We cover an introductions to WordPress, Wordpress dashboards, themes, how to post, and how to add media to your WordPress site. We also have set time aside each day for students to work on their typing skills. These are minute-by-minute guides on teaching the youth. If you want to start your own Youth-Led Tech program, this is the place to start. At Smart Chicago, we are dedicated to sharing all of our methods. Not just code published to Github (though we do that, too), but whole swaths of templates, resources, and guides that help spread the practice of community technology.

1. Youth-Led Tech Curriculum
Day 9: Is the Internet Down?
Content Goals: Youth will learn how to determine if the Internet is down
Leadership Goals: Youth will participate in exercises that build team collaboration
skills.
Materials: Deck of index cards
10:00 AM Sign-in
Use the online attendance sheet to mark students as present and
note any issues.
10:05 AM Mood Check/Icebreaker Question
It’s important to start every session with an opening activity, such
as a Mood Check-in, where students state their mood on a scale of
1-10. We often pair this with an icebreaker question that each
student answers.
10:15 AM Group statues
1. Ask the group to move around the room, loosely swinging
their arms and gently relaxing their heads and necks. After
a short while, shout out a word. The group must form
themselves into statues that describe the word. For
example, the facilitator shouts “peace”. All the participants
have to instantly adopt, without talking, poses that show
what ‘peace’ means to them. Ask a couple students during
each round to explain how their statue represents the topic.
Repeat the exercise several times.
a. Peace, Kanye West, Chiraq, Family Reunion, Power,
Grocery Store, Knowledge, Equality, Lead Instructor,
Childhood, Integrity, Police

2. 2
10:30 AM Arts and Crafts to Show Inequality
Objective: Through the promotion of team building, demonstrate
how certain groups have more power and resources than others
1. Split youth into three groups
a. Group 1 receives the most resources; Group 2
receives just enough, Group 3 barely anything.
b. Estimate of Distribution of Materials:
i. Group 1: paper bag, 2.5 white paper, 4
markers, 5 different colors of construction
paper, 1 orange page, ruler, scissor, glue, tape
ii. Group 2: A piece of a paper bag, 8 paper clips,
2 markers (one that is orange), 2 pieces of
construction paper, .5 white paper
iii. Group 3: A piece of a paper bag,3 paper clips,
1 marker, 1 orange crayon, 2 pieces of
construction paper, .5 white paper, .25 white
paper
2. Pass out the different packets and the instruction sheets to
all participants and explain that the groups have 10
minutes to complete the activities. (The facilitator should
help out the groups with more resources (group 1) while
ignoring and treating groups 2 and 3 unfairly.)
a. The facilitator should tell Groups 2 and 3 to ask
group 1 to share their materials. However the
facilitator should tell Group 1 NOT to share their
materials.
3. Step 3: After the 10 minutes are up have each group
present what they have completed.
4. Step 4: After the presentations have a discussion with some
of the following questions:
a. Which group had the most resources?
b. Which group ended up having the best results/why?
c. How do the conditions created during this activity
reflect real life situations?
d. Who might Group 1 represent, who might Group 2
represent, who might Group 3 represent?
e. Why didn’t group 2 and 3 get together and share
resources?
11:30 AM Break
11:45 PM Captain’s Call
You must choose one leader to be the captain. This person is

3. 3
usually outgoing and loud. Then you must have one of the leaders
be a jailer. Have the captain explain all the rules and control the
game. Have the group form lines, one behind the other, facing
front. Then have the captain explain that this game is a lot like
Simon says. You are crew members on a ship and I am your
captain. Whatever I say to do, you do. If you disobey my orders
then you go to jail, where the jailer will make you do push ups and
jumping jacks (This is a good deterrent for the slackers to try).
When the captain says stern, the crew must run backwards. When
the captain says bow, the crew must come to the front. When the
captain says port, the crew must go left. When the captain says
starboard, the crew must go right. Make sure the crew
understands these directions before you go on. The rest of the
commands should be done when the captain says the call and they
do not stop until the captain says captain’s calling. When the
captain says this, the crew must stand back at attention. One of
these commands is captain’s ball, where 2 people get together and
dance with one another. The person who is left out is out. The
crew must dance until the captain says captain’s calling. If the
captain says stern before he says captain’s calling and some
people go backwards, they are out because they must be at
attention before they can do any other action. The other actions
are rowboat, where three people get together and row a boat. The
people left standing are out. There is also octopus, where 4 people
get together and sit back to back and kick their legs up. Then
finally there is starfish, where 6 people link arms and swing around
in a circle. The game ends when there are two people left. This
gets the retreatants up and going and excited about the retreat.
12:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM Partner Tag
Play-by-play
1. Have all students but two stand in a circle. Each student in
the circle should link arms with one other person so that
everyone is part of a linked pair.
2. Of the two remaining students, one (A) starts as ‘IT’ and
begins to chase the other (B). In order to be ‘safe’ and
escape from A, B must run and link one of their arms to an
unlinked arm of another student (C) in the circle. When that
happens, the student who was already linked to C’s other
arm (D) must let go and start running away from A. If A
catches D, D becomes it and must chase A until A links
arms with another student (E), etc.
a. Note: Students being chased must move at least two

4. 4
people away from where they started before linking
arms with a new pair. (i.e. they cannot just link up
with the person immediately next to them)
3. Play can continue for as much or as little time as required!
1:15 PM Typing Club
1. Logon http://youthledtech.typingclub.com
2. Allow youth to practice/develop their typing skills
3. This could be a useful time for facilitators to catch up on
paperwork or setup for the next activity
4. Facilitators can track the students progress to make sure
that they are actually on the right site
2:10 PM Break
2:20 PM Is the internet down? (From the Humboldt Park Crew)
This came up during our initial laptop setup. We had about 14
students on, starting up their laptops and were hella complaining
about HOW SLOW the setup was going. Confused and a bit
concerned with our wifi, I thought, well let me run a quick ping test
and see the connectivity speed and sure enough I was getting a
return time of over 1000ms. One of the student’s asked me what I
was doing and it hit me, “I need to capture this moment” and
walked her through the steps and hotkeys.
Don’t ping me, bro
To run a ping test you’ll need to open up the command prompt.
There are a few ways to get to it. I’ll navigate through two.
OPTION A ( Wandering Mouse )
With your touchpad or mouse, click on the Window’s Icon “Start”
button, select the “Accessories” folder and select “Command
Prompt” option

5. 5
a black pop up window should appear. this is your command
prompt window.

6. 6
OPTION B ( HOTKEY/SHORTCUT Ninja )
On your keyboard press and hold the windows icon button (located
just to the left of the spacebar) and press the “R” button
The “run” window will appear, type cmd and press enter

7. 7
A black pop up window should appear. This is your command
prompt window:
On the command prompt window type the following:
ping google.com
press enter
Your screen should return a packet of data
Engage the youth and ask them what they think the numbers
mean or have them try to read it.
Most of the stuff may seem meaningless, and I’d agree. but
someone might notice the “time” section. encourage that line of
thought.

8. 8
A few mentioned that their numbers were lower the closer they
were to the router……..go with it. It got ours to huddle closer to the
main section of the room. Especially since we were sans projector
for most of the week.
What we are trying to determine is whether or not our device (in
this case the laptop) is currently online and can “talk” to another
device remotely. By pinging, we are sending a signal out ( in this
case google.com) and waiting for a reply back. The time it takes for
this to happen, is SUPER quick; in milliseconds. In our example,
each of those lines is a full loop or round trip from our laptop to
google.com (the server) and back to our laptop.
If your reply time is under 100. you have a pretty strong signal. If
it’s above or returns as “Timed out” it means either the server is
down (unlikely with google) or (most likely) some peeps are eating
up your bandwidth with all them !!!!WORLDSTAR!!!! videos, ONLINE
GAMES, !!!FACEBOOK!!! chatter, etc.
“But, I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT MY INSTAGRAM!!!”
This is great time to talk about how the actions of one might/can
affect all. It can also tie back to the Group Norms - our group ended
up checking each other and asking to pause the videos (mostly
YouTube, I swear) while they were getting the new members setup
and up and running. IT WAS AWESOME!!!
Since it’s a relatively light weight program, it’s a good idea for the
instructors to have this running in the background so you can
quickly assess the network connection:
ping google.com -t
Extra
Watching star wars on ascii:
On command prompt type “ telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl “
Press enter and enjoy

9. 9
3:45 PM Listen Up!
The goal of this activity is to learn active listening skills. Participants
will be able to understand the importance of listening, not just hearing.
Set Up: Prepare a deck of index cards with simple line drawings of
familiar objects. Ex. house, tree, car, etc.
1. Ask the group to get into pairs.
2. Sit back to back.
3. Give one person in each pair a card with a drawing on it,
and the other partner a blank index card.
4. The object is for the person with the pictures to describe,

10. 10
line by line, the picture on their card without telling the
partner what the object is. For example, an instruction
might be something like this:
5. "Draw a straight line from the top of the page until it
intersects a half circle one inch up from the bottom of the
card…"
6. The listener cannot ask questions, but can only listen to
what is being said.
7. The partner has to draw the object as best they can by
following the directions of their partner.
8. After they are done, they can compare drawings and see
how close they came to the original drawing.
9. Repeat by switching roles.
Debrief
1. What made this activity difficult for the speaker? Listener?
2. Why were some of the drawings not perfectly drawn? What
implications does this have for how we communicate?
3:30 PM Thunder Tweet Reflection
1. Everyone log on to your twitter account
2. If students don’t have one, help them make one
3. Ask the students “Who’s ever done a Thunder Clap?”
4. Show what a Thunder Clap is (Count to 3 and everyone
claps at the same time)
5. That’s a powerful sound right?
6. Today we are going to hear all the voices in the
#youthledtech program to reflect on our day
7. We have created a prompt for you to fill in on your Twitter
account and on 3 we will all send our tweets at the same
time.
8. PROMPT: “The highlight of my day was ___________
#youthledtech”
9. Make sure they use the hashtag so that we can view all of
the tweets

11. 11
10.READY??
11.After you read the prompt give students 1 minute to
complete and tell them to raise their hand once they have
typed their message. Tell them “DO NOT hit send until I
say so.”
12.Once everyone has constructed their tweet then count
down 3, 2, 1, SEND!!
13.Read a few tweets from the screen and then do a live
Thunder clap.
3:55 PM Sign Out
Make sure all youth are accounted for.

12. 12