6.c+Extension+of+Our+Project

As project partners, one thing the two of us never lacked was vision for the Take Action project. So as we worked through the pilot of the project and then looking at the data after completing the pilot our vision for the future of the project got more realistic to what works for students and teachers. In Week One of our Observation Journal, “we felt [participants] needed more time to process the information and receive additional sites and resources to educate themselves with before they were ready to take action on their own.” This is at the heart of what we hope to accomplish in extension of our project. There are three extensions to the project in which we will focus our efforts.

First, there was a lot of new information that students and teachers alike were learning in the project and even the idea of social activism was new. Unless a parent engages his or her child in understanding civic and political obligations, a student is not as likely to actively participate in civic engagement projects. (Torres) To this end, we will pursue identifying out our Super Users and deciphering why they are engaged. We are also aware that to “make deliberative techniques, such as study circles or dialogue groups, central to all engagement processes.” (Wyman, Shulman, Ham) is essential to enhanced engagement. So in the pursuit of a more engaged student population we will provide more structure prior to and during the project. This would include a more robust set of tools for teachers to use and a site design which would be more structured and designed to engage both students and teachers.

Another extension of the project will make Take Action one part of a bigger, culminating project. “Citizens are looking for a much stronger voice, and a way to interact with government or combat issues rather than just learn and spread more information about it.” (Wyman, Shulman, Ham) Merely giving users a simple action does not //engage// the participants because they are looking for a way to interact in a more meaningful way. So as a part of the project, every classroom would have an offline component or culminating project that would bring participants to a “critical mass”, this way they would be better prepared to become engaged during the Take Action project. This will take what was merely “service-learning” and “peer education” to the next step in the Continuum of Youth Participation to “youth leadership development.” (Mohamed, Wheeler, 12) An offline, culminating project which is informed, enhanced and dependent on the Take Action Project for its successful completion will cultivate a more engaged community of global citizens.

Keeping in mind the extension of the project through the culminating project, the amount of time a teacher would spend with the Take Action project and the data of participant activity which showed participation dropped significantly after a week, the Take Action Project would be a much shorter time commitment. Some “…classes have been spending up-words of 40 minutes on engrossing discussions and explorations of other resources each day as they become more interested in the project” according to the Observation Journal Week 3. This is a serious class-time commitment for a teacher and a month was simply too long to be practical and workable for keeping students engaged.

We found some interesting data, challenges and rewarding experiences through the pilot, so in the end we found there were certainly components that can be extended and improved. The extension of our project is more than just that, it is also improving on version 1.0. The extension will be more structured for students and teachers, include a culminating project which is “offline” in the physical world, and a time commitment of a school week instead of a month. Of course, there are more ways we would like to extend the use of Take Action, i.e. adding a Facebook application, an e-mail "Action of the Day" reminder and so on. However, these extensions to the project are the most important because they will have the greatest impact on students, their global perspectives and hopefully their future social activism for a better world.

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