June 18 Virtual Meetup Recap

Thank you for attending our June Meetup with special guest Sybil M. Madison, Ph.D., Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services!

The importance of connection is more evident than ever.

Here are some highlights from our June Virtual Meetup:

• Sybil M. Madison, Ph.D., Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services, Office of the Mayor, spoke about COVID- 19 summer guidelines for in-person programming. She also highlighted the Mayor’s new initiative, My CHI. My Future. (MCMF), the vision of which is to connect every young person in Chicago to rich, engaging, and safe learning and work opportunities and pathways. When speaking specifically to curation and development of pathways, Madison stated: “[CLX is a] wonderful space to make connected learning real and visible, concrete, for young people and their families; and caring adults play a huge role in connecting young people to opportunities.” Check out the CLX Wiki to watch the full video.
• Moving from connection to building: CLX convenes the innovation learning ecosystem to learn, share, and build together. This is evident through our breakout sessions. Here’s a recap from our two breakout sessions on computer science and media activism:
  • In partnership with the Center for Excellence in Computer Science Education at Northwestern University, the CS Affinity Group strives to connect CS practitioners. During this meeting, we discussed the EcoSystemsforCS: CSforCHI work and strengthened our collective work across the in-school and out-of-school and work space by digging deeper into terminology and finding common ground on language.
  • CALL TO ACTION: Be part of the national CSforALL movement by pledging a commitment, please review sample CS4All Commitments and indicate your interest by June 30, 2020.
• In the Youth Digital Media Activism (YDMA) breakout group, a project to connect youth media makers and youth digital activists, participants learned about a new tech tool called Mural during our CLX tinker time. Are you missing those Post-it notes? Don’t fear, use Mural. It’s a visual collaboration tool for virtual Post-it notes. We also connected to share how organizations are pivoting summer programming this year. Our partner, Convergence Design Labs spoke on their Spy Hop study which depicted how one youth media organization persisted in the face of a pandemic. The YDMA CoP is building the capacity of CLX members and organizations to harness youth voice and civic engagement through authentic media production.
  • CALL TO ACTION: Originating with YDMA grant recipients, the Community of Practice (CoP) is now open to any interested members of the CLX community. We know that youth participation in media is deeply connected to the development of civic voice and engagement, and this space is dedicated to furthering those goals through connected learning practice. If you would like to be added to the Participate platform, please fill out this form.

Our next virtual check-in call will be Thursday, June 25th, 2020, from 9-10 am. The Zoom registration link can be found here. Use the password CLX.