Anderson@Large

All That Philly Jazz is Live

At last weekend’s Music Hack, a music-related hackathon, the All That Philly Jazz team, Mark Headd, Mike Lamond and the writer, developed the Philly Jazz App, an interactive  map where we will tell the story of Philadelphia’s rich jazz legacy.

All That Philly Jazz is mapping historic places and markers, Walk of Fame plaques and public murals. We will take visitors back to the days when jazz legends performed at the Uptown, the Royal, and the Earle and Lincoln Theaters. To contextualize the images, we will include data curated by Echo Nest and audio samples from Rdio. We’re jazzed that All That Philly Jazz won a one-year subscription to Rdio for the best hack.

Much of Philly’s jazz history has fallen victim to urban upheaval and urban removal. To preserve the history for future generations, we must tap the memories of Philadelphians and visitors. So All That Philly Jazz will be crowdsourced. We will use social media and traditional media, including community newspapers and radio, to ask folks to share their memories and photos.

We will also use technology, including Google Glass and Historypin, to breathe life into legendary jazz clubs like the Showboat, Pep’s, Blue Note, Up Jumped the Devil, Fantasy Lounge, and joints along West 52nd Street, aka “The Strip.” Clubs like the Aqua Lounge, Top Shelf, Mr. Silk’s Third Base and Foo-Foo Ragan’s.

Indeed, All That Philly Jazz is at the intersection of technology, art and civic engagement. To get involved, contact us via email or Twitter: @PhillyJazzApp.

All That Philly Jazz

The Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner famously observed: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” At this weekend’s music hackathon,  my team, All That Philly Jazz, will bring Philadelphia’s jazz legacy to the present.

 

The Philly Jazz App will map historic places and markers, murals and local venues to hear live jazz.

Looking beyond the hackathon, we will go back to the future and augment reality along South Street, Ridge Avenue and 52nd Street. Back in the day, those corridors were jumping with jazz clubs where legends like John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald and B.B. King hung out. I’m already fantasizing about the Fantasy Lounge, which was located across the street from the studios of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records.

All That Philly Jazz is at the intersection of technology and art. It can serve as a model for how art can be used to motivate underrepresented minorities to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). While jazz appeals to an older demographic, a project on, say, Philly’s or Brooklyn’s hip-hop legacy would resonate with young people who are disconnected from the innovation economy.

For more information, send us an email or follow us on Twitter: @PhillyJazzApp.

STEM is Everywhere

STEM is short for science, technology, engineering and math. In the nation’s revitalized manufacturing industry, math matters. And for a lot of job applicants, that’s problematic.

McClatchy reports that manufacturers are having trouble finding prospective employees with basic math skills:

But what troubles General Plastics executive Eric Hahn is that although the company considers only prospective workers who have a high school education, only one in 10 who take the test pass. And that’s not just bad luck at a single factory or in a single industry.

Jacey Wilkins, a spokeswoman for the Manufacturing Institute, added:

You could think that even for production, do you really need to know math? But the truth is, you do, because these jobs are incredibly complex and integrate multiple functions and systems.

The truth is, part of the problem is how math is taught. The focus on repetition (“drill and kill”) and teaching to the test kill students’ interest. Sam Houston, president and CEO of the North Carolina Science, Math and Technology Education Center, said the Common Core State Standard Initiative will help teachers connect math to real-world possibilities:

The Common Core should give everyone a better means to answer the question, “Why do I need to know this?”

Why indeed. That’s what most schools don’t teach. That’s also the problem that STEMeverywhere will help solve.

At last weekend’s AT&T EduTech Hackathon, my team developed a prototype for a mobile-friendly website where we will curate free resources for teachers to help them connect the dots for students. The team members are Morgan Bagshaw, Pamela Bey, Jessica Hammond, Cheo Walker and Michael Washington.

In the Teachers’ Lounge, we will break down information silos and curate a fully indexed database of resources, including Common Core instructional materials, lesson plans, and tutorial/how-to videos on inquiry-based learning. On the community message board, teachers will be able to collaborate, share strategies and effective instructional practices, and identify their needs.

The Students’ Space will promote year-round learning and engagement among our target audience of middle- and high-school students. With one click, students will have access to free resources on how to build video games and other cool things, internships and contests. Using our interactive map, they will be able to search for tech-filled fun where they live. Our STEM Rocks interactive videos will connect students to STEM superstars who can expose them to the possibilities.

STEMeverywhere made it to the second round where we will compete for the grand prize of $5,000, plus in-kind business services from local partners.

We will be judged on three criteria – concept, development progress and implementation opportunity. We have an opportunity to have an impact on increasing interest in STEM among underrepresented minorities and girls. But it will take a village – crowdsourcing – to fix the crisis in STEM education.

If you want to get involved, contact us.

Voting Rights v. States’ Rights

Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A quick primer:

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requires jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to receive preapproval from the Justice Department or a federal district court in D.C. for any voting change to ensure such changes do not discriminate against voters who are racial, ethnic or language minorities. In 2006, an overwhelmingly bipartisan majority of Congress reauthorized the VRA for 25 more years.

Those jurisdictions include the former confederate states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. What’s at stake for these states is an issue as old as the Civil War: states’ rights. Stateline reports:

But in asking whether a key part of the federal law is constitutional, the court also will reopen a debate that long predates the measure’s enactment in 1965. It’s an argument that was at the heart of the U.S. Civil War, and one that has seen resurgence in recent years as Republicans around the country bristle at what they perceive as meddling from Washington.

That debate is the battle over states’ rights.

On its face, the challenge to the Voting Rights Act is about how state and local officials run elections. But states’ rights have underpinned much of the opposition to the law since it was first enacted, and Wednesday’s hearing will feature familiar arguments.

The issue is Section 5 of the law, which requires all or part of 16 states to get any changes to election law preapproved by either the Justice Department or a federal court. That requirement, based on findings of discrimination and racism years ago, applies to most every aspect of elections, from technical changes to the high-profile issue of photo ID requirements that recently spawned court battles for states such as Texas and South Carolina. The challenge was brought by Shelby County, Alabama, and argues that the act’s preclearance requirement is unconstitutional on its face, no matter how it’s employed.

Civil rights leaders, Members of Congress and voting rights activists from across the country will rally at the steps of the Supreme Court.

For more information, visit ProtecttheVRA.org.

Zora Ball is Young, Gifted and Black

Sometimes good news does sell. The story of the first-grader who developed a mobile video game has gone viral.

Seven-year-old Zora Ball is a student at Philadelphia’s Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School. Her teacher, Tariq Al-Nasir, told CBS Philly:

She was given very basic information. She transformed her screen into a nail salon! She found a picture of a ballerina, she found a picture of a jewel, and then another picture of a vampire. The game she created is called “Vampire Diamonds,” and the object is to get the diamond and avoid the vampire.

Little Zora, the youngest computer programmer in the country, was recently featured at an event hosted by STEM evangelist will.i.am. Awesome!

President's Day (and Nights)

 

STEM Puts a Dip in Your Hip, Glide in Your Stride

OK, not really. But the man who promised to put “more dips in your hips, more glide in your stride” reminded us that STEM is everywhere. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.

I grew up listening to Frankie “Hollywood” Crocker.

Back in the day, Hollywood went, well, Hollywood and appeared in five films, including Cleopatra Jones and Darktown Strutters.  In Five on the Black Hand Side, he played Rolls Royce, a numbers runner. Before state lotteries, folks played the numbers, the “poor man’s stock market”:

Once known as the “policy numbers game” in Harlem, playing the numbers was a way of making ends meet as well as a way of meeting other needs in the economically starved community. Playing the numbers, a game where players betted on a series of three digit numbers from 000 to 999, was considered the “poor man’s stock market.”

The numbers man carried the money and betting slips to the policy bank. Some were mathematical geniuses who didn’t need slips; instead, they memorized the numbers.

Today’s Black History Month lesson: From runaway slaves looking for the North Star to their descendants running numbers to make ends meet, STEM is in black folks’ DNA.