✨ A community-driven wireless network and intergenerational tech stewardship program in Brownsville ✨
Hi! Through the Brooklyn Public Library, we're coordinating the efforts of many in Brooklyn to make wireless internet access and equitable technology training a reality for Brooklyn residents. We're excited you want to participate!
This README file is meant to give you information about bklynCONNECT as it develops, and to let you know how you and/or people in your community can contribute. A pilot of the project will be collaboratively designed and built in Brownsville, by youth participating in the Brownsville Community Justice Center's tech lab, trainers from the New America Resilient Communities program, and anyone in Brownsville who might benefit from (or be harmed by) the network. We're not quite there yet, but soon this repository[1] will be used for collaborating on an open[2], reusable community technology curriculum for the program.
- Curriculum Guide
- Project site
- Potentially helpful resources and organizations
- Project roadmap and milestones
- Example flyer from a previous DiscoTech
This cohort of the Tech Lab will learn about networks and how data travels, both from a technical perspective, and from a civic and political perspective. The 3-month session will be organized around three projects, and will give young people to opportunity to develop marketable skills in web development and wireless networks, to create media to teach an intergenerational audience about data and privacy issues, and to build their own internet/mesh wireless network along Belmont Avenue. Additionally, students will leave with the skills to be lifelong learners by using library resources, online resources, and cooperative learning networks.
Guest speakers/facilitators and field trips TBD.
It can often feel like we have little control over our personal information, and by extension, our lives. Using the internet, or just existing in a connected world with sensors and monitoring technologies enables surveillance by law enforcement, parents, peers, and schools, can affect access to opportunities and resources, and can expose us in ways we never asked for. We want learners to build an understanding of how to personally control what information is transmitted, but also why and how governments, corporations, and nonprofit institutions use and control our data and communication tools, and how to make change in these systems (and how to build our own alternatives).
Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is an anchor institution that plays a crucial role as a community connector and hopes to deepen its cohort-based work readiness services. A community-driven wireless network and a technology-based fellowship program for young adults, ages 18-24, will serve up to 45 young people annually and will teach technology, leadership and workplace readiness skills. Fellows will install and maintain the wireless network, while engaging community members – residents, community-based organizations and small businesses – in using the free broadband access.
- Maya Wagoner (@mayawagon), Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow at BPL (project coordinator)
- Diana Plunkett, Manager of Strategic initiatives at BPL
- Selvon Smith, Vice President of Technology and Chief Innovation Officer at BPL
- Rawle Jackman, Manager of Technology Services at BPL
- Jackson Gomes, Today's Teens, Tomorrow's Techies (T4) Project Coordinator at BPL
- NYCxCoLabs
- Brownsville community organizations, (TBD)
- Local library branch staff, including Adwoa Adusei, Paul Levy, Lameane Isaac, and Larissa Larrier
- Story Bellows, former project director and Chief Innovation and Performance Officer at BPL
- Pelham Van Cooten, T4 alum, summer fellow
- Arvin Azam, T4 alum, summer fellow
- Nia Fraser-Browne, T4 alum, summer fellow
- Johnathan Acevedo, T4 alum, summer fellow
- Jason Faublas, T4 alum, summer fellow
- Reeba Toby, T4 alum, summer fellow
- Do you regularly access public wifi? Are you at a library right now? Are you lacking internet access at home? Do you need or want technology skills for improving your community, or for getting a job that involves technology? Then we want to speak with you about what would be most useful to you and people like you. Email Maya (mwagoner@bklynlibrary.org) and tell her you're interested and would like to be interviewed, or stop by the Brownsville Public Library branch and ask for Adwoa Adusei.
- Do you have knowledge that you want to share? Contact Maya (mwagoner@bklynlibrary.org) to see about guest teaching a technology workshop in the Brownsville or Bed-Stuy, or contributing to curricula.
- More ways to contribute coming soon! Can you think of a way you'd like to contribute that is not listed here? Contact Maya (mwagoner@bklynlibrary.org) to add something new.
- Red Hook Wifi
- Detroit Community Technology Project
- guifi.net: a free, open and neutral, mostly wireless telecommunications community network, with over 33,000 active nodes and about 46,000 km of wireless links (as of April 2017). The majority of these nodes are located in Catalonia and the Valencian Community, in Spain.
- Hack the Hood
- Detroit Future Media Guide to Digital Literacy (pdf)
- [1] repository or repo: a collection of documents related to your project, in which you create and save new code or content
- [2]Open or working open: terms used to refer to using the power, knowledge, and skills of a diverse community of volunteers to accomplish something a single person could not do along. Knowledge and information generated by the proejct is shared widely and freely, and others are allowed to build upon it, and to maximize its usefulness for everyone.
- mesh or Community-driven mesh wireless network: Mesh networks are wireless networks (WiFi) that connect communities by using inexpensive deveices to transmit wireless internet signals between each device and into the community, allowing anyone within the connectivity range to log on to the network and access the internet for free.
- Roadmap: a document outlining the schedule of work to be done on a project
- Issue: the GitHub term for tasks, enhancements, and bugs. Use these to let us know about things that are wrong or should be addressed.
- DiscoTech: Short for Discovering Technology, this is a science-fair style community technology skill share event, where people from all walks of life in the neighborhood can teach and learn from one another about technology.