Category Archives: Participatory culture & learning

Behold ye olde dissertation…

OVERVIEW

This story began in Africa, and it continued in southern California. Let’s take it “home” by making sense of the journey. I utilized an ethnographic approach in order to study the learning culture, pedagogical process, and participant skill development of four out-of-school educational programs. To examine learning culture, I interpreted the extent to which participants indicated their sense of safety, connection, engagement, and empowerment. To conceptually assess pedagogical process, I characterized each program’s modeling of participatory governance, participatory learning, and playfulness. Three “master skills” — NML/SEL hybrids that I refer to as Dynamic Appreciation, Resource Engagement, and Respectful Negotiation — were my means for interpreting participants’ skill development.

Now let’s put these four case studies into conversation by answering RQ11, which asks, “Across these four case studies, which trends and/or relationships between/among culture, process, and skill development does this study suggest?”

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS

Safety. These data suggest that, when participants perceive a lower level of safety, their levels of connection, engagement, and empowerment also tend to be low.

Connection. When there is social-emotional safety, it seems as though it becomes significantly easier and more desirable to connect with a group, connect with a caring individual, and connect with self. Trust is the cornerstone upon which connection depends.

Engagement. Engagement appears related to both safety and connection. If you don’t feel particularly safe and/or connected, where’s the incentive to engage? Engaging under those tenuous circumstances is risky; your identity or your work might be disrespected in such a norms-challenged, shallowly connected culture. On the other hand, when levels of safety and connection are high, then engagement levels also tend to be high.

Whereas safety still seems like the cornerstone of all (e.g., everything flows from safety), the relationship between connection and engagement might be bidirectional.

Empowerment. Where engagement leads, empowerment tends to follow; or is it the opposite? … Let us conclude that engagement and empowerment are positively correlated and potentially boast a bidirectional relationship.

Participatory Governance. Empowerment and participatory governance are discrete constructs that overlap with regards to participants’ decision-making. When participants can make decisions for themselves, they sense empowerment; when they can make decisions about how the learning community operates, there is participatory governance. This corpus shows that when participants are empowered, power-sharing tends to be pluralistic — but not always. In the case of L4C, participants sensed personal empowerment even in the absence of equally shared control. When power-sharing is pluralistic, however, participants always sense empowerment.

Participatory Learning. Step One and Step Two of the participatory learning model (Felt, 2011) pertain to warmly welcoming participants and introducing participants to a learning community’s resources. These steps were universally modeled, and it’s little wonder – those processes are relatively simple, intuitive, and “safe” (in that they destabilize neither traditional classroom relationships nor traditional teaching practices).

In the case of ELED, the extent to which participants engaged with Step Three, which is about creation, was limited in Phase One and more considerable in Phase Two. I believe that this phenomenon will arise whenever educators value students’ acquisition of knowledge above their production of knowledge.

Steps Four and Five, which are respectively about iterating based on feedback and taking on new roles and responsibilities, were the least frequently modeled. I tend to think that this reflects the wider world as well. Compressed timelines and “perfection vs. failure” paradigms don’t lend themselves to iteration (Step Four), and traditional social hierarchies prohibit students’ varying and diverse access to the identities of expert, learner, leader, etc (Step Five).

Playfulness. Across this dissertation’s case studies, iteration was more commonly manifest than joy. This might be an artifact of program design; given Project NML’s definition of Play as iteration, and established educational traditions that either disallow fun or distrust its legitimacy as a learning goal, facilitators and curricula may have failed to consciously promote “joy.”

GLOSSARY

Culture. Norms, values, ambient emotional energy (i.e., affective climate).

Safety.

• Physical safety: bullying-related violence, gang violence, school shootings, corporal punishment, sexual predation, inadequate provisions (e.g., non-existent or polluted drinking water, exorbitantly priced or nutritionally deficient food, broken or germ-ridden bathrooms), unsafe built environment (e.g., uneven pavement, faulty wiring), extreme temperatures (e.g., stifling heat, bitter cold); and natural disasters (e.g., tornadoes, earthquakes).
• Social-emotional safety: bullying, unhealthy levels of competitiveness between and among community members, self-destructive involvement with social comparison, disloyalty and lack of integrity, inconsistent delivery of rewards and punishments, and the application of excessively punitive measures.
  • Relational trust = Relational trust depends upon four supports: interpersonal respect; willingness to go “above and beyond”; confidence in the other’s capacity to perform his/her role competently; and faith in the other’s personal integrity.

Connection.

• Connecting to a group = Sensing relatedness, school belonging.
• Connecting to a supportive individual = Bonding with a compassionate school-based “caregiver.”
• Connecting to self =
  • Self-compassion = Being kind and understanding toward yourself, realizing that most people go through similar problems, and trying to maintain a more balanced awareness of your emotional experiences.
  • Shame resilience = Acknowledging personal vulnerabilities, raising critical awareness of how social/cultural expectations shape and narrowly define experiences, reaching out to others to both find and offer empathy, and developing fluency in the language of shame.

Engagement. 

• Student emotional interest = Students approach the learning context with a sense of enjoyment, fascination
• Student cognitive interest = Students can and do demonstrate comprehension, retention of material
  • Relevance = The extent to which the learning context’s foci/material respects students’ cultural and geographical worlds, identities and interests, workplace requirements for the present and the future.

Empowerment.

• Self-efficacy = Belief in one’s capacity to produce effects.
• Collective efficacy = The degree to which individuals in a system believe that they can organize and execute courses of action required to achieve collective goals.

Process. Practices, approaches, ways of working.

Participatory Governance. See Wong, Zimmerman, and Parker (2010).

• Vessel control = Lack of youth voice and participation; adults have total control.
• Symbolic control = Youth have voice; adults have most control.
• Pluralistic control = Youth have voice and an active participant role; youth and adults share control.
• Independent control = Youth have voice and an active participant role; adults give youth most control.
• Autonomous control = Youth have voice and an active participant role; youth have total control.

Participatory Learning.

• Step One = The first step in the participatory learning model features the learning community avidly welcoming all entrants.
• Step Two = The second step in the participatory learning model features learners exploring a learning context’s constraints, opportunities, boundaries, and affordances. Asking questions and facing challenges are means by which learners might collect this information; the context can assist by providing transparent rules and norms.
• Step Three = Step three features the learning context providing access to materials for creative participation, and learners pursuing their own learning in a self-directed and/or novel fashion by constructing products and exchanging feedback.
• Step Four = The fourth step in the participatory learning model features the community providing feedback, the learner steadily incorporating this feedback into his/her work, and developing passion(s) as a result of this meaningful experience.
• Step Five = Finally, the fifth step in the model features the context providing access to diverse community members’ reflections and roles. The learner has the option, should s/he choose to exercise it and distinguish him/herself as worthy, to assume a position of more power/responsibility.

Playfulness.

• Iteration = When iteration (e.g., experimentation, observation, revision) is an essential part of the learning process, then it both signals and compels other practices. These practices include, first, lowering the stakes around “failure.” If learning experiences are meant to merely set up the next attempt, then there is no such thing as failure. The second practice is restoring the balance between protection and freedom (Gill, 2007). If the implications of “failure” are less significant, than adults can “afford” to let youth negotiate novel pathways that might lead to disappointment, frustration, or innovation. Tim Gill, author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society (2007), describes this as a “resilient approach to risk” (p. 82). Third, iteration relates to supporting learners’ agency. If many attempts are to be expected, then learners can decide how they construct each attempt in order to approach their goal. It is worth noting that, since gaming and inventing both fundamentally rely upon iteration, they are effective strategies for propelling a playful learning process.
• Joy = When joy is an essential part of the learning process (e.g., a key purpose and a frequently manifested emotion), then it both signals and compels other practices. These practices include identifying “fun” among one’s top objectives vis-à-vis a learning experience. If you’re not having fun, then the process isn’t playful.

This isn’t to say that the learning/work is easy, merely that it’s enjoyable. There’s a certain sort of joy that’s associated with flow, “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 4). The optimal experience or flow experience consists of “…situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a personʼs goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. 40). According to McGonigal (2011):

When we choose our hard work, we enjoy the stimulation and activation that makes us want to dive in, join together, and get things done. And this optimistic invigoration is way more mood-boosting than relaxing. As long as we feel capable of meeting the challenge, we report being highly motivated, extremely interested, and positively engaged by stressful situations. And these are the key emotional states that correspond with overall well-being and life satisfaction” (p. 32).

A second practice is sharing laughter. When processes are joyful, participants tend to smile, joke, and use laughter to both express their satisfaction and flatten social hierarchies.

A third practice is embracing spontaneity. If joy is a key purpose, then shifting directions and/or acting on impulse, be it a silly whim or divine inspiration, is both permitted and supported.

Skills. Capacities, abilities, competencies.

NMLs. New Media Literacies. “A set of cultural competencies and social skills young people need” in a culture that “shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement” (Jenkins et al, 2006, p. 4).

• As of today, the NMLs are: Play; Performance; Simulation; Appropriation; Multitasking; Distributed Cognition; Collective Intelligence; Judgment; Transmedia Navigation; Networking; Negotiation; and Visualization.

SELs. Social and emotional learning skills. The pedagogy of emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

• As of today, the SELs are: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making

Master Skills. NML/SEL hybrids.

• Dynamic Appreciation = When its constituent NMLs and SELs are considered together, they articulate a hands-on, other-oriented way of knowing. To simultaneously (and exclusively) apply Play, Performance, social awareness, and self-management to a particular situation enables a learner to exercise creativity, rise above his/her own views or emotions, appreciate another person’s perspective, and “go with the flow.”
• Resource Engagement = To simultaneously (and exclusively) apply Collective Intelligence, Appropriation, self-awareness, and social awareness to a particular situation enables a learner to efficiently engage with environmental resources (e.g., ideas, talents, infrastructure, agriculture, etc) and use them in meaningful, ethical ways.
• Respectful Negotiation = To simultaneously (and exclusively) apply Negotiation, Networking, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills to a particular situation enables a learner to collaborate productively. Respect, caring, and conscientiousness undergird this practice. Whereas Dynamic Appreciation has a learner “step into another person’s shoes” in order to better appreciate his/her humanity, this skill begins from that place of appreciation and deals with how to cooperate. Whereas Resource Engagement could be enacted in solo contexts (with a learner collecting data or considering information independently), Respectful Negotiation must be practiced with another.

RESEARCH PARTNERS & CASE STUDIES

Project New Media Literacies

Dr. Henry Jenkins launched research group Project New Media Literacies (Project NML) in 2006 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2009, both Jenkins and Project NML moved to the University of Southern California (USC).

The formation of Project NML occurred in the wake of Jenkins and colleagues’ publication of the provocative and widely read white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006). Inspired to investigate and support the types of learning that they had documented in their paper, members of Project NML stepped outside of the “ivory tower” and worked directly with both students and educators. Project NML’s goal was to “…identify and create educational practices that will prepare teachers and students to become full and active participants in the new digital culture” (Project New Media Literacies, n.d., para. 5). Project NML realized that the extent to which its philosophies and tools would shape classroom life would be determined by the degree to which educators appreciated new media literacies and themselves felt comfortable with participatory culture.

PLAY!. In 2010, from its new home at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, Project NML designed and launched a multi-faceted, multi-year investigation entitled Participatory Learning And You! (PLAY!). This investigation maintained Project NML’s focus on educator outreach, explaining its rationale thusly:

Teachers play a monumental role in facilitating opportunities for students to become critical thinkers, proactive citizens, and creative contributors to the world. In our rapidly shifting digital and social landscape, unequal access to experiences that help build the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute in these evolving environments can prevent youth from meaningful participation in them. This “participation gap”, we believe, cannot be wholly addressed when teachers themselves are not afforded these same opportunities to grow and learn (Project New Media Literacies, n.d., para. 3).

PLAY! sought to discover ways in which Project NML researchers and like-minded peers could integrate the tools, insights, and skills of a participatory culture into the public education system in the United States. Rather than a purely clinical, positivist data dive, Project NML conceptualized PLAY! “as a form of intervention”; this approach compelled “being on-the-ground and listening to participants’ needs in order to include them in the process” (Project New Media Literacies, n.d., para. 7).

This dissertation examines the three (intervention-like) components of Project NML’s PLAY! investigation:

• Explore Locally, Excel Digitally (ELED), an after-school program at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools that Project NML staff facilitated over 15 weeks during the spring of 2011 with a core group of eight high school students, most of them freshman at the New Open World Academy;
• The Summer Sandbox, a five-day professional development program at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools that Project NML facilitated twice during the summer of 2011, with nine Los Angeles Unified School District educators participating in Week 1 and 12 participating in Week 2;
• PLAYing Outside the Box (POTB), an extension of the Summer Sandbox, in which 10 of its graduates chose to participate during the fall semester of 2011. 

Laughter for a Change

Laughter for a Change, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, uses play to both follow and extend improvisational theater’s legacy of civic engagement. Its mission is to employ improvisational theater games and comedy training to foster new forms of learning, and to contribute to healing and a sense of well-being, particularly among underserved populations.

Founder Ed Greenberg established L4C in 2007, following his stint as a cultural envoy to Rwanda. Charged by the U.S. Department of State with the task of helping genocide survivors to “learn to laugh again,” Greenberg introduced improvisational theater to Rwandans (McFarren, 2011). He trusted that engaging with improv’s central tenets—“playing agreement, risk taking, spontaneity, changing perspectives, opening up to moments of discovery and surprise, [and] making active, not passive, choices”—would facilitate healing (as cited in McFarren, 2011, p. 166). And it did. Rwandan participants embraced the workshop enthusiastically and continued to create comedy content even after the program was over, prompting the head of the U.S. Department of State’s cultural envoy initiative to conclude, “This is the kind of program that keeps us doing what we do” (R. Keith, personal communication, November 1, 2007).

Greenberg and his staff of L4C Comedy Mentors use theater games to help participants build confidence and community. While L4C runs workshops with senior citizens, military veterans, and residents of homeless shelters, its primary focus is youths. Over the years, L4C Comedy Mentors have worked with such populations as juvenile offenders at Pacific Lodge Youth Services and fifth graders at five Los Angeles elementary schools.

During the spring of 2011, L4C applied and was accepted as a partner of Project NML’s PLAY On! program. Along with other PLAY On! partners, Greenberg presented L4C to Summer Sandbox participants. These partners invited Summer Sandbox participants to join their workshops for their own enjoyment and/or as members of PLAYing Outside the Box (POTB), the Summer Sandbox PD extension that required its participants to attend at least 8 hours of PLAY On! workshop programming.

Greenberg intended for his after-school L4C workshop to provide participating educators with the opportunity to co-learn with youth and to further develop their proficiency in various new media literacies (NMLs), particularly Play. Only one educator chose to attend L4C’s workshop (Week 2 participant Larry – see Chapter V); L4C nonetheless implemented its program, serving youth during the 2011-2012 school year.

This dissertation examines one of L4C’s projects with youth:

• L4C at RFK, a weekly after-school improvisational theater workshop with a core group of 12 high school students at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, most of whom were freshman at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LAHSA), that took place during the 2011-2012 school year.

Inspiration and FYI

One of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is you’re in the scene too. So hopefully to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you. No one is leading, you’re all following the follower, serving the servant. You cannot win improv (Colbert, 2011).

In my experiences I have observed that most students only will pursue out-of-the-box innovation if they feel that the environment is a safe space for spectacular failures – that is, if they believe that, regardless of outcome, their community will respect their unique perspectives and essential humanity.

“Most significant was the finding that schools with chronically weak trust reports throughout the period of the study had virtually no chance of improving in either reading or mathematics” (Bryk & Schneider, 2003, p. 43).

Imagine what would happen if all stakeholders, like improvisers, entered into a mutual safety contract – that is, I’ll keep this space safe for you and you keep it safe for me. Just imagine the authenticity, creativity, and reform that the community could cultivate.

On Friday, October 10, and Sunday, October 12, my dear friend Roni Ben-David and I will instruct an interactive course at a conference in San Francisco entitled Project Zero Perspectives: Making, Thinking, Understanding. We’re thrilled for the opportunity to work together and to share the extraordinary work of our service-learners.

Description of course:

Service-learning is a hands-on, holistically enriching strategy for developing global competence without leaving the country. This course will explore how two institutions — the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Joint Educational Project and the Jewish Community High School of the Bay — seek to enrich service by applying theoretical and conceptual understandings as well as enrich learning by encountering diverse others’ lived realities. While the institutions differ in terms of student populations, length of engagement, and service sites, both rely upon academic preparation, community partnerships, and thoughtful reflection. Course participants will identify the synergies between service-learning and global competence, articulating how global competence skills can be practiced within service-learning contexts. Then participants will brainstorm service-learning projects for their own students, analyzing with partners if/how these projects scaffold their students’ global awareness as well as cultivate their heads, hearts, and hands.

Goals of course:

KNOWLEDGE goals: By the end of this course, participants will know…

1a. The definition and key properties of service-learning.

1b. Characteristics of globally competent students — K-12 (Boix Mansilla & Jackson, 2011), post-secondary (Russo & Osborne, n.d.).

1c. How the USC Dornsife Joint Education Project & the Jewish Community High School of the Bay facilitate service-learning experiences that cultivate global competence.

2. ATTITUDE goals: By the end of this course, participants will believe…

2a. Service-learning is a valuable strategy not only for enhancing global competence, but also for enriching theoretical knowledge, supporting social-emotional competence, honing professional skills, learning about communities, and delivering useful assistance.

2b. Global competence is an important asset for work and life, both domestically and internationally.
3. PRACTICE goals: By the end of this course, participants will be able to…

1a. Brainstorm a service-learning experience for their institutions that respects their particular philosophies/objectives, models a process of academic preparation, community partnerships, and tailored curriculum, and incorporates reflection.

1b. Identify and amplify how these service-learning proposals facilitate students’ development of global competence characteristics.

Intended audience: 

Anyone interested in service-learning, high school administrators and educators (particularly grade 12), university administrators & educators (particularly sociology, community psychology, history, American Studies, urban planning, public policy, pre-service teaching), newcomers welcome!

re-posted from http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/open-classroom/hacking-for-gold-south-la-youths-code-towards-a-better-future.html

(from left): Kevin Amaya (student), Jerome Johnson (tech mentor), Ben Coppersmith (tech mentor), Gisela Hernandez (student), and Ashley Shorter (student) | Photo: J. Morr

Hacking for Gold: South L.A. Youths Code Towards a Better Future

By Laurel J. Felt |

May 5, 2014

Gisela Hernandez scrutinized the computer screen and frowned. “That’s going to make it really clashing,” she said, referring to the proposed change in font color.

“We can try it,” reasoned Ashley G. Shorter, Gisela’s friend since the start of this 2013-2014 school year and her coding partner for designing the homepage of Los Angeles Trade and Technical College (LATTC) Auto Shop.

“We can try to see what it looks like,” Gisela agreed, and turned back to her screen with equanimity. Ashley typed in the new code and hit the Preview button to evaluate the modification.

Along with these two young women, 18 other high school students were assembled in the Sage Hall Computer Lab at LATTC, each engrossed with their own projects. Time pressure, potential awards, and public visibility motivated their focus. By the end of WebSlam, the intensive 12-hour Saturday hack-a-thon, the youths’ websites would be evaluated by a panel of experts and launched on the Web.

Oscar Menjivar, founder and CEO of URBAN TxT, who had taught daily coding classes over the past week leading up to Saturday’s event, noted how engaged the students have been. “They don’t want to leave the computer station and the coding that they’re doing,” he said. “They’re liking it — they’re loving doing it.”

Nadia Despenza, WebSlam’s organizer, retold an anecdote that has become WebSlam legend: A group of three high school students — Jose Sandoval, Hector Linares, and Michael Taton — were tasked with developing the website for LATTC student Robert Hubbard’s cookie business, Shaquann’s Gourmet Cookies. “They told their mentor Steven, ‘We’re not having lunch today, we’re not doing that, we need to finish our website, we need to get this done,'” Despenza recalled. “And their mentor was like, ‘We have to have lunch, I’m super hungry.’ And they were like, ‘No, no breaks.'”

Steven eventually convinced the young men to grab a slice of pizza or a sandwich. But it wasn’t easy.

 

Client Robert Hubbard (Shaquann’s Gourmet Cookies) goes over the design elements he’d like incorporated into his website with Jose Sandoval (student), Hector Linares (student), Michael Taton (student), and Steven Sullivan (technology mentor) | Photo: J. Morr

 

WebSlam was born of Despenza’s determination to help youths learn about careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). WebSlam’s participants, half of whom are female and all of whom identify as either African-American or Latino, are youths who could use such help, as recent research suggests. While women represent slightly more than half of this nation’s population, and individuals of African-American and Latino descent represent 12% and 16%, respectively, ¹ only 19% of the high school students in America who took the 2012 Advanced Placement exam in Computer Science were female, and 12% identified as African-American or Latino. ² Unequal participation rates persist during college, with women earning 18% of all bachelor’s degrees in computer science, ³ and underrepresented minorities (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians) earning 18% of these degrees. ⁴ Workforce participation rates in computer science similarly vary along gender and ethnic lines; of all individuals employed in science and engineering careers, 27% are female and 11% are African-American or Latino. ⁵

This disparity has major economic implications, both for individuals and for the nation. According to U.S. News and World Report‘s 2014 coverage of the nation’s best jobs, in 2012 web developers earned a median salary of $62,500. ⁶ To put that figure in context, it is more than triple the median salary of a nail technician, and more than double the median salary of a preschool teacher. Construction workers’ and clinical laboratory technicians’ median salaries slightly exceed half those of web developers.

As Despenza explained, “A lot of our students think, ‘How am I going to get outside my neighborhood?’ or ‘How can I help my neighborhood, how can I support my family?’ And it boils down to, not only just a passion for learning, but how can I support myself?” As leading education blog Mind/Shift stated succinctly, “For low-income and disenfranchised youth, learning to code might lead to a lucrative career in an industry that’s both booming and lacking in diversity.” ⁷

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 28,500 new web developer jobs will be created from 2012 to 2022 ⁸; in fact, the next decade demands massively more highly skilled employees across the technology industry. The technology industry is growing, and there is space for our citizens — including women and people of color — to serve it.

This is why Despenza decided to earn a Master’s degree in STEM education, and join the staff at YouthBuild Charter School of California (YCSC) as STEM Coordinator. YCSC is a competency-based dropout recovery school rooted in social justice. YCSC oversees 18 sites across the state, with 13 in southern California. Three of these — Slauson Site at Home Sweet Home, Long Beach at W.I.N.T.E.R. YouthBuild, and South L.A. Site at CRCD Academy YouthBuild — sent some of their finest students to participate in WebSlam.

 

YCSC STEM Coordinator and WebSlam organizer Nadia Despenza | Photo: Laurel J. Felt

 

The WebSlam experience took place over six days. First, students attended five afternoon coding sessions, taught by Menjivar. In Despenza’s view, these sessions were crucial, not just educationally but also socially. “We just all became like one big team … they became like their own site.”

Joseph Guerrieri, LATTC’s Dean of Academic Affairs and Workforce Development, who hosted WebSlam at LATTC, would occasionally pop his head in to check out the students’ process. He recalled seeing several intimidated young people on the first day.

“Talking to Oscar [Menjivar], a lot of these students came in completely green, either having little or no background in this,” explained Guerrieri. “Just watching them work now, they look so confident. It’s really great to see that in one week … It’s remarkable.”

The infamous lunch refusal is consistent with many of the students’ behavior all week. Although instruction ended each day at 3 p.m., Menjivar said, “We had students stay until 4 — that’s the time that we stayed. But I think if we were to stay maybe later, until 8 or 9, I think they would have wanted to stay.”

Following this one-week intensive, participants arrived at LATTC on Saturday, April 12, for the 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. hack-a-thon. Students split into four teams and met with four LATTC-associated clients who needed new or updated websites. This local connection played directly to YCSC’s values. “YouthBuild is about giving back to the community,” said Despenza. “Freely you give, freely you receive.”

Student teams created wire frames that reflected their clients’ requests for particular styles and content, then distributed tasks amongst team members in order to finish each website by 6 p.m.

While WebSlam is Despenza’s brainchild, it’s several people’s baby. Samantha Walters, Colocation America’s Vice-President of Online Strategy, is among them. “I was doing an article for National Women’s Day and it took me an entire week to find five women in my industry who were making a difference,” she remembers. As soon as Walters heard of Despenza’s WebSlam concept, she delivered sponsorship dollars within 24 hours.

Despenza already had found a teacher in Menjivar, whose company, URBAN TxT, is dedicated to encouraging inner city teen males to become catalysts of change in urban communities. Guerrieri, who’s currently developing a digital media program at LATTC, embraced the opportunity to host WebSlam on campus. Melanie Vaget, Senior Manager of Culture & Engagement at Factual, a L.A.-based company that sells such products as global location data mapping and cleaning, rounded up several mentors from among Factual’s ranks. Not only was Vaget interested in supporting education and opportunity, she also was enthusiastic about providing a physical representation of a woman who works in the tech industry.

 

Colocation America VP of Online Strategies Samantha Walters talks to student Jose Sandoval and client Robert Hubbard | Photo: J. Morr

 

According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, several factors dissuade girls from participating in computing, including: computing curriculum that is disconnected from student interests and environments that are uncomfortable for girls; unequal opportunities and early experiences vis-à-vis computing; a sense of isolation for lone girls who get involved; perceptions of computing as masculine and “geeky”; and limited knowledge or inaccurate perceptions about what computing careers involve. ⁹

“This isn’t just a dream,” said Vaget, narrating what she hoped her presence would convey to female WebSlam participants. “This is me at the other end of the tunnel and you totally can get here …if you have it in your heart to stick with it, you can do it.”

Yasmeen Summerlin, an 11th grader at Youth Build’s Slauson site, worked with Morgan Mullaney, a Factual software engineer and WebSlam mentor, on a website for the Cosmetology Department team. Her procedural mastery and grasp of the vernacular was spot-on.

“I was resizing [an image] into a banner using Gimp so that we could put it on our website,” said Yasmeen. “So you either save it as a jpeg for image, and then png would be like if you don’t want no background on it, so the layers can come out. I stayed with the jpeg …”

Such commitment to and proficiency in both problem-solving and perseverance are among the most important participant outcomes of WebSlam.

“Today our server went down,” sighed Despenza, “and we just had to problem-solve right then on the spot. If the students hadn’t been here throughout the week they might have been like, ‘What do we do now?’ But they were like, ‘Let’s look up some codes!’ So they started to work through it.”

This also exemplifies sensitive and functional communication, another key take-away from WebSlam. “There was one kid who wasn’t talking too much to his group members,” said Menjivar. “But then after realizing, if I don’t talk to them, my ideas won’t be heard, he had to figure out, how do I talk to them?” Menjivar facilitated discussions on the subject, offered useful language for negotiating conversations, and modeled best practice by coordinating with Despenza aloud, for students to hear.

 

Factual tech mentor Morgan Mullaney (R) assists student Yasmeen Summer (L) with her site | Photo: J. Morr

 

Educational researchers and computer scientists report that learning to code develops practitioners’ systems thinking and collaboration skills, and might even inspire a passion for computer programming. ¹⁰ This is why hack-a-thons for students, particularly low-income students, have become more prevalent across the United States, from Oakland, CA, to Philadelphia, PA, to Seattle, WA.

Hack-a-thons are also occurring on a global scale. During the same weekend as YCSC’s WebSlam, UCLA hosted “L.A. Hacks,” a 36-hour event catering to ambitious, tech-savvy college students and conferring both monetary prizes and access to CEOs and VIPs associated with such hot companies as Tinder, Amazon, Coinbase, and Pandora. ¹¹ In Argentina, the city of Buenos Aires recently welcomed hackers to solve problems in the public sector as participants of FINDEMO, “the world’s first Public Innovation Festival.” ¹² And this April in New York, the Tribeca Film Institute is inviting coders, designers, and filmmakers to their hack-a-thon in order “to imagine and invent new possibilities for storytelling in an increasingly mobile and connected world, experimenting with storytelling on wearables, smartphones and tablets, using social media and connected devices.” ¹³

Back at YCSC’s WebSlam, the judges awarded top prize to the site built by the three young men who refused to leave for lunch; Yasmeen and her partner Anai’s Cosmetology site came in second; a team working on behalf of the Associated Student Government came in third; and Gisela, Ashley, and their colleague Kevin’s site for LATTC’s Automotive Department came in fourth. ¹⁴ But considering the participants’ knowledge gains, skill development, and professional prospects, as well as WebSlam partners’ collaborative success and the community’s receipt of both new websites and empowered learners, everybody was a winner.

As District 9 City Councilmember Curren Price said during his lunch-time site visit, these youth are part of a revolution, and their WebSlam helps to advance the rise of the “New Ninth” as a place for new ideas, new energy, and new enthusiasm.

Power to the people.

 

Students and teachers from YouthBuild Charter School of California, technology mentors, clients, employees from URBAN TxT, Colocation America, Factual, and Los Angeles Trade Tech College with Los Angeles City Council Member Curren Price (center) | Photo: J. Morr

 

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¹ National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2013). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2013. Special Report NSF 13-304.
² The College Board. (2012). Program Summary Report.
³ Ashcraft, C., Eger, E., & Friend, M. (2012). Girls in IT: The Facts. Boulder, CO: National Center for Women & Information Technology.
⁴ National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2013). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2013. Special Report NSF 13-304.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ “Best Technology Jobs: Web Developer.”
⁷ Mind/Shift. (2014, March 3). Looking for the Hidden Genius Within Disenfranchised Youth.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ashcraft, C., Eger, E., & Friend, M. (2012). Girls in IT: The Facts. Boulder, CO: National Center for Women & Information Technology.
¹⁰ Quillen, I. (2013, May 23). Why Programming Teaches So Much More Than Technical Skills.
¹¹ LA Hacks. “Info.”
¹² UNICEF Stories. (2014, March 17). FINDEMO: First Festival of Public Innovation.
¹³ “Hackathon Overview.”
¹⁴ Suttmeier, E. (2014, April 16). WebSlam a Huge Success.