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Ideas for Digital Advantage Support

FYI Here is the historical timeline and brainstorm space I am keeping. It's a wiki so you can add comments. History Outline of Initial Idea and Activities Additional Ideas



History
1. GU HQ notified the College of Science (COS) team that SUSD was offering basic computer courses to Digital Advantage (DA) parents and other parents that GU staff were helping to publicize. 2. Lisa (me) called Andrea Foster the Community Outreach Person at SUSD (listed as the organizer of the Computer Classes). Lisa and Andrea discussed the bullet points below and decided to meet and include Noah Tonk. Lisa let GU and SUSD folks know of the potential idea and meeting beforehand and got preliminary thumbs up :) 3. First Meeting at SUSD (Lisa, Andrea, Noah) outcomes 4. I let the GU folks know of our idea and asked for feedback on moving forward. COS/GU can fund jump drives 5. Meeting planned with GU HQ team, COS/GU and SUSD for Monday March 2nd at 4pm! 6. Lisa met with Crystal Bartels and another approach was discussed (see additional ideas).
 * Andrea relates that parents of DA students really didn't sign up for the classes, so they opened them up broadly and got a lot of people to sign up, especially from the Spanish speaking parents. (they offer two classes one in English and one in Spanish).
 * Andrea relates some feedback she got from parents at the first Mandatory DA meeting was that parents wanted to know when there would be an opportunity to have some advising on how to use the computer with their students - e.g. an event for them and their child.
 * Andrea gave a brief survey about what parents might be interest in learning but there wasn't much of a response on the survey. Andrea and I decided to meet together and with Noah Tonk talk about the potential of parent/student classes.
 * //Lisa and Mary have met with Noah several times prior and are somewhat knowledgeable of the broad scope of the SUSD work.//
 * Noah was only able to meet briefly- he expressed that things he would like to increase knowledge of are:
 * What I would term Internet Savvy (e.g. what are urban myths, interent safety, myths about the internet, basic info literacy)
 * able to gather that I believe Noah wants to teach all parents and students how to use google calendar to help instantiate the use of the tool in the broader institutional structure of the SUSD
 * Andrea and I hashed out an exploratory plan to invite parents at the next Mandatory DA meetings to a series of 1hr workshops for parents and students in April. We thought that because of the late start in the year and because the mandatory nature of the DA meeting provided a venue for publicity that we could see if people were interested....and try this as a pilot of sorts. We were going to have a brief flier that people could submit part of it to express interest and intent to come, give us their contact info - but not a formal registration. We thought of having the incentive to come be jump drives. See Initial Plan ideas below.



__**Basics of Lisa's Initial Plan Ideas**__
(with some feedback and planning support from Noah and Andrea). > Registration - We were going to have a brief flier that people could submit part of it to express interest and intent to come, give us their contact info - but not a formal registration. > **Incentive: jump drive > *More of a mentoring situation than a teaching situation and basically to get a better idea of what it is people know and want to know and see if some things like he use of infinite campus is known.** (see ideas for activity below). > ***Incentive: jump drive** > **Technology:** They Bring their laptop TECH FOR OTHERS: I would need to get access to a laptop to get acquainted with it beforehand, would need a projector. **NOTE that** we don't know what kind of response we would get...if people would want to come (see additional ideas in section below) **NOTE that I would need to get trained on infinite campus and have access to a laptop**
 * I**nvite parents and students (can only be DA initially) to three, one hour workshops (not linear, folks could come to one or all) in April, to get advising on and experience with the kinds of tools available on the internet for learning activities that could be done as a family and that would support students academically.**
 * **Note on language: -** have written materials in English and Spanish - provide links to pages and activities in english and spanish. Encourage activity and speaking in cualquier idioma quieren hablar, escribir y leer. Personally I can understand Spanish really well but my speaking is not that good so I would tell people that, but I can communicate in spanish so I could give instructions in english and spanish. And, as Andrea noted the students will be more biilingual so they can act as mediators.
 * **Ideas for activity:**
 * At workshops have a webquest type "menu" where people could choose from different activities to try out depending on their interests, with everyone doing a few things together. Webquests can also have a "treasure hunt" type of thing where there are things to hunt for hidden in one of the places they might visit. Have a space where people can continue to interact later on (different ways and formats the webquest coudld be put so thta it can be interactive in terms of feedback and an extended resource). Most activities would be to see where people are interested so that future support could be based upon interests and they could also get a sense of where they might look for stuff they are interested in (and this could be shared with teachers).
 * **NEW IDEA**: for first session (and maybe all) and especially if others will get involved and be there to serve as mentors/teachers besides me have "centers" for different families of menu activities; e.g. math, english, net savvy, multimodal meaning making, participating in an online community/giving feedback, infinite campus. Hav e people switch every 20 minutes so they could do 3 centers per evening.
 * Start with a fun icebreaker - Like have people interview each other with digital recorders and cameras, or by typing into a blog (give choices) about themselves (have a set of general questions as suggestions) and also have them ask how they use technology, what they want to learn...
 * Menu in a Modified 5th dimension style: Each person gets a menu that they can check off what they did and give feedback (simple likert or more). And in a greatly modified 5th Dimension type model (See La Clase Magica - http://lcm.ucsd.edu/LaClaseMagica/Home.html) people could reach certain levels of achievement and get peer feedback. This way the menu could also offer tasks that go from simpler to more advanced but in a whole project based format. Menu can have tasks that are interdisciplary and/or also located in particular disciplines (and the menu can indicate). //Activity needs to have a way for peer feedback, and activity that involves learning how to create something would be best served if they are interdisciplinary and project based so that skills are not taught discretely and on their own but in the context of a something cool that people want to do and can do in a social manner. This can also help build analytical thinking about work and motivation (see Carol Lee below)// Research shows that people learn new technology on a "as I need to know" and social basis best - thus provide ample ways and space for dialogue and feedback about activity.
 * __Some whole group activity:__ Educate on **Net Savvy** type things by providing a set of Net Savvy Challenges. Take one challenge per week as a group, but have a quiz that people can take on their own as well. Examples would be to determine if something is an urban myth or what you should do if someone asks for personal info, discuss password and user-name savvy, Show statistics and research on realities of harassment youth face and address safety behaviors for safe use of the social aspects of the web that have become prevalent and important for learning. Aim to allow for greatest freedom of use by equipping families with Net Savvy. - for example look at reports on internet safety and recommendations:
 * [|OnGuard Online Safety tips for Tweens and Teens] (also available en espanol/spanish) Great site links to all of the other big Internet Safety sites.
 * [|ISTTF_Final_Report-Executive_Summary.pdf] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/isttf/
 * http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/peds.2007-0693v1
 * [|Putting youth technology use in perspective (including links to info on cyberbullying and the digital youth macathur research)>]
 * Those who are knowledgeable of how to use infinite campus could teach others in the group
 * OTHER EXAMPLE MENU ACTIVITIES below - ORGANIZATION people can "sign on" for certain activities and they could be projected or just with a hand count so that that people would know who else working on the same thing and could collaborate (in a chatroom or in real space). Or people could decide as groups what to work on...especially is other mentors there. This work can be done in pairs of student and parent.
 * Ask people to give their opinions in a backchannel or a wiki or a comments section for that activity during the event that other people can see. For example a webquest activity could have people check out Judy Baca's digital murals or the Bay Area Youth Speaks project or a site on sharing recipes, and ask them what kind of collaborative projects they might be interested in, ask them to submit links or info on their ideas
 * Wikipedia - have people visit the Sunnyside entry on Wikipedia and add some info about their school. Discuss the pros and cons of collaborative production. Have an activity where you have to compare two sources about something popular
 * Add a link to a collaborative Digital Advantage delicious social bookmarking group.
 * Have people look for videos of things they are interested in on the web. Following Carol Lee's (Professor and AERA president) use of "cultural data sets" such as a Lauryn Hill Video or snippets from popular TV shows, or popular lyrics. Asking people to find media they are interested in can provide a way to use those media as "generative" texts by taking a look together and share thoughts. Analytal and conceptual thinking can be drawn out and then paired with genre specific thinking. This could be done in small groups and also provide a dataset for teachers. (see //Culture Literacy and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of a Whirlwind,// [|Carol Lee], 2008, review: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4009/is_200804/ai_n25420677)
 * Send a picture to a site from a cell phone.
 * **Google calender** - c//reate one, talk about how could help teachers do this. Offshoot - Potentailly HELP TO integrate laptop students and technology into whole classroom if they play key roles for technology integration and support in classroom //
 * Sign up for a cell phone alert for something
 * Have people find a book they have read on Amazon and write a book review (or could do with music)
 * Collaboratively write a persuasive letter, cover letter or another type of text necessary for an authentic out of school practice, have other people give feedback.
 * Discipline Specific
 * Math - get ideas from Crystal - ( I know of a few cool video sites)
 * Science - I have resources will add
 * Games - I would like to get feedback on youth on games they play so more connections could be made across the curriculum. Gee's book on what videogrames have to teach us about learning is useful reference. If anyone is a gamer, let us know more!



**Some Additional Ideas!**

 * __**Parents/Students Recruited to Teach/Mentor Workshops:**__ Crystal's awesome idea - "[|MAPPS]" style parent and student co-mentors/teacher - sustainability, good distributed funds of knowledge pedagogy, parent/student leadership etc. (Lisa wrote this :)
 * MAJOR ASPECT - BUILDS IN "BUY-IN" FROM PARENTS/STUDENTS. Builds leadership
 * MAJOR SUPPORT NEEDED - recruiting, help co-mentors with logistics etc. whole team effort
 * Lisa's thoughts (and discussed w/ Crystal who said this is what Marta did for MAPPS - recruited via classrooms) for recruitment, 1)"a la MAPPs" - target parents and students from particular classrooms at SUSD so that the families funds of knowledge (FOW) can be accessed and viewed as a resource in the area of technology integration for those classrooms. Form study groups....This would be good b/c then can recruit from classes where teachers have committed to supporting the exchange and want to integrate technology FOW into classroom. This could be great in helping get student leaders integrate the digital advantage into a community resource for classrooms where only some students have laptops - this could be very helpful!
 * 2) or recruit outside of classroom domain and have parents/students serve as co-teachers to a broader group - e.g. through the proposed parent teacher classes
 * **Lisa thought's on Crytal's idea this for now** - great to do this kind of a thing and perhaps necessary but this kind of work is more complicated and takes a whole team effort for recruitment and logistics. May be good to start with trying out the evening classes and invite people to participate in a more active way from that angl**e -** my initial idea would involve people in doing a lot of peer feedback and support and self directed learning and gather info on what people want to learn, so it is in some ways a very similar approach, it just involves me and maybe others being the lead facilitators and parameter developers initially rather the folks in the audience. My teaching method would aslo be to have people report on and show what they are doing and discuss their strategies so it would build in peer teaching in that way also. //BUT probably need a more bottoms up recruitment strategy to get people there???//

Digital Organizing of Team Lisa's thoughts for for **Online Community, mentoring, peer support, resources, questions etc..** Could have a ning for Digital Advantage - but has disadvantages, but could work b/c could have family membership. Could have a blog (use wordpress) run by a smaller group of parents and students that everyone could comment on but not post on - this is good for privacy issues and also whole SUSD community could use. Could also do a wiki in this way but seems easier to do a blog. I like the blog idea... Could use the existing nings, but I think having parent members may be a liability issue we need to discuss. Would be great to have a wikipedia type tool but would need a server to install it on. We could also use other networks.... Lisa 2/24: How unique of an interface do the laptops have? Have the rules been changed (and configurations) to allow for downloading? I heard they were but need to hear more :)
 * Questions:**

http://sparcmurals.org/ucla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=362&Itemid=124 http://sparcmurals.org/ucla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435&Itemid=169 http://sparcmurals.org/ucla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=357&Itemid=117 ||  ||
 * LISA Resources/Projects etc ||  ||   ||
 * art, language, culture, digital || Judy Baca's Digital Murals:
 * || http://youthvoices.net/ ||  ||