Mayor Daley and Chicago Public Library Offers Teens Digital Media Space

Mayor Richard M. Daley joined the Chicago Public Library at the opening of YOUmedia, an innovative new 21st Century learning space for high school students.

Located at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State Street, YOUmedia connects young adults, books, media and institutions throughout the city, in one dynamic space.

YOUmedia is a collaboration between the Chicago Public Library and Digital Youth Network, with generous support provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Pearson Foundation through the Chicago Public Library Foundation. The space was designed by a team of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon Universitys Entertainment Technology Center.

The Chicago Public Library is a vital component of our citys comprehensive efforts to provide our children with the opportunities and resources needed to ensure that the educational activities are continued after the school day has ended, said Mayor Richard M. Daley. YOUMedia will offer Chicagos teens an opportunity to develop digital technology skills, improve their minds and have a lot of fun at the same time.

New media such as social networking sites, chat and online discussion forums are changing the way people, especially teens, communicate and learn. YOUmedia supports young adults use of digital technology by engaging them in literature-based projects that promote critical thinking, creativity and skill-building.

YOUmedia is home to thousands of books, more than 100 laptop and desktop computers and a variety of media creation tools and software, including a recording studio, which allows teens to express through music and spoken word.

Teens in YOUmedia will have the opportunity to attend free workshops, attend book discussions, author events and performances.

YOUmedia also exists beyond the library walls virtually at youmediachicago.org providing an online community where students can create, display and exchange ideas about their work with peers and adult mentors.

Youth have the opportunity to create an online portfolio of work that can then be connected to and shared with other teens, institutions and initiatives.

While the focus of the design of YOUmedia has been on supporting youth in out-of-school time, Chicago high school teachers with classes of students are also able to reserve the space for skill-building workshops during the school day.

YOUmedia is based on research supported by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its digital media and learning initiative, which is exploring the role digital media plays in the lives of young people and its implications for education in the 21st century.

The research was conducted by Professor Mizuko Ito and colleagues, Living and Learning with Digital Media (2008).

This ethnographic study of more than 700 youth found that youth participate with digital media in three ways:

they hang out with friends in social spaces such as Facebook and MySpace;
they mess around or tinker with digital media, making simple videos, playing online games, or posting pictures in Flickr; and
they geek out in online groups that facilitate exploration of their core interests.

In these groups they may, for example, make music, documentaries, machinima or robots. They may also be committed writers on fan fiction and anime sites.

The researchers found that these online interest-driven activities extend young peoples learning and exploration significantly beyond experiences in school or local community programs.

Based on these findings, YOUmedia was designed along those same three categories:

Hang Out: A relaxed space which allows teens to socialize with friends after school, work on homework assignments, check out books, play games or spend time in online social spaces such as Facebook and MySpace. A performance space offers participants a stage for spoken word pieces or readers theater.

Mess Around: Designed to encourage individual exploration or collaboration, the space offers work tables for group projects, as well as Mac and PC desktop computers on which teens can create videos, play games and discover the Librarys collections.

Geek Out: Participants engage in variety of digital media workshops and explore the creation of digital artifacts such as music, documentaries, fan fiction and virtual worlds grounded in the content of books in the Geek Out section of the YOUmedia space.

Digital media workshops offered by the Digital Youth Network mentors, include Digital Photography, Fan Fiction, Graphic Design, Digital Video Production, Digital Music Production and WordBuilders Game Design.

The goal of YOUmedia is to support youth in their participation with digital media across all three of these practices. The goal, in time, is to increase substantially the number of youth in Chicago who use online resources and new media as tools to engage in inquiry about their neighborhoods, the city, and the world.

All high school age teens are welcome at YOUmedia.

Teens can use YOUmedia technology for free with a valid Chicago Public Library card.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Mayors Press Office, 312-744-3334
Ruth Lednicer, 312-747-4907

Chicago Public Library

lednicer@chipublib.org&/

Source: Chicago Press Release