Group items tagged

From the website: "Based in Providence, R.I., What Kids Can Do (WKCD) is a national nonprofit founded in January 2001 by an educator and journalist . . . they felt an urgent need to promote perceptions of young people as valued resources, not problems, and to advocate for learning that engages students as knowledge creators and not simply test takers. Just as urgent, they believed, was the need to bring youth voices to policy debates about school, society, and world affairs. Using the Internet, print, and broadcast media, WKCD presses before the broadest audience possible a dual message: the power of what young people can accomplish when given the opportunities and supports they need and what they can contribute when we take their voices and ideas seriously. The youth who concern WKCD most are those marginalized by poverty, race, and language. On this website, WKCD presents young people's lives, learning, and work, and their partnerships with adults both in and out of school. Our community of readers stretches from youth organizers in some of this country's toughest urban areas to policy makers at the national level. We believe that a good story well told crosses geographies, generations, class and race, and position. Our publishing arm, Next Generation Press, honors the power of youth as social documenters, knowledge creators, and advisors to educators, peers, and parents. WKCD is a grant maker, too, collaborating with youth on multimedia, curricula, and research that expand current views of what constitutes challenging learning and achievement. Starting in 2006, WKCD began working with youth worldwide. WKCD has become an international leader in bringing the promise of young people to the attention of the adults whose encouragement can make all the difference."

Here they have collected various articles about how youth around the country and around the globe have been actively involved in policy making and shaping. This may be great to get teachers and students started thinking about project ideas or to inspire students (and teachers!) that students really can make a difference.

ARG! My diigo isn't working at all. Very frustrating. I have to highlight stuff four times and then add the comments in on this page. Technology is not my friend this week.

So if you do a rad civics project with your students, students can then write an article about what they did and send it in to WKCD. They will then put it up on this cite and your students will have something to be uber proud of. This is another reason to make sure you photo document rad projects.

The online map room is maintained by the University of Texas at Austin, and it is frequently updated with new scans and additions from the library. The folks at the library can be contacted by computer or telephone.

The site has a plethora of maps, but I think their modern political maps/historical maps are most helpful. For teachers, this is a great resource to help students understand and analyze history.

The library's online map collection is also searchable-although the search engine is pretty basic

This website was created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Their collection includes thousands of letters written during wars of military service. It is an active site, and they ask people to send in war letters to expand to the collection.

As people get older and they come across old letters in the attic, hopefully they will want to contribute their personal correspondence for a greater public understanding of war.

I think this would be a great activity during the study of any war. It would also make for a great activity on Veteran's Day. Using Joellen's SOAPS (speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject) analytical tool, students could examine different letters.