Tag Archives: global kids

April Hive Meet-Up Recap: Summer coding, Leah + Rubin = Hive expansion, and more!

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From this point forward, we’re going to recap the amazing-ness that is our monthly member meet-ups.  On the third Thursday of every month, 25-40 Hive NYC members gather to learn more about other youth programs in the city, brainstorm around new opportunities, share updates on their projects, and generally enjoy each others company. It’s an incredible group of educators/peers/colleagues/friends, and we’d like to share a glimpse of what results when we’re able to come together to do cool stuff. The structure is generally as follows:

  • Host organization leads a brief ice breaker
  • Host presents overview of their youth programs, or more specifically, updates on their Hive-supported projects
  • Sometimes a guest will join us to introduce/demo a relevant tool or concept
  • Activity and/or brainstorm around a timely topic, upcoming event, emerging product theme (either as an entire group or in break-out groups followed by a share-out)
  • Snacks!

Last week we were hosted by The YMCA of Greater New York, at their international headquarters on West 63rd St.  Lori Benson, VP of Healthy Lifestyles and Membership initiatives, kicked off our ice breaker – there were a variety of cards on a table with different images, and we were all asked to select a card that spoke to us in a positive way, then share why we chose that card with the group.  Through this activity, we discovered a bit more about each other, who were the music lovers, the artists, the childhood camping enthusiasts, the world travelers, and those that directly connected the images and positive experiences with the work we do in the Hive every day. Next Dana Mantella, Director of City-Wide Teen Programs, shared an overview of programs that address everything from college readiness and civic engagement to healthy lifestyles and the arts.

Then we announced that Leah Gilliam, formerly of Institute of Play, joined Hive NYC as Portfolio Strategist, where she’ll help develop systems and pathways that align youth across projects and programs, as well as work to productize, ship and scale the best ideas that come out of the network.  She’s been a Hive member for quite some time, and we’re excited to have her on board! Also, we introduced that Rubin Museum of Art has joined as a new member of the network – also looking forward to the opportunity to collaborate with them moving forward. Next up: Mark Surman introduced Mozilla’s Summer Code Party campaign, and explained the commitment to make stronger the connection between making and learning, as well as the desire to help the world become more web-literate!  Jess Klein detailed how she’s working on developing projects that make it easy to learn how the web works, using tools such as Hackasaurus and the 2-pane editor.  You can follow her process and her progress, as well as see some mock-ups  on her blog.

She also facilitated a short brainstorm where everyone shared the most common tools and places their youth spend their time online, as well as their current interests. Having this information will help Hive NYC, Jess and the Mozilla Learning team plan and build projects that address the direct interests and skill sets of one of the core audiences for campaign – youth!

As an example of the type of Hive project that would work well as part of the Summer Code Party campaign, I briefly shared my own experience beta testing a project with my daughter that combined Hackasaurus with Inanimate Alice, to use storytelling as the entry for learning how to remix the web. Jess will be hosting open office hours for Hive NYC members on May 9th from 2-5pm, in case you’re interested in discussing or developing webby projects to feature on Mozilla’s campaign site.  Please email her if you’re interested.  If you’re interested in learning more about Mozilla’s campaign, developing your own webby activities, or just joining the party, sign up here. Jeff Smink from The National Summer Learning Association shared an update on their efforts to help connect the DOE with Hive members to develop innovative summer programs.  As a pilot this summer, Global Kids will be working with two high school teachers to co-plan and deliver a program, and will document their process to help inform planning for summer 2013.  Stay tuned! We wrapped up with members sharing updates on upcoming events and projects – best way to stay up to date on activities and opportunities is via our Facebook page or @HiveLearningNYC on Twitter. Until next month!

Global Kids to Develop Badging System in Partnership with Hive

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This is re-posted by Hive NYC member Barry Joseph. Barry directs the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids, Inc., helping urban youth acquire leadership skills and engage in efforts to address global issues through the production of digital media.

GLOBAL KIDS, INC. ANNOUNCES NEW BADGING SYSTEM TO CERTIFY INFORMAL AND INTEREST-DRIVEN LEARNING

More than two dozen institutions in New York City and Chicago invited to participate

Through a generous grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Global Kids, Inc. is excited to announce that it is developing a new badging system for New York City and Chicago members of The Hive Learning Networks. The Hive Learning Network is a community of civic and cultural institutions dedicated to transforming the learning landscape and creating opportunities for youth to explore their interests in virtual and physical spaces. Up to 28 Hive member organizations will pilot badging programs within the system, both for their own organizational needs and for the broader Hive network. Global Kids (GK) will contribute the first series of badges, for global citizenship and civic participation, and be amongst the first to offer a model demonstrating how the Badging System can be deeply integrated throughout a youth-serving organization.

The project addresses MacArthur’s interests in strengthening informal learning institutions and using digital badging systems to motivate, scaffold, and certify the informal and interest-driven learning of the youth they serve.  This project will address the two while expanding the breadth and depth of learning opportunities for youth in both cities. Civic and cultural institutions within Hive NYC and Hive Chicago will be invited to participate in the first year of the project. Some Hive members will use their content expertise to contribute new badges for the use of other Hive members, while others will create badges just for youth within their programs. Some organizations will integrate the badging system into their programming, while others will use it to connect youth they serve with other Hive youth, resources, and activities.

For example, Global Kids will integrate the system within our after-school programming to offer Global Kids youth leaders:

  • Assessment, both formative and summative, to provide meaningful feedback about their participation in our programs and qualified certifications that can be shared with those in the workforce and at universities;
  • Deeper engagement with Global Kids’ programs, through games-based techniques and an online social network;
  • Scaffolded learning, supporting them to find their own path through Global Kids’ programs;
  • Enhanced lifelong learning skills by developing their ability to value what they learn at Global Kids, give name to it, and connect it with their formal and informal learning; and
  • A more democratic learning experience, in which they get to take part in their own assessment process and shape the system itself.

The Hive Badging System will be a branded version of Global Kids’ installation of LearningTimes’ BadgeStack. LearningTimes provides tools and expertise to the world’s most innovative organizations to create powerful interactive online learning experiences. LearningTimes’ BadgeStack is one of the most robust badge-based learning platforms on the market today, and includes features key to executing GK’s vision. Developed in 2011 and released for public use in 2012, BadgeStack was the first to fully integrate with Mozilla’s Open Badging Infrastructure. The key features of the new site will include:

  • A youth feature-set
  • An admin feature-set
  • Digital badges
  • A digital transcript
  • Digital portfolios
  • Missions, power-ups, and rubrics
  • Facebook integration
  • GK and Network-wide badges

Global Kids began developing its first badging system four years ago, within an after school setting funded by the MacArthur Foundation, which supported youth to recognize, talk about, and demonstrate a range of digital literacy skills. This system was later taken to scale within the New York Public Library, adapted for use within a K-6 school in New Orleans and an Atlanta middle school, and is currently in development for additional schools. This experience also informed a badge implementation to train youth to become serious game designers, in partnership with MOUSE, and to assess, direct, and engage interest-driven learning for the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo (the latter funded by The Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in The New York Community Trust).

Today, Global Kids is poised to play a prominent role to advance our collective understanding of the educational potential of badging systems, demonstrating how digital media can provide a network binding together the institutions within youth’s learning ecology and supporting the development of the lifelong learning skills required to strategically shape and navigate those ecologies.

Emoti-Con! A-Team in the House

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Hello Hive members!  We are the Youth Action Team or A-team, a group of teens from different Hive organizations that meet every other week on Fridays to plan Emoti-Con!
As mentioned in a previous post, Emoti-Con! is an annual gathering of tech-smart teens, where they showcase their work and compete in a Youth Digital Media and Technology Challenge.  There are fabulous prizes involved for winning projects!

Emoti-con 2011

As the A-Team, we have chosen to participate in the planning of Emoti-Con! in order to lend an important youth voice  to the event and to put our existing skills and interests to use.  We’ve been busy working with Global Kids staff Daria Ng and Joliz Cedeño on several tasks, including choosing what swag (a.k.a FREE STUFF) Emoti-Con! participants will get for coming, brainstorming ideas for guest speakers, developing an activity for all participants, and writing blog posts and tweets to promote the event. We’ll also be emailing all Hive members interested in participating so that we can be your main contact in the coming months.

During Emoti-Con! you will see us documenting the day through photo and video, helping out at registration and lunch, emcee’ing, and facilitating the group activities.  Some of us will even be submitting projects for the challenge.  You’ll know who the A-Team is by the different colored t-shirts we’ll be wearing.  We’re all looking forward to seeing what teens in NYC are doing with digital media and technology and the awesome projects that will be showcased on Saturday, June 2nd.

In the next blog post, you’ll hear more details about registering for Emoti-Con! 2012.  In the meantime, here are some social media challenges for you and/or the youth you work with to participate in.

Facebook: Post your favorite emoticon on our Facebook wall and tell us why it’s your favorite. The post with the most number of “Likes” wins a $50 iTunes gift card.  Note: you have to “like” Emoti-Con! to be eligible to win.  You can also Read our FAQ’s on Facebook.

Twitter: Tweet @EmotiCon_NYC about what you’re looking forward to at Emoti-Con!  The challenge: Your tweet must rhyme!  We’ll choose the best tweet and the winner gets a $25 iTunes gift card!  Note: you have to follow @EmotiCon_NYC to be eligible to win.  (Sample tweet: Looking forward to the box lunches and to projects that pack some punches! @EmotiCon_NYC)

Below are our bios so you can learn more about who we are.

A-Team Bios

  • My name is Omar A. and I am 15 years old. I am a sophomore at Hudson High School of Learning Technologies.  I am a MOUSE Corps member. This is my second year participating on the Youth Action Team.  I am currently saving up for my first Tron motorcycle.  This year I’m most focused on my design skills.
  • My name is Kim B.,17-year-old senior at International High School at LaGuardia Community College. I  am representing MOUSE.  I am a musician and I play the guitar and sing.  Also, I’m a little tech geek myself.  I’m a very mean, unapproachable person. So, drop by and say hi.
  • My name is Thorn G. and I am a senior at Paul Robeson High School.  I am also a Global Kids Leader and have helped plan Global Kids’ annual youth conference. My interests include TV, chocolate, music, video games and technology.
  • My name is Sharon M. and I am a folk and jazz concert enthusiast, aspiring music journalist, and whole-hearted arts lover. I also enjoy watching the Food Network’s awesomely cheesy competition shows, and hope to one day feature my infamous tofu-spaghetti sauce on the show Worst Cooks in America. When not making a mess in the kitchen, I can be found whipping up art projects at Eyebeam!
  • My name is Neil N. and I am 15 years old. I attend Hudson High School of Learning Technologies and I am interested in Hardware Engineering. The program that I represent is MOUSE.
  • My name is Luis N.  I am 17 years old from Queens, New York and a Global Kids Leader.  A jack of all trades, I enjoy writing, solving math problems and using these two skills in my work on computers. Through my interest in computers, I’ve learned about programing and engineering.
  • My name is Jacqueline S. and I’m 16 years old. I currently attend Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens. I represent Global Kids. My interests are illustration, graphic design, game design and photography.

Youth-Run Talk Show on Sustainability

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Two exciting opportunities for youth from Hive NYC member Global Kids!
First, Let’s Talk Sustainability is a program where teens have been creating virtual talk shows about environmental issues related to sustainability.  Their first broadcast will take place this Friday!  Topics will include food justice issues and how factory farming affects our environment.
When: Friday, Oct. 28 at 4:30pm ET
Where: 
Next, the Playing 4 Keeps Internship Program (P4K) invites high school students to apply for an opportunity to play games, design games for social good, visit game design companies, develop leadership skills and launch online game design projects.  

P4K interns will meet every Tuesday from 4-6pm at the Global Kids’ office in Manhattan from November 2011 to June 2012.  Click here to learn more and for application details.

MobilityShifts 2011 Recap

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MobilityShifts: An International Future of Learning Summit was a week-long summit that took place from October 10-16, 2011 and featured a conference, workshops, a science fair, performances, and exhibitions focused on the changing landscape of learning using digital media. A continuation of The New School’s biennial Politics of Digital Culture conference series, MobilityShifts added an international layer to the current debate about learning with digital media, with a particular emphasis on learning outside the bounds of schools and universities.

“MobilityShifts is about bringing together the people, theories, projects, and organizations that are doing the most exciting work in the area of digital learning, and starting a dialogue that will rethink the future of education,” said summit chair Trebor Scholz, a faculty member at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.Hive NYC members Global Kids (GK), the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) led a workshop at Mobility Shifts :: International Future of Learning Summit. Attracting a group of 35 participants, Barry Joseph, Daria Ng, of GK), Anthony Negron (NYSCI), and Michael J. Foster (AMNH) presented each of their Hive Learning Network NYC related projects.

The workshop was split into two parts.  First, each presenter presented youth projects that used mobile technology for STEM or civic engagement in after school settings.  The discussion centered around mobile digital tools and their educational affordance. Global Kids spoke about their project with the New York Public Library called “NYC Haunts,” where middle school students in the Bronx created a location-based game on iPads using the platform SCVNGR to learn about local history and explore larger social issues such as clean air, religious tolerance and racial differences.

The second program involved the American Museum of Natural History’s “Urban Biodiversity Network,’ where high school students used Android smartphones that were connected to a badging system developed by Global Kids, to investigate the impact of intense human developments on urban ecology.

The New York Hall of Science developed a program called “C3 Pollution Patrol,” where middle school students used handheld smartphones to research and report on local environmental conditions in their neighborhood, as a means of advocating for change.

In the second part of the workshop, we opened up the session to participation and allowed those in the session to create a geolocative game using SCVNGR in small groups.

Here is the presentation from Global Kids.

Were you able to attend this summit at MobilityShifts?  If so, would love you hear your feedback in comments!