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October 7, 2022March 3, 2023

Reset and Robotics – October 2022

For Hope IT, this is time to reset / re-establish our partnerships, and start a new course, Introduction to Robotics!

With COVID lasting these last 2 years, we experienced difficulties connecting with our partners. To improve on that, the Hope IT team had a Zankou lunch (yum) with key leaders in organizations that have partnered with us in the past,as well as new one.

Key takeaways:

These organizations care and serve underserved kids in the Pasadena area. These organizations are the Door of Hope, Stars, the Elizabeth House, Sycamores (foster group homes for boys), Thrive Learning Lab NW Pasadena, and Pasadena Church.
We had time to introduce ourselves, review what Hope IT is about, demonstrated a few past courses, and ask how we can partner together.
We covered why an IT career is compelling for youth, particularly as there are so many good IT jobs in Pasadena.
Connecting in-person with these leaders was key, as many of them are new to their organizations, and new to Hope IT.
The above picture is some of the folks that join us. From right to left is Miriam and Karyn from Stars, Florence from Thrive Learning Lab NW Pasadena, and Pastor Brad from Pasadena Church, and me.

We have a brand new course coming this month: Introduction to Robotics. We start this Saturday, October 8th…tomorrow morning!! We will give you an update.

Here’s a quick overview of the Robotics course.

We use an Arduino kit. We start with a box of wires and components. We thank Barnabas Robotics in Pasadena for the starter kits.
Slowly, students will be learning about circuits, resistors, and LED lights, and putting them on a breadboard. (I show an example in the picture below.)
Later, we add programming, moving parts (a servo), and the robot begins to move and react to outside stimulus. (An example is parking arm that senses your car approach, and raising the arm to let you pass.) This takes time to build. Students will learn!
Key concepts include electrical current flow, sensors, and software control. These are the basic building blocks on how our laptops and smartphone and all devices work. Students will see these directly.

We can see how complex robots are, and how much more complex humans are (read Psalm 139). Such is the art of God. We hope you see God’s blessings around you.

Peace,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

June 29, 2022March 3, 2023

Challenges, COVID and Continuing – June 2022

The past couple of months has been challenging for Hope IT. COVID makes it difficult to maintain contact with kids and volunteers, and Zoom, while a great tool, is not the same as meeting in person.

We had a Roblox course planned and ready for June. It’s a fun course for creating games, which are popular with young kids today. It allows students to learn how to create the games and do some programming as well. (See 2 screen shots of what creating a game in Roblox looks like below.) We intended this to be an in-person course. We took a chance when Covid was at a low, but got no sign ups. There are also challenges with our partner organizations. We will continue to try.

Underserved kids need extra help to transition to the job market. Few of them can avail themselves of “take your child to work day” to see what the work world is actually like, which in turn results in a serious case of culture shock when they are first exposed to it.

To help with this, we look for internship opportunities and found one at Bridges, one of our partner organizations. This opportunity was for WordPress (web sites) remote work, and paid $16/hour for up to 4 weeks. After a lot of searching for applicants, we found a 16 year old in a foster group home. He was very successful in our WordPress course. He filled out an application and went through an interview with Hope IT. We talked about overcoming challenges, maintaining trust, and how to solve problems. We were all set. Except, when it was time to start the internship, we could not reach our student. After 3 weeks, we finally talked again – mind you, all on-line – and the student finally decided not to pursue the internship. We intend to review this with some youth leaders (more about this below.) We will learn and try again.

We are also planning to talk directly to youth leaders. We will have a lunch gathering in September. One topic we plan to discuss is how to maintain the relationship with the students and keep enthusiasm alive. As I have heard, Hope IT is not the only group seeing youth decline when opportunities arise. We think this time will help us work together going forward. It’s a time for the youth leaders to see what a job in the IT industry can bring to a student. We have to figure out how to sustain the students’ motivation and ease the transitions. We are confident we can do this, but we will have to work hard to make it easy for the kids. This is not trivial.

Our next course is also intended to be in-person…learning the basics in Robotics. (See a preview picture of the Robotics kits below). We love it. I hope the students do as well.

We will give you another update in the Fall.

We know our God does not quit. We are motivated by what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love bears all things, believe all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We will continue to learn, and try better efforts. Our students can overcome these challenges.

Blessings,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

Create games with Roblox Studio — Sample of creating a game in Roblox studio

November 2, 2021March 3, 2023

Newsletter – November 2021

Hope this newsletter finds you well. We are thankful for your prayers, for new opportunities, and for efforts showing fruit. Two remarkable stories occurred in these last 2 months:

You may recall we are partnering with Liberia Renewal Ministries (LRM), to run a Basic Skills course for 15 high schoolers in Liberia, Africa. (Half are girls.) Our partner is Boye-Nelson Kiamu, who is CEO of LRM; he is also a PhD student at Fuller Seminary. Logistics and operations with Africa are always an adventure, but with a week’s delay we got 3 laptops to Liberia. Each laptop was shared by 5 students.

Olivia — our remarkable 17 year old Hope IT student — taught the basic computer skills course (creating a document and spreadsheet, using a mouse and keyboard, and basic Internet searches) to these students who have NEVER touched a computer before. Olivia had her own challenges, still recovering from a COVID vaccination of the previous day of the start of our course.

Olivia put in the effort. With 14 hours of preparation work, class time was 2 hours on 3 consecutive Saturdays. The courses started at 8am, so it would not be too late in Liberia, which was a 3pm start time. Olivia grew as a good and caring teacher, learning how to patiently repeat new topics until students were able to repeat and understand. There were several golden moments of 16 students…Olivia and Liberian students…concentrating and working together…all learning.

We are proud of Olivia. It was just last year, Olivia first joined a Hope IT course. She entered the foster care system at that time. One year later, look at what Olivia is doing. Above and below we show pictures of Olivia teaching, all the 15 students with the laptops, and Boye-Nelson receiving the laptops from me and Hope IT. We feel blessed by the recent successes, and hope to do more.

Meanwhile, we were preparing to offer our next WordPress on-line course. We were able to reconnect with the Sycamores, a foster group home for boys. (It’s been 2 years since we have had boys from the Sycamore in a Hope IT course). After I visited the home, we had 4 boys signed up for this October course, and 2 boys (ages 16 and 18) attended the course on 4 Saturdays. Sycamores provided laptops for the boys to work remotely on their new web sites.

Our WordPress course mostly covers web development, but many other topics come up, like Cloud computing, art, and tracking metrics. The boys are interested in more courses, so we are developing a more extensive education plan.

Hope IT plans to have an in-person Robotics course in February. This is a new course, and we are getting assistance from Ed Li and Barnabas Robotics, also in Pasadena. We will give you an update in January.

Please pray for Liberia Renewal Ministries, these 15 students in Liberia, students like Olivia and other Hope IT students in the Pasadena area, and the Hope IT team. We all need to see and experience the mercies of our Lord.

Blessings,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

August 18, 2021April 24, 2023

Newsletter – August 2021

Hope this newsletter finds you well. The Hope IT team wants to give you an update on our situation and upcoming plans.

As you know, COVID and the Delta variant are still here. We (try to) progress to normalcy, while taking precaution against the Delta variant.

Such is the case at Hope IT. To keep students safe, we decided to hold another on-line course. For October, we will hold our most successful course, creating web sites with WordPress.

Our other problem is underserved kids and their families are struggling. We try to find kids to attend our courses. It is hard to create courses that are on-line, using the platforms and skills available to the students. It’s hard for kids to attend on-line courses. Hope IT is starting to recruit kids for our course.

It is not fun to struggle. It brings questions. One wonders if we are on the right path.

In the midst of these struggles, we find some areas of opportunity and partnership. We are thankful to God for these.

First, we found a partner in Barnabas Robotics. Ed Li is their co-founder, and has been teaching kids to build various robots for 7 years, from 5 years old to high school. Hope IT recently visited his educational center in Pasadena. We were thrilled, and encouraged. Ed has a heart for teaching. He runs his course for kids to be engaged, to add creative ideas, and include art and their individual perspectives in their work.

For example, two robots were built by 2 siblings, a 5 and 8 years old. These robots controlled traffic light switch boards, reacting to toy cars coming near the stop. The kids added their own traffic signs, which they identified with on their own family travels. Another robot was able to make fencing moves, made by a highschooler. The number of robots at the center was quite impressive. Unfortunately we cannot meet in-person to build robots while Covid is a threat. But we are beginning to prepare for a robotics course.

Another opportunity to run a course for 15 high schoolers in Liberia, Africa. Our partner is Boye-Nelson Kiamu, who is CEO of Liberia Renewal Ministries; he is also a PhD student at Fuller Seminary. We are working on having Hope IT students teaching other students, including preparing resources to train the students who will teach. The Hope IT vision is to reach underserved kids in the Pasadena area, we want to build up their skills, including teaching and leadership skills. One of our Hope IT kids — an impressive high school senior — will teach basic skills like creating a document with a word processor, spreadsheet, Internet searches, and creating an email account.

These 15 Liberian students have not touched a computer before. The idea is to have them share 3 laptops; 5 students to each laptop. (And if you like to donate a spare laptop, definitely contact us!) There are many risks: For one, the Delta variant is also spreading in Liberia. Having 15 students so close together may be unsafe even with masks. Additionally, internet and electricity in Liberia are intermittent, even in the capital of Monrovia.

We plan to start this course in Liberia in September, so preparation time is limited. Can our one Hope IT student lead all 4 Saturdays? Will conditions in Liberia permit this to be done? Stay tuned…

Please pray for students in Liberia, and in the Pasadena area as well, as school is starting again. Pray for us all to see the goodness of the Lord, and again remember that the Lord is good, all the time.

Blessings,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

April 24, 2021April 24, 2023

Roblox course in June 2021

Hope IT is happy to offer a new course in June 2021. Creating games in Roblox using Roblox Studio! See some details in our Roblox course web page, including some parent’s guides to this on-line environment.

Summer is a great time for students to spend time learning new things, and Roblox makes it fun. We will cover the basics on how to build and script in Roblox.

Due to COVID pre-cautions, we are going to offer this course on-line. This also means we will only have 4-6 students in this course, so we can give each student the attention they need to create a new game, and the on-line teaching format can be challenging. But it’s worth it!

March 26, 2021April 24, 2023

Newsletter – March 2021

Hope IT students's web page in WordpPress — Olivia’s WordPress Home web page

Hope IT is hopeful, navigating through the new realities with the COVID virus. We want to share why. Here’s an interesting story about a Hope IT student in the last few months.

Olivia is 16, and a junior at Hoover High school in Glendale. Rev. Jim Milley from Bridges, a non-profit Christian based organization, referred her to us.

Olivia came to Hope IT at a difficult period with her family. Rev. Jim thought Hope IT could provide her some technical skills. The timing was right, as we were starting our October WordPress course, teaching how to create web sites. Olivia joined, and did very well. (See a sample of her work at the top of this newsletter.) Rev. Jim hired her to work on the Bridges WordPress site. While Bridges uses different WordPress Themes and Plugins shown in the course, Olivia understood the concepts and adapted. She said the skills she learned in the Hope IT WordPress course enabled her to be effective this job.

This is what Hope IT wants. We were thrilled with the immediate success of our student. Then came another idea: If she is this good, could she teach WordPress to other kids? More broadly, can Hope IT teach and enable kids to teach other kids?

God provided such an opportunity. Hope IT also was teaching a WordPress course with Stars in Pasadena (an afternoon mentoring and tutoring program) last Fall, and they wanted another WordPress course in the Winter. They were open to have Olivia co-teach with me. And so she did. For six weeks on Wednesday nights, Olivia and I taught 3 Stars students WordPress; two of these students were girls. Was it perfect? No. Do we have ideas how to make this better in the future? Definitely.

On top of this, Hope IT paid Olivia to teach. We do not have a motivation structure in place yet. Olivia in fact took us by surprise. She is so able. So our motivation for her to teach was to pay her $13 per hour for this course, including five hours of preparation and debriefing time. Worth every penny. And we partnered with Bridges to make this happen, having them handle the taxes and other details with Olivia’s work permit. We are sure this will increase Olivia’s confidence going forward.

Olivia wants to get into the medical field when she goes to college. I also work for a hospital, and we have a ton of data. She has finished our Data Analysis course in February (see one of her dashboards using Google Data Studio at the bottom of this email), and is also taking college courses. True, she is exceptional, but we will seek the spark in any kid. Hope IT is there for kids who have the ability, but just need those key times to gain skills and opportunities, and encouragement.

You may also notice the side story of partnership going on with Hope IT; that is key for us. Again, Hope IT is focused on underserved kids in the Pasadena area, to give them access to IT/computer skills, as well as to IT professionals.

Please pray for our students and our Hope IT team. God shows the way.

Blessings,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

Hope IT student Data Studio dashboard — Olivia’s dashboard created in Data Studio

March 3, 2021April 24, 2023

2 February courses completed

Hope IT finished 2 on-line courses in February. It was a full time for us, despite COVID.

First, we finished our Data Analysis course, meeting on 4 Saturdays mornings. We used Google’s Data Studio, and covered 3 datasets: our own course member’s Cell Phone Ownership data to start, and 2 datasets from Kaggle, Video Game Sales and COVID-19 data from John Hopkins University. We covered basic statistical functions –like Minimum, Maximum, Counts, Sums, Mean (Average) and Median — and created Bar, Line and Geo charts. We also covered how to avoid dirty tricks with statistics, and how Data Science uses data to make future predictions.

Second, we finished a second WordPress course with Stars. This was a 6 week course, meeting on Wednesday nights. We had 3 students, and covered Themes — the Astra Theme — and Plugins, like the Elementor page builder, WP Power Stats to track users visiting our site, Yoast SEO, and even a eCommerce plugin, Easy Digital Download. And on top of all that, this course was co-taught by a student that took the October WordPress course; more on that later.

January 29, 2021April 24, 2023

Newsletter – January 2021

Poetry Pi course — Mark guiding how to create cameras out of Raspberry Pis

Happy New Year! We hope 2021 begins a good year for you.

This is Hope IT’s fifth year. We had our share of difficulties and missteps, but God showed us the kids are well worth the effort. That gives us purpose, and keeps us going.

In past newsletters, we focus mostly on our courses. In these next few newsletters, we’ll focus on our people…both our Hope IT team members and some of our students.

In this newsletter, I would like to spotlight our Hope IT Technical Director, Mark Bracher, who has the final say on what technology we use and teach. Mark was the very first person to join the team, 5 ½ years ago. I have known Mark for 25+ years…losing count now. Back then, Mark and I lived in the same house with 4 to 6 other guys, all working in either the junior high or high school ministry of our church across the street, in Highland Park. Mark is kind, generous, honest and humble.

We are old friends. We both graduated in Mathematics from Occidental College in Los Angeles (Eagle Rock). He, my wife Ruth, our friend David (Mark’s best man in his wedding), and I played many board games. He was one of our Scripture readers at Ruth and my wedding. Mark helped Ruth and I move into our first home in Altadena. Mark is technical, and uses that creatively. For example, he brews his own beer. He has a sign in his dining room now, a gift from his friend David: “Beer, so much more than a breakfast drink.”

Mark has always been a professional programmer. I know very few better engineers. Originally he intended to be a math professor, so math comes up in our Hope IT courses. Here are two examples of courses Mark created.

Our course in February 2019 was to create cameras out of Raspberry Pis. Getting the idea from RedHat’s presentation at the Linux EXPO, SCaLE, Mark used his personal 3D printers to print the cases for the cameras. Getting it right took many tries. It had to have the right holes for monitor cables and the other cables, fit the small touch screen, and hold the Raspberry Pi inside. It takes 8 hours to print a camera case. After several iterations, he created 8 camera cases for the Hope IT course. In the top picture he is showing our students how to fit everything inside. On the 3rd Saturday of the course, we walked the students around CalTech, taking pictures with their newly built cameras. Most of the pictures on our web site are from that Raspberry Pi course.

For our course in February 2020, Mark created (in Python) the maze and a robot to solve it. Students could control the robot in their Python code. If you think that was hard enough, Python isn’t even Mark’s top choice of programming languages. He also created the program to arbitrarily generate different mazes given a numerical seed, and of course, ones that are solvable, meaning there is an exit. (See a screenshot below of the maze application.) If you use the same seed, you get the same maze, to make the mazes identical and reproducible. Mazes can be small, medium, large, and robot speed is configurable. We post our source code on-line so others can benefit. (We try to do this for each course we offer.) After all this work, Mark was willing to co-teach this Python course with a new team member.

Mark is a gift to Hope IT. Mark and I are working on a Data Analysis course for this February. Mark and another Hope IT team member are working on a future robotic course in the future. We all have fun creating these courses, and teaching them.

Please pray for our students and our Hope IT team. God continues to move and work. We are fortunate to already see that occur.

Maze for Python course — Maze for the Python course

December 12, 2020December 12, 2020

February 2021 course – Data Analysis

Introduction to Data Analysis will be Hope IT’s course in February 2021. We will be using a tool called Google Data Studios. This will be an on-line course.

We find data so vital these days. We all have been looking at the COVID curve, and the positive cases rise. One of the core topics in IT is how understanding data and trends affects our lives, and how useful data is. Beyond COVID data, we will review other datasets as well.

Students signing up for this course with their pastor or group leader will need to be at least 13 years old, as we will be using Google Accounts to access Google Sheets and Google Data Studio. If you like a course flier, please contact us.