Announcing W.U. School 2011 (aka WUniversity)

BY Ebenezer Bond, February 9, 2011

Dear friends, teachers and artists,

World Up’s mission is making the world smaller through technology, education and hip hop. In our technology and arts workshops, we’re not just empowering young innovators to participate for a day, we’re teaching them to contribute to the emerging technology based global community. Our method, collaborating with artists, musicians, programmers and educators around the world, allows us to make technology education accessible to students of all stripes.

We’ve named our next endeavor W.U. School, a six-week, two-course Saturday school experience, where select students can enroll in either Hip Hop Hackers with our Technology Director Ari Joseph, or Living Remix, where our Music Director Spazecraft 1 teaches interactive music making and producing.

Technological literacy is the 21st century’s landmark educational imperative. It is estimated that over the next 10 years, there will be 123 million jobs available in the technology sector, but only 50 million Americans qualified to fill them.

We see technology education as a natural extension of hip hop culture, not an unrelated entity. Hip hop was founded by hackers: DJs who hacked their turntables and forever changed music, MCs who hacked language and created a lexicon that still drives youth culture, B-boys that hacked movement and seemingly gravity itself, and graffiti artists that hacked the visual landscape to bring awareness to issues in their community. Through their artistic innovation, hip hop pioneers put their community’s issues front and center in the global consciousness. By fusing hip hop, the arts and technology, we are empowering students to become stewards of their own destinies.

“We have incredible gratitude for World Up! Thanks for the energy, inspiration, and magic! Way to take these kids to a new dimension of learning and community change through music!”
—Danielle DiMare, Office of School and Youth Development, NYC Department of Education

“ Programs like World Up are able to draw students from diverse backgrounds together and use materials and techniques that engage their natural curiosity while exposing them to technology, arts, and collaborative skills not often seen in their classrooms.”
- Stefan Wietz, Director, Bing, Microsoft.

If you are a student who is passionate about Hip Hop and Technology this is for you. If you are a teacher and know of any exceptional students who could flourish in this type of learning environment please share this.

We are looking for 40 talented and driven students who love Hip Hop and and Technology
Interested? Have a student that should apply. Please read more HERE