Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by SLAIS. Bertram (Chip) Bruce is a Professor Emeritus in Library & Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In our Youth Community Informatics project , university students and faculty work with diverse underserved communities to help young people learn about new technologies and develop academic potential through self expression and community building. Participants engage in inquiry units such as video documentaries, community journalism, oral history, multimedia and podcasting, GIS/GPS, protest songs, asset mapping, and setting up community technology center. The activities occur in schools, but also in after-school programs, boys and girls clubs, libraries, museums, and community centers. This presentation covers the background in pragmatism, the inquiry-based activities, the experiences to date, international partnerships, and what we’ve learned. Chip Bruce’s research goals include contributing to a conception of democratic education, meaning both the development of critical, socially-engaged citizens and of learning environments (formal and informal learning centers, home and work, and online), which are themselves democratic. Aspects of this work include research on community inquiry through collaborative community-based work, inquiry-based learning, drawing especially upon scholarship of the American pragmatists and the history of Progressive Education, and technology-enhanced learning, including research on the affordances and constraints of new media for learning.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Bruce, B. (1978). Interacting plans. ACM SIGART Bulletin, (66), 8-8. doi:10.1145/1045416.1045426. [Link]
Bruce, B. C., International Reading Association, & International Reading Association, N., DE. (2003). Literacy in the information age: Inquiries into meaning making with new technologies. Newark, Del: International Reading Association.
Bruce, B. (1999). Digital content: The babel of cyberspace. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42(7), 558-563. [Link]
Bruce, B. (1998). Learning through expression. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42(4), 306-310. [Link]
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