The Bronx Blog Project is a multimedia documentary about community, immigration, homesickness, and technology. The project documents a group of immigrant ESL students as they learn how to use blogging to develop new communities and write about their experiences as immigrants. It also explores problems of and possible solutions to unequal access and literacy with technology.
The main elements of the project are:
1) This web site, which aggregates posts from and links to the students’ blogs (created using Blogger) and offers video clips documenting their experience. It functions as both a document of the work done in the film and journal of the students’ experiences as they occur.
The right-hand side of the site aggregates the students’ posts; click on the student names below the posts to go their blog. The left-hand side features videocasts of my work with the students. This video is selected raw footage; it has yet to be edited into a film.
2) A short film about using technology in disenfranchised communities. It will focus on two or three ESL students in the Bronx, detailing their histories and what brought them to the U.S., their current life in the U.S., their social and political motivations, and their ideas about the future. The students will be introduced to blogs as a way of communicating their experiences in a new country to their friends, families, and the world at large. The film will track their experiences with blogging and its effect on their family at home (most of the students are from the Dominican Republic, and I will travel there to document their families reading and responding to the students’ blogs), as well as other peoples’ perspectives on technology use among immigrant and minority communities.
Thanks to:
Scott Wallick for the Wordpress theme that graces this site.
Itay Paz for his photographs in the Tapestry section.
Heidi Boisvert, Steve Clack, Gregg Conde, Hillevi Loven, and Mike Schuwerk for their help with shooting video.
Audrey Short for lending me her classroom and embracing the educational possiblities of blogging.
Bronx Community College for their support and generosity.
Professors Mary Flanagan and Tami Gold for their guidance throughout the project.
-Josh Levy