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