Our group met this past Thursday to talk to Maria from UYC concerning our second iteration.   Bex was able to join into our Google hangout in order to answer any  questions Maria may have had concerning Vojo that we may not have been able to answers. Maria was largely concerned that the Vojo approach would produce just another website for UYC to manage and that Vojo would not be as appealing or accessible via mobile phone as opposed to an app.

During our meeting, we all submitted quick sms messages to our Vojo test page. Maria expressed to us that she would rather the Vojo stories site be kept closed, and we were also concerned about how to incorporate the “survey” aspect of our project into our third project iteration. Bex suggested a number of other media projects and platforms for us to look into, such as mobilecommons. We were recommended to research the success of apps like the NYCLU Stop and Frisk App and to look into mobile survey tools.

We have not been able to meet with Neo yet, but we hope to soon. We would like to see if it’s possible to create a lightweight app that could package Vojo, perhaps with a screen explaining how to send in a story, a screen explaining student rights, and a screen explaining how to get involved with UYC.

This upcoming Wednesday we will be leading the class discussion and presentation. Maria will be presenting on the history of the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as explain more about Urban Youth Collaborative as an organization. We will be leading a class workshop where we aim to have classmates discuss how to make Vojo suit our needs and perhaps ways to convey the stories once we’ve received them.

Link to our draft of the UYC  case study: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SVHCPF9fnHiLVLLl6SY-ikNK-yIPTqJrEsD7UpI6L2w/edit#heading=h.k6o3nrgms2fr