You're invited to join MIT's Dept of Play working group! rsvp now for first mtg in early March

Get involved with a new initiative at at MIT Media Lab's Center for Future Civic Media, the Department of Play. We're hoping you'll join us in a new working group of Boston area community practitioners that can help us assess the needs locally for the use of new mapping and digital storytelling tools in your programs.

There's more info below on our goals, but here's what we're proposing: To gather MIT/Harvard researchers and community practitioners once a month this spring, with our first meeting in the next two weeks at MIT Media Lab, on a weeknight 6-8:30pm, to form partnerships to pilot the tools & curriculum we hope to develop collaboratively. Please let us know as soon as possible if you are interested and what nights/days/times work best for you in the evenings either March 3rd or 4th or 9-11th.

Our goal is to engage as stakeholders early on in our development process, in order to make you part of conversation and center our learning goals in existing community and youth development practices.

Pooling the collective youth, media, mapping, and technology experience of Nitin Sawhney (Voices Beyond Walls), Leo Burd (C4 & VOIP Drupal/What's Up Lawrence), Jeff Warren (GrassrootsMapping.org), Kate Balug (Harvard Grad School of Design), and myself, the Dept. of Play project aims to develop easy-to-use, open-source digital toolkits with corresponding curricula and pedagogical guidance to support youth-led active exploration, participatory learning, and civic engagement among children and adolescents in their neighborhoods. We've already got a few tools in development for capturing GIS maps using weather balloons & kites, using phone voicemail for organizing, and easy to use software to have youth add their own information and media on maps that document or re-conceptualize space in their neighborhoods.

Also, check out a more detailed description of the "Urban Learning Lab" applying for funding from the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning Competition website: http://dmlcompetition.net/pligg/story.php?title=364.

Please contact me by email or by cell 617-688-8319.

-Danielle & the rest of the Dept of Play Team