Mathew Davis

Michele Masucci

Information Technology and Society Research Group of Temple University

______________

Introduction

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become an integral part of how people engage economic, educational and community life in modern urban society.  The spaces and places that comprise urban settings have similarly undergone tremendous change as a result of the ever expanding role of ICTs in daily life.  Our social arrangements, daily navigations and engagement in community endeavors are iteratively managed along with ICTs. Incorporating a consideration of the ICT needs of a community into planning efforts often lacks strategic direction that accounts for how ICTs may underpin development goals and urban design changes. This is particularly true in disadvantaged community settings where built environments are aging and often dilapidated, neighborhood schools fail to provide quality educations, and economic opportunities are sparse.  Some planners and designers are beginning to acknowledge the role of ICTs as a critical resource for “producing livable communities and sustainable economies.” [i] But scholars who examine the relationships between disparities faced at the margins of society have recognized that ICT use and access is often closely connected to educational attainment, economic status and community settings.[ii] [iii] [iv]

This paper will review one strategy employed in North Philadelphia’s Latino community to overcome barriers to accessing ICTs as a means of addressing development distress and inadequate infrastructure to sustain community quality of life goals.  The approach taken was to develop a university-community partnership between Asociación de Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM) and the Information Technology and Society Research Group (ITSRG) of Temple University. The aim of the APM-ITSRG partnership has been to implement a combination of ICT resource development, educational training and community assessment activities that will support the future implementation of a Community Media Center (Figure 1).  Plans call for the center to be built during the next three years; it is intended as a community setting for accessing ICT resources and educational programs, ultimately serving as a hub that fosters civic engagement among residents and community development within the neighborhood.

Fig.1.APM Media Center and Surrounding Neighborhood

In addition to the development of the Community Media Center, a technology plan was developed that addresses the community’s comprehensive needs for ICTs.  The APM Technology Plan calls for the following infrastructure, education, and services to be supported by a new community serving facility and enhancements to community residential and commercial structures:

• Providing computers in all new homes as a basic infrastructure.
• Integrating wireless fidelity or “Wi-Fi” for short into APM targeting specific public spaces and institutions in the short-term and providing comprehensive neighborhood coverage in the long-term, becoming the nation’s first low-income wireless neighborhood.
• A new GIS system operated and used by APM to track the status of properties in the area and assist local residents in planning for the community’s future through public participation GIS programs.
• Developing youth programs that educate students in new computer software applications from AutoCAD and GIS to creating new web pages.
• Creating an interactive web page for the APM area that includes on-line forums for discussions and collaboration.
• Expanded education programs targeted to technology training and workforce preparation.
• Creating public access in key locations throughout the community through new technology kiosks, interactive digital bulletin boards and public art that elevates the visibility and impact information technology can have within the community.
• Developing a “Media Station” at the SEPTA Regional Rail Station that serves as the hub for local technology initiatives. The media station will act as a public space and community center providing information technology training and new entertainment and after-school programs. It will serve as a portal to programs and activities of value to local residents provided on-line both locally and nationally. With a focus on education and creativity, the media station will enable residents to create art, street furniture and other products for use within the community.
• Investing in fiber-optic infrastructure for sites surrounding the station making the planned office space and housing more attractive. The revenue from these uses will help to subsidize the media station.
• A marketing campaign to elevate both the interest in information technology but also the neighborhood as a whole.1

The technology plan anticipates that these activities can address community development needs by centralizing access to tools and services needed for entering into the 21rst Century economy. From the perspective of APM, devising means to address digital divide barriers faced by local residents is essential to achieving this goal.

APM views this initiative as “a model for neighborhood revitalization that moves beyond bricks and mortar activities, fusing the flexibility and resources Information Technology potentially provides with complimentary physical investment.”1 This vision illustrates the degree to which community serving organizations may think in strategic ways about the iterative relationships between advancements in ICTs and urban design and community development goals. The target area for activities of the partnership program is shown in Figure 2. It is a former industrial district, now primarily residential, situated between the American Street corridor and a SEPTA Regional Rail corridor and informally delineated on the south by Girard Avenue and on the north by Diamond Street. This location is located a few blocks east of the main campus of Temple University.

Fig. 2. Location of APM and Temple University in Philadelphia

This area reveals devastating neighborhood transformations that have included a nearly 50% loss in population during the past 40 years, increased poverty levels, abandoned properties, and loss of economic activities due to deindustrialization. Nearly 50% of the neighborhood’s current population is Latino. APM’s perspective is that poor quality of local schools, lack of family recreation areas, and limited commercial services are contributing to the continued loss of population and inability of community serving organizations like APM to adequately meet the needs of the people who remain. Nonetheless, APM has led many neighborhood initiatives to revitalize the area through providing social services and education programs as well as physically rebuilding the neighborhood fabric. This has involved creating over 200 new homes and a shopping center located in the community. [v]

The development challenges that are at the heart of APM’s organizational mission intersect directly with research and outreach goals of ITSRG.  The APM-ITSRG partnership has been supported through funding from a National Science Foundation sponsored Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) Program during the past two years. The partnership aims to create strong linkages between the experiential learning activities of program participants, university students and faculty and community planners and design professionals within APM.

The two central activities of the partnership are: (a) the development of an Internship program that improves knowledge among university students and program participants related to the community redesign and development needs and (b) the provision of technical support, data sharing, and planning applications related to APM’s plans to develop a geographic information system (GIS).  APM plays a critical advisory role for ITSRG in relationship to its community research activities. And, ITSRG and APM jointly host a Community Fellow who acts as a liaison for the joint formulation of the partnership agenda.

The Internship Program

The APM-ITSRG Internship program was established in November of 2005, has involved 12 students in various activities and research during the academic year and through summer 2006. Student interns were drawn from the Temple Architecture Program, Tyler School of Art and Department of Geography and Urban Studies.  Students who participated in internship activities on behalf of the APM-ITSRG partnership engaged activities related to community planning and development, with an emphasis on assisting APM with developing geographic information resources pertaining to the geographic area served by the organization.

Interns participated on a number of community planning projects in the APM neighborhood. One tasks that comprised part of the larger project of developing a community GIS was to conduct an inventory of each land parcel in the APM area. Interns also developed housing prototypes and an open space plan for a derelict site (Figure 3) in the neighborhood that was targeted as part of APM’s 2002 Redevelopment Plan and the American Street Empowerment Zone Green Plan.

Fig. 3. Open Space Plan for North Philadelphia Community Site designed by Interns involved in the APM-ITSRG Partnership Program

Interns developed a more comprehensive design project drawing from information gathered during the parcel inventory during the summer component of the program. The impetus for their summer design project was to develop alternatives to past housing developments in nearby quasi-”new-urbanist” neighborhoods that were deemed overtly suburban in character.  Some of those prior housing developments significantly disrupted historic urban patterns, and lacked sustainable design practices. Targeting a moderate to low income home ownership market, many of these past projects have been patterned to resemble suburban prototypes, complete with associated amenities such as low-density single family dwellings, complete with off street parking, garages, lawns, and informal semi-private public spaces. Such projects represent an effort to entice urban buyers into entering a housing market by offering the suburban styled homes in an effort to reduce the exodus to the suburbs that has been unrelenting for decades. These features are out of place, however, and are ultimately destined to become failed symbols of suburban emulation, relegated to the status of maintenance concern for residents.

The field experiences gained by interns provided them with a view of a recent history of ineffective development strategies. Their ultimate design concept reflected the appreciation they gained for resident and community organizational requirements to integrate open spaces into the housing design, but also incorporate commercial as well as public spaces. (Figure 4)  And, their design incorporated spaces that could take advantage of new ICT policies, such as the city’s efforts to disseminate wireless Internet in low-income communities, through creating neighborhood based open spaces.

Fig. 4. Close up View of Student Designed Open Space Housing Design Plan for APM Community in North Philadelphia

Through gaining opportunities to engage field survey work and other activities associated with developing a GIS, student interns have learned how these resources may be used by a community serving organization. The interns ultimately delivered community resources that could be built upon in future planning efforts, including: (a) an assembled database for APM’s GIS; (b) a user-friendly tutorial specifically designed to meet the needs of a non-profit CDC, such as APM, (c) assistance with the development of funding proposals for urban redevelopment projects, (d) field reports related to research on mixed income development and inclusionary zoning policies within the neighborhood and (e) long term collaborative linkages with other non-profit agencies, such as Philadelphia Green (sponsored by the Philadelphia Horticultural Society) that could support future open space design needs of APM.

Examples of community redesign ideas that have emerged from these activities illustrate how information drawn from inventorying community resources can support urban design goals that in turn meet community economic development needs. The datasets the students created provide fine-grained information that have not only supported APM’s development planning activities but also created a base of understanding among a larger community of learners.

Sharing Community Knowledge

Among the community’s most important learners are high school youth. They face some of the most challenging circumstances for achieving a high quality education in Philadelphia. One of the concerns of APM and ITSRG has been to develop programs that can integrate community development concepts in technology learning opportunities for youth. Geographic information and design resources that have been developed through the partnership have been used to support after school and summer intensive informal science learning opportunities for area youth.  Interns have had subsequent opportunities to serve as mentors for these programs. Through mentoring high school students, Interns have been provided with a means of integrating community knowledge with formal and informal educational experiences that comprise the activities of the programs.

One theme that has been central for both the Intern experiences and informal learning experiences of the high school students is to discuss and conceptualize community. The introduction of this dialog is a means of introducing a framework for understanding the shared and sometimes contested meanings about place and community. The approach provides a conduit for future development of ICT skills, including an understanding of those that are fundamental for developing and using GIS tools.  Through representing and then envisioning their communities, high school youth and Interns can have a dialog about what future concerns can be reflected in development and neighborhood design. Interns have informed their interpretations of community meanings through interactions with APM staff and residents they encountered during their site survey activities. Through interaction with youth, they may further understand the complexities involved in participating in developing strategies for enhancing development at the most local scales.  High school participants gain a unique view of the relationship between gaining fundamental knowledge about maps, spatial information, and the concept of community. And through dialogs with Interns can have insights about their local knowledge can support development change to reshaping their own communities.

Community Information Needs

In contrast to the information resources developed through the internship program, data-sets developed by government planning agencies, although increasing in sophistication and availability, are often out-of date and incomplete relative to the detailed parcel-level information needed by a community. Community groups, such as APM, operate with constrained budgets for planning and design. As a result, they often rely on private foundation grants and state-sponsored subsidies to develop and implement planning strategies. In many cases, community organizations utilize private sector consultants to fill the roles of technical experts when developing technology infrastructure and information resources.

University-community partnership strategies can involve a wide variety of shared activities, including service learning,   community practicum and internship experiences, and social-action research approaches.  These can provide important ways to relate community collaborations with academic training and research. [vi] [vii][viii] [ix] Some institutions have had more structural responses, developing programmatic alliances among academic and community groups. [x] [xi] [xii] [xiii] One of the main benefits that can result is that non-profit, community groups, grass roots organizations and social movements can acquire specialized technology support and design services. In addition, they have an opportunity to affect the formation of intellectual discourse through the knowledge shared in the context of the partnership arrangements. [xiv] [xv] [xvi] [xvii]

Collaborative Development of a Community GIS

Not all partnerships produce beneficial outcomes for all partners. The APM-ITSRG Partnership has faced many communication challenges during the past two years. And, ICT planning and implementation can be a hot-button issue among partners since frameworks for using and managing ICT can be dramatically different for each partner.

Despite these potential difficulties, a major component of supporting the improvement of enhancing community ICT capacity in the neighborhood near APM was to build on the current strengths of both APM and ITSRG. We quickly identified GIS needs as a point of common interest for collaboration.  From the point of view of many community serving organizations such as APM, GIS software applications are typically inaccessible due to their inherent steep learning curves and high cost in terms of both computer hardware systems and consulting fees. [xviii] [xix] This is one factor that stands in the way of many grass-roots planning efforts to realize the potential benefits from developing GIS capacity. [xx] [xxi] As many inner-city groups are constantly under pressure from private speculative development and gentrification, communities lack the same skill-sets and market driven real-estate data utilized by the private sector. [xxii] [xxiii]

Our approach for improving GIS capacity of both APM and ITSRG was to work collaboratively to develop a community GIS. This has involved improving technical skills in using software applications and designing spatial data systems while simultaneously addressing the need to make both software and data systems developed easy to access and use by all parties. It has also involved identifying spatial information needs, existing resources, and priorities for creating new spatial datasets.

What has emerged through the partnership is a strong commitment to data sharing and community dissemination, drawing on low-technology rather than state-of-the-art technology solutions. We have relied on Internet accessible applications (such as Picasa, Google Earth and Blogs) to create publicly accessible forums for the exchange of qualitative information that can be used by students, program participants and families. We have also used state-of-the-art software and hardware systems to implement community planning and design elements and support analytical tasks. These are used primarily by the more technically skilled participants and GIS specialists in the collaboration.

Our efforts with APM have been to capacitate the non-profit and elevate their facility to serve the historic residents of the community.  They are often forced to compete with the real estate development market, facing the jeopardy of displacement by the forces of gentrification. Consequently, a direct outcome of the process of creating a community GIS has been the development of a model for technology driving university-community participation and community outreach. The integration of technology interests and development tie-ins is reflected in the seemingly eclectic array of objectives APM hoped to achieve by improving GIS capacity. Some of the purposes they intended to support were:

• Monitoring property parcel exchanges;
• Managing and maintaining scheduling of held property;
• Managing existing rental and home ownership properties;
• Managing of open space and vacant parcels, greening and streetscape improvements;
• Identifying existing healthy housing stock for preservation as well blighted and vacant parcels for rehabilitation and/or demolition;
• Targeting areas for new affordable housing;
• Instigating economic revitalization;
• Identifying service area of retail and commercial facilities, identify underserved areas in need of these amenities;
• Analyzing local and area demographics to determine potential market for commercial and retail development;
• Identifying new optimal locations and service type for new retail and commercial uses.

These purposes are not ones that necessarily reflect the direct interests of community residents, students or researchers. However, the vision articulated through these goals is one that has at the forefront the challenge of linking redevelopment efforts with improving technology capacity. ITSRG was strongly supported to develop an educational program that provided a context for GIS development activities. The result has been that many of the goals APM intended to achieve have been reinforced with capacity building outcomes as well as youth ICT educational opportunities. Since the integrity of each partner’s respective missions was adhered to as a basis for collaboration, the APM-ITSRG Internship Program was an important mechanism for implementing the systematic development of an inventory of community resources needed by the community and for introducing more nuanced considerations about the relative value and potential uses of the information resource.

Fig. 5. bITS Participant Community Map. His comment on why he chose to represent his community this way was: “it made it easy for me to stress my head thinking about every place in my community, and also I wasn't trying to make a big drawing… those landmarks are the ones I would never forget about…bustops and bars…chinos, corner store, cleaners, car dealer, garage, and a car stereo place called Erietronics.”

APM, working under the guidelines of state-funded subsidies, had little choice other than to adopt these design practices in several of their recently completed housing developments. Our efforts examined the needs of the community’s residents and sought to create a more efficient, higher density development, with sustainable design practices such as on-site storm water management and green roofs while offering similar amenities to the distinctively suburban style developments. In an informal study of how residents occupy and use private open space in the historic context of the row-home, as well as the newer developments, these exterior spaces are used as direct extensions of indoor living spaces, used for barbeques, hanging laundry, storage, often even watching television in the summertime. The major issue understood through this study was one of privacy, which the suburban-style developments lacked where yard spaces were significantly overexposed to a number of adjacent residences, the street, or park-like green spaces that had little or no connection to a private dwelling.

By gaining an understanding of design elements that were valued by community residents, we hoped to support APM’s goal of stemming the tide of neighborhood out-migration. Moreover, if we were to ultimately support the technology delivery goals of outlined in the APM Technology Plan and Media Center design concept, we needed to find a pathway towards integrating the economic development, ICT capacity and residential development concerns driving dialog between residents and APM.  Results of these efforts are shown in the design plan and community voices related to the aims of integrating ICT capacity not only within the APM organizational infrastructure but also within the community development agenda.

GIS as a Catalyst for Urban Redesign

As a result of this process of collaboratively developing a community GIS, an emphasis on the development of social networks as a means of reinforcing technology capacity emerged. Outcomes of the partnership have included: (a) a shared understanding of current conditions among neighborhood residents and community development partners; (b) specific target areas of community concern related to public safety, health and environmental hazards were identified and strategies to address problems associated with those locations were prioritized; (c) community support systems were expanded, facilitating the development of new community partnerships and (d) the facilitation of public participation in community matters through developing ICT resources such as a community website is now seen as a viable means for connecting people with local issues, despite the digital divide challenges of many residents.

One comment offered by APM reflects many of the tensions that can occur in University-Community partnerships.  It was noted that Temple University, although adjacent to one of the most economically challenged and blighted areas of Philadelphia, has at an administrative level, remained insular in its approach to community outreach and community development. As a result, communities such as the one served by APM, do not ask for or expect Temple to invest directly in their communities. APM has chosen to form alliances through developing highly focused collaborative activities – in some cases with specific individuals, in others with department or centers. The effect of forming linkages with the university is accomplished, but without the larger often political complexities that can mire initiatives in protracted time-lines and superficial program development are contained.  The community empowerment effects of the arrangement provide a powerful incentive for many university collaborators who have an interest in relating their research and scholarly studies to participate in ameliorating some of the conditions that impact on the local communities where their work life is situated.

It is important to be vigilant that power dynamics related to the different resources of partnering entities do not detract from the community empowerment objectives that may be achieved. In the APM-ITSRG Partnership, this challenge persists despite our efforts to pursue a path of iterative technological adaptation and creation of a shared geographic information resource. But, the advantage of having participated in the creation of the strategic planning effort that related community technology needs to the development of the Media Center and associated ICT infrastructure is that we have had the opportunity to align opportunities for inter-institutional resource sharing that can be implemented for short or intermediate terms. This has enabled us to provide programmatic continuity and stability related to technological improvements over the long term.

[i] Davis, M.; Page, S.; Townsend, A.; and N. Liou. 2004. APM Technology Initiative. Asociación de Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM): Philadelphia, PA.

[ii] DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Neuman, R.W. and Robinson. J.P., 2001. Social Implications of the Internet. Annual Review of Sociology 27:307–36.

[iii] Hargittai, E. 2003. The Digital Divide and What to do About It. The New Economy Handbook. Ed. Derek C. Jones. San Diego: Academic Press.

[iv] Robinson, J. P.; DiMaggio, P. and E. Hargittai. 2003. New Social Survey Perspectives on the Digital Divide.  IT & Society 1(5):1-22.

[v] Davis, M.; Page, S. and B. Philips. 2005. Designing Community Interfaces in North Philadelphia: An Evolving Revitalization Strategy. Proceedings of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 93rd Annual Meeting. Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

6 Bringle, R. G. and J. A. Hatcher.  2002. Campus-Community Partnerships: The Terms of Engagement.  Journal of Social Issues.  Vol. 58 (3):503-516.

[vii] Prins, E.  2005.  Framing a Conflict in a Community-University Partnership. Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 25(1): 57-74.

[viii] Prins, E. 2006. Individual roles and approaches to public engagement in a community university partnership in a rural California town. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 21(7).

[ix] Silka, L. 1999. Paradoxes of Partnerships: Reflections on University-Community Collaborations. Research in Politics and Society, 7:335–359.

[x] Baum, H. 2000. Fantasies and Realities in University-Community Partnerships. Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 20(2):234-246.

11 Masucci, M. 2000. Institutional Partnerships in Using and Developing Information Technology for Community Environmental Monitoring.  In: Viadana, I. and M. Lombardo (eds), Universidade e Comunidade na Gestão do Meio Ambiente, pp. 65-75. UNESP (State University of São Paulo) Press, São Paulo, Brazil.

[xii] Mullins, R. L. Jr and J. I. Gilderbloom.  2002. Urban Revitalisation Partnerships: perceptions of the university’s role in Louisville, Kentucky. Local Environment Volume 7(2):163 – 176.

[xiii] Rubin, V. 2000. Evaluating University-Community Partnerships: An Examination of the Evolution of Questions and Approaches. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Volume 5 (1): 219-230.

[xiv] Dewar, M. 1988.  Learning from Difference: The Potentially Transforming Experience of Community-University Collaboration. Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 17(4):334-347.

[xv] Harkavy, I. and W. Wiewel. 1995. University-community partnerships: Current state and future issues. Metropolitan Universities, 6(3):7-14.

[xvi] Gilbert, M. and M. Masucci. 2004. Feminist Praxis in University Community Partnerships: Reflections on Ethical Crises and Turning Points in Temple-North Philadelphia IT Partnerships. In Radical Theory/Critical Praxis: Making a Difference Beyond the Academy, pp. 147-158.  Edited by D. Fuller and R. Kitchin. Praxis (e) Press, Okamagen, IR.

[xvii] Wiewel, W. and M. Lieber.  1998. Goal Achievement, Relationship Building, and Incrementalism: The Challenges of University-Community Partnerships. Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 17(4):291-301.

[xviii] Carver, S. 2003. The Future of Participatory Approaches Using Geographic Information:  Developing a Research Agenda for the 21rst Century. URISA Journal, Volume 15, APAI:61-71.

[xix] Hwang, S.  2006.  Role of University in the Partnership for IT innovations of Community Development: Utilizing Universities’ Assets for Neighborhood Information System’s Development.  Public Administration and Management, Volume 11(2):75-100.

[xx] Elwood, S. and H. Leitner.  2003.  GIS and Spatial Knowledge Production for Neighborhood Revitalization: Negotiating State Priorities and Neighborhood Visions. Journal of Urban Affairs,
Volume 25(2):139- 157.

[xxi] Ghose, R.  2003. Community Participation, Spatial Knowledge Production, and GIS Use in Inner-City Revitalization. Journal of Urban Technology, Volume 10(1):39-60.

[xxii] Schroeder, P. 1997. A Public Participation Approach to Charting Information Spaces. In 1997 ACSM/ASPRS Technical Papers, Volume 5: Autocarto 13. Bethesda: ACSM/ASPRS, AAG,URISA, AM/FM.

[xxiii] Schroeder, P. 1999. Changing Expectations of Inclusion, Toward Community Self-Discovery. URISA Journal, Volume 11(2):43-51.

Acknowledgements

This paper was supported, in part, by a grant from the National Science Foundation (ESI-0423242). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. This paper was originally presented on November 3, 2006 at the 21rst Century Cities Conference in Philadelphia, PA sponsored by the Institute for Public Affairs of Temple University as ” Community GIS for Urban Redevelopment.”

_________

© Mathew Davis & Michele Masucci 2009. All Rights Reserved.

May be distributed freely under ITSRG Working Paper’s Creative Commons License.

Fatima Abbas

Introduction

In August 2006, David Sifry Founder and CEO of Technorati, a leading blog search engine and indexer updated his quarterly, “State of the Blogosphere” report with the announcement that the “tracked” Blogosphere had grown 100 times larger than its initial size in 2003. [1] With the Blogosphere doubling every 200 days, the amount of blogs online is expected to hit the billionth mark by 2010. [2] Though blogs are a relatively new phenomena, Burstein (2005) sees antecedents of this communicative technology as far back as Paleolithic cave paintings, which he argues acts as visually archived cross generational conversations, enabling the group to memorialize and institutionalize knowledge.[3] More recently blogs gained mainstream prominence during the 2004 presidential elections resulting in its formalized addition into our lexicon via Merriam Webster. [4]

Blogs

Blogs a shortened form of the word “weblog” are websites featuring a series of relatively short and dated entries listed in reverse chronological order. The salient features of a blog are its use of hyperlinked content, permalinks (individual link per an entry), archived entries, and entry-commentary options.[5] Hosted blog software (as opposed to independent blog software) is the feature largely responsible for increasing the spread and application of blogs by enabling users to operate a blog without knowledge of HTML which is usually required to operate an independent site. [6]Another feature responsible for the continuing growth of blogs is RSS, an acronym for Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary[7]. RSS, an XML file enables blog syndication by acting as a news or update aggregator allowing a user to receive site updates on numerous blogs or websites. [8]

Educational blogging

Most attention on blogs has been centered on its antagonistic relationship with journalism (Wall 2005) (Blood 2004)( Reynolds 2003). The media and academic concentration on this journalistic genre has somewhat obscured the increasing use of blogs in the business and educational fields. The use of blogs in business as a tool for internal knowledge management as well as a collaborative tool for capturing knowledge construction has had a large influence on educational blogging which focuses on similar theoretical issues concerning knowledge development and dissemination (Röll 2004) (Williams and Jacobs 2004). Though academic studies concerning the interaction of blogs within the business industry outnumber those documenting the benefits of this technology applied to the educational sector, the use of blogs within education has been gradually growing.

Educators’ support of blogging draws heavily from the educational theory of Vygotsky (1978 Chap 6), which holds that social processes and interactions are vital in facilitating knowledge acquisition (learning) and developmental progress. Vygotsky takes a social constructionist view of development believing it to be contingent on largely discursive forms of learning involving language and social specificities rather than biologically predetermined stages. Vygotsky’s emphasis on the nonlinearity and the discursive and relational nature of knowledge construction as it relates to language has served as the theoretical underpinnings in the educational use of blogs. Ferdig and Trammell (2004) hold that “as students appropriate and transform knowledge, they must have authentic opportunities for publication of knowledge”.  They argue that the blog is an excellent tool for this publication of knowledge. According to Ferdig and Trammell (2004) publishing with a blog enables the students to easily document and publish their construction and internalization of knowledge, as well as enable feedback through the use of commentary buttons appended to each blog post.

Discussions on educational blogging are usually partitioned into three sectors: blogging about educational issues, teacher education, and student-centered blogging. Out of this tripartite, student-centered blogging garners the most concentration. (Ferdig and Trammell 2004) (Dron 2003)(Repman et al 2004).  Blogs as a form of social software are enticing to instructors for its potential ability to enable student publishing, develop/improve literacy and writing skills, and enhance critical thinking/reflection (Wang 2005) (Ferdig and Trammell 2004). Huffaker ( 2005) credits the blog as an exemplary medium to enhance two forms of literacy: verbal and digital. Verbal literacy is defined as the crucial skills of reading and writing while digital concerns the comfort of use of technology. Because blogs do not require cursory knowledge of programming wit their pre-formatted software, Huffaker argues that the blog is the perfect medium for stimulating more in-depth programming and technological skills by introducing students to the basics of HTML which are often tinkered with by users to format margins and side–bar links.[9]

Bruns and Jacobs (2006) describe the blog as tool for the mass produsage of knowledge. They define “produsage” as the consumption of existing knowledge (usage) and the simultaneous production of new knowledge as a result of this transaction. While Bruns and Jacobs (2006) employ this term largely in the context of media transformation via blogs, these concepts have proved fungible across disciplines. Williams and Jacobs (2004) refer to the collaborative enhancement of learning through commentary as one function that the blog performs. They also credit the blog with serving as a tool for the social creation of knowledge by enabling knowledge contextualization through hyperlinks and collaboration by bloggers through tools such as trackback and RSS feeds. Building on this concept of collaboration, Efimova (2005) argues that blogs can be used for “knowledge sharing” and as a Knowledge or Content Management System (CMS) as the technology not only “captures” knowledge but also archives it. The ability to quickly archive, aggregate, annotate, disseminate, and consolidate information at the organizational and individual level makes the blogs an appealing knowledge management system for businesses as well as educators which have recently begun to use the technology for this function. Carraher (2003) argues that teachers and students could use blogs to manage and record thinking over time facilitating researchers in understanding processes of knowledge creation for specific subjects such as math and science.

Purpose

The focal point of this research paper is to address the question of whether blogs can be used as a technological medium for developing basic geographical skills among high school as well as an apparatus that enables the concentration of targets in the creation of a Community GIS (geographic information system). These two questions focus on the blog as largely a content management system (CMS), as well as a technological tool to enhance the acquisition of geographical skills. Though the potential that blogging has to play in verbal literacy and collaborative student learning enhancement is acknowledged, the focus of this paper is not on these aspects of blogging. “Collaborative learning” however, is investigated in the context of the ability of the blog to link different concepts such as imagery, map-making, field trips etc, into coherent posts and help aid the student in contextualizing, constructing and articulating this knowledge.

To address these two questions, 16 open-ended interviews were conducted with high school students in the Building Information Technology Skills summer program at Temple University. Interviews were followed up with an analysis of blog development according to three criteria. The second question queried by the paper concerning the use of the blog in the centralization of targets for a community GIS is briefly explored in the remainder of the paper in light of the sparse literature on the subject and the on-going GIS project by the BITs program.

GIS

McHarg (1998) defines geographic information systems (GIS) as the coordination of a diverse spatially connected data set which can be used to record environmental inventories, document temporal processes, and facilitate predictions and analysis. Wood and Keller (1996) define this technology as a form of analytical cartography which enables the user to geographically code data (geocode), manipulate and integrate data as well as spatially cross-reference information within various data sets. GIS is often separated into tracks describing its intended use such as Land Management, Business, Health GIS’, etc. Encompassing these tracks is a form known as Community GIS, which features the involvement of a “community” (usually non-professionals) in the collection of data and the creation of a GIS. [10]

Community GIS applications have been increasingly employed by schools that teach GIS as a way to introduce students to spatial analysis using project based learning. Project based or inquiry based learning is a social constructivist method increasing in popularity in the educational and geographical fields (Kerski 2003).[11] This form of theory seeks to change students from passive to active learners thus enabling them to be participants in the process of knowledge creation by involving them in real-world problems (Johansen 2003). [12]Operating under the concept of project based learning, GIS has been lauded by educators as a tool to enhance collaborative learning and the spatial reasoning of students as well as develop digital manipulation skills (Alibrandi).[13] Additionally, GIS has been shown to improve student’s attitudes toward technology by increasing their scientific self-efficacy compared to traditional methods of spatial analysis such as non-digitalized Cartography, which is a more cumbersome method of teaching spatial analysis (Baker 2002). [14]

Though GIS technology has been increasing in popularity within educational academia, as of 2001 only 2% of schools were utilizing this technology (Kerski 2003). The reasons behind the slow employment of this technology among schools are usually due to three factors: lack of time, skills, and money. Studies (Meyers et al. 1999) (Kerski 2003) have indicated that one of the two of the major impediments to GIS application in schools is lack of knowledge and teacher training about the technology. Additionally, the lack of time needed to learn the software and the steep learning curve is often cited as another factor hindering its implementation. The high cost of GIS software estimated at around $6-10,000 has played another large role in hindering implementation of the software within schools (Johanssen 2003) (Kerski 2003). ESRI (environmental systems research institute), the main GIS software provider has attempted to tap into the educational market by releasing free software (AEJEE) specifically targeted toward schools which the intention of them eventually using a paid application.[15] Though this step and other programs such as Adopt a School[16] and school rebates are commendable, further reduction in the price of GIS software is required to continue to convince teachers and educators of the feasibility of this software in schools as well as extend this technology to urban schools which often are excluded from these company sponsored special programs.

Web-based computer applications have begun to reduce some of the financial impediments to GIS-use by enabling people and organizations to access low-cost or free software that performs (with the exception of analysis) many of the visual functions of GIS. Mainstream applications such as Google Earth and Maps, and MSN Maps along with open source GIS software are being used to develop GIS by communities and researchers (Boulos 2005)[17]. In addition to being free, these applications have gained popularity due to their ease of use by adults and children. Google Earth, a satellite-imagery mapping application released by Google has gained enormous popularity since its June 2005 release. [18] Though it enables image overlays, layer mapping, and external data input (via hacking and special programs), the program does not perform spatial analysis, a standard function of GIS. Though, the lack of an analytical function is usually perceived as a limitation of the application, it can be educationally beneficial. Meyer et al. (1999) caution in their research that the teaching of GIS without the requisite geographical knowledge needed to spatially analyze map productions leaves students with “drafting” skills, not a greater understanding of geography.By serving as a simple interface to the introduction of students to geographical concepts such as scale, attribute data and layers using real world imagery, Google Earth can serve as a preface to teaching standard GIS without exposing students to digitalized spatial analysis before they have adequately developed these skills.

GIS in the Program

Google Earth was used by the Building Information Technology Skills (BITs) program as an inexpensive and educationally comprehensive tool to introduce students to the concepts underpinning geographic information systems. Using Google Earth, students performed weekly mapping exercises of their field activities in conjunction with hand-drawn maps. The students gathered data for their maps within their notebooks and used pictures which were uploaded to their respective blogs. To construct a standard GIS, an application entitled “BitsyBeta” was developed by the program to enable conversion of the student’s Google Earth KML maps into ESRI’s ArcView; the construction of this Google Earth-fed GIS is currently in process.  The purpose of this paper is to examine the role the blog can play in enhancing the development of a Community GIS by enabling the centralization of targets and attribute data. The GIS section of the paper is focused on discussing the function the blog can perform in serving as a data synthesizing medium; it is not concerned with children learning standard GIS, but rather how they learn the concepts that comprise GIS and how open access tools such as the blog facilitate this process.

Program

Research was conducted in the context of the Building Information Technology Skills (BITs) program at Temple University. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s ITEST (The Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) program, BITs is a three year research project that seeks to provide inner-city public school students with basic geography skills and knowledge, create a community GIS, and expose students to career exploration in science, engineering and math fields. The program employs project based learning in its use of weekly field trips to structure activities, as well as more traditional forms of learning such as weekly lectures which provide background for learned content. The program is broken into a Fall and Spring semester which consists of 90 students, and an intensive Summer semester which consists of 120 students. Students are usually grouped 15 to a class under the instruction of a mentor. A typical week within the program involves an introductory lecture on a subject such as healthscapes, associated activities, field trips to identify healthscapes, use of Google earth to plot and add attributes data, and a weekly description of work in the form of a blog post or report. During the Fall of 2005 and Spring of 2006, participants used a blog for weekly write-ups. A typical blog consisted of a description of the field trip, pictures, Google Earth map, as well as an initial post of each student’s hand-drawn “Community Map”.

Sample

Using cluster sampling, research participants who had previously been in the program during the Fall and/or Spring semesters and built a blog were chosen from six groups in the intensive summer 2006 program. Three group clusters were obtained, of which every student having built a blog in previous semesters was interviewed. The products of this sample yielded 8 females and 8 males, of which 81.25% were African American, 12.5% Asian, and 6.25% Puerto Rican. The students were from four schools within inner Philadelphia with ages that ranged from 14-17. Thirteen students had been in the program for two semesters while three had participated for three semesters.

Design

As a mentor for a group of 15 students, I chose to fully design my research after two weeks in which I had become acclimated to the students and had gained their trust. I had initially considered using questionnaires as a method of data extraction, but after interacting with the students, I concluded this was not the best method to gather data, as their answers depended on their moods and their level of annoyance with the plethora of program questionnaires. I chose interviews, specifically open-ended interviews, as the key method of data collection. I felt this method conveyed a greater sense of seriousness than the questionnaires and gave a greater weight to their personal opinions, which could be expressed more fully in speech than in writing. I interviewed each student separately over a period of two weeks. During the interviews the students were seated in front of a computer with their blog on the screen. The interviews consisted of three questions broken into sub-parts inquiring into their pre- and post program level of geography, the role of the blog in facilitating their acquisition of geography skills and their comfort of use with this medium. The questions are as follows.

1. A. What was your previous experience with geography and map-making?

1. A. Describe your level of comfort in building a blog.

B. Were you previously exposed to or aware of this technology?

C. Do you believe the blog enhanced your understanding of geographical skills via your journal entries and map-building exercises?

D. Did the blog structure your learned lessons i.e. making the purpose of the lectures, field trips, map exercise, and other activities seem more cohesive?

1. A. Did the program enhance or expand your understanding of geography?

B. Did it enhance your understanding of community and/or the facets that compose it?

C. Do you believe the development of a blog played a role in this expansion?

Accompanying these interviews Blog development was evaluated according to three criteria: post of a Google Earth Map, use of pictures, and post descriptions. The remaining method for analyzing the role of the blog in the creation of a community GIS work is largely qualitative consisting of an exposition on the role the Blog played in centralizing targets for the GIS.

Interview Results

Question 1.

Question 2. A: Blog Ease of Use

Questions 2. B- 3. C

The above results of the interviews confirm the hypothesis that the blog would enhance the acquisition of geography skills among high school students with sparse exposure to geography. As the table above illustrates, the majority of students felt the blog enhanced their understanding of geography (87.5%) and helped structure their lessons (93.75%). Additionally, 62.5% felt the blog was central to the expansion of their geographical knowledge and their conceptualization of community and the facets that comprised it.

The results of the interviews reflect one of most important uses of the blog as a tool to centralize information. The ability of the blog to host pictures, maps, and descriptions played an important role in threading lessons for students, making the information appear more cohesive, and thus facilitating its conscious retainment for students. Student B’s comments emphasize this point:

“The Blog was useful for entries describing pictures because it (the picture) was directly in front (of the entry) and it was our original commentary on the blog with the community map rather then having questions asked as we did this semester. The Blog made the lesson more cohesive; maps, commentary, and pictures were all on the same page. When you read through you can see the theme. It would be cohesive for this semester (because) it would bring the theme together.”

One of the recurring responses to question 2 C/D stating why the participant perceived the blog to be beneficial was its ability to combine words and pictures on one page, thus combining the different activities and learning that engaged the students.  Ware (2004) posits that visualization functions as a cognitive tool enhancing the acquisition of knowledge. Interactive visualizations, Ware argues, are the interface between the human visual system and computational power. Employing this thesis, the Blog appears as an interactive interface harnessing computational and spatial data from maps and pictures while simultaneously hosting visualization which acts as a cognitive tool to develop and retain knowledge. This illustrative enhancement of knowledge is also important in catering to the different learning styles of students. Two female students mentioned the ability of the blog to cater to their specific learning style over traditional instruction as a beneficial aspect of this technology. The following comments provide an explanation:

Student P: “Yes it made it seem more cohesive because I’m visual minded so by taking pictures and seeing work it made it easier.”

Student:G “If we had the blogs this semester it would make the work easier to understand because you get to see and read what you are talking about.—–‘ If we had it this semester it would structure it (the lessons) because it goes hand in hand with each other, it (the blog) makes it easier for our understanding because some people can only visualize , so it would make it more cohesive.”

This last comment is particularly interesting from student G, who was the only student not to have answered affirmatively to question 2. D  which asked whether the blog helped structure lessons. Because of a failure to complete her work during the spring and develop her blog , the student G, answered negatively to 2. C/D and 3.C, but appended each answer with the statement that if the blog had been used in the summer program the information would have been easier to acquire. This student’s responses illustrate one of the central uses of the blog as a tool in content/knowledge management.

Arguing for the use of blogs in education Carraher (2003) posits that they facilitate original thought in students by allowing them to document their raw cognitive processes in posts as well as enabling other students to interact and reflect on their thoughts, thus enhancing knowledge creation and integration. Adding to this postulation is the creation of the blog itself, which reflects the level of integration of learned concepts by a student and is reflected in their information management. Participant B notes this function in her response:

“Yes it did help with the expansions (of knowledge). The blog enhances originality because it’s your thoughts, when you know more about the subject you can build the site (blog) better which shows that it helped enhance your understanding.”

Blog Analysis

Inclusion Criteria

1. Google Earth Maps

2. Pictures

3. Post descriptions

During the process of evaluation one student’s blog was unable to be recovered, thus reducing the sample size for analysis of the blog development to 15 student’s blogs. Due to this decrease, the tabular results are not wholly representative of the entire group, but they do present a generalized picture of the groups’ blog development. During the process of blog analysis, I chose not to count the numerical number of posts by students as it is a reflection of sheer quantity, not the quality of each individual post. The tabular results provide a glimpse of student’s adherence to certain standards that were established during the semester; they do not however, provide a comprehensive analysis of each individual blog.

The results above indicate that about half of students posted their Google Earth maps while the majority included pictures and accompanying post descriptions of these items as well as their thoughts on their field trips. The high percentage of students inclusion of pictures along with accompanying post descriptions reflects the importance that students attributed to these two items within their interviews, in which the majority of students made an allusion to the importance of being able to “explain pictures”. As student “R” noted:

I like the Blog format better. The Blog is easier, looking at the pictures more things come to you writing wise, rather than doing it separately.

During the process of reviewing the blogs I noticed a correlation between some of the students who were idlers within class and those whose posts lacked all expected content (maps and pictures) except for post descriptions. I found it interesting that some of these students during their interviews had mentioned the ability of the blog to bring lessons together as a reason why they wish they were using it during the than current summer semester, yet the content of their blogs from previous semesters was so sparse that they could not possibly have used it to organize lessons as the other students had done. I suspected that one of the students who had answered positively to the use of the blog (but had not actually adequately developed one) was biased by my possible expectations which he had somehow deduced. However, reviewing his interview responses I noticed another possible explanation.

“Yes it enhanced my understanding of geography skills by allowing you to see what others thought and wrote”.

As the underlined sentence indicates the student was essentially a “lurker” on the blogs. The blog structure by allowing students to review each others reflections is a particularly conducive medium for lurking. Taylor (1998) notes that lurkers online often correlate with non-participatory students within the classroom; a phenomena I also noticed.[19] While lurking often has negative connotations attached, it can be viewed as a positive form of passive cognitive learning by enabling reluctant or non-participatory students to review and learn information through the mental processes of others. Additionally, as Williams and Jacobs (2004) argue, lurkers may have a positive affect on active participants because these bloggers anticipate lurkers and may write more constructive and critical posts for this “audience”. Student “D” appears to indicate this phenomena of writing for an audience in her answer to 3 D. regarding a role the blog played in increasing her knowledge about geography and community.

“The Blog played a role in this expansion because it let other people see your views.”

Blogs and GIS

Community GIS has roots in Critical Cartography (Crampton and Krygier 2006), a field which challenges the “elite” intertwined academic and political underpinnings of cartography past and present. The field seeks to critically analyze the way power is spatially maintained as well as examine the cultural and political construction of the science of spatial analytics. Crampton and Krygier (2006) argue that Cartography has become gradually undisciplined as access to the map creation process i.e., data collection and map construction has become available via open source software such as Nasa’s World Wind[20] or mainstream software such as Google Earth. Blogs another form of free mainstream software/application can serve as a complementary tool to GIS/Cartographical democratizing agents such as Google Earth.

There exists an extremely sparse amount of literature on the potential uses of the blog in GIS construction and/or cartographical mapping. However, services and applications intertwining blogs and maps have been growing. Geo-tagging blogs, a process that involves geo-coding and mapping blogs is a phenomena growing in popularity over the net with free sites such as Feedmap which uses Google Maps to display coded blogmaps.[21] The research of Tezuka, Kurashima, and Tanaka (2006) investigated the mechanics behind mining blogs’ attribute data for spatially and temporally referenced local tourism and the encoding of these blogs into a GIS. Employing the concept of geo-tagging Tezuka, Kurashima, and Tanaka (2006) argue for a closer integration of web search applications via blogs with applications (ex. GIS) that provide greater geographical depth than simple mapping interface software like Google Maps.

While Tezuka, Kurashima, and Tanaka’s research on the relationship between Blogs and GIS’ was focused on algorithmically mining tourism data from blogs, the idea of using blogs as information databases in mapping can be applied qualitatively. Efimova (2005) in her description of “Professional” blogs, argues the blog can serve as a personal knowledge repository. Employing Efimova’s idea, the blog can be viewed as a knowledge warehouse; a tool which enables simple organization of thoughts and materials as well as automatically archives temporal information and knowledge.

Students’ blogs within the Fall and Spring semesters of the BITs program were used as aggregators for attribute data for the program-GIS currently in progress. Additionally the compacted display of visual, spatial and analytical data compiled by the students on their respective blogs enable a greater explanation of attribute data found within their Google Earth maps. Thus a placemark tagged Philadelphia Vision Center by participant “L” on his Google Earth Map is accompanied by a picture and explanation of this entity. This compilation of accessory information enables the blog to act as a complementary tool to a GIS which lacks depth-descriptive data, similar to the way a Census Data PDF provides greater details on tract shapefiles.

Conclusion

The data garnered through this research suggests the blog can be a useful educational tool within the classroom and in geographical fieldwork. The blog is an attractive medium for hosting learning by its ability to combine spatial, visual, and written information. This hosting of various forms of information is especially attractive in its ability to cater to the different learning styles of students as well as cognitively engage students who are non-participants within the classroom. Particularly within the field of  geography the blog can be a useful tool for teaching children concepts such as gentrification and healthscapes as well as scale, location, and layering. Accordingly a student’s blog may feature a themed map on “ healthscapes” displaying a grasp of layering by the decision by different students to include road names and hotels, alongside pictures which bring a specific entity into an altered scale. The ability to structure and “theme” lessons was one of the benefits of blog-use consistently noted by students within their interviews. Additionally, combined with the ability to structure information, the blog can act as a warehouse of information and knowledge serving as a PDF-like appendage to a GIS which lacks the ability to store in-depth content. In the context of a Community GIS, the blog can serve as an accessible free tool assisting open-source GIS tools such as Nasa’s World Wind and Google Earth which are reducing the barriers to the spatial sciences.

The blog as an entity is simply a tool to accomplish an end; this obvious point is often lost in educational literature on blogs which frequently appears to enthusiastically ascribe to this technology a range of abilities ranging from increasing children’s critical thinking and writing skills to stimulating group collaboration. My research on this medium indicated the exact opposite. Children’s writing skills appeared to decrease to short posts and visible online group collaboration was null, aside from two students who linked each other’s blog on their posts. Though these observations appear negative, they do no negate the beneficial aspects of the blog, rather they serve as a caveat for its implementation within education: the tool is only as good as the instruction. Many students were familiar with the Blog through its similarity to their Myspace accounts; due to this familiarity students transferred their casual and parse writing styles to the blog. Additionally, the students were not instructed, due to lack of program time, to engage in online collaboration via the commentary buttons. Future utilization of the blog within the classroom should provide clear instructions and expectations to students as it is presumptuous to ascribe to children the initiative to improve their own writing qualities and styles.

____________________________________

Click Here to view the Powerpoint
Presentation that was shared at the
Race, Place and Ethnicity Conference
in San Marcos, Texas in 2006.
____________________________________

[2] http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2005/12/terrifying_inte.html

[3] Burstein book page 2 of intro

[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4059291.stm

[5] http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp?bhcp=1%20

[6] http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/

[7] Burnstein book.

[8] http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss / http://www.rss-specifications.com/what-is-rss.htm

[9]http://www.editlib.org//index.cfm/files/paper_5680.pdf?fuseaction=Reader.DownloadFullText&paper_id=5680

[10] Community GIs Book

[11]http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/outreach/articles/implementation_and_effectiveness_of_gis_in_education.pdf

[12] http://www.scangis.org/scangis2003/papers/20.pdf#search=%22GIS%20in%20the%20K-12%20Curriculum%3A%20A%20Cautionary%20Note%20-%22

[13] http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss4/currentissues/socialstudies/article1.htm

[14] http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:INVmqa8SO90J:tbaker.com/papers/dissertation/public_release/Lichens_as_bioindicators.pdf+GIS+in+classrooms

[15] http://www.esri.com/industries/k-12/education/software_options.html

[16] http://www.gisvisionmag.com/vision.php?article=200207%2Ffeature2.html

[17] http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/4/1/22

[18] http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/google_earth.html

[19] http://library.athabascau.ca/thesis/taylor.pdf

[20] http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html

[21] http://www.feedmap.net/BlogMap/

___________________________

This paper was originally presented on November 1, 2006, at the Race, Ethnicity and Place Conference of the Association of American Geographers held at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX. This work was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation.

© Fatima Abbas 2009 All Rights Reserved

This post and updates are also published on the ITSpace Blog at: http://itsrg.org/itspace.html.

May be distributed freely under ITSRG Working Paper’s Creative Commons License.

michele masucci

temple university

ITSRG Twitter followers are no doubt aware that we have been tracking the rapidly growing Internet and Mainstream Media (MSM) story of our Graduate Fellow Michael Rovito’s exchange with GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin at Tony Luke’s in South Philadelphia this past weekend. It seems clear from the video captured of the Rovito-Palin exchange over US strategic interests in and around Pakistan that neither she nor her handlers anticipated that folks in South Philly would have the sophistication to be concerned and conversant about their campaign’s foreign policy positions.

The Rovito-Palin exchange, now infamously referred to in the blogosphere as the Cheesesteak Gaffe, is of interest to the information technology and geographic blogging communities. We noticed that the entire exchange was captured and recaptured by others in the crowd on cell phone cameras. The end of the video footage shows Governor Palin helping one of those cell phone users to verify her identity to the conversational partner with whom he was speaking. We have all done it – we see something, someone, some place of great interest and immediately pull out our mobile devices and contact members of our social network to let them in on our mini adventures and encounters through sharing stories, photos, email messages and GPS-derived locations on-the-fly. This epoch decentralization of the technologies used to stay connected with our social networks and to exchange digital information illustrates the importance of understanding not only the viral way in which information is shared, but also the proxy arrangements that are embedded within those information exchanges.

That the actual questions posed to Palin by Rovito were so quintessentially geographic in nature highlights the importance for IT and geographic educators, scholars and policy makers to come to terms with the implications of the hyper-googled earth we live on. This exchange illustrates that at any time, in any place information can be brought to bear on issues and problems in real time. The explosion of news attention to the Cheesesteak Gaffe illustrates further that the speed of traveling information often obliterates the ability to interpret context. 48 hours after the exchange, political analysts like Michael Smerconish are conducting interviews with Michael Rovito to gain a sense of why he asked those specific questions. That George Stephanopoulos drew from the exchange of a citizen’s questions directed towards Palin on This Week to probe McCain further about his policy stance on tracking terrorists between Afghanistan, Waziristan and Pakistan is a breathtaking sea change in not only how journalism is implemented but also in how information is exchanged.

This is a story that started at the grass roots and was promoted via the internet, followed by the release of video footage taken by a CNN reporter. It is precisely because of the cell phones of ordinary people being put into use to share their excitement of a rare sighting and close proximity to Palin with friends and family that the story broke before the video footage was aired. During Michael Rovito’s interview with Smerconish he reveals that he did not have time to digest the meaning of her responses until after the entire exchange was concluded. Only then did he fully grasp that he caught her on the record agreeing with Obama’s position on Afghanistan. The MSM storm followed the citizen use of IT, which collapsed the geographic scales, boundaries, and protocols that accompany information flows. McCain’s response has been to sequester Palin once again as the only answer to controlling the speed and power of information on the ground. His campaign failed to effectively harness social media when it opted out of the use of Twitter during the primaries; and now the strategy to geographically isolate Palin fails to recognize that the electronic footprint has already kicked up crazy amounts digital dust that cannot be contained.

____________

© Michele Masucci 2008 All Rights Reserved

This post and updates are also published on the ITSpace Blog at: http://itsrg.org/itspace.html.

May be distributed freely under ITSRG Working Paper’s Creative Commons License.

caroline guigar

michele masucci

temple university

Feminist scholars have drawn attention to the importance of understanding the how women’s responsibilities and activities as members of families, communities and workforces shape and constrain their lives as individuals. This discussion has been extended into the realm of women’s access to and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Most scholars have chosen to approach the issue by assessing the disparities in basic access to ICTs, a necessary project for informing how society should proceed on the parallel paths of both advancing technology innovations and promoting extensive technology use. Some scholars are beginning to point to the need for better understanding the mechanisms that foster as well as limit digital inclusion for women.

The rapidly emerging field of e-health is a particularly relevant context for examining women’s digital inclusion experiences. The field of e-health addresses a wide range of issues related to disparities of technology access and their close connection with health disparities. Moreover, since women remain at the center of coordinating family health care, their use of e-technologies related to health is of particular importance to policy makers and health care providers alike.

Despite the centrality of health care within women’s daily lives, the impact of gender and its associated roles and family expectations is not well understood within the e-health literature. Issues such as how women will use technology to access health information, interact with their medical teams and track their own health risk factors and outcomes as well as their families should be of central concern in the advancement of e-health policy and practice. Health practitioners need to gain a more nuanced understanding of how women’s use and understanding of technology impacts their ability to use telemedicine and e-health system as a basis for developing web-based health care delivery and monitoring systems. We have found in prior studies that providing women with training to use e-health systems is essential for them to integrate the approach into their complex array of daily activities.

For the last four years the Information Technology and Society Research Group of Temple University (ITSRG) has partnered with the research teams of the Temple Telemedicine Research Center (TTRC) to provide basic and computer literacy training across several clinical studies related to the use of e-health systems among different groups of users from inner city Philadelphia. Generally, we worked with a predominantly poor, inner city patient population that was comprised of three cohorts of individuals: elderly African American men and women with risk factors for heart disease, young African American and Latina women with gestational diabetes, and middle aged African American women with metabolic syndrome. Most had little prior experience using ICTs and none directly related to using e-health systems or searching for health information on the Internet. Our role has been to partner with clinicians to learn about the health information related to the conditions patients are managing and to integrate the goals for computer and e-health systems use are related to specific clinical studies. We have developed computer training materials and workshops that foster gaining basic skills to use computers, access the Internet and search for health related information. We have also provided direct training to study participants related to use computers and associated e-health systems for managing their specific health conditions.

The one-on-one training that we have provided has provided a context for examining the value that participants place on integrating the use of e-technologies in the management of individual and family health. It has also provided a context for better understanding the unique constraints faced by women to learn about and use such systems given the challenges they face to deal with family, economic, transportation, and health concerns in their daily lives.

The characteristics and findings of studies, along with discussions of the study participant demographics, that ITSRG has engaged have been extensively reported in the health, geographic, and e-collaboration literatures. Three aspects of the use of e-technologies among the individuals involved in these studies deserve additional attention by policy makers and scholars. We will highlight the specific concerns related to the women with whom we worked in all three cohorts, since we found that they faced unique challenges to operationalize the use of ICTs for managing their health. These include: (a) the importance of English language literacy in the use of e-health systems and implications for system development and training; (b) the risks of using obsolete technologies to save costs; (c) the importance of understanding the relationship between basic and technological literacies among health care providers and e-health system developers; (d) the need to better understand the role that social networks play in improving e-technology use and access; and (e) the need to better understand how gender defined roles shape the technology use experiences among women.

English Language Literacy and the Use of E-health Systems

Philadelphia is home to many multilingual communities. The area served by Temple University Hospital is adjacent to one of the nation’s largest Puerto Rican communities. ITSRG has encountered many English Language Learners (ELL) throughout the course of training almost 300 adults enrolled in studies coordinated by the TTRC. One project involved setting up computers in homes of 30 women with gestational diabetes. About half of the women were bilingual, with Spanish as the primary language they use to read, write and speak. Because of this, translators were used during the home computer delivery and training process. These participants might have made better use of the e-health systems they used had Spanish language versions been available for use online.

However, mounting such an effort is time consuming and expensive, since it is important not only to provide a direct translation of the information, but to do so in a way that is culturally relevant to the population who will use the information resource and web communication system. One solution that might be appropriate to address this need is for studies to design implementation strategies that involve partnerships with community serving organizations that can assist with the barriers for information communication and different cultural contexts for using e-technologies that might shape user experiences.

The Risks of using Obsolete Equipment and Technology

Three strategies used by these projects to address possible access issues related to ICTs included: (a) providing used computers and free dial-up Internet service providers (ISP) to study participants, (b) identifying community church technology center (CTC) access locations and training staff members at those facilities to work with study participants, and (c) staffing a small community technology work station within the hospital research center. All three strategies required study participants to exercise a great deal of personal agency in order to make use of the resources that were provided. In the case of the first approach, providing free computers and dial-up ISP, we found that using old equipment and slow Internet access was highly problematic for inexperienced computer users. The challenges that were faced with the free equipment and dial-up ISP included lack of funds to pay for utility bills needed to run the equipment, problems with the effectiveness of operating system and virus protection software, insufficient memory to use the e-health systems that were being evaluated, and failures due to the wear and tear effects on the old equipment.

We found that many participants involved in the TTRC studies did not have reliable computers at home. Participants reported that they had been given or purchased used computers from work or from a friend. Routinely, participants noted that their computers were slow or were inoperable or had been given away to other families members, this was especially the case with elderly, heart health populations. While participants might have computers in the home keeping Internet access, both dial-up and broadband, was often problematic and was the first thing families got rid of in times of financial difficulties.

Our use of community and church community technology centers, along with the training that was provided to their staff members, while enthusiastically received had little effect on whether or not study participants used the e-health systems related to managing their conditions. The staffing of the hospital computer station was used by a few individuals with success in terms of their use of the e-health systems, but this approach required those participants to incur the extra time and expense of traveling to and from that site. One of the most interesting observations we can report is that most participants relied on more than one access strategy, with careful thought placed on the advantages and disadvantages in terms of the time involved, costs for transportation, and availability of support staff to use ICTs. One woman managing her heart health using a telemedicine system even noted that she often used the free Internet access in a local hotel lobby near her home.

For example, older participants often identified adult children and teenage grandchildren who they realized could assist them in using telemedicine communication tools. On occasion, participants would bring family and friends to trainings sessions in order to gain training for their support staff. Users often identified neighbors, church staff and librarians as key people to whom they could turn to if they had a question.

The Connections between Basic and Technological Literacies

One aspect that was common across all three cohorts of e-technology users was that basic and technological literacies seem to be closely related. We did not measure basic literacy directly in working with the three groups. However, through our one-on-one interactions with study participants, we observed and noted the ease with which they read instructions and Internet content, completed forms and questionnaires, and used search engines to find health information. The e-health systems and e-technology strategies employed by the various studies take into account that participants are likely to have only basic literacy skills. Therefore, the user-interfaces were designed to be as easy to use as possible. One feature common to all e-technologies used was the ability for participants and health providers to communicate with each other. We found stark differences between those with the highest and those with the lowest language use skills. And, we found contrasts between the language use skills between providers and participants, with providers communicating in more specialized terms and with respect to specific health related information. Participant communications, on the other hand, were not confined solely to health related issues but often to the broader context within which their health concerns were placed. And, participant communications often did not use health related language in ways that were consistent with provider uses or meanings of the same terminology. This relates to the use of the e-health systems investigated in two important ways. First, while clinicians share in common standard understandings of health conditions and measures, the study participants do not. Participant descriptions of their health was often ambiguous, inconsistent, and contextualized within their life-stories. The use of on-line communication boards to mitigate the differences between professional and lay knowledge of health concerns in order to help participants improve their use of the system and management of their health conditions is an important feature that was included in all of the studies. However, many participants did not use the communication tools at all, and others used them infrequently. We suggest that the differences in written communication skills, along with the differences in health knowledge, between professionals and study participants are so vast that new strategies for fostering this important mode of e-health need to be devised.

The Role of Social Networks in Fostering the use of E-Health Technologies

All three studies showed that women relied extensively on their social networks in order to access and use e-health systems. The strategies they employed included: (a) relying on family members and friends for access to equipment, ISP and additional training; (b) finding others to access and use e-health systems on their behalf as proxy users, (c) linking their computer use to purposes beyond health management, such as assisting children with homework, and (d) linking their use of e-technologies to manage health with other activities in their daily rounds. These strategies helped women study participants to manage the complex set of responsibilities and roles they have as family members, workers, and community members, well documented in the feminist geographic literature. However, we also found that these enabling strategies presented downsides for women as well. Family use of computers is complex, and in many instances we found that families competed over the use of computers in the home, often with women’s needs coming in behind those of their children.

This competition for technology resources in the home extended past women’s biological children as well. We learned that some of the grandmothers we trained were often the after school care-givers of grandchild and extended family members.  While, grandmothers reported that they both felt the children in the home needed access to computers over them due to school work needs, others noted that children  took over the computers and refused to allow the grandparents access.  A few elderly participants noted that adult children took their computers to use because the elderly participants had no need for the computer or didn’t use it enough. Elderly participants also noted that adult children monopolized the computer in the home as well. One young woman noted that she could not use the telemedicine in her study because use of the dial-up competed with other family members needs for the one phone line in the home. Additionally, she was the childcare provider in the home even though she did not have children of her own at the time. This responsibility to care for the young children in the home meant that she did not have time to use the computer in the home during the day to send her data to the clinicians.

We also found that women relied on family members for assistance in using ICTs and e-health systems, but many complained that their helpers were doing not teaching the skills they needed to learn. And, in many instances women had to cope with the anxiety and power dynamics associated with having less experience and knowledge about the use of ICTs and e-health systems than their children and other young people in their social networks. Women in the studies often voiced fear of the computer and the Internet and worried about breaking the computer. During training sessions many of the women needed constant reassurance from trainers that they could not “break” the computer.

Yet, their the experience of ICT use was dynamic within the house especially among elderly women. One women noted that she took a computer class in order to be able to understand and monitor what the children in her family were doing with the computer. Some women  were trained with their husbands and reported that they would be the ones to enter the health data for their husbands. Furthermore, the men we trained often noted that their wives were the more technologically savvy members of the household and the men would rely on their wives to do the work of updating their husband’s health data in the telemedicine system they were using.

Women’s use of computers at work to manage health was also problematic for those who feared repercussions from employers and a lack of privacy with respect to their health information. Finally, In some instances, women did not feel safe at home at all due surveillance by family members and government institutions as well as the threat of domestic violence. Health care providers involved in the studies did not account for the effects of family dynamics, negotiating power relations related to the use of ICTs, and safety concerns that women face.

The Importance of Gender based Roles and Responsibilities for Women

We found that gender based responsibilities presented constraints for women study participants, even in instances where they had sufficient access to ICTs and experience to use them for managing their health.  The most significant challenges faced were the time constraints related to child care, elder care, and work that mitigated access and use. Since women’s roles on the job are often involved in customer service and as support staff, not only is their time constrained, they often do not have privacy in their work settings that would support use of work ICT infrastructure for personal health matters. At home, the situation is often little improved in that women had to put a great deal of thought and planning into managing their time in order to use e-health systems privately. In fact, the use of e-health systems and the Internet highlights the contrasts between the privacy women experience in their daily lives as mothers, daughters, workers, aunts, grandmothers, nieces, friends, and helpers and the privacy standards associated with accessing proprietary health systems and the Internet. The two realms are inconsistent altogether, and women we worked with often experienced conflicts between what was expected in their personal realms and what was expected in their use of ICTs and e-health systems. During interviews women often noted that while they found the telemedicine systems helpful and interesting they lacked the time to integrate it into their daily lives.

We found that a number of the elder women who we trained had been employed as secretaries and data input specialists. Many of these individuals were enthusiastic about gaining new technology skills in relation to the management of their health. We found that by coupling the opportunity to gain new ICT skills with managing individual health, women managed both processes better. Given the degree to which women are placed at the center of managing family health, we suggest that this is one of the most promising pathways for increasing ICT skills of elderly women, a group that is often cited as the least included within the digital society.

Conclusions: Implications for Future E-Health Research and Policy Implementation

In the end, what begins to emerge is a complex pattern of compliance and the daily struggle women face in caring for their own health as well as the health and welfare of their families — as well as the enormous impact that this daily dance has on their lives and long-term health status. Our experiences working one-on-one with women learning to use ICTs for managing their health illustrated the need for better understanding of the context within which women are learning and applying technology skills in their daily lives. On a practical level, our efforts show the importance of identifying multiple settings for accessing and using ICTs, including ones that support them to manage their social roles as caregivers and workers with their individual health concerns. We also suggest that more attention to the socially-bounded movements of women is needed. Women are extremely mobile, navigating multiple work and social environments often relying on more than one mode of transportation. Yet, the e-health systems we worked on were static in nature, and assumed that women’s lives are situated primarily in their homes. Relying on the home as the primary and sole locus of computer access and use proved to be an ineffective strategy for many of the women with whom we worked. Gaining a better understanding of the cultural contexts of women’s lives is equally important. Health care providers are especially attuned to the challenges of communicating across language and cultural barriers. E-technologists need to reflect that concern in their conceptualization of e-health systems to extend the benefits of their use across cultures and geographic settings. Most of the women with whom we worked were enthusiastic ICT learners and users, and recognized the potential of e-health systems to improve the quality of their health care. For some, it represented better care than they could receive in person because of the potential to reduce office visits and improve monitoring health conditions. It is incumbent upon health care providers and technology specialists to account for women’s experiences using these systems to design ones that take into account their particular challenges and concerns. The rapid rate of improvement in mobile technologies holds promise for many, since transportability would seem to address many of the access issues we observed. More direct connections between technology and literacy training also seems essential for improving the use of systems among women who lack English language skills and technology use experiences. Approaches for implementing e-health monitoring systems also need to attend to the safety, privacy and empowerment concerns of women if we truly expect to improve their health outlooks using e-technologies.

___________

© Caroline Guigar and Michele Masucci 2008 All Rights Reserved

May be distributed freely under ITSRG Working Paper’s Creative Commons License.

michele masucci

temple university

Media stories over the past year have heightened public awareness regarding cyber safety, teens and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) use. The emphasis of media attention has often been on the victimization and bullying of teens occurring on social network sites such as Myspace and Facebook. The prominence placed on ICT platforms, such as the Internet and Cell Phones, as threatening spheres has resulted in a narrow view of cyber security. Instead, I argue that we need to rethink the meaning of cyber safety for teens and begin a more complex dialog about best cyber safety practices.

Since 2004, The Information, Technology and Society Research Center (ITSRG) at Temple University, Philadelphia, has offered an after school program called Building Information Technology Skills or BITS. The program involves at risk high school students enrolled in the School District of Philadelphia to gain skills in information technology and geographic information science.

The students we serve come mostly from inner-city schools that typify many of the difficult educational and social challenges that garner public attention. Our program provides ICT training as well as access to state-of-the-art computing facilities, otherwise illusive for most of the students with whom we work.

Early on, we discovered that our students are heavily invested as early adopters of new ICTs. And, we learned that most have used a wide variety of strategies to gain access to the best available computer infrastructure and newest devices, whether at home, at Temple University or at their high school.

Given that our focus is on increasing ICT skills among students, our concerns reached into the need to better understand their parallel cyber lives and its impact on their real lives.

We have learned over the course of three years interacting with over three hundred students that most of the BITS students do not differentiate between the affects on their personal computing environment, the sharing of their personal information, and attacks on social network spaces. In the beginning, the BITS students lacked any formal training to gain skills that would allow them to better differentiate between computer environments as a context for improving overall information security. In short, nobody was exposing them to best practices when it came to ICT use.

The lack of any kind of in-depth cyber security training at home or at school is especially concerning because a full 85 percent of the students with whom we work have a Myspace or Facebook account.

While students are able to give voice to some ways to stay safe online, such as not giving out personal information online, eleven percent of the students said they still felt safe providing personal information on web sites and 24 percent felt safe adding a stranger to their Myspace or Facebook account. They are also targets of cyber harassment, with 18 percent of students admitting to being harassed through the Internet and nine percent through cell phones.

The effects of the lack of cyber safety taught in the schools or in their homes became apparent to the BITS staff over the course of program. Students also recognized that this was a growing problem for them. A full 78 percent of students said that cyber safety needs to be taught in high schools. They also said that the adults in their world had little understanding of their cyber worlds or how to advise them in the safe use of ICTs. As a result, only 15 percent of the student reported harassment from either source to adults or parents.

We have also heard from adults in their communities through a series of focus groups and interviews we have conducted in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia and Nonprofit Technology Resources related to increasing access to computers and student academic records. One concern that emerged from our discussions was that the adults themselves lacked any in-depth understanding of ICTs and how to use them. They also admitted, that it was their children to whom they would turn to for help to improve their understanding of ICTs, including use of the school district’s student records system.

In terms of safety, the primary focus of parents is on street safety not cyber safety. This physical concern is not without basis in reality. Since 2004, 396 young people ages 7 to 24 were killed by gunshots in Philadelphia and an additional 2,380 were injured due to gun violence.

The bITS program confronted the challenge of street or real life violence on a personal level as well. In the beginning, program participants were routinely physically assaulted in route to our program from their high school. As a result, we opted to relocate the program site to Temple University’s Main Campus. Thus, physical access to ICTs was diminished for the inner-city students because of the physical risks they take getting to and from computer labs.

However, what is often missed in the cyber safety debate is that the cyber world offers a unique context for improving student safety.

We expected to find a connection between cyber and street safety when we surveyed the students. However, we had not anticipated the degree to which cyber technologies can offer a refuge and strategic advantage for students to mitigate those circumstances.

Seven percent of our students felt their safety was improved because of the ability to report abuse (anonymously) online. Students recognized the ability to use the Internet to report abuse, access health information, and obtain software to enhance security for home computers. Of particular interest is the use of the Internet by the students to access health information. In our survey, one student commented that the quality of the health information discovered online was better than what had been provided with by the family physician.

Additionally, the students’ parents often felt that the online realm was a much safer place for their children to be than on the streets of Philadelphia. One mother stated that she felt her son being online would mean that he would be less likely to “get into trouble” than he would if he were not using the computer.

What has grown from our conversations with parents and students is that cyber safety has a much broader meaning for the students living in the inner city than is typically attended to in the media. It has led us to rethink the meaning of cyber safety in a much more nuanced way. For the student population that we serve cyber safety encompasses both threats as well as opportunities.

We need to do a better job of learning about the ways students use ICTs as we grapple with the growing presence of cyber worlds. We have learned through the bITS Program that a key part of this is to provide cyber safety education to students that both highlights the challenges as well as the supports for their safety. We encourage a broad societal dialog about creating partnerships between parents, schools, the ICT industry AND students to raise knowledge about how to best ensure that the ICTs students must learn to use to advance their educations and ultimately prepare them to enter the workforce of the 21st century will not diminish their sense of individual, family or community safety.

__________

© Michele Masucci 2008 All Rights Reserved

May be distributed freely under ITSRG Working Paper’s Creative Commons License.