NET – Connecting Computer Clubs with a Community Platform in :

Our case study discusses the design and implementation of an online platform “come_NET”. In the context of intercultural computer clubs in Germany. This tool was built in close cooperation with the children and adult computer club participants. It was designed to foster the sharing of ideas and experiences across distances, support collaboration, and make skills and expertise accessible to others in the local neighborhood contexts. The participatory design process involving the children in the computer clubs especially, fostered, we argue, a profound understanding of the platform structure and functionalities. Study results show how younger children in particular were able to benefit, as the closed nature of the platform enabled them to gather experience as users of social media, but in a safe and controlled environment. Introduction The come_IN initiative of intercultural computer clubs aims to foster and support understanding and respect across cultures and generations by means of collaborative project work with computers and modern media. With this, come_IN contributes to societal efforts to come to terms with migration and an increasingly socially and culturally diverse population on the most basic level of local neighborhood communities. It is here, where come_IN translates the general ambition of cultural integration – concerned with the creation of a common basis for living, involving an agreement on a common language, core values, common rules and mutual respect for and knowledge of social and cultural differences [7,8] – as well as structural integration, being concerned with equal access to all parts of societal life [32], into weekly project activity involving information and communication technology (ICT) [1,31,35,42,44,45]. Mostly located in schools in socially and culturally diverse neighborhoods, the come_IN computer clubs bring together people of different migration backgrounds and different ages. In the clubs weekly meetings the children as well as adult participants work on joint projects, study and play. This speaks to the social dimension of integration in that it fosters intercultural as well as intergenerational discussion, negotiation of opinions and perspectives, and the acquiring and refining of language skills. It tends the structural dimension of integration in that it contributes to the bridging of the so called ‘digital divide’ – the unequal access of immigrant communities, as compared to mainstream society, to computer infrastructure (e.g. [21,41,47]) providing open, yet guided access to modern information and computer technology. Come_IN computer clubs follow a decidedly open structure. Participation in the clubs is voluntary and free; topics for project work are developed by the child and adult participants themselves and then jointly agreed upon; tutors and a teacher provides help and guidance but does not set up a predefined schedule to follow for the clubs’ weekly meetings. Having grown into a network of several clubs in Germany (as well as in Palestine [1], more recently), the need for a tool that would allow sharing of ideas and experiences across distances, foster