ITSRG hosts a panel session at the AAG  meeting in Boston on the intersection of informal science education and geography - Lessons learned from the BITS Program  Wednesday, from 10:10 AM - 11:50 AM

Panelist(s):
Michele Masucci - Temple University
Lorena Munoz - University Of Southern California
Michael L. Dorn - Temple University
Langston Clement, Temple University
Melody Grewell - Indiana University
Jeffrey Carroll, Temple University
David J. Organ - Clark Atlanta University

Session Description: BITS is a three-year, youth-based ITEST program funded by the National Science Foundation. BITS used an informal science education model for engaging youth to learn information technology skills through hands on, interactive and non-traditional approaches. The program evaluation emphasized implementing an instructional approach that was culturally relevant with regard to participants, staffing, and content themes.

The research model aimed to assess the viability of a collaborative model for creating a community geographic information system that engaged high school students and provided a context for them to acquire an understanding of basic geographic concepts. This session will provide an overview about the outcomes and challenges involved in translating geographic knowledge and information technology skills into meaningful, age appropriate experiences for students in the program. We will also discuss possible new directions and opportunities for collaboration around new initiatives of the program. Originally posted on 4/16/08.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University

Mel Grewell, an M. A. Candidate in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies and Graduate Research Fellow of ITSRG is interested in youth perceptions of community. Her paper examines inner-city adolescents' perceptions of community and other geographic concepts, such as maps and place.  Her study was conducted in North Philadelphia drawing on perspectives of students involved in the BITS Program. She has noticed that there are many interesting connections between what participants drew on their sketch maps of their communities and how they chose to photograph their communities.  For example, most participants portrayed their homes on the community maps the created and also through photography.  But, some of the participants' drawings tended to focus on the area immediately around their homes, whereas their photographs had a broader geographic range showing where the participants spend their time.

Michele Masucci
Temple University

Lorena Munoz examines the way in which visual methodologies, such as photo-documentation and photo-elicitation, are used to analyze and interpret the cultural landscapes in which Latino street vendors exercise their daily informal economic practices in Los Angeles.  Photo-elicitation is a method that serves as a way of flexing power relations between the researcher who is photo-documenting the landscape and the subject that is being photo-documented. In analyzing the documented landscape, the vendors were shown the photographs and asked to describe emotive feelings attached to the landscape and what their perceptions and descriptions (such as space and place) are of the photo-documented site.

Photo-documentation is one mode of visual representation which functionality is to understand complex relational processes that are displayed in the same place at the same time and compare to different time intervals as well. Through these particular visual methodologies, I highlight how Latino immigrant vendor's 'place' and 'sense of place',  street corners, yards, and parking lots are transformed into informal commercial profit-making sites. This reconfiguration of urban space not only shapes immigrants' and immigrant vendors' experience of everyday life, but also the urban landscapes around them. Originally posted 4/15/08.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University

Graduate Fellow Langston Clement will present  Access to Admissions, a short film that visualizes enabled spaces from the perspectives of high school students in North Philadelphia.

This presentation will showcase a film  (See Below) created by high school students enrolled in the BITS Program at Temple University. The BITS program provides participants with experiences that build geographic information technology skills. The film depicts the perspectives of students on the meanings of accessibility for persons with disabilities on Temple's main campus.

The film illustrates the highly nuanced ways in which students connected with the literal challenges that are faced by persons with physical disabilities.

This paper will consider the challenges associated with representing the concerns of persons with disabilities. It also addresses the main focus of the enabling spaces project - to find constructive ways of engaging youth to envision their urban spaces in inclusive ways as a means to create new urban geographies. Originally posted on 4/15/08.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University

ITSRG Graduate Fellow Jeff Caroll will present on the policy and place implications of cyber safety in the conduction of a youth centered information technology program today at the AAG meeting in Boston.

The purpose of this presentation will be to shed light on the change of place in the use of information technology that subjects a student to different standards of cyber safety.  These following questions will be addressed:  How do changes in "IT places" inevitably result in changes in "policy places?"  What are the policy and practice implications in the administration of iT after-school programming? How does one teach individuals how to understand subjection to different policy realms as place changes?  Last, this presentation will offer empirical data drawn from our students to highlight perceptions of cyber safety highlighting the need for increased cyber safety attention across policy realms. Originally posted on 4/15/08.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University

ITSRG's Executive Director Dr. Masucci will present the lessons learned  from running a summer intensive and after-school program for Philadelphia area high school students called BITS, funded by the National Science Foundation.

During the past four years the Information Technology and Society Research Group of Temple University has the implemented an NSF-ITEST program called BITS. BITS aims to raise information and communication technologies (ICT) skills among high school students enrolled in the School District of Philadelphia.

The program provided a context for social action research that critically interrogated basic assumptions about the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICT) intersect with people's agency in constructing the geographies of daily life. One of the persistent issues encountered in the implementation of BITS is the highly prevalent concern among participants related to safety and the difficulties of managing transportation logistics in daily life. These challenges were interconnected with virtually every theme students found of interest, including health, nutrition, access to grocery stores, access to employment opportunities, and perceptions of local environmental quality.

We considered how student construction of place understanding was related to concerns raised about health and safety. As a result we invested heavily in using web 2.0 tools to enhance their interactive understanding of other geographic locales (including virtual places), communication skills and social organizing strategies for connecting people and places. This paper considers the implications of web 2.0 is shaping as well as reinforcing place experience among this group of students. It also considers the implications of social action research methods as a central component in shaping place experience among the students. Originally Posted on 4/15/08.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University

ITSRG staff and fellows are headed to Boston for the 2008 Annual  Meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

In attendance this week from ITSRG are: Executive Director Dr. Michele Masucci; Research Fellows:  Dr. Mike Dorn, Assistant Professor of Urban Education; ITSRG Summer scholar in Residence: Dr. David Organ, Clark  Atlanta; ITSRG evaluator: Dr. Lorena Munoz, University Of Southern California; Graduate Fellows: Langston Clements and Jeff Carroll and Temple University graduate student Melody Grewell.
Originally posted 04/14/2008.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University