has used computers quite a bit, but I wouldn't call her a Net-head like some of us , so we may need to give her some tips along the way (Ana? Nettrice?). Her email is: tonya@theyouthandfamilycenter.com. Please join me and the rest of the The Youth and Family Center staff in welcoming Tonya! We are confident that her involvement will ensure the success of St. Louis WizKids.

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.

Job Announcement

We are looking for a Learning Coordinator for the project. This person's job will be to coordinate all student learning and related activities. This is one of only two full-time positions (the other being the project manager), so it's a big job... okay so it's huge. Please distribute the job description (in Word) widely. We will conduct interviews in late Dec or early Jan. As always, check back here for updates.

Press Conference Held November 18

We held our first presss conference today for the St. Louis WizKids project! We were honored to have in attendance Ms. April Ford, Alderperson from our Ward (5th Ward) and Ms. Alyson Price, assistant to U.S. Representative Lacy Clay. Alderperson Ford announced the project to the audience of 22 people and congratulated The Youth and Family Center for receiving this highly competitive award. She talked about the importance of high speed Internet access for students in the 5th Ward and the incredible value of The Youth and Family Center to the neighborhood. Scott Schaffer, President of Networkz Consulting Group, one of our corporate partners, explained what wireless is and our use of not only leading edge technology but also leading edge educational technology products.

Mr. Schaffer invited other corporate leaders in St. Louis to join our project. Herman Noah, the Executive Director of The Youth and Family Center, thanked all partners and shared details of the program. He also announced the need for local matching funds. With receipt of the $560,970 Federal grant, we will need to raise an additional $50,000 annually in cash to support the project in addition to the match. These additional funds wil be used to support staff for homework assistance and to support students' educational development.

Everyone was thrilled that this exciting and innovative program is happening in north St. Louis. The fact that the students are designing the project was noted by all speakers as one of the most innovative aspects of the project.

Though there was some disappointment that the media did not attend, everyone who was there committed to working hard to make St. Louis WizKids a complete success. Please help support this project by telling your friends and colleagues. Ask them to send funds - ask them to volunteer.

Photos from the press conference
Press release (PDF)
St. Louis WizKids Executive Summary (PDF)

Fore more information, please email the Project Manager, Sue Beckwith at sue@beckwith.com or call (in the U.S.) 314-231-1147.

Press Conference to be Held on Tuesday, Nov 18

The press conference announcing the St. Louis Wizkids project to the community will be held on Tuesday, Nov 18 at 1pm sharp. We hope all partners and interested folks will attend. The press event will last only 30 minutes so please arrive at 12:45.

The press conference will be held at The Youth and Family Center at 2929 North 20th in St. Louis.

Get map to The Youth and Family Center.

Press Conference date change

We are not sure if we will have the press conference on November 18. We are looking at later dates and will post here when we have a date certain. Thanks for your patience.

Press Conference Tentative Date

We are tentatively planning the press conference to announce St. Louis WizKids for Tuesday, November 18 at The Youth and Family Center. If anyone knows of any big constraints on that day, please comment here or email Sue at sue@beckwith.com.