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Learning Democracy through International Collaboration
School and Community
The students at Riverwood High, Atlanta, Goergia, who took part in
the Learning Democracy Project were juniors and seniors during the
spring of 2004.
Riverwood is proud to be Fulton County's International Studies Magnet
High School. With our diverse population, varied programs, and
proximity to cultural and academic resources, we are uniquely suited to
prepare our students to be global citizens. The mission of the
Riverwood International Studies Magnet is to provide an academically
enriching program which values and affirms diversity, allows students
the opportunity to become globally educated and proficient in foreign
languages, makes students aware of the interdependence of the world
community, and develops leaders and citizens who will challenge the
present and enrich the future.
The Riverwood International Studies Magnet intends to:
- be a premier International Studies Program and a source of
pride for all members of the Riverwood community, Fulton County and the
State of Georgia;
- be recognized as a program that honors human diversity;
- be a program whose curriculum encourages students to be
passionate, innovative and productive citizens who understand their
role in the world community;
- create a community that encourages students to be
multidimensional thinkers, who have a global perspective on politics,
culture, science and technology, and the overall human experience;
- be a program whose students, academic leaders and the
Riverwood community as a whole all share responsibility and recognition
for the Magnet Program's success.
School Demographics
Ethnicity
48% white, 23% black, 20% Hispanic, 6% Multiracial, 3% Asian
Languages Spoken
22 different native languages, 43 different countries
Countries: Afghanistan,
Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Coast Rica, Croatia,
El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti,
Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Korea,
Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Syria, Thailand, Togo,
Turkey, Ukraine, USA, Venezuela, Vietnam.
Languages: Amharic,
Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, Croatian, Dari, English, Farsi, French,
German, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean,
Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese
English language learners.
Objectives and Standards for ìLearning Democracyî Project as per our Georgia Learning Standards:
- Learn and participate in the diplomatic process of consensus building and democratic debate and discussion;
- Identify and consider major concerns facing the global community over the next decades;
- Recognizes the political forms in existence in the world today;
- Recognize the unique opportunity to participate in government
that is afforded in the United States and other democracies;
- Show an understanding that citizenship in a nation includes both responsibilities and rights;
- Identify alternative methods of conflict resolution and apply to appropriate situations;
- Illustrate the needs for rules and laws and know appropriate
ways to influences school policy, public policy, and civic
actions;
- Describe and exhibit characteristics of good citizenship skills;
- Organize and participate in activities for effective community action;
- Compare freedoms in the United States with freedoms in other countries.
2. A timetable
March 30th - April 1st, Planning
April 12-16, Research
April 19-23, Create Documents to share
April 26, Transmit documents to partner schools via email
(Students will discuss research in the forum. The documents may also be posted in the forum for discussion.)
3. Questions about the project and particular lessons
How will you present this project to your students?
The project will be introduced to the class and student ideas will be incorporated into the project design.
How will you introduce iEARN to your students? Students will be introduced to the
website first with an LCD projection and then they will have an
opportunity to get familiar with the website. They will receive a
handout with instructions for navigating the site and using the forum.
How will you tie it into their curricular studies?
The
students are enrolled in World
Area Studies. For each area of the world political issues and emerging
democracies have been discussed.
How will you get them interested in the topic?
We are an International Studies magnet school and the students are very
interested in this collaboration.
What background knowledge do
your students bring to the project?
The students are seniors in our
magnet program and have taken 5 units of Social Studies.
Do your students need to learn some basic skills before starting the project?
The students are proficient in web research and in using the office
suite. Students will benefit from collaborating with students
from countries in various stages of developing democracy and also learn
that democracy has to be maintained by citizen participation and
vigilance. Students will also learn to use technology to
collaborate with their peers in other countries. We have been working
towards collaborating with students in other countries not just
studying about international affairs in our International Studies
magnet.
Will your students need to do research for their project?
Students will create a webliography as an assignment.
How will they be organized to gather information and produce their work?
Students will divide the research burden and the creation of documents among group members.
Who will be responsible and in charge?
The students will decide as long as they meet the deadlines.
How will the appropriateness of their work be evaluated?
The students will receive a rubric for grading.
4. Documents to be produced by students:
A brochure for high school seniors that informs them of voter
eligibility, voter registration procedures, and the rights and
responsibilities of voters.
A check list for evaluating fairness and equity of media reporting during an election period and post election periods.
A document that outlines danger signs for erosion of rights and
democratic freedoms in emerging democracies and established
democracies.
Webliography - annotated bibliography of helpful websites.
A Learning Democracy newsletter using Publisher or Front Page (optional)
5. Outcomes
We have carried out voter registration drives, mock elections, and
voter education projects before. The students were very excited about
their international partners. They couldnít wait to log on each day of
class to read the response of their partners. They were sometimes
surprised by the direction that the forums were taking. The Egypt
partners wanted to talk about the war in Iraq and expressed the view
that the U.S. was interfering with the democratic process there. My
students expressed surprise that all did not view this war as a war of
liberation that would bring democracy to the Iraqi people. They had not
anticipated a discussion of Iraq as part of the project. Some of the
Uzbekistan students wanted to discuss the democratic process in school
governance. That was also an unexpected direction of the project.
Challenges
We have to balance the class time we
can allot to IEARN projects with the preparations for external
assessments of our AP and IB students and with preparations for other
state mandated testing. We will need to find more projects that support
those objectives.
Assessment
Students
received a grading rubric and turned in a portfolio of their work. Some
of these items were posted in the iEARN Learning Democracy forum.
Student Response
by Joel Kadish
2004 Graduate
Riverwood High School International Studies Magnet Program
During the last few months of the spring semester, students in Ms.
Freda Goodmanís World Area Studies and International Affairs classes at
Riverwoood High School in Atlanta, Georgia participated in an online
educational forum entitled ìLearning Democracy.î The purpose of
this project was to promote not only a better understanding of the
United Stateís election and democratic process, but also to allow for a
comparison of the democratic processes of other countries around the
world to discuss the real meaning of democracy. Using the on-line resources provided by the International Education and
Recourse Network (IEARN), the students from Atlanta worked together
with students from other nations such as Luxor, Egypt and Taipei,
Taiwan to discuss and prepare documents which explored the different
factors that work for and against the democratic process. Such
topics included voting eligibility, the rights and responsibilities of
the voter, and the extent of the role that the media plays in a
democratic election.
A valuable component of this project was the on-line IEARN forum in
which students were able to interact with each other in a ìmessage
boardî type format concerning the different challenges of maintaining a
democracy. Students were able to post questions, which arose from
their research while at the same time respond to the questions of other
students.
Another highlight of the Learning Democracy
project was when the Georgia Department of State allowed the Atlanta
students to borrow one of the new electronic voting machines.
This gave the students the opportunity to demonstrate the voting
machine to the entire student body during lunch and to register seniors
to vote in the upcoming November elections. Not only did the
voting machine demo interest seniors, but the rest of the student body
as well by giving them their first look at the voting process and
something to look forward to in the future.
What separates this project from others as
truly unique is the fact that it involved students who were under the
voting age while still teaching the relevance of the democratic
process. Through a discovery of the advantages and drawbacks of
U.S. democracy, with a comparison of the democratic processes of other
countries, the IEARN Learning Democracy project helped to teach the
election and democratic process to high school students of all
ages.
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