Workshop on Marginalized Young People: Inclusion Through ICT
A pre-conference half-day workshop on June 11, 2008 - afternoon
Poverty, not belonging to the mainstream culture and language, lack of competences, and lack of motivation are some of the main factors for exclusion of young people from full participation in Western societies. As several empirical studies show, all young people tend to use digital technologies increasingly, but big differences exist in how they are using digital media. At the individual level and, more and more, at the social level, many young people today live in both worlds: the physical world, and the virtual world that ICT makes accessible “anytime, anywhere”. As this trend continues, It becomes crucial to explore these new kind of digital divide that is arising among young generations, which does not result from having no or limited access to ICT, but is produced by remaining only a user vs. becoming a critical actor who can exploit virtual experiences in order to increase his or her cultural, social and even economic capital.
The workshop aims at bringing together technologists, empirical researchers, designers, educators, sociologists, or decision-makers in any domain involving young people, to explore together some of the following issues.
- What are main factors of exclusion from positive participation in Digital Media activities?
- How can ICT solutions and learning environments for inclusion look like?
- What success stories/best practices can be told about positive impacts of ICT in these young people’s lives?
Position papers submission should be made electronically in PDF format, and may be up to 4 pages formatted according to our anonymous extended abstract template (http://idc08.northwestern.edu/files/idc2008_extendedabstracts_anon.doc).
A selection of the best papers from the workshop will be published in the ACM IDC'08 proceedings and at the ACM digital library, and will be presented during the main conference.