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.