W Y M S M Software Design Team

In Spring of 2002, WYMSM began to develop a suite of simulation software designed to help residents explore social structure and their position within it, discover internal and external resources available to them, and make informed decisions about their life options and goals. This software is being designed in grassroots participatory fashion, and will help residents:

1. Foster self-definition and self-empowerment
The software loosely follows the pattern of the YW's "personal folders," and will allow participants to construct avatars or characters by creating a visual representation of “Who I am,” “Where I am,” & “How I got here.” The software will also include sections connecting individuals with their cultural heritage (e.g., Ron Eglash’s culturally-situated design tools) and tools for building individual and collective identity.

2. Navigate day-to-day life
The software is intended to help residents: manage social services/institutional restraints (make decisions about and maintain federal, state, or local assistance, education, childcare, etc); manage social relationships (i.e., interpersonal challenges like boundary setting, understood within broader social contexts); and set and achieve future goals and dreams.

3. Connect with personal and institutional assets that are available to them
The software may enable residents to: create individual/resident asset inventories and share assets more effectively through ABCD (asset-based community development) methods; recognize and take advantage of cultural capital and skills that their community already possesses; and identify, map and promote local assets in the several blocks around the YWCA (this could be a PDA project.

4. Provide focused and engaging technology employment training
Part of the goal of this project is to research and develop new approaches to technology employment training. Our method combines constructionist and culturally situated approaches. Constructionist approaches stress active learning and integrate content with the situational context of use. Brown and Seely et al. write, for example, that “Learning and cognition...are fundamentally situated,” and further that “activity and situations are integral to cognition and learning” (1989: 32). Culturally situated approaches use information technology to "translate" between local knowledges and more traditional technology training goals.

More research:

Popular Technology Education
Social Network Building and Social Change
Women, Simulation and Social Change Workshops
WYMSM Software Design Team

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