As we head into the new school year, we wanted to highlight several awesome opportunities for students to tackle current issues and make their voices heard…and build their digital footprints and ePortfolios in the process.
Image from the Aikuma Project http://lp20.org/aikuma/pilot_project.html
Aikuma Project – In the process of developing the Vietnam War chapter of our Time of Remembrance Oral Histories Project, we met Robyn Perry, a recent graduate from U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information. Robyn and Dr. Steven Bird are committed to preserving vanishing world languages. In Googling “Mien,” she came across our contact information on the Time of Remembrance website. We’ve connected several times via Google Hangouts to talk about ways a K-12 school district and two university researchers might support our mutual commitment to preserving the stories – and languages – of the Mien refugees, many of whom have resettled in the Elk Grove area.
Part of Steven and Robyn’s work is the deployment of Aikuma, a free Android App for recording and translating spoken language. The app allows you to make your own recordings, share them, and translate recordings into other languages.
A special feature of Aikuma is its voice-driven translation mode. Hold the phone to your ear and listen, and interrupt to give a commentary or translation. The phone records what you say and lines it up with the original. Now the meaning is also preserved.”
We’re hoping to encourage Mien students in the district to interview and record their parents, grandparents, and community elders and then contribute these primary resources, recorded in their native language, to Time of Remembrance – TOR Talks and to the Aikuma project. There is a very good chance that in the process of interviewing Mien refugees, besides preserving history, culture, and a possibly vanishing language, our students will also learn about the viewpoints of individuals whose stories might not otherwise appear in their textbooks. Equally important, they will be practicing digital and global citizenship.
Image via KQED Do Now http://blogs.kqed.org/education/2015/09/11/
KQED Do Now: Would You Welcome Refugees to Your Community? – We are big-time fans of KQED’s stellar program for engaging students, via twitter, in shared conversations on both local and global topics. Given the current Syrian refugee crisis, we cannot think of a more timely way to empower students as active digital and global citizens who are informed on the issues and challenges faced by refugees.
KQED provides the background resources and the structure for posting diverse opinions, thereby providing a virtual student toolkit for building active citizenship.
Digital ID – How about a Digital Citizenship PSA Challenge to jump start conversations in the new school year on what it means to be a positive, contributing citizen in all the communities to which our students belong, both face-to-face and online? With a December 15 deadline, there is still plenty of time for students to create and submit (through their teachers), a PSA (up to 90 seconds) on issues of cyberbullying, building digital footprints, respecting intellectual property, and protecting online privacy & security.
