A friend recently introduced me to a web-based presentation tool called Prezi which probably won't kill PowerPoint anytime soon but is still quite awesome. The idea is to move away from the convention of a sequential slide-by-slide presentation, which is a vestige of manual slide projector days. Prezi gives you an unlimited canvas to work off of and then zoom in and out of different parts as you go along - so you end up with something that looks kind of like a mind map. The classroom I'll be working in has a projector so I'm hoping to create a prezintation (?) for later in the semester (personal project, yay)
Speaking of mind maps, this wasn't created using prezi but I saw it earlier and it's a must-watch if you're interested in/going through education:
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
pleasantries, etc.
So I thought that while I'm waiting on grad school decisions and generally being anxious about Post Grad, it would be a good idea to go back to day school for a bit.
For this semester, I'll be volunteering as a college mentor with a pretty awesome nonprofit called Generation Citizen. GC was founded in 08 by then Brown undergrads with a mission to "expand democratic participation amongst youth populations that have been historically under-represented or actively excluded from the political process." They place college mentors in low-income urban classrooms to implement a semester-long action-based civics curriculum as part of students' regular US history or social studies classes. The curriculum is super interactive and hands on; the first unit involves discussing issues facing the communities that the students self-identify with and learning about political systems, democratic processes etc and at the end each class votes on an issue that they want to take action on. The second unit is all about learning to take effective political action through the lens of the selected issue and the final step is actually taking the action, which could including running a petition drive, making a documentary, meeting with local representatives etc. All in all, a very interesting model.
GC Founder Scott Warren talking about the program
In the past I've thought/written a little about the issue of how non-voters can be involved in/be incentivized to become involved in the democratic process, but this has mostly been related to immigrant communities including resident and non-resident aliens. So I'm excited to look at it from a youth angle and more than that, just really excited to work with what seems to be a group of really dedicated people and a class of really enthusiastic students. It's also a good excuse for a blog, something I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm hoping to just chronicle my classroom experiences here for myself and anyone who may be interested. Apparently because of NYC Dept of Ed regulations I'm not supposed to use identifying names or descriptions in a public forum so this will make for lots of fun acronyms and initials. For now, I officially start Monday the 28th of Feb and I'll be co-teaching an 8th grade class with another GC mentor from Columbia Teacher's College and the regular social studies teacher (both of whom I met today and they're wonderful). Can't wait.
For this semester, I'll be volunteering as a college mentor with a pretty awesome nonprofit called Generation Citizen. GC was founded in 08 by then Brown undergrads with a mission to "expand democratic participation amongst youth populations that have been historically under-represented or actively excluded from the political process." They place college mentors in low-income urban classrooms to implement a semester-long action-based civics curriculum as part of students' regular US history or social studies classes. The curriculum is super interactive and hands on; the first unit involves discussing issues facing the communities that the students self-identify with and learning about political systems, democratic processes etc and at the end each class votes on an issue that they want to take action on. The second unit is all about learning to take effective political action through the lens of the selected issue and the final step is actually taking the action, which could including running a petition drive, making a documentary, meeting with local representatives etc. All in all, a very interesting model.
GC Founder Scott Warren talking about the program
In the past I've thought/written a little about the issue of how non-voters can be involved in/be incentivized to become involved in the democratic process, but this has mostly been related to immigrant communities including resident and non-resident aliens. So I'm excited to look at it from a youth angle and more than that, just really excited to work with what seems to be a group of really dedicated people and a class of really enthusiastic students. It's also a good excuse for a blog, something I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm hoping to just chronicle my classroom experiences here for myself and anyone who may be interested. Apparently because of NYC Dept of Ed regulations I'm not supposed to use identifying names or descriptions in a public forum so this will make for lots of fun acronyms and initials. For now, I officially start Monday the 28th of Feb and I'll be co-teaching an 8th grade class with another GC mentor from Columbia Teacher's College and the regular social studies teacher (both of whom I met today and they're wonderful). Can't wait.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)