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MyBEST: Mentored Youth Building Employable Skills in Technology

Submitted by kbraafladt on Fri, 03/20/2009 - 15:05
Last updated by Dorothea Wheeler on Tue, 10/18/2011 - 12:11
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200 students in grades 7–12, with special emphasis on girls and youth of color, from the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota area work with museum staff and community and industry mentors to learn programming, engineering and multi-media production that interfaces with museum exhibits and programs.
Project Information
Cohort: 
1 (2003-2006)
Category: 
Youth-Based
Principal Investigator: 
Keith Braafladt
Co-Principal Investigator(s): 
Mary Ann Steiner
Sponsor: 
Science Museum of Minnesota
Primary Focus: 
Computer Science - Programming and Other
Organization Location City: 
St. Paul
Organization Location Region/State: 
West North Central
Minnesota (MN)
Where project work happens: 
West North Central
Minnesota (MN)
Other Area(s) of Focus: 
Engineering
Participant type: 
Black or African American
Hispanic/Latino
Middle School Students
High School Students
Girls
Target Area: 
Urban
Award Number: 
03-23155
Overview Section

The Science Museum of Minnesota’s youth-based ITEST program engages inner city teens in creating a learning community for STEM education through creative technology projects led by adult professionals in sciences and the arts. Through a three-year series and cycle of festivals, workshops, and presentations, 200 participating teenagers - with special emphasis on girls, youth of color, and economically disadvantaged youth - in grades 7–12 engage in hands-on design and construction workshops integrating familiar materials, computer technology, electronics, and engineering while developing relationships with one another, the program staff, and adult mentors.

Activities Section

MyBEST is organized around a series of cycles for volunteers, as well as a summer internship program for youth who have participated in the program for at least a year. Each cycle includes a theme with a hands-on project, workshops with guest presenters, a field trip, a career workshop and a presentation or outreach. The Summer 2004 program had three cycles to engage young people in creative uses of technology.

The themes were:

  • Telescopes: Youth learned how to make telescopes and manipulate light with mirrors and lenses, working with a museum exhibit prototyper. The youth then built three telescopes, giving one each to a Community Center in Landfall, Minnesota, to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History’s DesignIT program, and keeping one for the MyBest program.
    Kids are working on a science project with an adult mentor.
  • Documentation: MyBEST youth worked with an organization called Asian Media Access to develop skills in shooting and editing digital pictures and video. They documented an overnight camping trip to an artist’s farm, where they built machines to throw paint. Back at the museum, they edited this footage into movies and posters to tell the story of the trip. Dragonfly TV, a PBS Kids program, also came out and talked with the youth about TV shows.
  • Musical Inventions: Participants worked with a local composer who creates music from sounds in the urban and natural environment, who took them on an incredible sound tour of St. Paul. The youth then used tiny computers and sensors to design their own musical instruments that had some interaction with people and environment, which they presented in the museum’s new science park exhibit, the Big Back Yard.
  • Internship themes included a Sound Lab project, in which youth developed sound experiments to get high school kids who are into the arts interested in science programs; a Jitterbug team, in which youth did audience evaluation and research to determine directions for a hands-on visitor activity; and an Information Systems internship, in which a student worked directly with museum IS staff to assist them in various areas of their work.
Project Links
Project website: 
http://www.smm.org/mybest
Project Photos: 
http://itestlrc.edc.org/image_gallery?field_project_name_nid=485