Friday, September 10, 2010

(Posting #2a) Problem-Based Learning: A Call to Collaborate on Project Design

I've been thinking about this Verizon advertisement: the Internet provides a forum that doesn't care about age and experience - only the QUALITY OF IDEAS...

PROBLEM: Younger Americans are less involved in the political process than fellow citizens who are older. According to this report from the US Census Bureau: "In 2008, younger citizens (18-24) had the lowest voting rate (49 percent), while citizens who fell into older age groups (45-64 and 65-plus) had the highest voting rates (69 percent and 70 percent, respectively)."

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS / FRAMING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:
  1. How can students develop AUTHENTIC (real) VOICES in the political process - as we head toward elections this November?
  2. How can students INFLUENCE the public debate on issues they care about in MEANINGFUL WAYS??
  3. How can we MEASURE the IMPACT of students' political action on political leaders, on elections, on issues???
I want your HELP to develop a project that's broad in its scope, 'messy' in its details, and REAL in its impact. In the process, I envision playing a role similar to the guy in the suit from this YouTube video... can you imagine it? Envision it??

Let's work on this together: have a look at my DRAFT of the assignment:
  • What are your thoughts about developing this PROJECT?
  • What are your recommendations for teams working to define their projects and develop their action plans?

9 comments:

Unknown said...

IF you have a Tv, if you have seen a Tv, or you if you can spell Tv, chances are, you have seen something political on Tv. 21st century Children have such little concern for what goes on in this world. Thats why out country is on the break of another World War III.

Upper School Government and Economics said...

I'm not sure I follow your conclusion, Andrew - are you saying that you agree with my premise that 'Younger Americans are less involved in the political process than other, older Americans?' If you agree, then what sort of project design would you suggest to push back against this problem and help younger Americans to become more engaged in political action?

Johne McMahon said...

I think a good project design to get younger americans more involved in the political process would be to have some sort of debate on issues/laws that would focus more on younger americans. Such as the drinking age, draft age, driving age, curfew, or the War in Iraq. We all could spilt up into two teams and debate against each other and put our debates on youtube.

hayden said...

I think that as young americans we dont really have a big role in todays politics, but could have a bigger one if we wanted too. I think that we should start making YouTube videos about todays current political events that relate to us in someway or another, and to make it fun and exciting. We should have a new show almost. Expressing our opinions about currents events.

lizzie-sanders said...

I agree with Hayden. Although in today's society our role as young adults is not very i think it is in our power to be able to change that. I think we could do things such as post YouTube videos that voice our opinions on particular issues we are interesting. People online can watch our videos and her our voice. voicing our opinions in clever ways that would draw peoples attention would be a great way to gain a greater voice in today's society.

Alex and Maddie said...

I also really like Hayden's idea. I also like Johne's idea. I think it would be really cool to combine both Hayden and Johne's ideas. We could post videos and or find videos that voice young people's opinions about todays society. Then we can discuss them during class. Every day we could devote the first ten minutes of class to discussion about current affairs and or a video we found realting to society. Another idea would be once a month we have an entire class where we just discuss issues anything we'd like relevent to govenrment and economics classs. This could be a quiz grade and you participate and voice your opinions/arguments.

Erin said...

I think that it would be good to make a presentation like something to present to young Americans about how important politics can be in a person’s life. Maybe we should make avideo and send it to people and it would soon spread to many people. Some adults believe that we, young people, shouldn’t have a say in politics. In some ways they are right because people younger than 10 are not really educated in political matters. I believe that it would be good to prove to adults that not all people under 18 years of age can be smart about political decisions. How do we do this? We may not be able to get on the TV or radio, but we can impact in some way. I like Johne’s idea and Hayden’s idea about putting debates or speaking on youtube to different people about politics and young citizens. I also like the idea about doing the contest and let our voices be heard.

George Rodriguez said...

I hate projects. But, personally i think this would be a good idea because like people have been saying, we aren't very involved in the olitical process. Kid's today are not involved in politics at all. This process would help us to learn what is going on in the world and what is involved in society today.

George R.

Asante said...

I think that a good idea to get teenagers involved is to make it technology related somehow because our generation is into that stuff. I think something like Hayden said with a youtube video would be cool. I think this way more teenagers would be more motivated. ALso if political things were presented in a more interesting way, it would be more appealing to younger people and they would want to participate.