Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience

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Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience

• Bertram (Chip) Bruce
• Graduate School of Library and Information
  Science
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Communities

• Learning communities
• Online communities
• Bringing the community into the classroom (Moll
  funds of knowledge)
• Taking the classroom to the community (service
  learning)

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The community is the curriculum

• The good we secure for ourselves is precarious
  and uncertain until it is secured for all of us
  and incorporated into our common life. --Jane
  Addams

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Dewey on inquiry

• Thus the question of integration of mind-body in
  action is the most practical of all questions we
  can ask of our civilization. ... Until this
  integration is effected in the only place where
  it can be carried out, in action itself, we shall
  continue to live in a society in which a soulless
  and heartless materialism is compensated for by
  soulful but futile idealism and spiritualism.

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Progressive education

• Respect for diversity, meaning that each
  individual should be recognized for his or her
  own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and
  cultural identity, and
• the development of critical, socially-engaged
  intelligence, which enables individuals to
  understand and participate effectively in the
  affairs of their community in a collaborative
  effort to achieve a common good. --John Dewey
  Project on Progressive Education, U Vermont

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Social reconstruction

• There is no good education apart from some
  conception of the good society...The great
  weakness of progressive education is that it has
  elaborated no theory of social welfare. --George
  Counts, PEA address, 1932
• Ella Flagg Young on teaching democracy

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Public spaces

• it is not only a matter of admission and
  inclusion in predefined public spaces it is...a
  matter of transformation of our institutions and
  public spaces --Greene, 1998

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Self awareness

• Our students dont come here because they are
  consciously seeking a liberating education or
  because they support Puerto Rican independence.
  They come here because they know that this school
  will work hard not to neglect them and because
  theyll find out who they are. Iván, a teacher

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Nurturing

• This school is my sanctuary. I know this because
  once I step outside these doors my problems come
  back. Theyre just waiting outside the doors to
  smack me in my face and start all over again. I
  stay at this school because I dont have to worry
  about my problems. I got my mind set on other
  things. Damien, a PACHS student, in
  Antrop-González, 2003

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Healthy environment

• Dicen que el Coquí no puede cantar ni vivir fuera
  de la isla. Aquí, el Coquí canta a su isla con
  amor, sobreviviendo a la ciudad de los vientos
  aun en temperaturas bajo cero. --Luis Padial
  Doble

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PACHS curriculum

• the development of cognitive skills in the areas
  of Natural and Social Science, Mathematics,
  Communications, and the Arts.
• the development of self-identity and self-worth
  by analyzing the Puerto Rican and Latino reality.
• hands-on experience... video, bomba y plena,
  typing, dance, guitar and journalism.

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Youth activism community change

• Ginwright, Noguera, Cammorota, 2006
• self awareness
• social awareness
• global awareness

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Community Media Lab

• La Voz community newspaper, part of the
  Participatory Democracy Project
• Theater, e.g., The Spark/La Chispa, about the
  1966 Division St. riots
• Community Internet Radio
• Podcasts of oral histories

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Café Teatro Batey Urbano

• Cyber Wash
• by Ghost

Text
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Social justice technology

• economic development
• individual
• community
• liberatory possibilities
• critique of oppression

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Networked information systems

• Rehab donated computers
• Configure operating systems, software
• Local distance networking
• Set up a community technology center
• Teach people in the site

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Inquiry-based learning

• Fall 2006 uiuc.edu/goto/ibo
• Students worked with community members
  Digital Archive, literacy across the curriculum,
  hydroponics garden, violence reduction, community
  wellness program
• Inquiry units inquiry.uiuc.edu (PACHS)
• Developing better communication practices

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Community Informatics

• Community information systems
• Professional research in action
• CI Corps practicum
• Networked information systems
• Inquiry-based learning

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Students

• Ive always been passionate about literacy and
  social justice. I also have always loved
  libraries. I just didnt know that those
  seemingly disparate interests could be joined.
  Growing up in inner-city Chicago as a child of
  immigrants, I spent most of my time at my
  neighborhood public library. Although my mother
  only made it to 6th grade in her native land of
  Mexico, she imbued us with a love for books.
  Reading opened up so many possibilities in my
  life because it provides access to information.
  --Dali

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Lessons

• People participate because of felt needs
• Community action mobilizes diverse interests
• Challenges working across boundaries
• Learning when theory is integrated with action
• Technology is made, not found
• Things belong together after they are brought
  together
• Teaching as listening learning as telling

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The community is the curriculum

• Highlander School Martin Luther King, Rosa
  Parks, Pete Seeger, Bill Moyers, Eleanor
  Roosevelt, ...
• connections to Jane Addams, John Dewey
• Myles Horton cannot teach responsible
  participation in democracy without access
• we make the road by walking --Horton Freire

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Coffee cups

• Democracy is conversation. --John Dewey
• La taza de café puertorriqueña that kept us going
  through the process.

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Community as Intellectual Space

• Paseo Boricua, June 15-17, 2007

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Read more

• Puerto Rican Cultural Center www.prcc-chgo.org
• Community Informatics Corps masters program
  www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/ms/cic.html
• Ginwright, et al., 2006, Beyond resistance!
  Youth activism and community change
• Horton, 1990, The long haul
• Coffee cups, frogs, lived experience
  www.uiuc.edu/goto/frogs

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Acknowledgements

• Jose Lopez
• Matt Rodriguez
• Sunny Jeong
• Muzhgan Nazarova
• many more...

• Batey Urbano
• PRCC
• Community Informatics Initiative
• Ann Bishop
• Sarai Lastra
• Alejandro Luis Molina

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Thank you for listening!