In the year 2000, Microsoft made a landmark announcement: a major partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, to provide technology hardware, software and training for under-privileged communities nationwide. The results have been AMAZING! Only five years ago, there were less than 100 clubs with internet access, and now clubtech runs in 3,700 Boys & Girls Clubs in all 50 states, and on military bases overseas, serving in total over 4.2 million young people. . . and the clubs are still growing. Clubtech provides skills training and also creative inspiration: unlike other programs that provide hardware without software, clubtech provides innovative content and a best practice model based in the creative arts

• This presentation will begin with an overview video produced by SMARTlab as part of their major evaluation/review of the Clubtech Programme (2004-5), & giving an overview of three Core Toolsets in the BGCA/Microsoft collaborative toolkit: Netsmartz, YouthNet, & The Digital Arts Suite.
  
• Clubtech is a family of structured lessons, tools and resources to help Clubs create a dynamic technology program that teaches skills, through games, online interactive programs and staff-led activities and projects. It’s a structured curriculum that doesn’t feel like work – so it feels COOL to learn the skills needed to become role models for the next generation! Clubtech programs work together with Netsmartz to help young people learn skills so that they’ll have a safer experience online.
  
• NETSMARTZ provides animated games on how to be safe on the web. Because of the jumpstart that Microsoft has given young people through the Clubtech program, BGCA has been able to partner with other organizations to make an even greater impact on local and global communities. One such partnership, with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children & the U.S. Department of Justice, has produced the premier Internet safety program - NetSmartz.
  
• Youthnet is a moderated safespace for sharing stories in real time online. The Youthnet website functions as an online community - and in fact most of its content is produced by members. Youthnet connects young people in different clubs around the world and provides monitored chats and bulletin boards so that members can communicate in a safer environment that’s only accessible from the clubs. The program offers a key for unlocking the potential of communities and the talents of individuals, both in creative expression and learning.

Come to Interactive Sceen and test the toolkit - and then share your views on what’s most needed in the game and e-learning toolkit for future users and gamers!!!

Dr. Lizbeth Goodman

Director, The SMARTlab Digital Media Institute
Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London

Dr Lizbeth Goodman is Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute for Site Specific Media, Performing and Digital Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the London Institute (connecting SMARTsystems & People). She also directs studies for a group of professional new media artists registered with CSM on the SMARTlab's customised live and online Practice-based PhD programme and works as an international consultant on E-learning and Digital Creativity.

Lizbeth and the women of the SMARTlab have been working off site in 2004-5 to review the impact of Clubtech on kids, young people & communities across the USA.

SMARTlab is currently focusing its research in the areas of Gender & Gaming, Internet Ethics, Responsive Design & Wearable Tech, and Assistive Technologies. This group works cooperatively to create bio-sensor activated £d environments and live performance experiences for children and adults in need of physical therapy and rehabilitation.

Lizbeth is also known as a professional performer and TV presenter, with many years of experience in live and telematic writing, improvisation, performance and direction. She has worked extensively in comedy and theatre and television/convergent media entertainment, and has recently won commissions to create a new style of empowering online and live performance game.

Lizbeth was previously Director of the INMPR at the University of Surrey, following on from eight years leading the BBC Open University's multimedia research teams in Shakespeare, Drama, Gender Studies and Literature. She has worked extensively for the BBC as a researcher, writer and presenter of Learning and Arts/Media Programmes. She is a regular reviewer/validator for many independent courses and broadcast programmes and for publishers of print and online packages, and for major funding bodies and award panels internationally. She is the author and editor of some 13 books including a range of titles on women and theatre, the arts, representation and creativity. She has also written and produced a wide range of multimedia programmes ranging from educational CD ROMs and video/media packs to more experimental online performance events. She regularly leads 'playshops' (or workshops involving an element of theatre game and costume, role play and movement experiment) for participants ranging from persistently ill children in hospitals, to corporate executives worldwide.

Linda Testa

Linda Testa is Seminor Manager, Community Affairs at Microsoft Corporation. In this role she is responsible for providing leadership and strategic program guidance to Microsoft Community Affairs teams in the United States and Canada: managing the Clubtech, the company's technology initiative with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America; and managing the Community Affairs Program Coordination team. Linda was responsible for the development and global launch of the Unlimited Potential Community Learning Curriculum designed for use in community and technology learning centers worldwide as a component of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential (UP) Initiative, and has supported the Microsoft Latin America Community Affairs team. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2001, Linda held th eppsition of Senior Manager for Company Contribution at the Boeing Company.