BITS Participants Observe, Map, Design, Blog 07/20/2009
 BITS Program participants are walking Philadelphia, braving heat and sun, to examine landscapes of Fairmount Park. On Temple University's Main Campus, they are wearing their new Temple IDs to work in computer labs, libraries, classrooms, and offices as interns and as service learners. They are charged with creating social media projects related to environmental issues and to depict the observations they are making on their field assignments.  Kevin Groves of Friends of the Wissahickon orienting BITS participants to their upcoming visit to the park Add Comment BITS Program 09 - Week 2 Photo Highlights 07/17/2009
  Local Artist, Walter Gholson, meets with BITS Interns to discuss his artwork and plan the creation of a showing and gallery space in the ITSRG workroom. He creates mixed media, print, collage, and painted works. He helped the students to create collages during his first visit with the group last week.   The Rocky statue at the foot of the Art Museum was a favorite destination for Service Learners to stop, catch a little shade, and pose for a group photo. This marks the half-way mark for their three-mile long Benjamin Franklin Parkway loop. Students are examining the Parkway design, history, and uses as part of a month long set of field trips to various locations in the Fairmount Park system.   BITS Interns are working in research, data, and library settings across the university. They are working on Temple's new bike program, it's inventory of sustainable practices, cataloging maps and archives, creating social media projects, and reviewing environmental law case studies. This week, BITS Participants are walking the Benjamin Franklin Parkway with digital cameras and clipboards in hand. They are examining three aspects of this iconic Philadelphia landscape. First, they are searching for unexpected features, unique historical and cultural juxtapositions, signs of competing uses, and the use of symbols to represent Philadelphia's urban identity and history. Second, the BITS team is examining the design and environmental characteristics of the Parkway. Finally, they are assessing the relationship between the pedestrian and transportation modalities of the space. Did you see this? Maps in the News 07/15/2009
ITSRG has been examining web-maps during the past year. There have been two aspects of web maps we find of interest. First, we are interested in the data that is being visualized by the map. Second, we are interested in who is contributing to the data sets and the content of comments related to the maps that are disseminated. We have created a separate page for maps we have featured in blog posts called WebMaps. You can explore our archived comments about featured maps there.  Official Map of Michigan? State of Official State Map: Click on the map to read a short Associated Press story which illustrates that maps matter. A lawmaker in Michigan is pushing a policy that requires all state maps to include both the lower and upper parts of the state, not just the lower part shown in the image above.  LAPD Interactive Crime Map Crime Map Controversy: This map created by the Los Angeles Police Department has sparked public controversy because there are disputes over the data represented. Many claim that crimes are underreported, and therefore provide misleading content about the safety in different sections of the city. Read more about the issue here.  NYT Broad Unemployment New York Times Maps Broad Unemployment: Today's New York Times map of broad unemployment by state reflects what many economists have been concerned about for months - that full-time unemployment rates do not reflect the true impacts families are experiencing, because there are many who have simply given up looking for jobs and others who cannot find full time work and therefore settle for part-time positions. This map allows shows both the conservative and the more complete estimates of unemployment by state. Michele Masucci, Director ITSRG - Temple University BITS Participants Prepare for Parkway Walk 07/14/2009
 www.philadelphiabuildings.org Tomorrow, BITS Interns and Service Learners will walk the Ben Franklin Parkway as part of their respective examinations of historic landscapes and green spaces in Philadelphia. Interns are creating a virtual reality that includes various digital media to depict the iconic planned city park system from a contemporary perspective. Service Learners are examining green spaces throughout the Fairmount Park system and in the city. They will analyze the different uses and users of the park spaces and document the different types of green spaces incorporated in the park system. Their observations will be drawn upon to create designs for new trails, marking existing trails, and mapping routes that the general public can use within the park system, including both Fairmount Park and Wissahickon Park venues. We are exploring fun links that can help students learn information and communication skills as well as how to use on line applications to collaborate on projects. Here are some we have found that students enjoy using AND that introduce important skills in searching for information, interpreting data, problem solving, and fostering an understanding of core concepts in science, technology, engineering and math. What do you think?  Millsbury Online Millsbury Maps and Community Building Game: Explore the town, create places, post artwork, join a map and community building community.  Wired Science Wired Science has a great collection of science blogs, environmental reports, and technology innovations that readers will find interesting to learn about. Today read about Top 10 Scientific Music Videos!  Computer Security Quiz How Stuff Works - CyberWars! Are you interested in protecting computers from viruses? Do you want to learn more about cyber security? This site examines safety on the Web from the perspective of state security and cyber networks.  The Fact Monster Are you trying to solve a dispute over the fact of the matter? Maybe the Fact Monster can help. We appreciate the atlas, world facts, science content, and games and quizzes on the site. You may find other aspects interesting too!  The Control Room Professor Garfield loves Math, Science games, general facts, and cartoons! Students of all ages can find something fun to tap into on this engaging site.  BITS Students examine a satellite image of a Philly locale Researchers around Temple University’s Campus have welcomed BITS participants into their research centers, study zones, and smart classrooms as part of a six-week summer intensive program to learn sophisticated information and communication technology skills and applications. Next week, BITS students will visit the Digilab, a center for using virtual realities to support e-health research. BITS Summer Intensive 2009 Begins 07/08/2009
 BITS 09 Intern, Jen Caddell and Philadelphia's Mayor Michael Nutter On June 24, 2009, Philadelphia's Mayor Michael Nutter held a press conference at Temple University's Technology Center to launch Work Ready Philadelphia's Green Jobs Initiatives for Philadelphia Youth. The program represents one tier of the city's use of federal stimulus funding to foster the development of economic opportunities for young people through growing a green economy. The Importance of Green Jobs in Philadelphia 07/06/2009
ITSRG is pleased to initiate a new set of Summer Research and Instruction programs beginning today based on new funding from the Philadelphia Youth Network that was provided through the Federal Stimulus program. We are marking the start of these programs by hosting Mayor Nutter's Press Conference at Temple University to discuss the importance of developing an economic platform for the City of Philadelphia that encompasses research and innovation as a part of re-engineering the city's aging infrastructure and adopting new technologies, planning strategies, and practices to achieve the goals of a sustainable urban environment. My comments shared at the event, held June 24, 2009, are shared below. ______________________________________________ "Today we are here to call attention to a tremendous opportunity for youth educators around the city to help prepare local high school students to participate in the green economy as workers, consumers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and advocates through the stimulus funding that Philadelphia has been awarded for summer youth jobs.We all understand the importance of creating an economic system and jobs that lead to a sustainable future for our communities. We can green our economic system through using renewable resources in the place of non-renewable ones, fostering people and workplaces to engage in energy conserving practices, re-engineering our industrial production processes, developing sustainable transportation systems, and protecting the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. Central to the effort to green our economic system is the need to develop the knowledge and applied research that support making the best decisions about which practices to engage, techniques to apply, and innovations to advance to ensure that our local economy is vibrant and our communities are sustainable for future generations. The core mission of our university is to advance the knowledge and research, teach students the skills and technologies, and translate what we learn into solutions for society to achieve economic and environmental quality goals. ITSRG and Temple University, along with the other providers highlighted here today, are proud to have an opportunity to provide green jobs for high school students through the work-ready program. ITSRG aims to help program participants learn the conceptual underpinnings, gain practical experiences, and develop and use skills that will support them to pursue educational pathways and occupations that will ultimately support our city to develop its green sector. One day we hope these students will:Help us renovate our aging housing infrastructure to include renewable and energy conserving technologies, like installing solar panels, green roofs, and gray-water systems as builders, engineers, and designers;
Because of this, we are keenly aware that the geography of distance is often at strong odds with true access to the resources and social networks people rely on to improve the qualities of their lives. We began our ten-year long effort by implementing a community technology center at Harrison Public Housing Development that offered technology literacy training to children, high school students and adults through programs offered by Geography and Urban Studies students. We applied the lessons learned to expand our technology literacy training programs in the areas of environmental and health technology applications over the years. There is much literature in the field of youth education to suggest that the long standing disparities related to accessing technology, often referred to as the digital divide, are now resulting in a critical skills divide for students who must gain ICT skills to pursue their educational goals at the college level and to enter into the 21st century work force. This is particularly true for the green sector opportunities we are fostering in Philadelphia. More than ever, students need to understand how to gather, interpret, analyze and visualize data related to environmental systems; how to communicate both in person and in a virtual realm; how to use ICTs to overcome distance in their collaborative endeavors; how to bridge geographic and cultural divides through an understanding about people’s practices in different places; and how to synthesize and innovate based on these foundations. These are the core competencies our students will need to participate in Philadelphia’s green sector in the future. As a university research center that champions the importance of interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches for research, we have dealt with the challenges of our local communities through two pathways over the years. First, we help families and students to gain the skills and knowledge they need, particularly related to IT and geography. Our aim is to foster engagement and persistence for students to take a long view of the relationship of their educations to their economic opportunities in the future. We work to leverage the resources of our institution through partnering with students and their families to provide access to state of the art facilities on our campus related to our programs (such as the tech center where we are meeting today) and to translate what we study in discipines into programs that will help students prepare for the next chapters in their lives as they pursue their educational goals. Second, we work to foster an understanding of the needs and challenges faced by local students and their families within our Temple community so that we can create the partnerships needed to enable local students to prepare for and pursue their goals through achieving academic success.In order to do this, we have over the years called many to service; and we are always pleased by the willingness of faculty and staff, administrators and most of all students to respond to those calls. Our programs have involved over 50 faculty through the years, just as many staff and administrators, and literally hundreds of students through courses, service learning opportunities, internships, work-study community outreach programs, and grant funded positions to advance technological and basic literacies, improve the quality of local environments, and teach fundamentals of geography and maps to students young and old around the neighborhood. We have partnered with organizations large and small, have been fortunate to receive enormous support for our vision from PYN over the years, and because of that support from nationally competitive sources like the National Science Foundation. Faculty have given countless lectures, staff have made untold numbers of accommodations, deans and department chairs have shared their space and labs, and most of all Temple students have given their time through the years. In order to do this, Temple students have also taken the time to acquire the ICT, geography, and environmental knowledge and skills they need to pass on to students and families who participate in our programs. So, both Temple and high school students alike learn how to make maps, interpret spatial data, use information technologies such as geographic information systems, social media applications, digital photography, global positioning systems, graphic design, landscape analysis and narrative description. They all engage in field experiences – the backbone for geographic and environmental research, involving applying scientific and social science methods to see their local landscapes through the lens of our disciplinary frameworks. This summer we are pleased to add new partners to our efforts, including Friends of the Wissahickon Park and environmental and health researchers from across the university who have agreed to open their labs and staff to provide interns with experience-based projects to learn the science and technology that underpins the green economy we are building. Some examples of this work include Professor Michel Boufadel's work on studying the effects of remediation in the landscapes impacted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago and Research Scientist Giuseppe Russo's efforts to create a digital-laboratory within a prominent virtual environmental computing platform called Second Life that supports research collaborations in different countries.Most of all, at ITSRG, we are proud to be a home for the memories of the students we engage in our programs. We bear witness to a part of the educational process that sometimes eludes families and formal educators: the establishment of ties between students at vastly different stages in their educations that sustain interests in new endeavors; the value of role models for young students who envision themselves in the experiences they witness; the importance of hard work which challenges one’s patience; the commitment to oneself and one’s family required to defer gratification in order to pursue an education – particularly in these times of such economic turmoil. The environmental and economic challenges we face today require the participation and success of the young people with whom we are privileged to work. We – their elders – are counting on them, need them, urge them to transcend the barriers they face in their immediate circumstances to take the long view and persist in their studies. Hazreena Ali and Jennifer Caddell, two BITS Participants in prior years are now joining our Harrison Campus Compact staff as mentors and who plan to begin their university educations in the coming year. I am pleased that they will share a few words about their experiences at ITSRG that help to illustrate our commitment to fostering persistence among students in Philadelphia to pursue science and technology careers.I want to conclude my comments by sharing some images of our programs taken by students through the past few years. These show the local landscapes they study, with an aim to interpret the history of the built environment, the cultural legacies of previous generations embedded in our places, the ways in which health facilities are integrated into our daily lives, environmental quality concerns locally, and some examples of designs students have come up with to alter those realities. Michele Masucci Director, ITSRG June 24, 2009  ITSRG Staff Training ITSRG is pleased to prepare for the start of the BITS Summer Intensive Program - 2009. 150 high school students from Philadelphia will participate in programs from July 6 through August 15. The experience will feature environmental research internships and a service learning program aimed at creating a set of place markers for the Wissahickon Park in collaboration with Friends of the Wissahickon. High school students will be supported with work-ready jobs as part of Mayor Nutter's Green Jobs initiative.  Program Coordinators Kelly George and Aaron Searson  Mentors Mihn Nyguen and Aadil Patel describe the toy they made during a team building exercise  A few more toys! | ITSpace: Geographies  Flickr BITSArchivesNovember 2011 
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