Blue Dot || High Tech High Learning Lab

A learning lab that designs and documents educational experiences where youth do real, rigorous, meaningful, technical work connected to nature.

History teaches us that under the right conditions, young people do some of the most original, powerful work. They lead revolutions, invent new technologies, create new genres of music, and new kinds of government. With their fresh perspectives, they see old things in new ways and invent new representations and knowledge. Thus, the core function of public education should not be information transmission. Rather, education should be about empowering youth to leverage their talents, tastes, and interests to construct new forms of expression.

Instead of starting with content, we’ve started with the individuals before us and asked: How do we support youth — especially those facing great structural oppression— in doing the most high quality, real, creative and technical work?

This question is rarely asked and rarely taken seriously because the constraints and goals of our industrial-style school system (e.g. subject-based classes, short periods, age segregation, and the prioritization of content delivery over human capital development) are in direct opposition to doing real technical work.

We are prioritizing young people over the system. We’re starting with the strengths of youth and creating a learning laboratory that leverages their zest to do real technical and creative projects: to break rocket-launch records, build new kinds of mobile observatories, or make great documentary films about the environment.

Over the past four years, we’ve done this work through our nonprofit, Blue Dot Education in parthership with High Tech High. We’ve launched high altitude weather balloons, rockets, published scientific papers, and have even made a documentary film about the mismanagement of the Colorado River. Now we want to take our work to the next level.

At this time in history, there’s an incredible opportunity at our fingertips. The means of creative production (e.g. computers, microcontrollers, and cameras) are more accessible than ever. Despite this accessibility, the pressures of industrial-style schooling have suffocated imagination and innovation and has made it harder than ever to support young people as producers rather than consumers.

Instead of amplifying school, let’s grow something different: a learning lab that challenges the constraints of school and designs educational experiences where young people, especially those who are structurally oppressed (e.g. women, people of color), actually do personally meaningful, real, hard, creative work.

Many radical educators have created sandboxes in which to create new kinds of educational tools and experiences. However, they are few and far between. We want to make another sandbox, a new kind of learning lab that works with young people to do real, world-class technical and creative projects.

Out of such a learning lab would not only come great work but would also come great media about the learning experiences — stories and research, which document how these learning experiences are designed, implemented and how they help young people grow and develop. With this documentation, we will support and empower educators and others who want to build new kinds of organizations where young people learn, not to be students, but to be empowered producers of new knowledge.

Most organizations working to transform education are using technologies to make schooling more palatable and efficient.

We are doing something different. We are creating a learning lab that designs experiences where youth transition from consumers to producers. We use technology as creative and expressive mediums rather than tools for information consumption.  

What we are creating is much more like a research lab for youth than a school because we’re support youth, especially those who are structurally oppressed, in doing the highest level of creative and technical work.

We use computers, telescopes, cameras, and many other technical tools as expressive mediums that bring youth close to the natural world and inspire wonder. In educational experiences we design, youth use these tools to create new stories about the nature. With us, young women have launched high altitude weather balloons and used this footage to make a short film about gender and science. They’ve launched rockets. They’ve made a professional-quality documentary film about the mismanagement Colorado River. Through creative, awe-inspiring projects that they care about, young people develop their identities as creators, tinkerers, and autonomous learners.

Over the next year, are goals are to deepen and grow our work by designing and running programs, documenting students’ experiences, and developing our partnerships with outside organizations.

This school year, we’ll run full-time, immersive experimental courses at High Tech High with 20-50 young people. In preparation for this program, we’ll be running after-school programs and vacation camps. This summer, we’ll be running a camp of our own.

In addition, to make our organization more impactful, we’re currently hiring someone full-time to design workflows, manage our programs, document student work, and help us develop our vision and strategic plan.

Creating high quality, high resolution documentation of young people’s work and creative processes will be a core function of the learning lab. Through great storytelling, we’ll make ourselves useful to other schools in the San Diego area and to education reform more broadly.

Documenting student work is hard. We will design workflows that generate great documentation of projects and of human development. This will include designing digital tools and reflective practices.

Developing the workflows, tools, and documentation, will allow us to create programming and resources that other organizations learn from.

We already have great relationships with the community with which we live and work — the young people and schools of San Diego. We have been working at High Tech High for combined total of 60+ years and our immersive experimental courses thus far have been extremely successful. There is a high demand for them from High Tech High families. We also have personal connections with graduate schools of education and with educators from other schools with whom we hope to design and run professional development experiences.

Currently, there are fifty or so young people per year in the experimental courses, clubs, and programs. In addition, we ran professional development workshops for approximately one hundred educators this year.

As we develop our programming — grow our camps, after-school programs, and professional development programs for practitioners and graduate schools of education — the number of people who participate directly in our programs will grow immensely. Hopefully, it will double.

In addition, as we set up the videos, publications, and workflows we'll use to document our work, we'll create resources and trainings that educators all over the country will be able to use to create similar programs.

We design work using a diverse collection skills and experience on our team. We hold degrees in Chemistry, Biology, Business, Literature, and advanced degrees in Education.  Combined, we have 60+ years working in the classroom at High Tech High, where we have experimented with our practice through club work, projects, and extracurricular programs. We also have received a variety of relevant certifications for performing field work. Lastly, we have a broad community of supporters, ranging from influential people in science, arts, education, non-profits, law and finance.  We can impact students we currently work with at HTH and local schools.

Our initial and ongoing revenue source is from a benefactor that has committed to supplying us a long-term base of support for operational expenses.  We have several contracts to provide professional development and coaching for educators and schools, and expect to increase in this supportive capacity through running workshops and conferences.  We have developed products through student entrepreneurial projects that continually provides revenue for both students and our organization, and we are in the process of establishing an online marketplace to grow our capacity for students to share their products with larger audiences.  Lastly, we have received small grants from a few local foundations, including the Downing Foundation.  We are currently focusing our efforts on grant writing and developing close relationships with local businesses to attract corporate sponsorships so that we can increase our capacity to work directly with underserved students and communities.  

We are applying to Solve for several reasons.

1. MIT is arguably the greatest technical educational institution in the world. In striving to do the highest level technical work with structurally oppressed young people, we have so much to learn from MIT and would love to partner with them and with the MIT Media Lab to incorporate what they do into our program design.

2. The network, community, and resources that SOLVE will provide, could connect us to other educational organizations with whom we hope to partner and could drastically affect our impact and influence.

Within our community, something that has made our programming less accessible for structurally oppressed young people is that we do not have all of the resources they need to feel comfortable doing technical work in the outdoors.

Access to the necessary equipment that one needs to do immersive, technical work in nature (e.g. camping gear and enough media equipment) would make it much more comfortable for young people coming from many different backgrounds, to participate in this work.