Long Beach YMCA

In Conversation with

Bob Cabeza
(Executive Director)

Organization & Location

Long Beach YMCA Youth Institute YMCA of Greater Long Beach
[Long Beach, California]
http://www.lbymca.org

Website

http://www.lbcoralyi.org/news.html

About the Program

The YMCA Youth Institute provides an afterschool youth development program at the YMCA of Greater Long Beach / Community Development Branch, California, which integrates technology into literacy, media arts, career development, and civic engagement projects for Participants are learning technology skills in their wireless lab. academic success. High school youth start this program during the summer to work through team-building and diversity-awareness exercises, and participate in a further intensive technology program during the year. About 50 to 70 participants enroll in this program every year and become "high-school alumni" once they graduate from the summer program. Then they participate in the after school program all through their high school years.

The Goals of This Program:

To embody principles of youth development/engagement that lead youth towards academic success
To guide youth in developing academic, career-oriented, and technology skills through a program model framework for service-learning and project-based learning

Program Activities:

The entire curriculum of this program is organized as project-based learning that coaches the high-school participants to work as a group. Below are examples of the program activities:

Our hope is to help our participants learn collaboration as human beings, which is required for project-based learning... During the summer, we have youth participate in diversity trainings on ethnic and gender equity. After these trainings, we take the metaphors or lessons back into the technology projects during the academic year. - Bob Cabeza, Executive Director

Example 1) Digital movie and music-making: This is a literacy project where the participants focus on brainstorming ideas as a group and turning the ideas into a story with a Word document. While writing the movie story, they create a storyboard and compose a script, which are the bases for creating a three-dimensional movie using DV Cameras and movie editing software such as Final Cut 4 and iMovie. The participants also create their own digital music to insert into the movie using music keyboards and Reason music software.
Example 2) Teen magazines: The participants develop their own Teen Magazine working with Adobe software including Photoshop, PageMaker, Indesign, and Illustrator. Through issues and stories that the youth want to explore, they acquire journalism skills in addition to digital graphics skills.
Example 3) Team logo-producing: The participants also produce team logos for their "production company" using 3D animation software called Cinema 4D. Through this project, the youth cultivate a positive attitude to collaborative team projects while acquiring production and digital arts skills.
Example 4) Relationship training: To enrich the project-based learning in a group, "diversity training," "team-building," and "leadership-building" trainings are provided so that the participants learn to build supportive and constructive relationships with their peers and adult mentors.

Funding Sources:

James Irvine Foundation
Community Technology Foundation of California
California Consumer Protection Foundation
The Knight Foundation
21st Century High-school Afterschool Initiative

Challenges & Strategies

Challenges:

Increasing awareness of diversity issues
"Local school districts need to focus on diversity issues within their schools and be proactive, not reactive. Most of our participants live with fear and unsafety in their schools and communities. We need to be responsible for physical, psychological and emotional safety for them."
Lack of high quality youth development practices in our current institutions
"Our youth grow up in the current rule-based society where numbers and test scores are measured as success. This results in insufficient opportunities for learning compassion and decision-making skills, and for being creative."
Continuously identifying funding opportunities

Strategies:

Start with a relationship-building program during the summer as a pre-requisite for a technology-based after school program. more

Technology is a holistic resource, which can be shared with all youth. If we put too many barriers and rules around technology, we make it inaccessible to our youth...Our high school youth share their laptops with other youth and play a role of peer leaders in neighborhood schools. - Bob Cabeza, Executive Director

Consider technology as a holistic resource, which can be shared with all youth:
1) Use wireless hotspots near city areas to resolve the issues of access to technology. If possible, set up wireless technology in your lab so that the lab appeals to youth and promotes a creative atmosphere.
2) Create a community-based project where laptops are shared with other afterschool programs. more
Support multiple skill development through project-based learning. more
Integrate the Content Standards into the project-based learning activities aided by technology. more
Make an investment to keep the latest technology in your lab based on your knowledge of the advancement of technology. more
Work with staff members who possess multiple skill sets and are grounded with the necessary experience as youth development workers. more
Help youth experience real professional skills through relationships with other organizations. more
Evaluate youth outcomes such as positive attitude exhibited through oral communication and multimedia stories. more

Strategies in detail:

Start with a relationship-building program during the summer as a pre-requisite for a technology-based after school program.
"Human relationships are essential. According to TIME magazine's 2000 Census, Long Beach is the most ethnically diverse city in the U.S. We first offer our participants opportunities to celebrate their differences and similarities since our hope is to help our participants learn collaboration as human beings -- required for project-based learning. During the summer we put them into focus group trainings on ethnic and gender equity. Our participants camp out for 5 days in a local national park for intensive human-relationship and team-building trainings. After these trainings, we take the lessons back into the technology projects in which the summer graduates participate during the academic year. This process encourages the youth to find their voices in the series of learning events. As adults, we need to find support systems for our youth. We want our youth to be close friends so that they can support each other."

Consider technology as a holistic resource, which can be shared with all youth.
"While technology is becoming more and more institutionalized in our society, we believe that it should actually be holistic, at least in the learning process of our program. Technology is neither yours, nor mine, it's theirs. We write proposals and get grants not for us but for our youth participants. If we put too many barriers and rules around technology, we make it inaccessible to our participants in their environments and on their terms."

1) Use wireless hotspots near city areas to resolve the issues of access to technology. If possible, set up wireless technology in your lab so that the lab appeals to youth and promotes a creative atmosphere.

"Wireless hotspots are set up around the downtown business area of Long Beach. We held a field trip there for our youth and learned together how to use wireless technology such as configuring IP addresses. Since the trip, the young people enjoy using laptops in these hotspots for ubiquitous learning. They love to finish their homework in downtown coffeehouses, sitting down on a comfortable couch. We also use wireless in our lab for mobility, space, and aesthetics. Our educators and youth do not like a lab that looks cold and forbids youth to move around. We encourage a learning environment where you can see our high school youth lying down in a hallway with their laptops surfing the net. You can see our participants sitting on our couches or steel tables while doing homework with their laptops, logging in and out for the wireless access to play educational games. Wireless is a good way to create a holistic and homey learning atmosphere."

2) Create a community-based project where youth share laptops with other after school programs.

"There is a 'Community Service Project' in our program. For the project, participants take mobile laptops to nearby high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. Our high school youth share the laptops with other youth and play the role of peer leaders in these neighborhood schools. They teach computer skills to youth in elementary schools and digital arts skills to other high school youth using the laptops from our lab."

Back to Strategies

Empower multiple skill development through project-based learning.
"Our young participants develop ideas with their group and make them real through projects they complete. Youth learn technology skills using software, hardware, and peripheral tools through project-based experiences that teach multiple academic, social and leadership skills.

***One example of project-based learning is as follows:
The participants of the movie-making project experience learn in a real world context by doing this project-based activity. They begin with story development in groups. The ideas are collected in oral and written forms, which enhance discussion skills, and sequential and critical thinking skills. The second step is composing actual stories captured during the first step in a Word document. This document eventually leads to a script and story board. This second step heightens the participants’ level of understanding of the story. In the third step, youth start asking about character development, feeling, and settings of the story. Then they create actors, sets, lights, and special effects using lighting, 3D animation, computers, DV cameras, and editing software. This third step builds their understanding of the characters and setting, and helps them step into the story more in depth than if they were just reading it on paper or in a book. Finally, the participants edit their stories based on responses they receive from a test audience and have further discussion with their peers and educators before presenting their final products."

Integrate the Content Standards into the project-based learning activities aided by technology.
"We use technology in our program as a means to strengthen academic learning that is rooted in the California Content Standards. We concentrate on the area of 21st century learning skills among the standards. The curriculum has been written for the purpose of enabling the program graduates to transfer their knowledge of how to manipulate technology including laptops, projectors, and DV or digital cameras into academic skills. Our participants finish their school work using the valuable skills learned from our program. Since youth invite their school friends to their group projects over the course of a year, we try to deal with as many subject areas as possible so they and their friends can use their newly acquired knowledge in their schoolwork. An example of this effort is a group of youth doing a multi-media science project on the history of rice. While developing a story about the historical event, the participants learn the subject more meaningfully rather than just reading a book. The oral presentation also improves their communication skills. Through this kind of learning activity, our participants start looking at the project as a personal challenge and a fun way to overcome the challenge and demonstrate confidence through their newly acquired technology and speaking skills."

Back to Strategies
Make an investment in the latest technology for your lab based on your knowledge of the advancement of technology.
"You have to always make a certain amount of investment. Budget to keep the computers updated. Invest at least 10% of your annual budget in updating technologies including digital cameras, hardware, and software. For example, we used to have 180 computers with OS 9 installed two years ago. We have now updated them with OS X Panther. Always predict 2 years ahead and study different grants and their models so that you can make your program cutting edge. As a result of our effort on updating technology, we are going to obtain 5 new iMac G5 computers along with 5 new iBooks. Low-income urban youth deserve the same updated technology tools as their middle and upper income counterparts or they cannot compete in the corporate world."
Work with staff members who possess multiple skill sets and are grounded with the necessary experience as youth development workers.
"Structure the program staff based on diversity of their careers. Some of our staff members have background in film, cinematography, and digital media. Some have a degree in education and graphic design. Another member has a degree in business and information systems. As the staff members implement our program, these diverse skill sets are reinforced by their common background in youth development and by their innovative previous teaching experiences in technology usage. Therefore, our staff members can at least write a standard curriculum based on their own practices. They can demonstrate high-end technical skills like helping our youth learn how to carry out tele-conferences or video-conferences by using an iSite web camera. These people are valuable resources to our program and introduce our youth to real-world skills required in the corporate culture of America."

Back to Strategies
Help youth experience real professional skills through relationships with other organizations.
"In the project called 'Micro Company', high school youth are temporarily employed as independent consultants in non-profit organizations in the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles. The youth produce promotional movies for the organizations through the skills learned in our program. In 2003, we earned $8,000 through our company. The money belongs to the high school youth. This is the result of our effort to guide them in learning career-related skills and actually learn them in a corporate setting."
Evaluate youth outcomes such as positive attitude exhibited through oral communication and multimedia stories.
"We evaluate youth on their attitude, behavior, written and oral communication, and technology and leadership skills through focus groups, attendance reports, and pre-post assessments of skills. California State University Long Beach Department of Social Work is our evaluator on this project. Our participants have demonstrated confidence in the skills learned through the completion of their projects and also displayed their capacity to apply the skills in project-based learning and real-world activities. Three-dimensional anecdotal data collection is effective in measuring outcomes, which includes focus group discussions, individual stories, and multimedia presentation created by youth. The data that have been collected so far indicate that our participants regard their group as a family, our meeting spot as a safe environment to learn in, and our adult educators as sincere listeners and mentors. This is an essential element that needs to be considered prior to measurement of results on test scores. When we see positive evidence in this foundational level of youth development first, we believe that our youth are ready to engage themselves in deeper learning."