Floating Eyeball

Contribution, Attribution
Is this the same as necessary/sufficient?

Instrumental conception of information…if information is good, widen the pipe.
Another conception of

Research Pitches
Why do we care about ICTs? There’s a refrigerator divide and nobody suggested community refrigerators.

Census
Implicit assumption that these are good, but we never know how many there are.
Database of the relevant categories, types–not a survey.  The survey would follow.
Need to have some kind of count.  The numbers are very important.
Benchmark to use to make sense of findings.
Start with the assumption that it won’t be perfect, but it will be useful.
For private entrepreneurs, participation in the census can be self-promotion.

What would census accomplish?
Help with baseline data to measure other things against.
Measure different magnitude, categories of impact.
Geographic variables and comparisons come into play.

What would this miss?
Risks missing evolving technologies and services.
Categories could be confusing/misleading.
Would not capture what people are doing in space.
Risk of data not being equally valid across sites, countries.
Depends on the information you collect with census: must collect info on what’s happening.
Sample v. census
Can’t capture the unexpected
Obsolete results, landscape is changing fast.

3 approaches: Panel, Outcome Mapping, Most Significant Change
Public Access doesn’t come until demand is aggregated–supply side.  In urban, build it and they will come.  In rural, they won’t demand needs to be aggregated.  Need to measure the demand.

When demanders go for supply, and activity has occurred.  It has an output. 23 children learned powerpoint.  Which leads to an outcome–they are empowered to give presentation.  The impact comes next.  The farther down this chain you go, the more difficult it is to count the impact.

Panel
Stakeholder analysis.  Users, businesses, etc. go for a particular need.  Attract a bunch of people (users) and track what they do as a result of access.

Outcome Mapping
Outcomes can’t be linearly linked.  We are going to track outcomes only, with special emphasis on boundary partners.  What bp does differently is what we’re going to track.  As a result of empowerment, education etc.  what do they do?  Organize? Vote?

Most Sig Change
Pick a group of people and ask them in a period of time what was the most sig change.  It can document emergent change.

Outcome mapping and msc both require other tools to work well.  Both can work well as a structured way to organize narrative.  It can also help identify indicators to be measured.

What would this miss?

Risk that this technique would be overwhelmed by context.  More difficult to move to the lessons you can take away.  Sampling about generalizability key.  On what grounds and when do you sample.  What is the procedure for sampling?

Quasi-experimental design + Retrospective
Not sure why its quasi.
10+ years of significant m&e of public access: 1) surveys of users, operators, nonusers, stakeholders, focussed on self-reporting. 2) Tech informed–what pages, how many bits, etc.
Not done a good enough job of using work of predecessors.
Experimental approach asks for a smaller step…how might we best design an intervention to best reach the outcomes we want.

ESL in schools + in community centers.
Some groups doing some system in co-located shareware vs. private environs.
2 activities, track differential down the causal chain.

Retrospective Study
Study use from programs that are 5 or 10 years from inception.
Even places that have failed, we could look at long term impacts.
Potentially cheap and easy–pick right project, do it relatively

Gets closer to attribution (from contribution) because you can control a particular factor.
Quasi because you pick something that you know will change…its experimental if you’re doing the intervention.

What do we miss?
Attribution is still tough, because many factors always in play.
Experimental design in an emergent field.
Range of design limited by factors you can control or manipulate.
Require alot of theory upfront to know what to factors to manipulate.
Ethical issues, if negative consequences.
Risk of false attribution…understand the instance but not the larger phenomenon.

Knowing what was gained by retrospective–history + cheap.

We all have examples of these stories.  Arranging a body of stories to answer larger research questions and put the stories in context.

How frequently do these stories emerge?
What percentage of visitors gain these benefits?
What are the groups of users that benefit?
Which centers are able to maxiimze these benfits?
Which users aren’t benefitting?
Which users aren’t even coming in the door?

“For whom, to what extent, under what circumstances?”

Beth: Interaction effects.  Not only the space, but the common

Geogrpahy of Opportunity that is part of the story.  Supply side of information, if access is present.

Qualitative frame of mind, to see what’s really going on on the ground.  The development organizations know the right answers.  How can we ask the questions to get the right answers.

Multiplicity: venues, activities, ICTs.  Need not simply multiple methods.  Need mixed methods.  Need to be integrated to get at the complexities of the question.

Public use v. public access.  Useful to de-emphasize the space from the use.
Digital divide v. digital inequality.  The important thing is how access is used.

Place matters.  Can measure usage patterns.  Other things happen in that place, externalities from groups of people gather around the technology.

Factors of inclusion/exclusion.  Income, literacy, race and ethnicity, social taboos.  Open to the public but not everyone has equal access in those spaces.

Sense of esteem, participation and worldview ARE development.

Revisited the Al Davies Club in Tacoma. Met with Echo Curry, the BOTT Lab Director. BOTT is the South Puget Sound BGCA technology program that is trend setting in many different ways. Al Davies is a bright spark even in that outstanding system. Echo is a big reason for this. She’s articulate and passionate.

Key Takeaways

Reinforcing Ideas. Adapting programs based on age. Mutlimedia, art key to student interest and motivation. Competition good motivator: digital arts contest, scavenger hunts, prizes, etc.

Outliers. Clearest explanation yet of how technology is not the point…it is a tool to educate. The South Puget Sound BOTT program is stunning. Innovators!

• Persuasion Maps. Uses analytical tools BEFORE web research begins to outline the arguments, points of the websites, movies, presentations they will make. Point not to teach computers, point is to use computers to educate.
• Technology is pervasive–kids need help filtering, assessing credibility, using safely, being comfortable learning, having fun. If don’t understand “meta” concerns they will fall behind, even if have training on particular software.
• Digital Arts Contest! (Video, Audio, Photoshop) Competition good motivator–in class, between clubs, nationally…
• Curriculum! Skill tech bad. Digital Arts on Club Tech good. Learning.com GREAT! Need more basic examples, themes.
• Age, Skill Gap Problems. Classes harder with wide gap. Teens need own space.
• BGCA’s about relationships–students, clubs, communities.

Here are the full field notes for the Al Davies visit: bgca_aldavies_20080417

Reviewing the field notes from these sites has been really fun.  I revisited Al Davies Boys and Girls Club in Tacoma in March.  Echo Curry, the technology director, had so many insights that are going to inform our research.  Here’s a gem that immediately came up:

For black history month we find resources on Martin Luther King online. We’ll find timelines.  We’ll watch his videos.  We’re not using the tools to teach them to use the computer per se, we’re teaching them to use the computer to be educated.  There’s so much information out there.  There are so many materials.  So its using the computer to inform yourself.  That’s the connection to technology.

The Whatcom BGCA’s main club located in Bellingham, WA is very large and well supported. The system is in the midst of a successful capital campaign and though resources aren’t scarce, the ethic of care is strong. (They use milk crates with carpet strips for chairs in the computer lab, and everyday they are neatly pushed into place.) I spoke with the technology director for over an hour on an afternoon when students were there but before the computer lab opened.

Key Takeaways

Reinforcing Ideas. 1) Lifers are key to the club’s personality. 2) Voluntary activities, not mandatory attendance is the key to effective participation and motivation of members.

Outliers/Challenges. Ed thinks they were selected as a Miracles academy because they are not particularly innovative, because they “do the programs.”

Ideas for tagging:

• Miracles Academy Site (1 of 5 BGCAs nationally)
• “Nick runs the place”…lifer. Member turned staff that sets the welcoming tone for staff and members.
• We DO stuff…voluntary programs make staff hustle, keep kids interested and create space to boot kids if they’re not respectful, uninterested, causing problems, etc.
• Age, skill disparity limits lab options–6yo next to 12yo–>ban YouTube, MySpace even if older kid might be able to handle it.

The full version of the Bellingham Field Notes are here.

I visited the Regence BGCA in Portland in March. It is a beautiful new facility that shares space with Rosa Parks Elementary in a massive housing authority redevelopment. Many agencies at all levels of government have converged. Private money is also present. Like many BGCs, the relationships between staff and students are critical–these kids get personal attention from caring adults who design programs and activities that are voluntary. They must succeed because they are good programs, that hold the interest of boys and girls. Unlike many clubs, cash resources do not seem to be an issue here–the facilities are gorgeous. There are lots of plans for expensive future programs such as laptops, wireless technology, multimedia production, etc.

Key Takeaways

• Massive Government Coordination: City, state and federal housing redevelopment project.
• Co-located with Rosa Parks Elementary—featured literacy program coordination
• Plenty of money: private sponsors of each room (teen center, reading room, computer lab, etc.).
• Computers turned off in teen center as punishment for evading filters and accessing MySpace
• Posh digital recording space in Teen Cener waiting to be filled with Audio-Engineering equipment

• Scavenger hunt was a good computer activity: scalable by # of tasks and difficulty (typing or searching). Kids work independently. Typing, reading skills a big challenge.
• Open Lab time and access generally are powerful incentives for student behavior
• Sent kids home—Not daycare. Programs are voluntary. Must respect staff and rules.

Regence BGCA Fieldnotes are the field notes, attached as a word doc.

Storytelling is an ancient art. It’s how we relate, remember and persuade. Much academic research ignores the importance storytelling. Stories are an excellent vehicle for influencing policy because they are attention grabbing, memorable and pre-packaged for re-telling. They are the original viral content!

Plus, storytelling is the most effective way to actually change a person’s mind.  Framing (ala Lakoff and others) posits that people fit new data into their existing worldview, or frame. Data is understood to the degree that it conforms . Data that doesn’t “fit” is discarded. Detail-rich narratives challenge or reinforce these frames. This approach recognizes at the outset that research findings exist in a political context where the audience must be primed to “hear.” Findings never speak for themselves.

I’m working on a project at the CIS that called Evidence Narratives. We are using storytelling to reveal and explain the impact of technology training and access. The project is funded by Microsoft Community Affairs. It grew out of a desire to think about PR “success stories” differently. Microsoft donates substantial resources to organizations that are doing amazing work in communities that face large development challenges. They deserve credit. But we all deserve more than Oprah-style heart string tugging. That is where evidence comes in. How can these stories be crafted to speak to what is representative and typical about programs and beneficiaries? What deeper dynamics are at work? Can we align the PR desire to tell success stories with third-party, independent research?

We’ve got an eclectic, brilliant cast of characters: Andy, Mark, Tricia, Maria and Chris. And one of these days we’ll include Becky, Rucha, Elizabeth and Ricardo and his quest for the “elusive impact.”

Check out the EN project page.  There are currently stories from Colombia, Czech and Turkey with many more on the way.

Rebirth. Floating Eyeball has been born many times. Originally as a nomadic ict trainer. Followed by a few incarnations as a student. Most recently in the ictd research world. All incarnations have been centrally concerned with the uses and utility of the new communication technologies for communities. I also love underdogs, new media and the awesome transformational potential of the Internet.

The bulk of the information here will be relevant for my current gig at the CIS, though I’m notoriously drawn across fuzzy lines, hot on the trail of hidden, indirect or subconscious connections.  So expect a wide range of ideas, including a healthy dose of nonsense.

For the homeys with rss feeds that may still be tuned in, thanks for hanging around:)