Long Beach CORAL Youth Institute Checks Out Long Beach Internet Hotspot

      On Friday, January 17th, 26 Long Beach High School teens from the Long Beach CORAL Youth Institute arrived on the corner of Broadway and Pine Street. in downtown Long Beach to surf the web. They carried with them 26 laptop computers. This wasn't any ordinary surfing that they were doing. It was a chance for them to taste the freedom of the wireless web courtesy of the City of Long Beach.

      First they got a hands-on city tour of the wireless Internet infrastructure from Bruce Mayes, Business technology Specialist with the City of Long Beach. Then they proceeded to access the wireless web by configuring the wireless cards on the laptops.

      The wireless network is called 'Big Eye', and works rather well from 1st St. to 6th St. along Pine St. It works best between Broadway and 3rd Streets due to the proximity of the wireless antenna. They downloaded streaming video footage, the true testament to the speed of connection bandwidth, with ease.

      The high school teens even interviewed the general public via their DV Cameras and audio equipment. They asked questions as to the amount of the general public who knew about the new free wireless Internet service and how the public felt it would help them. The response was generally positive.

      The teens are Alumni of the CORAL Long Beach Youth Institute, an intense computer learning summer program that culminates in a technology based community service project at six local elementary school sites in Long Beach. The teens also get to check out laptops to do homework. The hope is that they will frequent this area to hook up to the Internet for fun and academic research. The Teens were very excited by the new technology and how easy it was for them to access it.

      For pictures and more information on this trip and the Youth Institute in general, check out the website at www.lbcoralyi.org.

The Long Beach CORAL Youth Institute is a project of the YMCA of Greater Long Beach. It is funded through a grant from The James Irvine Foundation. Contact person is Bob Cabeza at 562-624-5474 or e-mail at bob.cabeza@lbymca.org