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By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

Educator Collaborations

Starting in Summer 2014, we began piloting the By Any Media Necessary (BAM) online resource with groups of K-12 educators affiliated with the National Writing Project. This was done in an effort to see how teachers can utilize the resource in their classrooms. Sessions brought together small groups of teachers to informally explore the BAM resource, provide feedback on the utility of the scalar platform and usability of the interface, test drive some of the available materials such as the MAPP workshops and digital media toolkit, and engage with the sizable archive of media on BAM. For example, high school Economics teacher Albert spoke from experience as a teacher who already incorporates creative use of digital media and technology into his classroom. He described how different aspects of the BAM resource could help him scaffold and build lessons that deepen students’ critical engagement with social issues and how working with these practices and tools could help students learn to express their knowledge and opinions through creative and maker practices that they are passionate about.

Through our conversations, we also sought to understand some of the structural obstacles preventing teachers from working with digital media and technology in their classrooms. For example, high school Language Arts teacher Kate talked with us about administrative and systemic barriers to working with cellphones and other kinds of digital media and technology at her school, and discussed ways that she and other teachers could legitimize this kind of work and navigate around these barriers.

While the MAPP team hopes that BAM is a resource for teachers, we understand that we ourselves are not teachers and therefore the development of lesson and unit plans is not our expertise. Rather than outline how we feel BAM can be used in the classroom, we would like to highlight how actual teachers are using the resource. We hope to continue to partner with teachers who are using BAM in their classrooms in the months ahead.

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The complete package NWP Albert is an Economics teacher at Locke High School in the Watts area of South LA and member of the UCLA Writing Project, shown here talking about various ways he could incorporate the digital media examples, workshops, conversation starters, and media making resources he found through the By Any Media Necessary (BAM) web resource into his lessons and curriculum. Speaking from experience as a teacher who already seeks to incorporate creative use of digital media into this classrooms, he also talks about how different aspects of the BAM resource can help students think even more critically and engage with creative and maker practices that they are passionate about.
Standards and Cellphones NWP Kate is a 10th grade Language Arts teacher at Locke High School in the Watts area of South LA and member of the UCLA Writing Project, shown here discussing administrative and structural barriers to working with cellphones and other kinds of digital media and technology in classrooms, and ways to legitimize and work around barriers to doing this kind of work for teachers at her school and elsewhere.