A Web 2.0 Enabled Content Management System for Rural Youth Photographers: Social Computing Supporting Community Empowerment

Abstract

A distributed coalition consisting of a Head Start program, its youth activities program development director, rural youth, an art gallery and its curators, a graphic designer, and a university department are collaborating to design, build, and populate a user controlled content management system to bring the youthsâ work to a global audience, enable computer mediated interaction, provide a venue for exploring artistic expression, and introduce information and communications technologies (ICTs) to the youth and other project participants. Using a project-based approach combined with implicitly constructed scenarios and the iterative and informal processes associated with free / libre / open source software development, the geographically and organizationally distributed project team created the first release of the Growing Tennessee Web site to coincide with a photo exhibition held at a not-for-profit art gallery. The project will build upon its previous accomplishments and introduce additional media and their supporting technologies to rural youth.