What are we doing?
The City of Pittsburgh in partnership with Comcast equipped 22 city of Pittsburgh Community Recreation and Healthy Active Living Centers with Free Wi-Fi. The city is committed to increasing the access and utilization of technology for residents by creating and administering educational programs for senior citizens.
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What are we doing?
Rec2Tech Pittsburgh is an initiative of city-wide organizations that work with developing technology oriented educational programs for youth. The city of Pittsburgh supports this initiative by providing space and access to free internet through its recreational centers for the development of programs that will address the digital divide. Through technology and innovation, Rec2Tech Pittsburgh, helps shape the future of learning. It does this by repurposing underutilized municipal assets and converts them into youth-centered, technology-enabled, and maker spaces for the benefit of local communities. September 12-17th, Rec2Tech Pittsburgh enhanced municipal-owned recreational centers with technology, enabled spaces, to cultivate skills in engineering, technology, and math to youth ages 7-12 years old.

What have we learned?
September 12-17th, Rec2Tech Pittsburgh piloted a week long after school program. Five city of Pittsburgh recreational centers were repurposed to provide programs in which youth learned how to use technology to express their creativity, solve-real life challenges, innovate and create.
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What are we doing?
In 2014, the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County and community leaders committed to be part of the national My Brother’s Keeper initiative. The “MBK communities”, is an initiative where elected officials work with local partners to develop long-term and strategic programs to improve the livelihood of all young people, in particular those of young boys and men of color.

The city with its My Brother's Keeper program, in partnership with the Remake Learning professional network, support the development of educational programs for Pittsburgh youth. One of these programs is “Message from Me”. Message from Me, is an application that enables young children to record their daily experiences in videos through electronic devices such as IPads and phones and send them to their parents via email. This application aims to enhance parent-child conversations in ways that impact the child's feeling of individuality, self-confidence and well-being in Pittsburgh Public Schools.

What have we learned?
In 2015, message from me was implemented in 111 public schools reaching approximately 5,190 students. In 2015, the students sent 27,316 messages to their parents while being in school. This application has also engaged 7,571 adults that participated and communicated with their children during school hours. Through message from me, young children can learn how utilize technology to communicate and engage with their parents while being in school.
Message from Me | My Brother's Keeper Initiative

What are we doing?
The city in partnership with Heinz College III, School of Public Policy & Management at Carnegie Mellon University systems capstone project program, has developed a spatial analysis and a mapping of free Wi-Fi hotspots in Pittsburgh. Every year students from the local universities, as part of the Master’s thesis project, collaborate with the city government to tackle challenges through research and analysis and recommend best practices for the city to adopt. The spatial analysis and mapping of free Wi-Fi project studied digital equity in Pittsburgh and provided an overview of the physical infrastructure of Wi-Fi in different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. The map provides a visual representation of all the facilities in which Pittsburgh residents can enjoy free access to the internet throughout the city. This map will be evolving as Wi-Fi connectivity and accessibility in Pittsburgh increases in the coming years.

What have we learned?
Free WiFi Map

What are we doing?
Citiparks launched it first Welcoming Hub Pilot as part of the Welcoming Pittsburgh Plan. Welcoming Hubs will enable immigrant communities to gain access to information on citizenship, English as Second Language (ESL) classes, and 101 Pittsburgh classes to learn the basics about residing in Pittsburgh when immigrants relocate to the city. These resources will be offered to help newcomers navigate the city and connect residents with common interests to volunteer opportunities.

What have we learned?
Welcoming Pittsburgh is a city-wide initiative under the leadership of Mayor Peduto to provide the best quality services to newcommers and immigrants wishing to relocate to Pittsburgh.
Visit Welcoming Pittsburgh | Press Release

What are we doing?
The City of Pittsburgh Department of Recreation (Citiparks) and the City of Pittsburgh Department Innovation & Performance in partnership with Comcast have installed free Wi-Fi in 22 City of Pittsburgh Community Recreation and Healthy Active Living Centers. In an effort to address the digital divide, free access to Wi-Fi can now be found at city recreational centers in different neighborhoods in the city. This open up opportunities for youth and senior populations who may otherwise have limited internet access to enjoy free internet access and implement technology in their everyday lives.

What have we learned?
Pittsburgh residents can now find free access to Wi-Fi at community recreation and healthy active living centers throughout the city. As part of a wider initiative to address the digital divide in Pittsburgh, there will be digital literacy programming for youth and senior citizens that want to implement technology in their everyday life.
Mayor, Citiparks, and Office of Innovation & Performance Launch Free WiFi

What are we doing?
The Steel city Codefest is a city-wide application building event that brings together coders, designers, and innovation enthusiasts to create applications for local government, citizens, and community organizations. The Codefest 2016 was the fourth event since its launch. This year, the event held its first Codefest Junior for youth enrolled in grades K-12, who want to learn about coding and tech education early in their schooling.

What have we learned?
The Steel city Codefest has allowed for the development of 16 applications throughout its four years. The number of applications funded by sponsors to completion have been nine and three of those were developed from the Steel city Codefest 2016. In the first ever Steel city Codefest Junior, approximately 50 youth participated and they were able to learn about coding education through games and activities. The Codefest meets its goal every year to incentivize and encourage young developers to address social issues while using innovation and technology.

Mobile applications developed during the Codefest have helped the city government and service providers better serve Pittsburgh residents by using technology and innovative ideas. For example, PGH.ST. is a mobile application developed at the 2014 Codefest where Pittsburgh residents are able to search schedules of street cleaning, trash pickup, recycling and similar services. The organization, Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, needed a simple form that could be taken to work sites for volunteer registration. Steel city Codfest team joined forces and developed a user friendly application for volunteer sign-up. Due to the innovative ideas and their potential, both of these applications were offered funding by the Steel city Codefest's sponsors.
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What are we doing?
Digital Badge Lab is a rewards program to incentivize youth between ages 13-24 to participate in educational training and acquire new skills and credentials in the areas of math and technology. STEAM and Maker Partner organizations in collaboration with the city provide digital badges to youth who attend training events. These trainings offer a variety of classes ranging from marketing, visual design, and or maker related skills. The skills allows youth to remain competitive and get rewarded for learning happening outside the classroom. The Badges provides a form of credential and acknowledges the learning that happens throughout the summer and when is school is not session. The managing organization, the Sprout Fund along with several other service providers during the past year, convened a diverse group of educators to determine the core competencies important to the community, and to create badges and curricula to reflect them.

What have we learned?
In summer 2015 approximately 1,600 youth participated in program. A total of 7,000 badges were earned by Pittsburgh youth and distributed by 34 different organizations. Each youth that participated in the programs earned four badges on average. In 2015, the biggest participating organization was Learn and Earn, which recruited 460 youth that earned 3400 badges.

For more information
My Brother's Keeper Initiative | Digital Badge Lab

This project is pending grant funding. The idea behind this project is to encourage library patrons to bring their own devices if they want access free Wi-Fi (BYOD). The library has learned that the use of desktop computers is declining and people are now bringing their own mobile devices. The library will launch a pilot program in which they will encourage people to bring their own devices but also have the capability to lend mobile portable devices for people to access the internet in their own time.

What we are doing?
This project is on-hold. This project will enable library kiosk to be placed at the Pittsburgh International Airport for people to download e-books there. The library was rethinking the project so that instead kiosk can be put at bus stops. In order to do this the idea needs to be pitched to Port Authority. Please contact Toby for status on this project.

What we are doing?
The city of Pittsburgh has been working on initiatives to increase its wireless access for public use. Through the 22 recreational centers as well as in the city-County Building, Pittsburgh residents can find free access to Wi-Fi. The city is interested in learning about the usability and impact of this new services, and how to best promote it to citizens

What we are doing?
Rec2Tech Pittsburgh piloted STEAM and Maker after school programming in five different city of Pittsburgh recreational centers. During the week of September 12-17th Rec2Tech Pittsburgh tested the possibility to enable and expand educational programming in city recreational centers. Rec2Tech Pittsburgh in partnership with Citiparks and the department of Innovation & Performance will work towards creating permanent sites for programming for Pittsburgh youth.
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