This article by Mindy Faber appeared in Youth Media Reporter. It outlines some of the goals and key pedagogical strategies behind the program.

Listening Across Borders: Creating Virtual Spaces for Youth Global Exchange
By: Mindy Faber
Published: November 14, 2007
Category: Trends
Photo by YouthLAB

As we transition into an increasingly global and technology dependant society, new participatory media networks have the potential to affect an international youth-led social justice movement. Because youth media programs are consistently at the forefront of technological innovation as well as the development of youth-centered educational practices, as a field, we are in a unique and exciting position to facilitate and incubate new youth-centered forms of global exchange.

However, there are few spaces where young people of different backgrounds and global perspectives can interact under conditions not mediated and controlled by adults—even in youth media. Innovative models that provide instruction on how such interactions can take place must be thoughtfully discussed, tried out, and shared among educators, which requires learning new pedagogical approaches.

As youth media educators, how can we create a different kind of pedagogical space where young people from around the globe can use the tools of participatory media (blogs, wikis, social networks, digital sharing sites, etc.) to connect politically and socially? How do we learn to “listen across borders”—the first step in creating a youth platform for global social justice?

These sets of questions inspired me to create YouthLAB, a program where youth are in charge, conceptualizing how to use participatory media as a springboard for youth leadership, activism and organizing.

About YouthLAB
YouthLAB, (Youth Listening Across Borders), an intensive two-week program, took place in summer 2007. Twenty young people from Barbados and Chicago came together in a virtual space to create global exchange using peer-to-peer networks and other tools of participatory media.

Each day during these two weeks, youth from Barbados and Chicago would meet physically in each of their respective locations but would also come together in a variety of wired worlds as well (such as online video chats, blog posts and comments, video letters, GoogleMaps, and Facebook).

Before the official start of the two-week exchange, a 16-year-old Chicago-based member of YouthLAB traveled with me to Barbados to provide computers, cameras, high-speed Internet service and skill training for eight young people at Mela Berger’s Caribbean Institute for Cultural and Healing Arts (CICHA). During that time, we shared knowledge on how to produce journalistic videos using iMovie and Final Cut Pro, shoot digital photographs, use social networking sites, and upload content to blogs and Google MyMaps.

Despite the high incidence of poverty on the island, the Bajan youth were digitally literate. Most youth access technology such as YouTube and satellite television regularly, although few had ever worked on Macintosh computers or software. While all the Bajan participants were black (as is 98% of the population), they were diverse in terms of socioeconomic status, schooling opportunities and the parish in which they each lived. In Chicago, the participants were comprised of 12 youth, 16-18 years of age (African-American, white, Latino, Muslim, and from a range of income levels).

Physical and Virtual Contact Zones
The diversity among the youth participants, within and across sites, is a critically important component of the YouthLAB model. As the work of Michelle Fine, Maria Elena Torres and others in the Participatory Action Research Collective have shown, “contact zones”—in which different cultures meet, clash and negotiate meaning—are not always neat and conflict-free. In fact, these messy spheres are necessary in order to create the kind of conversations that kindle democratic dialogue and richer forms of cross-cultural understanding.

Bringing youth into conversation about oppression and injustice both in physical and virtual spaces fosters critical consciousness. In such “zones,” new relationships form across previously uncomfortable differences. This is an area that is essential for educators to support if we are to “listen across borders” and help build global social justice movements by and for youth.

Pedagogical Approach
Part of YouthLAB’s mission is to provide a space where young creators and activists in Barbados and Chicago could engage in meaningful talk and listen and learn on their own terms, using their own tools and cultural forms of communication. The intrinsic properties of open source and Web 2.0 technologies are perfectly suited for this form of global learning.

While far from being naïve about the problematic aspects of social networking sites, most youth still perceive YouTube, social networks and other “affinity zones” (Henry Jenkins, MIT Comparative Media Studies) as having ample “street cred” precisely because of the way they exist outside the control of adult authorities and institutional gatekeepers.

In creating new spaces for young people to conceptualize their creative media & dialogue, I drew inspiration from the work of Harvard law professor, Yochai Benkler and his book, The Wealth of Networks, where he expands on the theory of “socially-motivated commons-based peer production.” Benkler describes a new public sphere, in which the creative flow of many people is galvanized into large-scale, participatory projects, but without the baggage of traditional hierarchies and profit motives. In other words, commons-based peer production supports many voices coming together to shape an idea or product.

Benkler identifies several defining features to commons-based, peer-to-peer production; however, in designing YouthLAB, we focused on the following:

• Make the work “granular.” Everyone should contribute something of value that advances the overall cause.
• Make the work modular. Divide the tasks into self-selected individual projects so that the work is divvyed up equitably and progress is clear.
• Make the work capable of integration. Individual contributions can be assimilated efficiently into a meaningful and publicly shared final product.

YouthLAB put this theory of socially motivated, commons-based, peer production into pedagogical practice. All 20 participating youth joined together to create media and dialogue about racism, segregation, inequality, migration, and social justice through the collective authoring of a central multimedia blog.

For example, this cadre of teens co-created an interactive multimedia GoogleMap on migrations, which contained both personal and historical travel and migration routes, embedded geo-tagged photos, stories, and videos and placemarkers indicating past, present and future landmarks. In addition, teens raised and answered questions in the form of videos, online chats and blog posts for a global exchange.

YouthLAB developed a networked system that allowed youth to see themselves as contributors to a shared political discourse. Integrating collective intelligence into the participatory framework, youth became actors in a public global arena rather than passive recipients of mediated information.

Emerging Practices for Youth-Centered Global Exchange

1. Start with a leading, genuine question. For example, in YouthLAB our exchange was launched through a joint inquiry: “Does evidence of the legacy of slavery, injustice or inequality exist within in your everyday lives and communities today?” This leading question spurred research and dialogue and led to a new set of questions posed and pursued by youth participants.

2. Enter into “interpretive discussions” about youth-made videos. Several videos and clips were posted on the YouthLAB blog and youth participants engaged in “interpretive discussions,” analyzing the meaning of videotexts. For example, a fascinating exchange centered on the video, A Girl Like Me, where the teen filmmaker raises the question, “Why do so many of the Black children in the social experiment choose the white doll to play with?” The videotext can operate as a fulcrum for a shared discussion in which everyone contributes. In this way discussions can move beyond limited and non-interactive comments towards real exchange and communication. http://youthlab.net/category/interpretive-discussions/

3. Pose cross-cultural questions and responses through video. For example, the youth in Barbados produced a video asking a series of questions of their U.S. counterparts in Chicago and vice versa. Each YouthLAB team then created videos responding to these questions. The questions ranged from lighthearted, to social, political and educational. Some of the more complex topics incorporated research and street interviews, which teens posted onto YouTube or on the YouthLAB blog.

4. Use “skyping” and online chats to build intimacy. The immediacy and realness of these interactions through live video chats provide personalized exchanges and visceral experiences across borders.

5. Use online mixing and mashup tools for collective authorship. In YouthLAB, we created a split-screen video with images of Bridgetown Barbados on one side and Chicago on the other. We also began experimenting with a video online mixer tool housed on the video-sharing site, Motionbox. The possibilities for new forms of creative collaboration through digital content-sharing applications are endless.

6. Step back and give young people the lead. In YouthLAB, peer-to-peer teach-ins, collective intelligence-sharing, and co-construction of “tag clouds” through social bookmarking were important ways that youth participants not only created media products but shaped their own curriculum and instruction as well.

Key to this work is that youth media educators become “invisible” in the learning process—which is different from most of the training we received as educators. As youth interpret the meanings and questions their peers bring up, they bring their own perspectives, informed by a complex set of experiences, seen through the lens of race, class, privilege, gender, and nation. Young people in global exchanges hear challenging and different perspectives, which lead to new questions and understandings that can strengthen the social justice field.

Conclusion

The YouthLAB participants needed no persuasion to merge social activism with cultural production using digital networks. They did not need to be coaxed to talk about the issues affecting their lives with peers from a different country or prodded to sit down and watch media made by other youth. On the contrary, they couldn’t get enough of it. Clearly, youth with access to the tools of participatory culture experience new international and media-based sites as powerful and vibrant, fostering imagination, youth activism, and international exchange.

As an educator I was schooled in the methods of backwards-design; however, in a learning environment built around youth-led, commons-based, peer production, adult facilitators need to relinquish predictable outcomes in favor of a more elastic approach. We need a different type of pedagogical space—one where youth are in charge at the outset to use media as a springboard for leadership, activism and organizing. Using tools like commons-based peer production, interpretive discussion, and virtual contact zones, we can provide the types of environments for online global youth media to develop.

By creating these pedagogical spaces where hierarchies are flattened out but differences are not erased, youth media makers can provide a global example of dialogue by listening across borders.

Mindy Faber is an educator, curator, consultant and award-winning media artist. She is the Founding Director of Open Youth Networks and the designer of YouthLAB (Listening Across Borders). Faber lives in the Chicago area with her husband and 16-year-old son.
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In YouthLAB we collaborated on a map using Google My Maps. Check out our map at

YouthLABmap

Participants share their family migration histories,document the slave trades routes, embed diaries from survivors of the middle passage and show their future hopes for travel.

There is much to explore in the YouthLAB site beyond the main page. On the main page you will see daily entries posted by the youth participants which often represent digital content they have produced.By clicking on the comments under the posting you are likely to see lively and intellectual debates going on. By exploring the categories to the right you will get a feeling for our curricular and educational philosophy guiding the workshop.

Here is a description of what each section holds.
YOUTHLAB POSTS and INTERPRETIVE DISCUSSIONS
Under each of these you will see COMMENTS.

TIP - Don’t skip the COMMENTS because this is where the fascinating online conversations and interpretive discussions occur and where YOU can add your own voice.

On the right of the main page you will see CATEGORIES. The categories that are posted to the main page are:

INTERPRETIVE DISCUSSIONS are pages where on-going dialogue can occur around the interpretation of a particular text. This can be audio, writing, articles, fiction, video or photos. Anyone can post a piece of content and ask a question to begin an interpretive discussion.

TIP: There is a really fascinating discussion going on in the COMMENTS section under the Interpetive Discussion called A GIRL LIKE ME. Check it out.

YOUTHLAB POSTS are pages where youth post their content or any blog they wish.

The other categories represent our curricular and pedagogical process which we make completely transparent and available on the site. These categories include:

The DAILY SCHEDULE which is just that. YouthLAB participants can check in on our agenda for the day the minute they arrive in the morning or the night before.

UNDERSTANDING AND USING THIS SITE contains reflections and blog posts by facilitators as we connect our curriculum to a public.

REFERENCE is a sections where youth and facilitators can post quotes, photos, books, and videos that we want to share with each other.

VIDEO TEXTS are videos that we use to generate interpretive discussions. Sometimes these are self-authored and sometimes they are embedded from other sites.

TUTORIALS contains technical how to guides for YouthLAB participants and resource materials.

And our TAG CLOUD actually contains most of our resources and links that are used in the workshop on a daily basis. Our TAG CLOUD is mad eup of links provided not only by the facilitators but by the youth themselves.

We are a group of 11 including three facilitators Mindy, Zane and myself.

We have been working intensely with the techniques and applications of our mediums. We have also begun to “process” the “content” of our issue.

Our mediums are web-based communication and multi-media art. Our issue is the current impact of slavery.

The first week leaves us with a greater awareness of some of the details of the slave trade.

We have begun to share some of our new insights on this website. We are inviting the community outside of our group to join us in sharing awareness and perceptions of both the issue and the medium/technology.

I observe of a growing list of imbalances in current day life that can be attributed to slavery. I would like to see our group explore possibilities of balance perhaps stimulating a focus on balance in the collective conscious.

I am excited about the possibility of a convergence of positive energy with a tremendous potential to heal and create direction towards some resolutions.

We are off this week and when we reconvene on Monday July 23, the Chicago members of our group will join us. I look forward to seeing how our conversation develops and who in the greater community joins the discussion. This is very exciting!

One of the important ways that we launched the workshops in YouthLAB is through the creation of tag clouds. If you don’t know what a tag cloud is - just check out our own home page - the big list of words to the right is the Tag Cloud for YouthLAB. Click on any of these words and you will go to a list of websites that we have bookmarked.

In YouthLAB, our tag cloud essentially links us directly to our curricular resources. For example, click on [maps] and you will see all the url links to maps that we reference for our own personal YouthLAB migrations map using a Google tool. In fact, the YouthLAB tag cloud encapsulates our identity as a collective by linking us to our questions, our reference points and our collective methodologies for assembling knowledge and constructing meaning.

We formed this tag cloud using an on-line social bookmarking tool called Del.icio.us. See our how to guide under the category Tutorial!

In order to introduce the conceptual power of social bookmarking, we decided to create non-digital tag clouds on our first day. Here is how it worked. We began by discussing tags and their multiple meanings (labels, graffiti, games etc). We asked -”Are labels positive or negative?” Most will quickly say BOTH. So we ask youth to write in their journals what are negative tags, labels, put downs, categories, stereotypes, words that disrespect, degrade or denigrate - particularly ones that they themselves or people close to them have been victimized by. Then they were instructed to select two of these words and write them on cards in bold black ink and slap them to a wall.

Continuing on, we now ask a different set of questions and tell them that we will now create a very different tag cloud. We continued the same process but asking different questions: 1) define your community - what words, images, sounds, smells, foods, ideas, thoughts come to mind; 2) what knowledge do you desire, what do you want to know more about; 3) what do your value, what issues are important to you, what do you care most about.

At this point we have two very distinct tag clouds clustered onto the walls - one is hateful and the other is more complex. When we asked the youth to describe the difference between the two - at first they see negative and positive. But we point out that some of the words on Tag Cloud 2 are not considered “positive” by all. They identify “Rum” for example and “Tourism”. Through a series of questions, they see that Tag Cloud 1 constitutes a set of labels and identifiers inscribed onto them from outside forces. In Tag Cloud 2, the words are “self-authored”, representing the complex and multiple aspects of who they are, where they come from and what they dream of becoming. We may not agree and we may not be free of conflict and controversy - but we define our own questions and pursuits.

Participants then go on-line to explore del.icio.us and contribute to the tag cloud . It becomes a kind of wiki adding to the collective identity, inquiry and intelligence of the group. Throughout the workshop, they will be expected to contribute to the YouthLAB Tag Cloud and with each post, youth will gain greater engagement, ownership and authorship within the project.

Self-authorship can them become something which is routinized with the workshop as democratic practice, as responsible journalism that cites its sources and as an actively evolving means of self-inquiry.