Educational activity concepts and implementations

Educational Activity

Future History Journal

Challenging middle school students to develop a greater sense of civic pride is one of the most foundational goals of the period in both education and in social and personal development. Middle school is an extremely personal, social, emotional period in the development of the individual. The personal events surrounding often-rapid changes in the physical body of the adolescent and in the social boundaries of their independent lives often dictate the ability or willingness of a student to concentrate on issues of a broader nature. For this reason civic responsibility and world or local events can sometimes occur without the awareness of some members of this age group. For this reason an activity which focuses on the impact of current events on the future is age appropriate and a journal format is very personal. Melding the personal and the global into a single project, lasting a full term, may assist the student in realizing a greater sense of social responsibility and understanding of issue/event impact.

The concept of learning journals is one that has become increasingly utilized to assist the student in many areas. This format can be driven by technology as it is easily translated into an electronic assignment. Given the need and aptitude many students of this age group have for the use of technology this format should be encouraged for this project as a learning tool for electronic research and basic formatting of electronic to print documents. The initial teaching can include a review and refresher of the basic computer skills needed to format the project, internet research, and the more basic use of cutting and pasting, picture and graph insertion as well as proper citation in the MLA format for electronic resources.

The assignment itself will consist of an individually driven work that will encompass the entire term of school. Students will choose current events, either local or global that have become of interest to the media, and therefore the public during the beginning of the term. They can choose any area of interest/event that they believe may have longstanding social, cultural and/or practical staying power within the media for the period within question. The work will be self-driven and therefore hopefully of greater interest to the student in the long-term. Students may choose anything from a distant or even local natural disaster to a political event such as the election of a political official and the event will dictate the availability of future information on the subject.

To greater serve the assignment each student will choose three such topics from their research and find all the available media depictions of the topic/event. The student will utilize local as well as national/international electronic articles covering the event. After choosing three issues/events the student will cut and paste the newspaper articles into a journal format, with the inclusion of the proper electronic citation. The articles themselves will be preceded by an individual explanation of why the student believes the even to be of lasting media attention and any background information about the subject not found within the articles chosen and then each article will be followed with a personal statement about possible ways in which such an issue/event may have a future impact upon society. The three events/issues must be of three areas of impact, local, national and international but otherwise can be completely dictated by the individual interest of the student. The instructor may give any student who is having difficulty finding appropriate issues/events assigned topics.

The student will then follow up on the three chosen issues/events through the entire term, seeking more articles and outgrowths of the initial event/issue over the remaining time. The student will use a limited multimedia format including pictures, (web available recordings where available) and written accounts of events. The instructor will provide a list of available resources for each subset of topics, mainly web links to local newspapers, national and international media resources on the web, such as usatoday.com, and npr.com and any other legitimate media sources for the initial finding of interests in the work, if provided by the student instructor must review and approve source and then add it to the whole classes list of possible sources. The instructor will also provide a list of possible topics.

Disasters

Terrorist events

Death of important individual

Campaign and election of any official

Reflection on a historical event

A movie or thematic presentation/event that may have historical importance

The initial exposure of a new musical talent

A thematic series of events such as a new reality TV venue

A local/national/international weather trend

A crusade for some civil right or social change

The revealing of an important invention

A possible future crisis such as tax laws or social security failure

An international negotiation

Or an open topic approved by the instructor

The initial assignment can include some history of the issue/event (but does not necessarily need to) and will depend on the topic choice.