Hi! Welcome to Verde Smoke

As most of you’ve heard, I’m happy to be back in Boston/Somerville and working with my old family at the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network (ICCN). I feel very privileged to take over the work of the long-time Knowledge Manager, Patricia Diaz. As the new lead on knowledge management, I’ll be documenting local youth development and digital media instruction practice, training new coordinators & staff, managing the online community, the Village (a social network where youth members meet and post their digital media projects), and supporting local affiliate and new partners within the international Network…all out of their office at the Museum of Science, Boston.

To give you a little background, the Clubhouse learning approach is designed to empower youth from all backgrounds to become more capable, creative, and confident learners. This approach is grounded in research from the fields of education, developmental and social psychology, cognitive science, and youth development. It builds on research on the role of affect and motivation in the learning process, the importance of social context, and the interplay between individual and community development. It leverages new technologies to support new types of learning experiences and engage youth. Read more at http://www.computerclubhouse.org/content/learning-model. I also referenced these theories quite a bit in my masters thesis research.

So next week, I’m heading off to Phoenix and Tucson AZ to meet the Coordinators in my new region, the lovely SouthWest USA at our regional meeting. I also got to catch up with my MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten peeps, and get into some of the new things they’re exploring with bringing Scratch software into the physical world, so I can bring some learning out to AZ with me. I have to say, Lego Education WeDo kits are damn fun….play my game to see!

Danielle’s Friendly Gator Remix with Lego WeDo & Scratch from Danielle Martin on Vimeo.

[This post was first published on MIT Colab Radio blog, as part of the Media Mindfulness series]

This spring, I rode Boston’s #66 bus with a camera, an audio recorder and a gaggle of ten to sixteen-year-olds.  Why?  To jump on a unique chance to use photography as a reflective tool for investigating what makes neighborhoods tick.

A group of staff and volunteers encouraged these youth to use their new critical photographic eyes, honed during a fifteen-week training institute, to document and compare two neighborhood centers in Boston.  Each youth, in his own way, formed a new definition for photojournalist and activist.  These students are part of the Boston based international non-profit Peace in Focus.  Founded in 2007, the organization aims to create social change by engaging youth in a dialogue about peace in their own lives and their communities and giving them the critical photojournalism skills to become local, place-based voices for change.

After four four to six-hour outings, the youth decided to produce a collaborative essay of photographic pairs, highlighting both visual and attitudinal similarities and differences in the two corners.  These photos will become part of the citizen media displaying on the storefront screens of the Knight Foundation funded public art project called Virtual Street Corners, which seeks to break down the divide and distance between two very diverse communities with significant historical connections: Coolidge Corner in Brookline, and Dudley Square in Roxbury.

John Ewing, the Virtual Street Corner’s creator, noted in a PBS IDEAS Lab blog post:

“The Greater Boston neighborhoods of Brookline and Roxbury are 2.4 miles apart, yet there is little interaction between them because of divisions of race and class…It is my goal…to inspire or provoke people into having more involved conversations and exchanges. I’d even like to see people travel from one location to the other. Despite it being a 15-minute bus ride between these two neighborhoods, it is amazing how rarely this happens.”

Here’s a video version of the youths’ collective photo essay, entitled “Our Journey to the Corners,” also featured in an exhibit at the USES Harriett Tubman House in Roxbury, where they held their Saturday training sessions.  All the photographs that appear in this short movie were captured by Peace in Focus youth participants, showing a mix of shots from Coolidge Corner on the left and Dudley Square on the right.  The audio you hear is pulled from interviews the youth did with storeowners and randomly recorded during the bus rides.

Voices heard include:

• Danielle Martin, PiF Instructor
• Dounia, youth participant
• Jumaada, owner of Nubian Notion, Dudley Sq
• Ethel Weis, owner of Irvings Toy & Card Shop, Coolidge Corner
• Khadijah, youth participant
• Willy, the 66 Bus Blues Man

Post by Danielle Martin.