I am Pablo

A film by YTC students at Youth Connections Leadership Academy. They participated YTC’s After School Matter’s film program - they were challenged to come up with a topic, to film and then edit. What you see below is the fruit of their labor!

I have plenty of excuses for not posting - realistically, I could have made time to do so, but I just had way too much going on! The last two weeks have been non-stop! Youth Technology Corps‘ Mexican counterparts were visiting the first week of May. We had a computer competition, where the kids had to build computers from spare parts - ala Iron Chef. We had a few professors from Devry as well as Chicago’s alderman of the 12th ward, George Cardenas, on hand to oversee and judge the competition. Our video crew filmed and had a live feed for the rest of the audience. I played many roles as head judge, MC, translator, lead techie, A/V… etc… it was quite exhausting! But overall a total success!! Each team consisted of four Chicago Public school kids and two Mexican students. They were given 3 cases that they had to build into computers and 3 computers that had been sabotaged. 30% of their score was for the computers they built, 30% for those they troubleshooted, and 40% for teamwork. I was amazed at how into the competition the kids were! The “audience” was also quite enthusiastic! Overall a great event!

YTC Mexico 2007

Ok - so I’ve been back for over a week! I just haven’t had the time or the energy to write about the trip. (I got sick upon my return - still taking antibiotics!) It’ll take some time to fully register - but, no worries, I have a lot to write about. In the mean time, I have posted pictures from the trip (if you haven’t already noticed on the left) - so go ahead and click on the album above to take a look! More soon!

(seems like a general lull in posting - get to it bloggers!)