Meeting+Notes

Meeting Minutes 8/11/08
Skype Call toc

__Conference Notes – 8/11/08__ Thanks Jamie **Contributors:** Crista Lawson- 5th grade, Eugene, OR Jamie Nicholsen- 5th grade, Eugene, OR Sarah Jones- 5th grade, Willegillespie Elem, Eugene Denise Phillips- 5th & 6th, Elk Grove, CA David Cosand- 5th grade, Medford, OR Jane Krauss- RPBL teacher, Eugene, OR Linda Nitsche- Gifted support k-6 South Beach, Pennsylvania Erin Van Guilder- Gifted Support K-6 Chester Springs, PA Ginger Lewman- Charter School 5th-8th Euphoria, Kansas-Doing some roll playing of candidates to see who does the best job representing Lisa Parisi-5th grade, New York Christine Southard- Co-teacher with Lisa, Spec. Ed., New York Paul Bogish? Holding a debate, 8th graders, Lisa’s 5th grade would ask questions, they would have to come up with questions to ask the debaters  __Purpose:__ Kids becoming informed voters, ultimately when doing mock elections how they came to their decisions compare to another class, reflect on the way they arrive at their voting decisions, comparing civics education

__Helpful tips to getting started with PBL…__ What makes a project good, and then will it work collaboratively (Lisa) Start with project collaboration outside the walls (Lisa)

Do we want to start by telling them what the issues are? Or, do they do research to find out the issues, gather information, display on a wiki

September- Constitution Day

What if the wiki had separate pages Kids do research Look at issues and how does that effect our kids in our community They have to learn (Ginger) Look at polling practices- election process, students becoming more critical thinkers (Denise) Look and see who is polled, how do they choose who they poll, and is it a good representation (Sarah) Look at national poll, here is the question that was asked in the poll, then take it home, or conduct a poll to find out if the nat’l poll represented our area, and Analyze data (Lisa) Survey monkey, doing our own poll, then also have students cast a vote in a mock election (crista) Need to do a transfer, look at issues, local and nat’l, map to candidates Transfer learning to the mock election Important for them to vote, the authentic piece, connecting all of the work done before to the vote (Linda) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Kids Vote in Pennsylvania <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> =<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Polling = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Assessment, could put a poll in the Wiki, look at whether our students go along with the areas voting took place, do they care about the issues in our area <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Demographic profile of neighborhood <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Kids did a classroom ranking in the degrees of importance, then compared the rankings <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">You don’t have to teach government to teach about the election <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">1. teaching the government how it is set up <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">2. teaching about the election and on the issues, candidate <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> =<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Focus = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">We will teach about election, issues, and candidates <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Working in groups <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• What polling is <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• What issues are <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Candidates <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• These could be mini-lessons along the way <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Casual light weight, getting students minds ready (few days before brainstorm) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• We brainstorm with our students what the issues are by looking in newspapers, talking with parents, listening to commercials, we could download You Tube on teacher computer, RSS online newspapers, Time for Kids, CNN for students, RSS on politics <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Add these issues to a Wiki page by a date early in September <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Then we meet again on a conference call and decide as teachers what 5 or 6 issues we will focus on as a class <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Create a Wiki page for each issue <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Then come back and compare issues between states, different or the same <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Then connect the issues to the candidates <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• Identify where the candidates stand on the issue <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">• We should have issues well looked at by November. Then we can look at the electoral process the days before the elections <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">How will we explore the electoral college and how it works? Should we have the electoral college anymore? <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">-create a page on the wiki <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">-looking at the state map, red and blue <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> =<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Culminating Project = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Create a message for the candidate or president we are the future this what we think you should be doing, comes together with the issues – 2 minute video or podcasts, voicethread, blabbercise Each issue gets covered throughout all the regions and we could collaborate to make a video together <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Look at Flat Classroom for a process <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> =<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Timeline = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">January 20th-Inauguration Day we could have the video done to share <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> After election- make comparisons and analyze vote <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Election Day- <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">October 30th- Mock election vote <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">October 27th, 28th, & 29th – share with classroom their wiki, explain issue to class <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">October 24th – ALL research has to be done <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">October 1st – 24th Research and <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">September 29th – Classroom Brainstorm, conference call <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">September 22nd- 26th – Getting kids minds ready (come back to this) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> =<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Next steps = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Google calendar add to wiki <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Lets create a dicussion thread on wiki- continue with this discussion <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Guidelines for research <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Interviewing people in their area <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Then looking at the issues according to the candidates <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Next Skype meeting – September 29th ,<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> 3:00 pm PST <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> =<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Meeting Minutes June 30th, 2008 = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Skype Call <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Contributors: Crista Lawson, Jamie Nichelson, Jane Krauss, Linda Nitsche, Derek Brandow

Purpose: Learn what government is about and tie it into what is happening today

Discussion: Kids learn about role of goverment (functions, and how it serves us), voting, freedom <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Collaborate on a wiki (wikispaces) to see what parts of the project kids want to do: sharing ideas on a common topic <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Collaboration was difficult in the past: provide a template and framework for what they produce, scaffold simply, give a foundation to tackle bigger ideas <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Maybe do a timeline on a topic, ask students if they want to stay on a topic and research further. What is happening on that topic today? set up a current RSS feed <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">From there what to the candidates say and who would you want to vote for

Straw poll on survey monkey: How you get a representative sample, how does your area vote compared to other places-connections to math and statistics <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Great to get some representation from the south and southwest. It would be really interesting. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Continue this conversation and put ideas on this wiki.

=<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Meeting Minutes September 29th, 2008 = <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Skype Call <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> Contributors: Crista Lawson, Jamie Nicholsen, Linda Nitsche, Lisa Parisi, David Cosand

Linda and Lisa shared their addition of Hot Issues to the Election Wiki. Jamie and Crista will add their classes Hot Issues. Shared how we found the Hot Issues or Red Issue by asking students to share the issues that their families feel are important in the upcoming election. Crista made a table for each classroom to add their issues.

We then discussed how exactly we were going to have our students dive into the issues and record the information. It was decided that we would break our classes into groups to research an issue they are interested in. Each group will become an "Expert" on their issue. We made a template on the wiki for the groups to add information to as they research. Important that groups don't duplicate information on their wiki page.

Student groups will be researching the following: Where do the candidates stand on the issue? Why is this issue important to our area? Why is this a Hot issue?