Engaged Youth

New Inventory of Online Youth Civic Engagement Resources

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:45:15 +0000

The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement has just released a new report that catalogs and describes many of the most prominent youth civic engagement resources on the web. It is crucial for civic practitioners and scholars to be aware of the wide range of online projects dedicated to youth engagement, and the purpose of this report is to contribute to that goal. We gratefully acknowledge the Surdna Foundation Digital Advocacy Skills project for sponsoring this project, which was researched and compiled by Becoming Citizens interns under the direction of Scott Brekke Davis.

Download the report

Advice for other youth civic engagement website developers

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:21:49 +0000

The following points of advice come from our experience in developing, marketing, and extending the Puget Sound Off youth engagement web site. We hope some of it will be helpful for others seeking to develop youth civic sites of their own.

Think carefully about the aesthetic lay-out of your site, and consult youth in its design
Take care to align the goals of different partners in the project
Ensure technology expertise on your core partner team
Be aware of the legal/policy tension between developing an open engagement system and making more conservative decisions based on safety concerns for youth
Take care to ensure staff continuity
Define the roles of different core partners carefully and keep them in mind as the project develops
Plan your site design carefully; bring on a developer in the beginning
Create curricula for both teachers and youth
Technology access in schools and local organizations may be an issue
Be patient regarding barriers partner organizations face to collaborating or quickly incorporating your site into their activities
Be aware that youth organizations and schools may be slow to adapt their existing conceptions of citizenship
Carefully structure and provide support for good project management
Emphasize the planning and development phase of your project
Provide more design funding than we did
Establish a consistent for of technology for project management and team communications
Engage diverse communities and local partners
Bring on people with expertise in writing for education for curriculum development
Focus on issues that matter in your community on your site
Leverage local media to promote your site
Plan events and conferences
Seek research funding to support your project
Develop your project collaboratively between organizations
Invest in diverse content during the development phase of the project
Involve youth and experts in the site design phase
Be patient
Define your niche and goals carefully
Engage community volunteers
Carefully estimate costs
Approach youth engagement creatively
Approach local funders and corporations
Have a strong marketing plan

Puget Sound Off Receiving Worldwide Attention and Recognition

Toby Campbell — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:29:04 +0000

The Puget Sound Off (PSO) web site — a joint project of the University of Washington’s Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, the YMCA of Seattle, and the City of Seattle — focuses on promoting and facilitating youth civic engagement.

Recently, PugetSoundOff.org won an award from the Public Technology Institute (PTI) for best web and e-government services. The CCCE has worked with the City of Seattle Department of Information Technology and the Seattle Metrocenter YMCA to develop the Puget Sound Off website, curricula, and project partnerships in the community. An array of Seattle youth organizations, including teams at Youth Media Institute, Rainier Vista Neighborhood House and Horn of Africa Services have led the use of the site developing online groups and posting video, blogs, photos and more. The Mayors Youth Council and the City’s Citizens Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board have also helped in developing the project. (more…)

Puget Sound Off Competition Results

guestblogger — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:41:43 +0000

posted by Kat Catlett

On Jan 10, Puget Sound Off (PSO) members and their friends, families and supporters all gathered at the Metrocenter YMCA to celebrate the end of PSO’s first competition.

“I [got to meet] some of the PSO bloggers and developers. It was so great,” wrote regular blogger Kai Flores.

Overall, the event was successful. A majority of contest participants attended, and one extra member, Tim Chambers, received an unexpected prize that was left over.

The general vibe of the gathering was relaxed and welcoming, with bloggers and developers walking around, shaking hands and commenting on each other’s posts. Parents were also put at ease by finally meeting the developers in real life and being explained the safety features of the open-forum style of PSO. A healthy choice of Thai food was served at the beginning, and everyone seemed to enjoy the food without complaints.

The actual award ceremony at the end, the purpose of the gathering, was also a success. Well organized and full of great prizes, the bloggers and their supporters left very happy. Each category within the competition was explained, while a preview of each winner was shown after they gave a short speech describing why they posted what they did.

“[My favorite part was] winning. What makes the ceremonies good are the prizes,” stated member, and third place winner of the blog category Daniel Wyman. The gathering was such success, that one member wrote a blog thanking everyone for such a great time. All the members who attended joined in commenting that they had a great time.

Although the competition is over, the end of this chapter, of PSO leads into a new one. Currently, PSO members and developers are organizing a new PSO game, an e-scavenger hunt. While the details are still in the making, the overall layout is set; members will visit a variety of websites to uncover information regarding a certain important issue. While they uncover information on one site, it will lead to another- much like a treasure hunt. There is also the consideration of having a trip to Seattle for “clues” to enable a more hands-on approach.

At 2 pm on Feb 7, members and developers will meet at the Metrocenter YMCA to finalize the new game that will hopefully bring more members and more success to PSO.

PSO contest winners:

Blog:
3rd Place: Daniel W. “Flaw in our Freedom”

2nd Place: Erin R. “Human Trafficking”

1st Place: Kat C. “Washington State Student Press Rights”

Music:
1st Place: Sophie D. “This Is Who I am”

Video:
3rd Place: Tatiana P. “Child Abuse”

2nd Place Leda G. “Teens and Politics”

1st Place: Philip K. and Samuel A. “Break the Habit”

The Youth Civic Web: Charting the Learning Landscape

Deen Freelon — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:08:41 +0000

As an illustration of our ongoing MacArthur-funded research project mapping the youth civic web sphere, we have created a brief slideshow containing screenshots of all of the various types of civic content we encountered in our analysis. Our theoretical framework incorporates four learning opportunities (knowledge, expression, joining publics, and taking action) each of which can manifest in two citizenship styles (actualizing and dutiful), and we divided our 90-site sample into four categories: government/candidate, community organizations, interest groups, and online-only sites. This yields 32 possible combinations of learning opportunity, citizenship style, and site type, all but three of which we actually detected in our sample. The PDF slideshow linked below briefly describes the study’s theory and methods and displays one visual example of the actual site content that was judged to merit each distinct coding possibility.

Download the slideshow (PDF format)

Video: Introducing Civic Learning Research, Media Skills and Advocacy projects

Adri — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:54:41 +0000

As part of the Civic Learning Online Workshop we created a video to showcase several efforts that are related to youth civic online under the umbrella of Center for Civic Engagemen.

The video features Lance Bennett and CCCE staff members as well as YMCA Metrocenter youth team members.

Video was shot and edited by Jon Hickey

Open Thread for the Civic Learning Online Research Presentation

jonhickey — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:33:21 +0000

This is an open thread for the civic learning online research presentation taking place at the Civic Learning Online Workshop at the University of Washington. Feel free to leave comments below to join in conversation.

Youth organizing

Toby Campbell — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:01:34 +0000

We are excited to have a few new advisors on board. Kate Boyd and Cristien Storm from If You Don’t They Will have joined our Civic Learning Team. I’d like to invite Kate and Cristien, along with any other interested bloggers to weigh in on the following:

Kate and Cristien have a lot of great experience fostering youth organizing through their work. What are the ways that organizations like PSO can support youth organizing? How does this compare with the activity of organizing youth?

All-ages movement, youth leadership

Toby Campbell — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:47:09 +0000

We are excited to have a few new advisors on board. In particular, Josh Powell, Program Director for the VERA Project, has joined our Civic Learning Team. I’d like to invite Josh and other interested bloggers to weigh in on the following:
What are the various ways organizations can foster youth governance and leadership and put power in the hands of the young people they serve?
In what ways do these types of organizations fit into the all-ages movement project, and what does this involvement mean?

Activism Style of Millenials

Chris Wells — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:06:39 +0000

I’d like to follow up on the debate over Sally Kohn’s Real Change Happens Offline (see DailyKos’ georgia10’s response, Allison Fine’s post at Social Citizens Blog, and our own CLO post on the debate), because I think it is rich in the ideas we tangle with here at CLO.

So far, this debate has mainly focused on technology, with the central question being: are Millennials spending too much time on webby activism, and not enough on offline activism?

I want to add to that focus an awareness that, concurrently with the development of the web, citizens have been changing their participation habits to engage more often with looser, networked communities that fit into increasingly busy schedules and complex political identities. (It’s quite clear that this trend started before the web—but can it be a coincidence that many of the tools developed for the web enable just those sorts of online communities?) So there are at least two models of political action—ways of approaching and preferring to engage with the political world—at work, apart from web use. (A number of scholars have theorized those models, including Lance Bennett, whose Dutiful/self-Actualizing approach is being employed in our current CLO research, and was recently blogged about.) (more…)