FIRST TECHNOLOGY IN THE PARK EVENT HELD AT COLUMBUS PARK

Congressman Danny Davis in collaboration with the Austin Peoples Actions Center and the Chicago Park District recently held the fi rst Technology in the Park event at Columbus Park, 5801 W. Jackson Blvd., where students and adults learned about coding, robotics, cellphone repair, music and video production, and technology career paths. Photo Credit: Provided by the Office of Congressman Danny Davis.
Congressman Danny Davis in collaboration with the Austin Peoples Actions Center and the Chicago Park District recently held the fi rst Technology in the Park event at Columbus Park, 5801 W. Jackson Blvd., where students and adults learned about coding, robotics, cellphone repair, music and video production, and technology career paths. Photo Credit: Provided by the Office of Congressman Danny Davis.

First Technology In The Park Event Held At Columbus Park

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

Congressman Danny Davis in collaboration with the Austin Peoples Actions Center and the Chicago Park District recently held the first Technology in the Park event at Columbus Park, 5801 W. Jackson Blvd., where students and adults learned about coding, robotics, cellphone repair, music/video

production and technology career paths.

“STEM and computer-based skills are essential for economic growth and innovation. We are falling behind on these fronts. By some estimates, the U.S. may be short by many as a million programmers by 2020. Technology in the Park is a great initiative to generate community interest and provide valuable continual access to technology,” Davis said in a press release.

The Technology in the Park classes were taught by volunteer experts from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Codenow, Talking Wireless, West Side Health Authority, Chicago Knights Robotics and Motorola Solutions Foundation.

“We introduced them to some basic development and our target was to reach high schoolers, so teenagers, but it turns out that there are a lot of younger kids that were showing up and wanting to learn. What I ended up doing was that I had a dual focus of introducing some basic web development, hypertext markup language (HTML), but I also taught them a fundamental skill which I had to teach myself when I started goading for the first time which is how to touch-type and that means typing on the keyboard without looking down at the keyboard,” said Neal Sales-Griffin, CEO of CodeNow.

The touch-typing lesson quickly became a competition for the students and they were all motivated to work hard and improve their words-per-minute typing score without looking at the keys. Even something as simple as a typing exercise is exposure to technology and a step toward getting kids interested in technology careers, according to Sales-Griffin.

“I was really impressed and surprised that there were so many kids that were extremely savvy already at how to navigate and wield a computer. The only next step that we have to get to is helping them understand that the magic behind all of the tools and software that they use was written by other human beings and could also be written by them one day,” said Sales-Griffin.

Technology in the Park will resume in the fall with a tech curriculum and as an after-school program, according to a press release from Congressman Davis’ office.

In the meantime, Sales-Griffin offers a four-level coding program through his organization, CodeNow, which is a non-profit that teaches high school students how to solve problems through coding and introduces students to web design, coding, app development.

“For me, this is why I do what I do, to have opportunities to introduce young people to this whole world that everyone deserves access to,” said Sales-Griffin. “Technology is embedded in young folks DNA and that is something we have to unlock further.”

Latest Stories

Latest Podcast

STARR Community Services International, Inc.