Creating Technology for Social Change

AT PBS IDEALAB: Helium Balloons with Digital Cameras Create Grassroots Maps

The latest C4FCM post from the Idea Lab blog:

NuVu Boston harbor flight

I’m getting ready for day five of a two-week workshop for high schoolers at Beaver Country Day School in a suburb of Boston. The subject is my project, Grassroots Mapping, which helps teach people — often young people — around the world how to be activist cartographers and how to make their own maps. There’s a twist, however: Instead of just marking a Google Map, or walking around with a GPS tracker, we construct simple capsules to hold a cheap digital camera, and send the whole package up on a helium balloon or a kite.

This isn’t exactly your typical high school activity. My workshop at Beaver Country Day School is part of a series of studio design-style courses that make up the NuVu Studio — an experimental education project where the students get hands-on exposure to topics like alternative energy and “the future of labor.”

NuVu Boston harbor flight

Read the rest at PBS MediaShift Idea Lab: “Helium Balloons with Digital Cameras Create Grassroots Maps”