Training Sites

Digital Literacy for All is a collaborative effort involving community volunteers and five (5) local sites in Champaign-Urbana that serve as community technology learning centers and community-based collaborative spaces. Our sites are listed below, along with a brief description of the programming being done there.

Champaign Public Library

Every weekday, school dismissal brings Champaign Public Library between 75 and 100 kids.  Despite these numbers, the librarians make the effort to get to know the kids on a first-name basis.  For these kids, the library is a place to access resources, study, and socialize, sometimes all at once.  CPL staff are excited at the prospect of providing the kids with fun activities and learning opportunities.

Kenwood Elementary School

Kenwood Community Tech Time is a before-and-after-school program that runs four days a week, where students are able to explore and examine the hardware, software, and social aspects of technology. We typically get about a dozen students in the mornings and twenty in the afternoons. Morning workshops are spent working on Scratch projects planned by students with design worksheets. K/1 Mondays are focused on code.org and Scratch, Jr. for the youngest students to learn basic programming concepts. On Scratch Tuesdays, students work on Scratch projects and learn finer points of coding. Girls Lead Thursdays feature a variety of activities, both hands-on and digital, chosen by Tech Time girls. Hardware Fridays are about the physical side of technology, from disassembling and reassembling computers and small electronics, to hand-wiring Arduino circuits and building paper automata.

Tech Time also maintains a blog helping to let others know what is happening, future programs, and an online space for the students to upload content.

Tap-In Leadership Academy

An after school program in Champaign working with several Unit 4 schools. This program meets Mondays-Thursdays at the school from dismissal until 6:00 PM. The first hour is devoted to academics and the remaining time is for enrichment activities (where our digital literacy work would be slotted). Additionally, Tap In hosts Cyber Cafes, on Tap In’s site, open to all where community members can come in and ask computer questions. In our early planning stages, the potential programs we will be conducting include workshops in the schools, Cyber Cafe workshops, and a Parent Enrichment series. More to come!

The Urbana Free Library

The grant work at The Urbana Free Library (TUFL) is currently two-fold. The Community Ambassador at this site, Kim Naples, divides her time between the Teen Open Lab and the computer lab’s help desk. The Teen Open Lab is available after school three days a week to students in sixth through twelfth grade. They use the space to hang out, play video games, do homework, and work on projects. Tools that are available to them include a 3D printer, a Silhouette vinyl cutter, digital drawing tablets, sewing machines, laptops, and audio production equipment. Kim helps the teens use these technologies in their projects and periodically leads workshops.

The Urbana Free Library’s computer lab serves a wide range of patrons and is open to those without a library card. The Community Ambassador staffs the computer help desk and assists users with reserving computers, printing, applying to jobs, emailing, file management, social networking, and navigating the web. TUFL also offers scheduled one-to-one computer tutoring, which the Community Ambassador is also involved in. Finally, Kim also helps to recruit and train volunteers for the help desk and tutoring.

Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center

After school, students K-12 from the Urbana School District come to Urbana Neighborhood Connection Center (UNCC) for an after school program that runs from 3-5:30 PM. Elementary and high school students arrive around 3:05-3:30 PM and middle school students do not arrive until 4:10-4:20 PM. Mondays-Thursdays, the elementary school students work on homework (either assigned from school or assigned by UNCC workers) until 4:00 PM where at that point, are allowed to use a computer, play a game, go outside, etc. Fridays are free days. The goal of working at this site is to develop workshops for the after school time that are geared towards the younger students and then develop workshops for the middle and high schoolers that can occur on the early out and inservice days.