The Public Media Institute and the Experimental Sound Studio are two non-profits promoting community-based art in Chicago through media programming. PMI and ESS are collaborating to deliver a series of skill-share workshops to provide training from experts on topics like sound experimentation and media accessibility. TechTeam will help these groups by preparing a training session on the backend technologies used for live-streaming services. We will research the relevant protocols (RTMP, HLS) and softwares (OBS Studios) involved and assess the options available for streaming services, focusing on open-source alternatives to products from major corporations. We will also investigate APIs to assist in automating processes like setting up a Twitch stream at a repeated interval and handling re-streaming. Near the end of the quarter, we will present an accessible and beginner-friendly training session on these technologies. We will also condense our research into a training document which PMI/ESS can reference later.
Read MoreCreative Chicago Reuse Exchange
CCRx is a non-profit organization that enables the redistribution of surplus materials to teachers, artists, and other civic groups. By creatively reusing supplies, CCRx promotes environmental sustainability and affordable access to equipment in Chicago. TechTeam will help them with that goal by completing a data analysis and visualization project to further their understanding of their reach and impact. CCRx has been collecting data from several sources about their volunteers, donors, and customers. We will analyze that information and extract meaningful trends that are relevant to CCRx’s mission and give insight into the nuances of their operations. TechTeam will then create visualizations that clearly display these statistics in an understandable manner – both for internal use by CCRx to understand their impact and for potential external use to attract donors and volunteers.
Read MoreAlternatives
Alternatives’ mission is to provide behavioral health and restorative justice resources to youth in Chicago. During spring quarter, TechTeam will help them by redesigning and updating their WordPress website to best reflect this goal. TechTeam will remove information that is no longer relevant, redesign the website’s layout to be accessible and usable, and add new features to help them with their new mission statement. Also, TechTeam plans to help Alternatives with a future project for Autumn quarter 2021 by creating an app to give youth an approachable method to access the resources that they need. This spring, we will do initial preparation for the app project if time permits, including creating drafts for how the app might look in Figma, researching existing apps with similar goals, and preparing a template for workshops on app design.
Read MoreSue Duncan Children's Center
Sue Duncan Children’s Center (SDCC) is a non-profit organization situated in the South side of Chicago whose mission is to enrich the lives of youth of all ages by nurturing their academic, athletic, and artistic growth. TechTeam will help develop both a new frontend and backend for the SDCC’s website, including a reference page for similar organizations, a convenient way to display and manage media like bog posts, photos and videos, and a clean information displays.
Read MoreOneGoal
OneGoal’s partnerships Wiki Page serves as a resource for high school leaders (e.g. School Principal, Counseling Team Lead, CPS network specialist, etc.) to answer FAQs about the OneGoal school partnership while reporting progress to school leaders and influencers about their students. TechTeam will perform web analytics on the wiki to help assess its impact and optimize its future useful. Also, we will complete preliminary research to help OneGoal prepare a student-to-student advising portal as a resource for the students during the summer between high school and college.
Read MoreMusical Arts Institute
The Musical Arts Institute is a non-profit providing high-quality music lessons to underserved populations on Chicago’s South Side. TechTeam will the institute in improvement in their administrative web infrastructure to support the coordination of lesson scheduling online. We will tackle this issue via a redesign of the backend Institute’s Wix-based webpage, implementing features that enable such diverse stakeholders as students, parents, staff, and board members to log in and view pertinent administrative information.
Read MoreCook County Board President
The Cook County Board of Commissioners is the governing board and legislative body of the county. It is comprised of 17 Commissioners, each serving a four-year term and is elected from single-member districts. Each district represents approximately 300,000 residents. The board aims to create educational video programming for children who are learning remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. TechTeam will assist the board in creating an Android mobile app that would allow both children and parents to browse through and watch the Project’s content.
Read MoreLove Fridge Chicago
Love Fridge Chicago is a mutual aid network that places community-run fridges around the city to support those struggling with food insecurity. TechTeam worked with Love Fridge to analyze food scarcity and waste in Chicago with the goal of creating a compelling and informative visualization to raise awareness and attract donations. Additionally, we enhanced the visualization with an interactive component.
Read MoreChicago Tool Library
The Chicago Tool Library is a tool bank and community maker space that provides Chicagoans with access to tools and resources to learn, share, and create. TechTeam helped redesign and update the Library’s Resource Index page to assist visitors in find tool-related resources around the city. Additionally, we added an interactive map to ease locating resource physically and a resource submission feature.
Read MoreExperimental Station: Blackstone Bicycle Works Web App
Blackstone Bicycle Works is a community bike shop and youth education program of the Experimental Station. Blackstone is structured as a retail, full-service bike shop that offers an "earn and learn," hands-on bicycle mechanics curriculum to its participants. TechTeam worked to create a web app that would allow students to check-in/check-out when they volunteer their time, an easier hour-tracking method than paper logs. This web app also included the tracking of the youths' skills and achievement levels.
Read MoreStudent Counseling Services
Student Counseling Service (SCS) is committed to promoting the mental health and well-being of UChicago undergraduate and graduate students by providing accessible, high-quality, culturally sensitive mental health services. TechTeam redesigned their website and built an interactive chatbot to improve navigation of the resources SCS has to offer, providing extra outreach and consultation to the University community.
Read MoreShe Votes Illinois
She Votes Illinois is a statewide political action committee aimed at highlighting the importance of women’s voices in elections, government, and policymaking. TechTeam helped redesign the She Votes Illinois website, adding different functions (e.g. drop down menus, options to donate, an events calendar, etc). Additional tasks for this project included identifying a server, resolving other backend issues, and redesigning the interface to make the website more clear and dynamic.
Read MoreIn2It Chicago
In2It is an organization whose mission is to make it easier for people to be civically involved in their communities. TechTeam helped In2It with their goal of matching people and opportunities. The goal of this project was to give users the ability to sort events by “type” or “category” to help them make decisions about which event to attend; this was done by building a machine learning categorization model which parsed an event and returned a category that the event belonged to.
Read MoreStudent Government Health and Wellness Website
TechTeam worked with UChicago’s Student Government to help redesign their Health and Wellness website. The project involved creating an interactive tool for students to navigate a database of mental/physical health resources on and off campus, and making recommendations to the user about which resource is most applicable to them.
Read MoreExperimental Station Web Optimization
The Experimental Station is working to build independent cultural infrastructure on the South Side of Chicago by fostering a dynamic ecology of innovative educational and cultural programs, small business enterprises and community initiatives. TechTeam implemented a series of optimizations on Experimental Station's website to increase visibility and web traffic from paid (using Google AdWords) and unpaid (search engine) results.
Read MoreLincoln Park Conservatory
Lincoln Park Conservatory is a nonprofit organization that identifies, preserves and enhances the natural, historical and cultural assets of Lincoln Park. TechTeam used ArcGIS to digitize the floor plan and location of plants in the conservatory building. The product is used for internal staff usage, and helps improve the process of updating records during plant exhibit relocation within the conservatory.
Read MoreCareer Advancement Web Scraping
TechTeam worked on creating a directory of job listings from different companies and organizations through the web scraping of websites given by UChicago Career Advancement. Using Beautiful Soup, a Python library, our team was able to extract specific information from each page and compile it in a spreadsheet to be passed on at the end of the quarter.
Read MoreChicago Department of Public Health
As a continuation from last year, TechTeam built an app using React Native for the Chicago Department of Public Health. This app would provide Chicago-based medical providers a means of quickly looking up conditions for diseases, find the time frame for reporting, the numbers for who to call, and guidance on whether they need to submit an isolate to the lab.
Read MoreGreater Bronzeville Neighborhood Network
To aid in Greater Bronzeville Neighborhood Network’s mission to reduce poverty and violence by sharing necessary resources for members of the Greater Bronzeville Community, TechTeam created a website that hosts information on a variety of opportunities for employment and services for interested community members.
Read MoreMaroon Tutor Match
Maroon Tutor Match is a program that provides affordable one-on-one tutoring for local K-12 students. Using Python, TechTeam automated the matching process between students and tutors.
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