Tag Archives: High School Back

A City of Neighbourhoods.

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It was another busy week last week!

On Wednesday, we wrapped up the final A City of Neighbourhoods (ACON) workshop.

For those who came in late, ACON is an intensive after-school based program (you can read more about it one of my earlier Blog entries here).

On May 16, 10 teens in grades 9-12 from DreamYard Preparatory (a Bronx-based public high school) presented their design solutions. Teen participants presented to their peers, teachers, community members, Cooper-Hewitt and DreamYard Project staff.

Over the course of 5 weeks, students learned about the design process, explored their local community through the eyes of a designer and worked with leading, creative professionals to gain an understanding of how design could be used to affect and improve their community.

Students had access to the latest technologies as they worked together to find sustainable solutions to real-life problems for their community. Students also received an exclusive tour and conversation with artists from the “This Side of Paradise” exhibition.

The students worked and talked with local community members and stakeholders to identify areas of concern that affected their local community. After the consultation process, the students divided up into three groups and tackled issues of transportation, traffic safety and flow and sanitation.

Students’ innovative design solutions and prototypes included a tidal traffic flow system for The Grand Concourse that further encouraged the use of bicycles and public transport, a social networking style website that allowed community members to track and report garbage and sanitation issues and an automaton that maintains the subway platforms and tracks, disperses rodents and contacts commuters via text when trains are delayed!

Going forward, students will now have the opportunity to present their design solutions and prototypes at Emoti-con.  Emoti-con is a digital media and technology challenge where New York City teens present their social impact digital media and technology projects, be inspired by their fellow media producers and technology makers, and meet professionals in the field.

On a more personal note, we were all very touched to receive an email from the Principal of DreamYard Preparatory letting us know that the workshops had positively affected one of the participants.

Before the workshops started, this student was failing all of their subjects – but since starting with the project, the student is now passing all subjects but one! Stories like this are why I teach – and it is also a testament to the power of design and the importance of the Cooper Hewitt Youth programs.

Telling/Showing

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If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story. – Barbara Greene

Here’s a visual recap of the TFI Interaction through Storify. Continuing on from my last post, I wanted to quickly touch base on e-Readers and other modes of addressing the traditional forms of literacy as well as new literacies (that don’t require a working knowledge of HTML code!).

IDEO showcased a series of e-reader concepts, proof of concepts for different ways of interacting with digital devices. The future of the book video showcases Nelson, Coupland and Alice. Each present a different mode of interaction that goes beyond technological specifications.

Nelson looks at books from a larger perspective, showing users how books have influenced others and links a book’s subject matter to current events. this design also has built-in fact-checking systems and provides both sides of issues discussed in the text. Coupland, on the other hand, explores the social world of books by allowing users to share their reading with friends and colleagues. this software would allow people to see what others are reading and send recommendations. Alice takes a different approach, developing new ways that narratives can be explored across digital platforms. (via designboom)

Inanimate Alice takes a different, trans-media approach, developing new ways that narratives can be explored across digital platforms. This platform requires user generated content to drive the story forward.

Inanimate Alice is working hard to support teachers and schools to roll out this approach to story telling – the makers suggesting that “…Inanimate Alice is a new media fiction that allows students to develop multiple literacies (literary, cinematic, artistic, etc.) in combination with the highly collaborative and participatory nature of the online environment…”

Exciting times ahead?

Dick and Jane meet Hackasaurus

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I am back in the office today after having had a wonderful day out with Monica (remember Monica?) at the Tribeca Film Insitute Interactive Day. It was hosted in the lobby of the IAC Building which was designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry and completed in 2007.

View of The IAC Building from The Highline.

The speakers, from diverse backgrounds and through a variety of lenses, explored generally how to engage with, design for interactivity and foster interaction with users. Some of the presenters were definitely more interested in dynamic and organic growth of interactive spaces (guide on the side/crowd sourcing/remix culture/hacking) while just as many seemed to advocate that interaction by definition had to be designed (sage on the stage/directed experiences/the illusion of choice). I’ve (safely) got a foot in each camp!

The analogy used to support the designed interaction versus organic growth and play was that of a playground space. If there was no equipment in the play ground, the opportunities for interactive experiences in the space are limited – however, if there was a slide placed in the space, the opportunities increased. It doesn’t matter how the equipment is used (and that there was probably a finite number of ways that the equipment could be used in any case)- but that the absence of any equipment at all limits interaction*.

The standout panel talk for me was PROGRAM OR BE PROGRAMED: CODE AND EDUCATION which was presented by Chris Lawrence, Marc Lesser and Jess Klein. The panel argued that schools should also be teaching digital literacy as well as the more traditional forms of literacy (hence the abstract Dick and Jane reference!) to our students, arguing that the new influential are the tech-savvy who understand programming and how to use it to make their voices heard within a crowded media landscape**.

Chris argued that teaching students the fundamental’s of HTML code actually empowered students to become producers of content, rather than passive consumers. The analogy that Chris used was that a student who couldn’t understand code was equivalent to a student who could read but not write. Of course – not many of us understand HTML code either – so how can we teach a literacy that most of don’t have ourselves? Enter The Mozilla Foundation.

At this point, Jess introduced the audience to Hackasaurus, a tool that makes it easy for youth (or anyone!) to tinker and mess around with the building blocks that make up the web. The mission of Hackasaurus is to help helps tweens move from digital consumers to active producers, seeing the web as something they can actively shape, remix and make better.

As an educator who strongly believes that learning is a byproduct of making (learn more and contribute to a discussion on design principles in learning here), the Hackasaurus toolkit allows student to deconstruct, remix and construct content in medium that they generally have very little control over (i.e passively consuming content – even when they think they are contributing i.e. facebook, etc). Mozilla have created an in-browser tool called X-Ray Goggles that allows students to hover over elements, divs and blocks in browsers and view the underlying structure of the webpage. Best of all, the goggles allow them to ‘hack’ the code and make live changes to the visual layout of the page – or if you like, learning by doing!***

* Presenters who believed strongly in designing the experience seemed to generally be Game Designers, Web Developers and Film Makers whereas the presenters who advocated for crowd sourced remixing, intervention and hacking were social media leaders, journalists, design specialists and futurists. I think that ownership of IP seemed to underpin a lot of the difference in conversation – but it wasn’t talked about explicitly in any of the conversations.

** View an example here of their ideal tween contributor to the congested media space.

*** For those of you looking for a more complex tool for Senior Students, Firebug facilitates deeper diving into HTML code and CSS.

TFI Interactive. And The Bronx

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This coming Monday, Monica and I are spending the day at the Tribeca Film Institute Interactive Day.

Summarising their Media Release (who wants to click on the links anyway, right?), “...on April 23, in the midst of the Tribeca Film Festival, TFI and the Ford Foundation will bring together leading thinkers and pioneers from the fields of media, entertainment, education and technology to share their insights and inspire content creators at TFI Interactive...”
This is an area that I’m particularly passionate about – the use of digital tools to explore traditional models of story telling as well as developing new paradigms for the way in which we deliver and distribute stories now and into the future.

My Year 10 media students back in Australia are hopefully (fingers-crossed!) using Digital Story Telling tools (Adobe Flash, Digital Capture Devices, Scanners, etc) to retell/re-vision a traditional story in a digital way – so I feel really privileged to have the opportunity to attend this festival and find out about the way that industry, artists and educators are using digital tools and platforms to do the same thing!

And The Bronx.

I’ve really been enjoying getting out of Manhattan. Two trains and a little walking later (and before) gets us up to The Bronx (plus I get to look at Yankee Stadium on the way!). Even though it’s only a 15 minute train ride (that includes the transfer) – it’s like a completely different world! Definitely not in a bad way – it actually reminds me a lot of where I work – the students come from an incredibly diverse range of backgrounds. The U.S. Census considers the Bronx to be the most diverse area in the country. There is an 89.7 percent chance that any two residents, chosen at random, would be of different race or ethnicity (yes – that’s a quick wiki fact!).

The Taft Educational Complex - DYPREP is located on the 4th Floor of the Complex and shares the building with several other separate schools.

To get into the school, you have to go through a metal detector (students follow the same process) and your bags go through an x-ray machine. All of this is overseen by the NYC Police Department School Safety Division – and they are armed! Of course – this doesn’t seem to faze my colleagues – and I should qualify my uncomfortable-ness with the weapons with the acknowledgement that every student and person that I’ve met and talked to in The Bronx has been exceedingly polite and helpful – the students scramble over each other to hold open the doors for the teachers, they clean up the classrooms at the end of the sessions without being asked and always raise their hand to speak – I could get used to this kind of service!

In the classroom, the students have been incredibly engaged with the design process – students are articulate in their responses, ask thoughtful questions all the time and engage with the practical and ideation tasks that are set with vigor! All of these students are participating in their own time after school – and after the workshop, many go on to sports practice, tutoring or part-time work. The teachers deserve a mention as well – they are so so SO passionate about education and giving their students the best start to life that they can – it makes me feel like a charlatan at times!

This afternoon we are taking the students to an art exhibition in the neighbourhood called No Longer Empty. The artists that we are meeting (Elizabeth Hamby and Hatuey Ramos-Fermín) are artists and educators working between the studio, the classroom, and the city.

For “This Side of Paradise” the artists have presented IRT, a multi-model installation and public engagement project exploring transportation issues in the Bronx. The project has a variety of interrelated components including a video installation about livery cabs in the Bronx, maps, and interviews.

In collaboration with community-based organizations in the Bronx, the artists will present Boogie Down Rides, a temporary bike shop and public education hub located on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The shop will be open throughout the month of May and will host a series of educational events, community visioning sessions and group rides. Visitors and community members will be able to rent bikes, get repairs and learn about ongoing cycling projects in the Bronx including the development of green-ways and bike paths, as well as initiatives from Greater New York such as bike share.

The bike shop will also be a place for community engagement and for members of the public to respond to these initiatives through surveys and participatory workshops. By creating a cycling hub on the Grand Concourse, Boogie Down Rides will increase awareness of cycling as a mode of transportation and recreation, promote safe cycling and bridge existing efforts to expand cycling in the Bronx.

Read a review of the exhibition in the New York Times here.

As a self-proclaimed Hipster (see my earlier post here for some background on this) – one of the first things that I did when I arrived in NY was look for a single speed bike to get around on. I found a few – but as I was looking for bikes, I realised that public transport is so good here that it really wasn’t necessary (I still have my original Penny Board so I can roll when I get the mood). Needless to say, I’m really interested in the Bikes as Art (or vice-versa) so I can’t wait to see the show!