Knowing the Avenues- Service Learning Plan

Service Learning Plan
Title- “Knowing the Avenues”

Area of Service- Developing active political participation and awareness

Grade Level- 9-12

Subject Area- Government or Civics

Unit Description-
Step 1: The students will familiarize themselves with local, state or federal politicians directly connected to their community (elected by the community). For the politician they choose a short biographical sketch should be made containing their views, background, party affiliations, voting history, personal platforms, and interesting facts that shaped the persons life. This can be done through emails, telephone conversations, or personal interviews. The students will compose a summary of each person and post it on the class wiki.
Step 2: The next step in the service learning unit will be to conduct interviews from various people in the community (coaches, other teachers, parents, etc.), outside the students’ immediate family. The purpose of this step will be for the students to identify a need among the members of the community. The students will bring any needs found out from the interviews back to class where they will select the most important.
Step 3: Using the proper political ‘avenues’, whether it be local, state, or national, the students will use their knowledge gained in step 1 to lobby for the needs they discovered through their interviews. The goal will be to expose the students to the political process first hand and to show students how local, state, and federal governments function. By creating dialogues with politicians the students should gain an understanding of how important or frustrating the political process can be.

Standards:
SS.912.C.2.2: Evaluate the importance of political participation and civic participation.

SS.912.C.2.3: Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels.

SS.912.C.2.5: Conduct a service project to further the public good.

SS.912.C.2.8: Analyze the impact of citizen participation as a means of achieving political and social change.

SS.912.C.2.10: Monitor current public issues in Florida.

SS.912.C.2.11: Analyze public policy solutions or courses of action to resolve a local, state, or federal issue.

SS.912.C.2.15: Evaluate the origins and roles of political parties, interest groups, media, and individuals in determining and shaping public policy.

SS.912.C.3.13: Illustrate examples of how government affects the daily lives of citizens at the local, state, and national levels.

Technologies/ Web Applications-
The students will add all of their content to the class wiki about each politician. After the needs (from the interviews) have been determined and selected they will be posted as well. The students will be required to contribute to the discussion about why each need is important or unimportant, worth campaigning for, or any other discussion topic that can be generated by the teacher after the needs have been isolated and examined.
The students will periodically add updates to the wiki from their efforts to expose/ campaign for the needs they choose. Any responses received from the politicians will be summarized and added to the site to create a constantly changing progress report. The wiki will be open for all to see, excluding the class discussions, which will be protected.
The students will use this wiki platform to connect to the community and the people where the needs generated to show any progress.


Assessment:
The students will be assessed on how much they participate in the online discussions and during the interviews process. This project can actually last all year and beyond, based on having the students conduct another round of interviews from the community. The students will also be assessed on how well they research the politicians and summarize any responses they receive. All responses will be examined by the teacher to make sure they are accurate with the responses received.
Activities or worksheets will also be used to examine how well the students understand the steps each politician must take to achieve the classes request or need. The students will also be judged on their creativity on the wiki, to ensure that students add any photos, video, or documents that may help their objectives.

30%- For composing biographical sketch of any politician used to fulfill a community members need.

20%- For interviewing members of the community and choosing which issue or need they are going to pursue. The group needs to provide the reasons they chose the need.

20%- For updating the wiki with new information received from any politician and writing responses to these updates.

10%- Contacting a politician and describing the need the group is lobbying for in a professional manner.

10%- Responding to teacher lead discussion points brought out during the course of the project on the class wiki.

Click here to view a storybird about this service learning project

Why is he yelling, Blog #7

The first event I thought of after watching the video, that would probably be totally weird if our modern technologies were available, was Paul Revere's ride through Boston. He would not have had to ride through the city yelling 'The British are coming!' He could have just relaxed and sent a text or posted it on twitter. Revere's midnight ride has become a famous event that has reverberated down to our time as national folk lore. The city of Boston would lose out on a huge tourist attraction, I've been to Boston, they have statues, reenactments, and museums devoted to everything that has to do with the 'colonial trouble makers' it is amazing. Without names and characters to display there would be nothing to see. You can't build a monument if all you have is a screen name.
The American revolutionaries could have also gained support in much less dramatic ways. They could have connected the colonist, that were not interested with revolution, with their opinions and ideas, instead of throwing tea in the harbor dressed as Indians, etc. Twitter and SMS would have also made the guerrilla warfare used by the colonists much more effective, which may be happening in Afghanistan and Iraq today. However, we would not have the romantic stories that we have today if Revere had not rode through the city screaming his head off. The event would be totally bizarre in modern times but not less effective. As we have seen recently with the Iran elections and following crack down, dramatic events can still be very iconic using modern technologies; I'll never forget Neda and her murder captured on video.

You are Just a Screen! #6

This video was awesome! At first I thought it was going to be like listening to another person paranoid that the world was coming to an end because we don't talk or pay attention to each other. Thankfully, he changed his focus and exposed some very interesting things that I have never thought about concerning the way people interact for the past forty to fifty years. The 'Whatever' stuff was funny and made sense the more I thought about it. The 'assembly line feeling' also gave me some insight into why people do the things they do, such as American Idol etc.

The social networking examples Wesch used are relevant because they are an important aspect of the world culture that, barring a very serious disaster, is not going anywhere. These types of social networks are changing the feeling that we are lost in society by placing humans at the forefront again, maybe more than ever. Personally I can connect to my family in New England easier than ever before, as well as my friends that live out of state or country. With these social networks, although very different than face to face conversation, still qualify as interaction. I liked the wording Prof. Wesch used when he said, 'The most private space becomes the most public space.' The social networks allow people, and maybe classrooms, to open up in ways that are useful and important in creating a sense of belonging.

Our sense of self is changing with these new mediums and this is inevitable. The telegraph, phone, and radio all had the same effect. I thought of the scene in the movie 'Oh brother Were Art Thou', when the fat gov'nah walks into the radio station and yells at his biffy son for being nice to the people outside the station. I think he said something like, 'we aren't here to talk to a few people, we're trying to reach the masses.' I think the social networks we have now are similar to this example. We need to be careful that our face to face interactions don't completely vanish, but people have always been rude to each other, so I get irritated when I hear that people now a days are so rude. What does this mean? How do people that say this know? I talk to old people, like my grandmother, and she tells me all the time how rude people were when she was a kid. I think people want to think things were different when they really weren't. Okay back on target, sorry.

As Educators I think we should definitely use these social networks even if its just to expose our students to them. So many people use social networks that I think it will play a huge role in the future business world, which I'm pretty sure that by the time our students are out of school their bosses will be people our age; so I think its safe to say technology will play a large part in the workplace. I think we can try to connect these social networks to our content area but that probably should not be the total focus. Just like SSR (sustained silent reading, for those who have not read the fabulous BRB textbook), which may or may not be connected directly to the content material it still has many benefits.

Question:
Do you think these social networks and other Web 2.0 applications will be taught just like typing class was taught, or instead of typing? Or is it our job as educators to incorporate it with our class? (I had to take typing when I was in middle school, I don't know if these classes are still offered, it was really boring!)

Watergate podcast lesson

Mallory and I created a podcast collection covering Richard Nixon and the Watergate event. The podcasts include many calls to/from Richard Nixon by friends and colleagues consoling him during the predicament he was in. The collection also includes a podcast from a congressional hearing that is investigating the event. The students could use this collection to help put a human face on an event that is very confusing and embarrassing in U.S. history. Using these interviews the students will better understand the final days of Nixon's presidency, as well as hearing Nixon on the phone in a personal atmosphere. Other resources that can be used to accompany this lesson could be from supreme court decisions covering executive power, and perhaps other presidents that may have overstepped their bounds. Resources that discuss our government's checks and balances could also be used by the students to connect why Watergate was such an important issue that had to be exposed. This lesson would be perfect for a civics class discussing the limits of power each branch, in this case the executive, have to protect us from shady practices. One web site that can be used to look up Supreme court cases would be this one here. The following links are from our collection. (For some reason I could not directly link these podcasts.)

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/americanpublicmedia.org.1349949535.01357471251.1355019026?i=1426120683


http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/americanpublicmedia.org.1349949535.01357471251.1355019026?i=1426120683

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/americanpublicmedia.org.1349949535.01357471251.1357014222?i=1766028534

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/americanpublicmedia.org.1349949535.01357471251.1356949900?i=1208012496

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/americanpublicmedia.org.1357552105?i=1876981101

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/americanpublicmedia.org.1349360431.01349360438.1351818005?i=1697554405

Service Learning

The service learning plan I chose to write about dives into the subject of religious persecution. Here is the summary as described by the website: While studying the struggle against religious intolerance in United States history, students will research the current plight of various religious minorities around the world. They will focus on religious groups that are currently the victims of religious intolerance, and contact government officials both in the nations involved and in the United States. They will seek to eliminate religious persecution against these groups.You can look at this service learning project here. This plan covers many benefits that are described on the Inquiry in Social Studies MindMeister. The first is it stimulates awareness of controversial issues, which I think is probably the most important when covering a topics such as this. It also limits teacher bias by allowing the students to choose any religion they want to research. By doing this type of project the students will have to think like a social studies researcher, which is also listed in our Benefits.
The methods that the students will have to use to be effective in exposing religious intolerance will be exploration. The students will have to explore many areas of the world through websites to find religious intolerance. They will also have to use their discussion skills to determine the best course of action. The project calls for the students to contact government officials which will require them to hone their discussion/communication skills. The students will also use collaboration, listed under best practices, with government officials to expose religious intolerance. They will also have to use technology to contact the government officials in other nations. Without being familiar with the newest communication technologies the students will be less effective. By Being closely involved in each students activities most of the challenges should be taken care of. Making sure the students show the proper respect needed to government officials from other countries will be essential.

The article by Edelson, D, in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching; titled Learning-For-Use: A Framework for the Design of Technology-Supported Inquiry Activities; describes a program that allows students to input their own data to create a new Earth. This program makes the students actively learn the processes of the Earth and how theses processes interact to make a stable planet. I think this same type of 'Learning-for-use model' can be used for government or economics study.
If this program allowed students to create different scenarios for governmental ideas, and then showed how their models fit together, it would be a great tool for showing how our current government works with its many functions. I would put the students in group and have them discuss how they think a government should function, the specific powers they want to give the government, and the systems they would put in place to keep it from becoming a dictatorship or anarchical. If the students did want a system that was undemocratic it would open up a great opportunity to discuss the benefits of democracy compared to other forms of government. This activity would create a greater appreciation for our current government and the problems the founders faced when they first developed it.
In economics the students could input their own ideas about a number of variables, such as currency, state and federal banks, interstate and international trade. If the students input scenarios that would not work well, such as only having state-run banks, the program could show them the reasons why this is defective. After each group made their models we would, as a class, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.
This is all speculative and would need a software designer to make happen, but I just modified the original science related model, described by the author of the article, Edelson, D., and made it applicable to American government or economics. It seems this would be a very interactive way to show the intricacies of government and economics. Would this turn into a simulation type game that students did not take seriously? Would this be profitable as a learning tool compared to the cost it would take to develop? Has an interactive program used specifically for U.S. government/economics already been developed?

Blogs, podcasts, and wikis: Has school become extremely fun?

I found some great podcasts, blogs and wikis that made it seem that the students involved were actually enjoying the assignments; what a crazy concept. The first podcast was a little dated but I thought it was worth mentioning. Two students, one acting as an interviewer and the other a expert, had a great discussion about the differences between Sec. Clinton's health care proposal and Pres. Obama's proposal. This must have been done during the primaries. Nevertheless, the discussion required the interviewer to ask very pointed questions which obviously had to be researched before the podcast. On the other end the student playing the expert had to answer the very specific questions and she really laid out the differences very well. This example made both students do relevant research about a modern issue. I thought this method was more effective than making the students do a paper or simple presentation. This podcast was done by the Springfield school district in Pennsylvania last year http://ssdcougars.libsyn.com/. A class wiki that I stumbled upon was actually part of a larger international collaboration called Flat Classroom Project. The class created wikis about numerous subjects with help from a class in Germany. This network allows teachers and students to team up with students from all around the world to discuss various topics and work on projects together. I did see there are Flat Classroom workshops where teachers can learn how to use this type of technology. A social studies blog that I found was by a middle school history teacher. He used the blog to communicate assignments, study sheets, and relevant information, such as links to all sorts of history websites, to his students. The students also had an opportunity to respond or ask him questions. I had difficulty finding student blogs. It seemed like they were not open to the public, which makes sense to me. The podcasts, wikis, and blogs all look more interesting than the type of assignments I had to do in social studies classes. I think teachers are definitely making learning exciting by using these methods.