PORTFOLIO!

CLICK HERE FOR THE PORTFOLIO SUBSTITUTION INSTRUCTIONS!

The portfolio is due by email to profpoole at gmail dot com by 12/19 at 11:59 PM.

PLANNING!!!!

Today we are planning your "Be The Change" projects.

Choose AT LEAST 4 of the following.(This might be different if you are part of a two- or three- person group.)

Volunteering

Street theater

Direct action or demonstration

Letters to important people

Videos

buttons/stickers

social media (like Facebook)

PROPOSE your strategy and your plan, with deadlines, to your group.

PROPOSE your plan to me and Kemar, via email, by 3:00 PM on Saturday, 11/5. Copy your group members on the email.

The proposal should outline the big deadlines, like "upload the video" or "send the letters"; the little things on the way, like "edit the video," are for you and your group, not for Kemar and me. As a reminder, our email addresses are

kemarbennett at hotmail dot com

profpoole at gmail dot com.

Your confirmed proposal is binding. If you need to move a deadline you must re-propose it and get it confirmed by Kemar and me.

Collect your work in a portfolio on 12/9!

PRESENT your work on 12/16

SEND your finished portfolio to me by 12/19, no exceptions! Note: no speeches on 12/2; we need another work day.

TODAY; PLANNING THE PROJECTS!

Today we are planning your "Be The Change" projects.

Choose AT LEAST 4 of the following:

Volunteering

Street theater

Direct action or demonstration

Letters to important people

Videos

buttons/stickers

social media (like Facebook)

PROPOSE your strategy and your plan, with deadlines, to your group, THEN your group proposes it to Kemar and me, by 12:30 today.

Your confirmed proposal is binding.

Collect it in a portfolio on 12/9!

PRESENT your work on 12/16

SEND your finished portfolio to me by 12/19, no exceptions!

Note: no speeches on 12/2; we need another work day.

Campus Champions of Change Challenge

President Obama is urging college students to self-report stories of change within their communities that they were involved in. It’s called “Campus Champions of Change Challenge” http://www.whitehouse.gov/CampusChallenge You ARE champions of change; tell the president! Get a broader audience for your projects!

Extra office hours this week!

Hi! If you want to meet with me to talk about your project or about classes, I'm adding extra office hours this week!

So, total office hours remaining this week are

4-4:30 Wednesday

12-1 Thursday

4-5 Thursday

1-2 Friday

Enjoy!

Event on Friday night (optional/extra credit)

IF YOU WANT, come to this event held at MIT on 10/21 at 7pm

"A Robot Sent to Destroy Me": Town Hall Meeting on Media and Democracy

This is FREE.

If you want to earn extra credit, comment on this post afterward with ONE cool thing you learned at the event, the name of ONE cool person you met, and ONE way this event might inform your projects.

Finding Out Stuff (AKA Information Literacy)

As a reminder:

You have a strip of paper with questions on it.

Find out the answers to the questions.

Make a comment on here with your answers.

This is important! We ALL need to know the answer to your questions! You're building the class' "textbook" or "reference book"!

Link to a website you found useful in finding out stuff regarding your question.

Thanks!

America Speaks (10/14)

Greetings, change agents!

Last Friday was kind of cool, wasn't it?

Please bring your laptops this Friday! We'll be hunting for information in class, and this works better if most of you have your own laptops!

We're also going to visit a problem-solving and project-based learning workshop at the college at 12:00, and you're going to model your awesome creative thinking and teamwork skills for professors at the college. You'll be asked to work with the professors to conceptualize some element of your Be The Change project: for example, a bumper sticker, a social media campaign (like Facebook or Twitter), a public outreach act (such as a flash mob, protest, public demonstration), or a YouTube video. So, come in with an idea of what your social or political problem is!

Also, you've probably heard on the news or elsewhere already, but Occupy Boston continues to make waves. Over 2000 people attended the students' march on Monday (did you???) And over 100 Occupy Boston participants were arrested very late Monday night.

(Your professor was there during the arrests. And yes, it was scary. And yes, it felt momentous, too. That's sort of how this stuff works--scary and momentous all at once.)

Here's video from the moment when the arrests began: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu63e7QD_5k

Some clips from the arrests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6FfO2rRbeQ

Occupy Boston's media team continues to do good work. See the press releases and other coverage at: http://occupyboston.com

TOMORROW! (10/7)

We're going to deliver speeches in class!

Please make sure you have listened to JR's TED talk, linked in the previous post.

BUT THEN!  After all your speeches have been delivered in class, we're getting on the train and going to OCCUPY BOSTON!

What is Occupy Boston?  Check out these links:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1371366&srvc=rss
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/occupy-boston-gathers-crowd-pushes-for-grassroots-social-change-1.2642350
http://civic.mit.edu/blog/mstem/a-visit-to-occupyboston

You see, you're really lucky.  You're studying political activism in a semester when Boston is engaging in a massive, large-scale citizen protest.  People--students, workers, everyone--are occupying Dewey Park in protest against social injustices, especially those having to do with the gaps between the haves and have nots.

Occupy Boston needs STUFF in order to KEEP occupying Boston.  Here's the list: https://sites.google.com/site/occupyrevolution/what-we-have

Please bring something in "high" demand from that list to donate to Occupy Boston tomorrow, if at all possible.  Ice packs, reusable camping dishes, cough drops, reusable not-easy-to-break (metal or plastic) cups--all these are good and inexpensive and easy to find choices.

Next week (9/30)
Syidah confidential: "How to not suck at life"

Keep polishing your speeches!

Be ready to perform your speeches on October 7 at the beginning of class.  Remember, your speech should be a call to action on your issue in two minutes or less.  This is important.

On October 7, we will also work on (as scheduled) making change through creative means.  Please watch this video before then:
JR, French street artist, proposes to use art to turn the world inside out

Saw this article on a youth activism summit--a "Youthquake"--where members spoke to the power of social media--and immediately thought of your mission and our Be The Change projects this semester!  Enjoy!

One Young World Mobilizes Youth to Create Positive Change

Awesome work yesterday, everyone!  I heard afterward that quite a lot of people had taken notice and spoken about what we were up to!  This is terrific!

Let's continue this next week! 

For next week, we're working on rhetoric and speeches.

Come in next week with a piece of about one minute that uses the power of speech to raise awareness for a specific social or political issue.  In your groups, you will work on techniques to make the speech better. 

One really good way to write a speech is to imitate a famous speech. 

You might imitate Dr. King's famous I Have a Dream speech, which you read yesterday, and which you can listen to here.  If you did that, you could begin with "I have a dream..." and then go on to explain what *your* dream is. 

Another cool thing to reference and imitate would be the Declaration of Independence (which you all know very well now): "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." What truths do YOU hold to be self evident?

Still another might be the beginning of the Constitution: "We the people..."  What declaration do YOUR people want to make today in 2011?

Or, you could imitate another amazing speech of your choice!

Remember, speeches don't just have to be formal addresses!  Students in the past have done very powerful spoken word (think Def Poetry) pieces as their speeches--feel free to get creative! 

What is required?
-That the speech be one minute long, plus or minus ten seconds.  Rehearse it!
-That the speech be SPOKEN.  Using your mouth.  Formal speech, spoken word, rap, poetry, whatever.
-That the speech serves as a call to action or a complaint about something SPECIFIC that is wrong in the world today--a social or political problem.  Hunger.  Poverty.  The environment.  Jobs.  Violence.  Police brutality.  Prejudice.  Drug abuse.  Rape.  These are just a few of the specific problems you might speak out against.

Surprise, surprise, we're going to work on these in class and then speak them publicly too!

Also, for Friday: practice reading The Constitution of the United States aloud.

Friday marks "Constitution Day".  In honor of this BHCC will have a guest speaker, Pauline Maier, on Wednesday, tomorrow, at 1:00 PM in C-202--I encourage you to come.

But we, America Speaks, will honor the Constitution in another way, with our first practice in public demonstration, on Friday.  We, as a class, will read the constitution aloud in a public space at BHCC.

The White House will soon launch some cool online petitioning tools at http://www.whitehouse.gov/wethepeople

These could be awesome for your projects!

Awesome class today!  I can't wait for next Friday!

Here are the two TED talks we watched in class:

How to Start a Movement

How To Make a Splash in Social Media (Mr. Splashy Pants) 

Week 2 (9/16) New media

Read or watch before class on September 16.
Clay Shirky, "How Cellphones, Twitter, and Facebook Can Make History"
“How Obama Tapped into Social Networks’ Power”
“QR Code Campaign Fights for Education Equality in Iran”

CHALLENGE (work in groups in class): Identify a social or political problem. What would be the most effective way to use Facebook, Twitter, smartphone apps like foursquare, etc. to raise awareness or make change for your chosen political or social problem? SHOW US!

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