Underway at Valley Settlement House ...

Newly installed birdfeeder with two surveillance video

 cameras at Valley Settlement House in West Orange, NJ.

A. The first Coding & Content workshop was held on Sunday, July 20th from 2 to 4 PM. We had two student participants and 2 mentors (Luis Grados and myself.)  One student -- from Essex County College and the Essex-Stevens Model Program -- will be working with Luis on updating the VSH website while learning html, CSS, Javascript, & Java. (Actually creating a new website.) The other student out of the VSH community and an 18-year-old West Orange high school student and drama major will be working with me in creating video content for the internet. (I will start using names if and when the students give me persmission to do so.)

B. Two bird feeders with three surveillance video cameras as part of a Zmodo wire-linked system were installed on Monday, July 21st. I did the installation with the high school student I am mentoring in the workshop. He is at VSH on weekdays. We will install one more bird feed this coming Monday, July 28th, and complete the installation of a total of eight surveillance video cameras next week. I plan to explore a communication connection to the Cornell University Ornithology Lab beginning tomorrow, Friday, July 25th.

C. In collaboration with Professor David A. Robinson, Department of Geography, Rutgers University -- and the NJ State Climatologist -- we will be instituting an Earth Systems framework for the science programs at VSH with two immediate initiatives:
1. Introduce the use of Skype to connect the classrooms of VSH with the global Earth Systems community beginning with Dave's climate science presentation in the VSH Summer Science Program from 1-3 PM Monday, August 4th. This Friday, July 25th, and next, August 1st, we will be debugging the connection to provide 2-way visual communication combined with projected PowerPoint graphics in the classroom.
2. Begin a precipitation measurement program  as part of the national  CoCoRaHS program, again, in collaboration with Dave's  role as NJ State Climatologist.

That is the beginning of what we hope will become a STEM Center for the community VSH serves. This is educational outreach to underrepresented populations in the STEM fields at its core. And yes we are doing it without a major grant BECAUSE it demonstrates what can be accomplished by a community that sets its mind to pursuing this goal.

Announcing the first series of workshops at the Geeks FSO Campus at Valleyh Settlement House

"Coding and Content Workshop 101a"

The first 2 hour coding and content workshop mini-series, "Coding and Content Workshop 101a," of the Geeks FSO Campus at Valley Settlement House for young adults ages 18 to 25+ is scheduled to begin on Sunday, July 20th at Valley Settlement House, 33-41 Tompkins Street, West Orange, NJ 07052  (973) 678-2550.

This initial mini-series will run for 6 weeks from 2 to 4 PM on Sundays through August 24th.

We will explore the use of online resources such as Jon Chan's Bento website as a guide for independent study for coding mobile apps and creating content for the internet within a workshop-based student-with-mentor learning environment.

Initially we will be looking at HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Objective-C, and Java.

The end goal of Geeks FSO Campus program is to develop marketable skills in our students for employment in rewarding careers, or even simply to enrich their lives with a deeper understanding of and heightened ability to interact with the exponentially expanding technology of the modern world.

Contact Hilding "Gus" Lindquist, hilding.lindquist@gmail.com to apply as either a mentor or a student. But while you may apply as one or the other as your main "function" in the program, you will be both within the context of the workshop.


There are a limited number of openings depending on the number of volunteer mentors available, but no more than ten students will be accepted into this workshop series as members in five two-person teams, and only ten more student applications will be accepted for the waiting list. As yet we have not put a limit on the number of mentors accepted into the program or put onto the waiting list.

This means that for this workshop series there will be a maximum of five two-person mentor teams working with up to five two-person student teams in order to be reasonably certain of at least one mentor and one student for each team's participation in the workshop.

Teams will be matched by their laptop's operating systems. For this initial series of workshops, students are expected to bring a wifi compatible laptop suitable for the workshop and will be assigned on a first come, first served basis to an available mentor team with a matching operating system. (Mac, Windows 7, Windows 8, etc.)

Prospective students without suitable laptops should still apply if they want to be put on the waiting list.

To the prospective student: If you are concerned as to whether or not your specific laptop is suitable then contact Gus for a determination while we are accepting applications, and no matter what, you will have put yourself in line to get a student slot in the program at some point ... and we know that extensive delay is denial, so we will be working as hard as we can to get you into the program as quickly as possible.