Blog Archives - ITSRG

BITS Participants Observe, Map, Design, Blog

7/20/2009

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.

Last week, Service Learning students completed Sadie's Parkway Tour - a 3 mile long loop from Love Park to the Art Museum of Philadelphia. Along the way, students examined the changes in the pedestrian landscape. They explored the uses of Fairmount Park areas around the river once they arrived at the Art Museum.

Tomorrow, we begin a week-long examination of the lower trail of the Wissahickon Park and along the Schuylkill Banks pathway near Falls Bridge. Friends of the Wissahickon's Kevin Groves provided students with an orientation to their visit last week.

On main campus, interns and service learners are gaining the IT, geography, mapping and social media skills they will need to document the environmental problems they are examining. Some are mapping bike racks on Main Campus as part of Temple's new Fuji Bikes program; others are preparing to mount a mock environmental trial. All of the students are writing blog posts about their experiences.

Here are just three of the many blogs currently being developed as part of BITS Summer Intensive 2009:

Environmental Research Forum - This internship group is blogging about all the green internship sites across Temple University's campus this summer

Stories from a PSU Student - This blog is being developed as a journal of one participant's comments on their internship experience working for ITSRG this summer

ITSRG Blogger Support Group - This blog was created by ITSRG staff member, Kelly George, to share tips for ITSRG mentors on how to engage students in creating their own blogs!

Michele Masucci, Director
ITSRG - Temple University

Kevin Groves of Friends of the Wissahickon orienting
BITS participants to their upcoming visit to the park

BITS Program 09 - Week 2 Photo Highlights

7/17/2009

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.

BITS Participants Survey the Benjamin Franklin Parkway

7/16/2009

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.

Here are links to institutions and organizations we encountered along the way.

Schulkill Banks
Center City and Fairmount are connected via a new, paved path for pedestrians, cyclist, wheelchair, stroller, and roller use.

The Water Works
The Delaware River Basin includes the watersheds of the Wissahickon Creek, the Schulkill River and the Delaware River. This educational center is a resource for learning about the historical development and contemporary challenges of those waterways.

Logan Square Neighborhood Association
"The square is a circle." This comment has been echoed at the foot of the Swann Fountain. Check out the LSNA's history page here.

Sadie's First Walk
Here is a map of the walk route, updated regularly to add new photos and links of interested based on our visits.

Click Here to read our prior post on the Parkway walk and associated Resource Links.

Michele Masucci, Director
ITSRG - Temple University

Did you see this? Maps in the News

7/15/2009

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.

Here are a few recently published web maps you may find of interest. Click on the images to read the stories.

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

7/14/2009

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.

Here are some links that may be of interest for students and readers alike:

Ben Franklin Parkway Rehabilitation Project - The Parkway is one of Philadelphia' planned park settings. Explore this site to review old photos and maps and learn about plans to maintain the spaces and improve user experiences throughout the area. Click here to view the map.

Sadie's First Walk - Here is the route we will take and points of interest. This map will updated throughout the next few days, so check here often to see what is new.

Gmaps Pedometer - Use this tool to analyze the distance between points of interest and the route we take. See how the differences change depending on the settings chosen for mapping the path. See if you can recreate the path from Sadie's First Walk.

Love Park - Known internationally to Philadelphia's millions of annual visitors, extreme athletes, community organizers, and residents alike for it's quirky LOVE statue and ever changing users.

Julian Abele - The Art Museum of Philadelphia was designed by African American architect Julian Abele. Read more about his role in the design and his professional accomplishments here. Investigate a database about architects and their designs across Philadelphia here.

Michele Masucci, Director
ITSRG - Temple University

Resource Links for Summer 2009 BITS Intensive Program

7/13/2009

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 to Visit SHRO's Digilab Next Week

7/9/2009

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.

The Sbarro Health Research Organization’s Digilab, is directed by Dr. Giuseppe Russo, a molecular biologist and bioinformatics specialist. He, along with Geography and Urban Studies graduate student Liv Raddatz, will work with six students to create a virtual reality in three dimensions that will depict a local landscape in Philadelphia. The students will investigate the landscape using traditional geographic field methods to identify key cultural, environmental, and historic aspects of a space of their choice. They will use information technologies like digital photography, online mapping applications, and podcasts to visualize and record their observations about the landscape they depict. They will also disseminate the information they gather on the Internet using such social media applications as Blogger and Flickr.

They will work with Dr. Russo to compile those digital bits of information into a three-dimensional rendering of the space that can be navigated virtually. The students will have the opportunity to work in SHRO’s Digilab to envision and navigate the landscape in three dimensions.

The applications of this technology are multifaceted. Three-dimensional spaces can be explored in different ways than conventional two-dimensional maps because both volume and magnitude are evident in the information sets. When applied to locations, the third dimension supports the analysis of landscape transitions, economic impacts and communications that factors in the effects of differences in the heights and design of buildings, economics of agglomeration when businesses are grouped in close proximities, and multiplying effects when different cultural institutions and historical centers are found in the same locations to create a community and legacy through time. The health applications are equally profound when information is visualized in three dimensions. The inner mechanics of cell functions can be examined in three dimensions, permitting researchers to see processes that are often hidden from two-dimensional views. Alternatively, researchers can also use these technologies in the treatment of patients who are experiencing cognitive and psychological changes that are impacting their quality of lives. When e-communications tools are combined with the creation of three-dimensional virtual realities, researchers and educators alike can interact with each other over large distances in real time to investigate a specific place, a patient’s needs, or participate in a lecture and demonstration.

This internship is just one of ten different ones that provide students and young adults engaged in BITS to gain skills and knowledge about state of the art information technology skills and their applications for both learning and research.

Michele Masucci, Ph.D.
Director, ITSRG
Temple University

BITS Summer Intensive 2009 Begins

7/8/2009

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.

ITSRG is proud to be a part of the Green Jobs Initiative through sponsoring the BITS Summer Intensive Program 2009 this year from July 6 - August 14, 2009 on Temple University's Main Campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

BITS 09 will involve over 150 Philadelphia youth aged 14 - 24 an opportunity to enhance their geographic knowledge and computer, Internet, social media, graphic arts, and research skills in a university environment through two program models - an internship experience and a service learning project. Both will enable youth to enhance their digital skills, which are increasingly in demand in a college and in the workforce.

The service-learning project will engage youth to work with Temple students and volunteers with the Sustainable Trails iniative of the Friends of the Wissahickon Park. Service learners will document the multiple ways the Wissahickon section of Fairmount Park is used by humans and wildlife. Service learners will work in small teams supervised by Temple University students and park volunteers to develop data sets related to decisions about where to place markers on new trails. They will also assist with the creation of a multimedia project that reflects the park.

Service learners will also use the datasets they create to develop team projects consisting of online maps and blogs that illustrate how competing uses of the park are balanced. Students will gain skills and practical experiences with Google Earth and Google Maps, blog applications and multimedia techniques to share the information they gather with a Web audience.

BITS 09 participants placed in internship experiences will work in small terms at either Temple University's Main Campus or with ITSRG community partners. Experiences will be designed to provide interns with career readiness skills and hands-on activities that enhance their knowledge of environment problems and research.

Interns will be placed in the Sbarro Health Research Organization's Digilab, the Social Science Data Library, the Department of Civil Engineering's Alaska Valdez project, the Blockson Collection, ITSRG, the Office of Sustainability, the Fu

Throughout the summer, the Interns will work in teams to develop a web-based multimedia project that reflects their internship experience. Interns will gain skills around group project work, website design, and multimedia applications related to environmental problems and research.

In addition, all summer intensive students will attend regular workshops focused building on college and work ready skills.

This program is made possible with generous support from Philadelphia Youth Network through the Mayor's Green Jobs Initiative and through Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development.

The Importance of Green Jobs in Philadelphia

7/6/2009

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.
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"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;

Find innovative ways to Leverage our city’s digital infrastructure to improve efficiencies in our transportation, education, and health delivery systems as entrepreneurs, business owners, and managers;

Market Philadelphia’s green assets – like Fairmount Park, our waterfront spaces, our extremely walkable infrastructure, our car share and maybe one day soon our bike share systems as participants in the hospitality and tourist industries;

Connect our community garden and urban agriculture infrastructures to promote a local foods agenda – one of the highest impact actions we can take to lessen our collective carbon footprints as health and environmental educators, restaurant managers and owners, and consumers;

Further develop our knowledge economy by connecting environmental research and education at the city’s institutions of higher education with local investors who can translate state of the art technologies and findings from research studies into best practices for health, education, engineering, and innovation.

ITSRG, The Information Technology and Society Research Group, is an interdisciplinary, university–wide research center that focuses on the societal dimensions of information technologies. Our research interests, projects and programs have at their core a concern for understanding how people use information and communication technologies (ICTS) in their every day lives, and how ICTs relate to education, environmental quality, and health for our local communities.

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.

I would also like to acknowledge the tireless efforts of some of our staff – Vicki, our volunteer without whom we would not have known about the green jobs initiative; Jay who works with family technology needs; Jeff who returned for a fifth year to help with recruitment; Diedre and Liz who have organized our staff and recruitment drive this year; mentors who will work with students this year; faculty, librarians, and scholars who will work with students this year; and our graduate program coordinators. We are grateful for your efforts."

Michele Masucci
Director, ITSRG
June 24, 2009

ITSRG Staff Prepares for BITS Summer Intensive Programs 2009

7/3/2009

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.

Temple University undergraduate and graduate students will serve as mentors and program facilitators for the programs. The programs aim to improve student skills related to information and communication technologies, geography, making maps, and way-finding. All high school participants will create social media projects such as blogs, collaborative maps, and digital photo collections. In addition, students will gain experiences in conducting geographic field work related to environmental problems.

The program was made possible through funding from the Philadelphia Youth Network and the Philadelphia Network for Neighborhood Development.

For more information about our summer programs, contact ITSRG at 215-204-3596 or email us at itsrg2007@gmail.com.

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!