Debut of the Education Exchange Corps Online Placement System

It sounds cool, videos make it look great, but the EEC Online Placement System really consists of a bunch of free online applications cobbled together in an expansive network.

That's right. I just debuted a real-time, online scheduling system that costs $0 to maintain (of course, if you don't include the time it takes out of the designer's and maintainer's life!).

I'm a big believer in parceling out responsibility. Education is an issue too big for anyone to tackle alone, but a lot of folks are too busy to dedicate a ton of time every day to making the world a better place.

So why not help them dedicate just a little bit of time to making the world a better place?

Unlike a lot of other civic engagement organizations, the EEC prides itself on the flexibility of its scheduling.

You can only come in on Mondays from 1:00pm-3:00pm? COOL!

You can only get a babysitter every other Friday? FINE BY ME!

You can get off work all day Thursdays? COME HELP OUT SOME KIDS!

The online system takes this process to a new level. Now these folks can go online and CHOOSE the slots they want.

Don't get me wrong. The #1 priority here is helping the kids we work with. There are rules for choosing placements that prioritizes a regular commitment and continuity by those folks looking to share their time.

But more on that later. Let's keep you readers entertained by taking away the reading. Time to crank out some home movies!

Check out how the placement system works from an EEC Member/Volunteer's perspective here: http://screencast.com/t/7s4QAwZcMs

Still a few kinks to work out, but you can check out the whole system at our website at www.eduexchangecorps.org.

More to come!

Dr. King Column

You can find the dataset for the column in the previous post, and you can find the column here:

http://clayton-richmondheights.patch.com/articles/census-data-and-kings-dream-speech-reveal-need-to-address-poverty

I'm planning on using the data in a few other columns too, so here are some highlights:

• Missouri and St. Louis are both ranked 7th as the most segregated state and large metropolitan area, respectively.
• To fully integrate Blacks and Whites residentially in Missouri and St. Louis, almost three quarters of the minority would have to move (or a combination of Black/White movement would have to produce an equal net effect).
• Out of the 74 schools in the St. Louis City school dataset I produced, 51 are at least 75% Black, 36 are at least 90% Black, and 18 are at least 99% Black.
• Without addressing poverty, we cannot really see how much of today's de facto segregation is still a racial issue v. a socioeconomic one.

Dataset for Patch Column

In my column (which I will link once it's online), I reference a dataset that I created from Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. For your benefit, here is the dataset. It includes the St. Louis City Schools and their demographic compositions from 2010.

Feel free to download and play with it. I'll comment more on this once the column comes out tomorrow.

Connecting Blog to Column

In an attempt to get this blog up and running consistently, I am going to connect some posts to my twice monthly education column at Patch.com.

My column can be found here.

Now to upload the dataset that will go with tomorrow's column.