Tech Citizenship
2007
Pay it forward
IBM Engineer steps up to bridge ‘digital disconnect’
For software engineer Angelo Lynn, community service is a hereditary condition.
Lynn’s father is a Boston-based community activist, and his grandfather, Conrad Lynn, was a civil rights lawyer who participated in the freedom rides throughout the South in the early 1960s to protest racial discrimination. Conrad Lynn also defended his fellow riders, as well as conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, in court.
“I’ve kind of been groomed to take on this role,” says Angelo Lynn, of his focus on philanthropy. “I just happen to be an engineer.”
Angelo Lynn, who works on IBM Corp.’s Lotus Domino server product at the computer giant’s Westford site, headed up a five-person team last January that ran a 10-week afterschool “apprenticeship” in robotics at the Doctor An Wang Middle School in Lowell. Lynn, who grew up in Roxbury, said the program helped address what he calls a “digital disconnect.”
“Inner-city children don’t get exposed to technology and engineering,” said Lynn. “Showing them you can do this might pique their interest, and they might seek it out on their own.”
Once a week after school, Lynn and his team taught 12 sixth- and seventh-graders how to build and program robots using the Lego Group’s Mindstorms set of robot parts and programming tools. The Mindstorms interface simplifies the programming process, but “you have to know what you’re doing,” said Lynn.
“It took some training,” he said. “We keep it fun but definitely introduce them to new technology.”
The students were divided into groups that built their own robots. At the end of the 10 weeks, the teams competed to see whose robot could knock over the most cones arranged in circle.
“At one point, they got too competitive with it — who could build the better robot, who could win the challenge,” Lynn said. “The parents were pretty much amazed.”
Marta Magnus, now an art teacher at the Wang School, was campus director at the time for Citizen Schools, a national nonprofit that coordinates the afterschool apprenticeships. She said the students responded well to Lynn and his team.
“They loved meeting these people that they wouldn’t be meeting in their everyday lives or in school, and learning technology,” she said.
Magnus said Lynn — with his easy-going personality and sense of humor — connected with the kids. Before the apprenticeship started, she put Lynn and his team of IBM engineers through a training session on teaching and said they may have learned as much as the kids.
“Essentially, they’re planning a curriculum,” she said.
Lynn was committed to doing a good job with the program, which provided laptops and robot kits to the students, Magnus said.
“He and his group are great role models for what other companies should be doing” she said.
Lynn won the YMCA Black Achiever award in 2007 for his work with the Concerned Black Men of Massachusetts, running computer workshops for black youth at Northeastern University. Once he won the award, he said, IBM asked him to do more community work.
“They back you and push you to get involved with the community and give back,” he said.
Pat Kirby, executive director of Citizen Schools, said the nonprofit’s results in Lowell were particularly good. Kirby said the main goal of Citizen Schools is to expand a student’s “learning day” — and apprenticeships such as the one in Lowell are what help Citizen Schools stand out among educational nonprofits.
“At the end of the day, kids spend some 80 percent outside of school,” he said. “But schools are under more and more pressure to influence the kids.”
Lynn may have picked up some of that slack with the robotics program, which starts up for another 10 weeks in February.
“The kids wanted to take the robots home and continue the project,” he said.
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