UC Links: A Day in the Life

The outdoor performance space at the Club DUSTY UC Links site in Oakland.

On Tuesday, 9 October 2001, UC Links participants from around California and from North Carolina visited after-school sites in the Bay Area.

Don Bremme (Whittier College) and three of his students, Connie Avalos, Myrna Lua, and Leslie Pilo, accompanied Chalon Emmons and Charles Underwood (UC Links Statewide Office) to the "Spider's Web" UC Links site at the Coronado YMCA and Coronado Elementary School in Richmond. Although the program was not in session during the morning, the visitors viewed the site and its artifacts, including the constitution, maze, and pictures of the "magical Spider," who communicates with Coronado children via email. Across the street, the visitors also visited Coronado Elementary School, where many Spider's Web children go to school and where some site activities take place.

Mural at St. Martin de Porres Middle School in Oakland, near the Club DUSTY.

Also that morning, Janet Wallace (CSU Sacramento) and Walter Oldendorf (Appalachian State University), along with Mara Welsh and Denise Lerner (UC Links Statewide Office), attended Anthropology 128, the undergraduate class connected to the "Expedition" site in West Oakland. In the class, taught by Ruth Tringham, Amy Ramsay, and Tamara Sturak (UC Berkeley), undergraduates gave presentations on assigned articles and engaged the visitors as active participants in discussion about the material.

Visitors at Club DUSTY.

After lunch, a larger group of Links people from all over California and North Carolina visited "Club DUSTY" (Digital Underground Story Telling for Youth), housed at the Prescott Joseph Center for Community Enhancement in West Oakland. Led by Glynda Hull, Jeeva Roche-Smith, and Michael James (UC Berkeley), the group viewed digital stories created by local children using multimedia authoring software and toured the outdoor garden and performance space at the Prescott Joseph Center. They also visited St. Martin de Porres Middle School across the street, where a number of the participating youth go to school and where the site will soon be expanding its activities.

A smaller group then traveled to Berkeley to visit the UC Links program at Rosa Parks Elementary School. There the visitors observed UC Berkeley undergraduates working closely with first-, second-, and third-graders on a variety of computer programs and reading and math activities. Janet Wallace spoke at length with Rosa Parks site coordinator Jiyon Han, collecting a wealth of information about the program to take back to Sacramento, where she and Professor Lynda Stone (CSU Sacramento) are developing a new UC Links site at Kinney Elementary School in Oak Park.

Site visit at Rosa Parks.

The day ended with a visit to the "Expedition" program at Roosevelt Middle School in East Oakland, where the students and undergraduates were already deeply engaged in computer activities when the visitors arrived. Site coordinator Jennifer Vakiener guided the group on a tour of the site, describing the artifacts used there to structure after-school activities. Some undergraduates and middle school students were working together to test rough drafts of "adventure guides" that the undergraduates had created. After piloting the adventure guides with middle school students, the undergraduates will gather feedback from their classmates and teachers in Anthropology 128. By the end of the semester, the undergraduates will revise their adventure guides and contribute them to pool of activity-based resources available at the Expedition program.

The Expedition program in Oakland.

After observing a wide range of activities at UC Links sites throughout the East Bay, the visitors headed home, full of new ideas for children and youth at their own sites.