5.+Discussion

Kira: I think the point about service-learning and peer education is really similar to the type of action we found the most participation with... application in the real world

Ben: It talked about how students sharing their own personal stories was highly engaging, but it was difficult when the teacher got to the part about creating environment stewardship digital stories

Ben Rimes: Because there was a personal disconnect, the students hadn't experienced much Ben Rimes: I think it plays nicely with what you were saying, and how we started to give a lot of those students a personal connection.

Kira: I like what you are saying about the personal connection and that totally ties into this idea: "All young people will seek ways to: 1) Meet their basic physical and social needs; and 2) Build the individual assets or competencies (knowledge, skills, relationships, values) they feel are needed to participate successfully in adolescence and adult life.” (pg. 6-7)

Kira Christensen: Providing a space for their social needs is beneficial for the student and for their development of global citizenship... in a way.

Ben: Doesn't directly relate, but it may provide clues as to why or why not students were motivated to particpate in Take Action, but more importantly at what level they were involved with it.

Kira: Definitely.. I think you are right. The students who were more engaged were either a) making personal connections and telling us about it (via the forum) or b) were highly engaged in open class discussion that was facilitated by the teacher

Kira: pg. 141) “The extent to which students experience their classrooms as places to investigate issues and explore their opinions and those of their peers has been found to be an even more vital part of civic education”

Kira: The idea being if there is true open discussion not just talk of having open discussion that this is a VERY important part of instilling the value of civic engagement/participation

Ben: Which is interesting because in my other reading it talks almost exclusively about creating democratic citizens and the dangers of technology

Ben: Most researchers and educationists assume that technology is inherently nuetral, that it is just a tool, and therefore can't be blamed for problems with the communication or the shpae of the discussion.. Ben Rimes: BUT, the paper talked about how technology can be manipulated, but more importnatly how it is controlled Ben Rimes: The discussion is already controlled by how you can access it, IF you can access it, and in what ways a given institution (I.e. a school district) allows people to paticipate Ben Rimes: This produces limitations in tools Ben Rimes: Limitations that we don't really consider....but could potentially hinder or direct an open conversation into a non-nuetral conversation

Ben: It made another point taling about how in some ways science and technology driven education is actually having the opposite effect of making conversations more diverse, that they in fact are making everything more homogenous

Kira: That is really interesting... it makes me think about how hard I had to work to make different sites accessible to students in my district and so on... it was a very deliberate effort on my part

Ben: However, even if we aren't the source, we're still trying to show students that there are authoritative voices, and despite saying we aren't the ones to look up to, we're still replicating that old model of trying to find another replacement for that authority, rather than let the students explore, and maybe even start creating their own ideas regardless of their credentials, hence the Global Program [6/18/10 10:49:13 AM] Ben Rimes: Yeah, I've done the same, making sure certain sites are unlocked, and then to put that idea on it's head and think, well, wait, I just found these sites which I want to defend as being the authority, but that's the same revisionist sort of history making people have been making for generations

Kira: That's another thing I read about... that students need to be a part of developing what they participate in.. and not just being told what to do.

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