I am researcher/designer working at the intersection of youth, learning, innovation and technology. I am postdoc fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a Research Associate with the Connected Learning Research Network. In this page you can find information about the projects I am currently collaborating and working on.
The Youth and Media project groups together several research, advocacy, and development initiatives around youth, digital technology, and learning. By understanding young people‘s interactions with digital media, the Youth and Media project aims to gain detailed insights into youth practices and digital fluencies, harness the associated opportunities, address challenges, and ultimately shape the evolving regulatory and educational framework in a way that advances the public interest.
In the Coding for All project we develop new online tools and activities to engage more young people in developing computational fluency, particularly youth from groups currently underrepresented in computing. We also conduct policy and legal research, examining existing barriers, precedents, and practices to inform the design and deployment for this project as well as to inform the field of cyberlaw in the area of online privacy for young people.
An evolving collection of tools (videos, curriculum, guides, among others) for supporting the acquisition of digital literacy skills and the practice of digital citizenship. At the Berkman Center, and in collaboration with the Youth and Media, Student Privacy Initiative, and the Digital Literacy Toolkit teams, I have lead the design and development of the prototype of this platform.
Global Voices has been leading the conversation on citizen media reporting since 2005. It helps to curate, verify and translate trending news and stories from blogs, independent press and social media in 167 countries. I started blogging for them fall 2016 writing about peace building and citizen media, with a focus in Colombia. I am also coordinating a collaboration between Alfabetizaciones Digitales initiative, a program from the Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica in Colombia, and Global Voices in order to amplify the stories and memories produced by several citizen and community media projects.
The rise of the Internet and the resulting social, commercial, and entertainment platforms have enabled a digital economy in which youth are participating as they develop a range of sociocultural practices. Some online platforms, such as YouTube for video makers and Twitch for gamers, allow children and young people the opportunity to earn revenue through hobbism and peer production. These blurring lines between income generation and play pose a number of implications for labor policy, child rights, law, and the skills that are needed for participating in the new economy. In collaboration with the a team from Nordic Centre for Internet and Society at BI Norwegian Business School, we are developing a series of case studies and literature reviews exploring play/labor, virtual collaboration skills, and youth participation in the digital economy.
Clubes de Ciencia is an initiative that seeks to spread the culture of science and knowledge among Latinamerican youth, as well as to build an international network of scientists and researchers. It was piloted first in Mexico in 2014, and later was expanded to Bolivia and Colombia. Clubes de Ciencia achieves its goals, through organizing one-week workshops about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and Entrepreneurship and Innovation, for low-income high school youths. The workshops are co-facilitated by researchers affiliated with academic institutions abroad, and scientists from local universities.
On winter 2016 I teamed with three game designers to create a new game for the global game jam. The theme of the jam was ritual and we chose to make a game about Alice in Wonderland and the tea party scene. We continue iterating on the game during the Spring and by the end of the summer exhibited at the Boston Festival of Indie Games. You can play a version of the Mad Tea Party game here .
To translate research into practice around the globe, Digitally Connected —a collaborative initiative between UNICEF and the Berkman Klein Center— brings together academics, practitioners, young people, activists, philanthropists, government officials, and representatives of technology companies across six continents that are working at the intersection of youth and technology.
Doing Innovation tells the story of how millennials are navigating today’s knowledge-driven and precarious economy through sheer grit and inventiveness in the face of extraordinary change. Our inspiration comes from a yearlong ethnography that we conducted in an Austin metropolitan area high school. Many of the students came from lower-income and immigrant households. When they graduated high school they entered a rapidly evolving workplace with few, if any, tangible pathways to meaningful employment or futures.
The transmedia documentary project, soy turismo, is an unconventional travelogue through the Caribbean. It tells the story of service workers who live and labor on the other side of paradise. There is much more wrapped up in tourism than the simple pursuit of leisure. Using multiple media formats, including web videos, podcasts, essays, maps, and photographs, the soy turismo project is designed to offer viewers a rich multimedia experience to explore and discuss the complexity of Caribbean tourism.
I am co-editing a collective book entitled “Youth, Digital Transformation, and Inclusion in Latin America.” A collaboration between the Digitally Connected initiative and research institutions across Latin America, this open access book is intended to examine the digital practices and processes of inclusion pertaining to youth in diverse Latin American contexts. In order to include diverse voices and perspectives, we hope to receive submissions (in Spanish or Portuguese) in either text (traditional academic articles or reflective pieces from experiences in practice) or visual (photo essays, drawings, illustrations, comics, infographic, etc.) formats. More information at our book website
The Berkman Klein Center’s Youth and Media team is co-designing digital citizenship playlists with local youth. The playlists are collections of learning experiences and multimedia content that high school students would use to develop their digital literacy skills, connect with peers and mentors, and earn digital badges, or certificates. Building off of educational resources the Youth and Media team has created in the past, we have been co-desinging four playlists around the broad themes of Online Privacy and Surveillance, Careers, Advocacy, and Licensing.