Service Learning Projects

(I copied from Liz J up to Allison's project)

Chance: Civil participation – movie to serve as a public service announcement over some controversial topic, create wiki and/or petition, contact government official through letter

Zahra: Voting rights – students research minorities and their progression towards voting rights, choose a topic pertaining to this (ie. Key figure in women’s suffrage) and work in small groups to create a online voting rights museum, info should include photos, primary documents, interviews with local people, Skype lessons to younger students

Michael: Oral history – interview people in retirement home, record interviews and create digital storytelling presentation, add sounds and images, upload to youtube

Adam: Voter registration – Students create resources to motivate people to vote or inform on the issues, pre-register voters, inform the school/students on issue, try to get on local news or community event with booths and information

Meg W: Human trafficking – learn about Reconstruction amendments, inform students on current human trafficking, current legislation, use any form of digital media to present research information, overall goal is to do a letter writing campaign to Congress

Jennifer: Military letter writing – Students create wiki for different military personnel, allow military to communicate in return, helps build relationship for those who don’t receive many letters

Josh: Veterans – research war, interview a veteran about war, create podcast, blog about research and experience with Veteran, share with vet, 2 or 3 more blogs, then compile all together

Jeremy: Drug war awareness – media sends mixed messages on drugs, research war on drugs and legislation and incarceration rate, create wiki, write representatives on a topic relevant to them involving the drug war

Megan G: Military contact – support a soldier, work through school and community to get donations to send to military troops, have a specific pen pal with soldiers from the community, write and film video monthly, also send care packages

Elizabeth H: Operation Christmas Child – research a variety of cultures on their ‘holiday’, help the less fortunate, volunteers at centers and interview volunteers, students then blog about research and experiences

Eric: Elderly/psyc – students visit local retirement home, have people complete questionnaire on happiness, teach residents how to use email and instant messaging in order to communicate with family, give them a questionnaire a month later, write paper discussing problems of home and the difference in their data

Mallory: Habitat for Humanity – Pair up with Habitat and determine costs in building homes, research cost effective methods of building, create wiki on information, interview families that have received homes

Louisa: Elderly – Oral history, nursing homes; interview residents about life at that age, create video podcast, compare and contrast worries, experiences, etc with their own, then have a ‘viewing party’

Mark: Active political participation – Choose local, state, or federal government official and create a short bibliographical sketch, try to contact the individual, create a wiki for each individual, interview person in the community, use knowledge gained from step 1 to lobby for the needs they discovered through their interviews, expose students to political progress

Jeff: Environment – students do thorough clean up local park, learn of human impact on environment, learn ways to help keep places clean and lessen human impact, blog each day with pictures, create video on environmental cleanliness

Katy: Civic responsibility – students look how historical events affect people’s lives personally, reflect on one historical event that has occurred during their life, interview residents at a nursing home on an even that occurred during their life, create a video that compares the events and each person’s personal experience

Megan P: Media and voting – research voter trends and elections, visit retirement home, interview residents about past experiences with elections and voting and media, create podcasts, show residents final product, write thank you letter to the residents about the things they’ve learned

Brittany: increasing voter turnout – lecture of voter trends (young people), generate survey with self-created questions, each student sends a certain number of questionnaires out, present data to class and how they reacted to the information, will raise awareness of election issues

Nicole: Voting – students learn about voting and campaigning, during election students create own campaign, use google motion to look at past trends, use wiki blog or podcast to present information and reach a certain demographic

Angie: Individual Rights – analyzing (Declaration of Independence, Supreme Court cases, Bill of Rights, etc.) primary documents and current events, students select a topic pertaining to individual rights, research topic past and present, put info into class wiki, organize a “get it right” fair, during school day and outside for community, students create a presentation

Trisha: Pen pal – at-risk students have pen pals with students in Japan, compare related topics being taught (War war II), contact through letters, emails, video podcasts, create a showcase for the school, also create a wiki for all the content

Allison:

Perceptions of muslim-americans after 9/11

NYtimes- A Day of Terror and other articles

tradebook- ask me no questions- experience of a 14 yr old girl

US Patriot Act

project- create a class questionnaire and interview people in their community- their relationships/perceptions with muslim americans, their knowledge and opinions of the Patriot Act, and reactions to 9/11.

Students create wikis about the Patriot Act incorporating primary resources that are their interviews.

Carrie W:

"Your community through the ages"

unit on the Cold War- students pick someone who lived through this time, or a mural or landmark that was erected during this time and do research on it

They create an article based on the info they gathered

A wiki is created with all of their work.

Invite other classes and community to add to the wiki

Working with local newspaper so that articles can be published to bring awareness to the community.

Griselda:

Students study history/geography of Haiti and network with a school from Haiti

They will discuss issues on tuition, transportation, etc. to diminish stereotypes they may have.

there will be a class website that tells what they have learned

podcast that tells community and school what they have learned.

They will collect funds, etc. to help students in Haiti.

Glogster

Blogs and Cell Phones in Nazi Germany

What people seem to forget when they think about Nazi Germany is how desperately hopeless the Germans felt during this time period. From the treaty of Versailles with its enormous reparations demanded of Germany as well as the depression that was hitting the entire world, the German people began looking for someone whose promises led them to a better place.

1932. Blog Post. The Nazi Party.

"It good to know someone is finally trying to do something for us. Enough of this capitalism; the crash of last year clearly shows its failures. Us Germans need someone to stick up for us and our country [rise of nationalist sentiment]. Enough with communism, it isn't doing nothing for us pure-blood hard working Germans. The Nazi party promises an elimination of unemployment- this is what we need. But we can't do it with all these Jews and others invading our homeland. Something must be done. "

Hitler's power grew stronger and stronger from this point. He wiped out all who went against him, took control of the armies, and created a centralized government. In the following years, millions of Germans were killed or imprisoned due to political reasons.

1937. Blog Post.
"My neighbors just up and disappeared. We hear it was because they didn't support the Fuhrer. Almost all the Jews that had businesses around here are gone. The Gestapo is everywhere. I am all about the new regime, but I am a little scared as to how far they are taking things. I see people being taken all of the time, and they never return. They were good people, too. The other day, I heard my cousin say that someone was shot in the street. Good thing this is anonymous, because just what I have said so far might land me in the same place they are. Hail Hitler!"

As the concentration camps get fuller and fuller, the soldiers with phones, and not necessarily supportive of what they are doing, are able to take pictures of the atrocities they witness (before they are killed, I suppose.) Nonetheless, they are able to capture the trains and trucks filled to the brim with "non-aryans" and those who committed treason; those who burn bodies and throw babies in the air for some "fun" skeet shooting. I am sure, however, that once sent, these soldiers send their pictures that they would undoubtedly be killed if discovered.

1940.Blog Post. Soldier.
"I can't take this anymore. I believed all of his promises, I pledged my allegiance, but this? We are ruthlessly killing men, women, and children. Babies! Babies being burned in ditches. Bodies piled up behind the camp by the hundreds. Just rotting there- too many to go into the crematorium yet. If I resist, I will be right there with them. My family, too. The amount of people I have seen ruthlessly shot in the head, among other things. People who were once my friends have gone mad by this behavior and have become sick killing machines. The people I once knew are no longer in these bodies. I have had to do horrible things too, but I have never liked it like some of these soldiers seem to. I hope that I can stay strong until this is over. But I feel that I am slipping... I can't take the violence, the brutality any longer. I must go now, people are coming.. "

If I were to think about this event happening with the use of phones and blogs, etc., I would like to believe that the rest of the world would have known what was going on sooner, and therefore capable of stepping in earlier, or at least the countries who were invaded would have been able to better arm themselves. However, if the common man had these technologies, that would mean that the Nazi Party would probably have them too, only better.

How would you think the Nazi Party would have combated the public's use of technology?

Learning About Ourselves in a Whole New Way

I found this video to be absolutely amazing.

We, as in grad students, are still young. Most of us are still probably trying to find ourselves in one way or another. Who we are, who we want to be, how we want to present ourselves to the world, how we want to be towards others. These are important questions to ask ourselves in order to mature into better human beings; of course, as long as we try to take an honest and fairly selfless approach.
I think the main reason youtube was the main medium discussed in this video was because of the idea of identity and recognition. Young people, and all people for that matter I suppose, are feeling like the spotlight is where they will be special. At the same time though, youtube provides this atmosphere where a person can "unload" or speak their minds in a way they might not ever in a face to face situation. This is, as he said, a way to become more self aware and more self consciousness on the questions I brought up earlier. In addition, they are able to go back and evaluate themselves in a way they never had before, and this has profound implications.

I find the search for the self in context of the whole an extremely important endeavor that every person should attempt to do. On top of that, I cannot separate the search for self and identity, the quest for meaning in life to promote better understanding and thus a facilitation in the search for self and identity, to be at all incongruent with my job as a social studies teacher.
I used social studies at first as a way to understand how and why people act the way they do in order to understand myself better. As I studied more, I developed a feeling of obligation to do something, to play a part in the betterment of society; to be a good person and a good citizen.
I want to instill these very same things in my students. At the beginning of the semester, I began to feel that having a blog would be a great way to promote honest answers and discussion to alleviate the pressure and anxiety many students feel with class discussion. I hope that through time, my students will be better versed in stating their opinions well and respectfully, and through writing may gain a sense of flow and confidence that can transfer into the classroom. I saw technology as a useful means before, but I am definitely more adamant about wanting to implement it in creative ways I hadn't thought of before.

Going back to my first discussion on the issues of self and our relations with others in the context of social networking, I wanted to give a few examples of myself to illustrate the point, and to show why this video really had such a huge impact on me.
First and most basic, it has allowed me to stay in touch and regain touch with people that are far away; this is really important to me because family is really important to me, and things like webcam and facebook and camera phones allow me to really stay close to them. In addition to that, it has made the processes of reconciling with someone easier. My little sister and I haven't really talked for months because of a particular life choice she made, and this has been really hard on the both of us in light of the fact that our mother passed away last February. We should have been supporting each other, but we didn't until very recently. She signed up for facebook, and it has allowed us to slowly begin to have conversation again without having to rush into uncomfortable and superficial chats on the phone. It has essentially allowed me to show her I love and care for her, but that I am still not condoning her actions.
In relation to finding our identities, I must say that I have often been uncomfortable in my own skin, contemplating simultaneously how I was presenting myself, whether it was an accurate representation, and whether I wanted to continue being and presenting myself as such. This is borderline obsessive, I know, but my point comes down to this: facebook has allowed me to embrace myself as a unique individual more than I ever have. My biggest example is that I post very personal poems that I write that often show a darker side of me that many people don't really see in person. This in consequence, has allowed me to be more accepting of myself, more comfortable with myself around others, and has allowed me to be even more genuine and show more sides of myself than I have before. Lastly, it has allowed me to be more forgiving when I mess up, because I have come to embrace the fact that none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes; we just have to learn from them and move on.

If I can show my students even just a glimpse of the positive potentials of social networking, I will be a very happy person.

Would anyone like to share a way that social networking has influenced their sense of self and identity?
If we think about this personally and perhaps share it with our students, I believe it can have a positive impact on our students perceptions of social networking and the ways in which it influences who we are, who we want to be, and how we get there.

iTunes U- Identity

As someone interested in both psychology and sociology, I wanted to put something together that evoked ideas of identity from an integration of both perspectives. Not only do I think these podcasts are great for student reflection on life and who they are as an individual and the beliefs that they hold, but it will give them a sense of social and psychological discourse that could possibly help them in future readings on these subjects.

One of the podcasts I chose was an introduction to a class on social psychology where they talk about the idea of individual-society dualism. This means that often times these two things are separated as being isolated variables without effect on each other. However, as the women in this podcast argue, social-psychology tries to do the opposite and show that the two are intrinsically linked. I think this is great for getting students to think about the fact that they are not just one person, effected by isolated events but are participants in a much larger context, where we have a give and take relationship that cannot avoid influencing who we are and who we become. Students need to realize there is a big world out there, and should begin to think about how they fit in it.
file:///C:/Users/Lexi/AppData/Local/Temp/Individual-Society%20Dualism.url


I also wanted to include ideas on gender. This particular podcast is an interview with a genetically female woman who was raised as a boy due to the fact that she had a rare condition that demonstrated physically ambiguous genitalia that doctors mistakenly identified as male. While this particular condition happens in 1 in about 4,000 births (which is not that small of a number when you think about it) similar issues of ambiguous genitalia occur in about 1 in every 2,000 births. Many of these people are faced with gender identity crises that are only exacerbated by family and society ignorance and nonacceptance. Students must realize that things are not just black and white, so we should never judge someone who may be different from what we consider normal. I think this podcast will also be helpful in getting kids to think about how their gender identity is constructed.
file:///C:/Users/Lexi/AppData/Local/Temp/Nature%20or%20nurture_.url

This next podcast expands on the woman talked about in the previous one, and how this relates to nature vs. nurture. It is a great argument that all of us at some point contemplate.
file:///C:/Users/Lexi/AppData/Local/Temp/Nature%20or%20nurture_%201.url

I also included a podcast that talks about the dynamics of families today, and how they have changed over the years. They explain that this change may not necessarily be bad, but in fact is a change that is responding appropriately to the change of times. It is good to get students to think about the structure of their family and other families, and how this affects who they are.
file:///C:/Users/Lexi/AppData/Local/Temp/The%20Role%20of%20Family%20and%20Social%20Change.url

I included a podcast that address what consciousness is and gives a brief introduction to the concept. I think this is good for students to understand the idea of "thinking about thinking" and the role that consciousness plays in our lives and how it manifests itself through our actions. I belief that having a better understanding of this may get students to think more deeply about their own actions and thoughts.
file:///C:/Users/Lexi/AppData/Local/Temp/What%20is%20consciousness_.url

The last podcast I added comes from a more biological viewpoint, and it makes a differentiation between the way males and females react towards stress in the context of terrorism and war. It ties this into the general idea of risk taking, which is a common and popular topic among youths. The fact that it uses the concept of terrorism to explain this is a more innovative and "world issue" incorporating way of talking about this topic.

file:///C:/Users/Lexi/AppData/Local/Temp/Emotion%20&%20Decision%20Making%201.url


Because the podcasts are on very different topics, it would be interesting to see how the students synthesize the information from their own interpretation of what they listened to. When reading, I would expect them to jot down main ideas and initial reactions. After that, I would like to see them in small groups discussing what they thought about what they heard and give them some questions to think about. On their own, I would then have them do a reflection paper, I just haven't decided what the focus will be (or if I would even have a specific focus or just give them free reign).