Many Voices for Darfur
Over the weekend, Mr. Mayo, tweeted out that he needed to know how to get rid of the navigation bar at the top of Blogger blogs. As it turns out, this is something that I know how to do, or at least where to find the information to do this, so I tweeted him back and a little while later Mayo sent me message about this project:
I milled this over for about a second and then started thinking about how to incorporate this in my Government class. The first fit was easy. I have a handful of students that are trying to earn honors credit for the class. And I needed to develop a new unit just for them. Yeah, instead of doing that, why not get them involved in this project? No reason why not. Okay, where else can this project go?
Right now my students are working on a unit about interest groups and in a few weeks they’ll be looking at international politics. Two perfect fits, right there. Awesome.
What else? Well, I’ve got a teacher working on a Contemporary Problems class. He’s been on the lookout for things for his class to do. Let’s get them invited. Oh, and a Survey of Social Studies class and a few other classes as well. Let’s get them going on it.
On top of this, this weekend was the official relaunch of the school’s social network. So, students across classes can meet and work together. I can’t take any credit for this, Cory can and should (thanks, Cory), but I’m going to exploit the heck out of this. How? Well, all of the teaching for this project is going to happen in the school’s social network. I’ve got a group going just for the project. With just a little luck it’ll have students that aren’t just in my Government class and I’ll get to work with a whole host of students.
Here’s how I introduced it to the class:
and that’s being used for other participants.
Closing Thoughts:
If you’re looking for a project that’s dead simple for your students to get involved with, this is it. Great job, Mr. Mayo.
As it turns out he wasn’t looking for people who knew how to get rid of the navigation-bar at the top of Blogger, he was looking for people to rope into the project. Thanks for casting out the line, Mayo.
Technorati Tags: Many Voices for Dafur, Mr. Mayo, global connections, Classroom 2.0