<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hello fellow iDC'ers, I'm Josh Levy, an MFA student at Hunter College in New York and an editor for the web site Personal Democracy Forum (<A href="http://www.personaldemocracy.com">www.personaldemocracy.com</A>). Last spring I completed a project that continues to hold valuable lessons for me as I continue on with my thesis and other adventures. <DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The project, called the Bronx Blog Project (<A href="http://www.levjoy.com/bronxblogproject">www.levjoy.com/bronxblogproject</A>), resulted from my excitement about emerging social media practices and my disappointment that large segments of society were missing out on them. I had gotten interested in the political and social implications of social software and the grandiose claims being made by its marketers. One comment from Bart Decrem, who'd worked Firefox and at the time was the head of the Flock browser project, was particularly striking: </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3" style="font-size: 14px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">We are part of the participation revolution, a shift of control away from corporations, publishers and others large entities, and towards the individual.</SPAN></FONT><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; "> </SPAN> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>A revolution! He was talking about a new web browser that -- in accordance with Web 2.0 doctrine -- was supposed to help enable the production of "user-generated content" (see Jon Pareles' <A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/arts/music/10pare.html">piece</A> in the NY Times today for a more reasoned discussion). </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Essentially, Flock was/is (it's still under development) a web browser based on Firefox that makes it easy to upload pictures to Flickr and see your friends' pics, tag bookmarks for del.icio.us, write blog posts, etc., all using tools built into the browser. Fun? Yes. Important? Probably. Revolutionary? I dunno. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>But I realized that a big reason why I got interested in this stuff -- why I've been so fascinated with Clay Shirky's discussions of folksonomies, or the rise of Wikipedia, or rise of citizen journalism -- is that within these emerging structures there may actually lay the seeds of a genuine change in paradigm, of the way that culture is produced and emitted. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>If this was true, then how could we reach out to members of our society who might get left even further behind by these advances? </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The optimistic and naive answer was: let's get immigrants blogging! I've been continually inspired by </DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.globalvoicesonline.com">Global Voices</A>' support for "third world" bloggers and their belief in the political implications of blogging and citizen journalism. Why not try this stuff at home? I thought. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>So I met an ESL teacher at Bronx Community College who taught an immersive English class. Her students, mostly Dominican, were in class for 25 hours week, learning English so they could apply to the "senior" colleges in the City University of New York system. She was interested in the educational potential of blogging, and we gave it a shot. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>So I led weekly classes on how to blog, from starting up an account on Blogger to inserting links and pictures in posts to learning how to comment and link to other bloggers. The classes were filmed, and each student's blog was aggregated on the project's web site. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>While some students knew of and used social networking sites, few of them had heard of blogs, and it was a rough start for many of them. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Eventually, though, we had the whole class up and running on Blogger.com and a few of them got into it, posting pictures of their children and girlfriends and taking advantage of the form (and the, um, assignments) to write about topical issues. Their writing about immigration was especially moving, as it was a response to a national discussion about immigration. Students sometimes weathered unfriendly attitudes from online strangers who'd found their sites; it was a quick lesson in the challenges of public communication. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>In any event it proved difficult to get most students blogging, and I sometimes found myself trying to convince them of the importance of this stuff when I should have been listening to why they were or weren't interested. It was a lesson in theory vs. practice. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Enough of me. Check out the aggregate site at <A href="http://www.levjoy.com/bronxblogproject">http://www.levjoy.com/bronxblogproject</A> where I collected all of the students' posts, video of them in and out of class, and some other goodies. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Whatever high-minded ideas I had about social media were tempered by everyday frustrations of internet access, student apathy, and the obviously larger problems of getting by as a recent immigrant in New York. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I look forward to your comments. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>-Josh Levy</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>--</DIV><DIV>www.personaldemocracy.com</DIV><DIV>www.levjoy.com</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>