Take Action Project Proposal and Review

Transcription

1 TAKE ACTION Connecting Youth, Humanizing Data, Sharing Learning Kira Christensen & Ben Rimes InGlobal University of Michigan-Flint ICS Take Action Project Proposal! 1

2 Mission Statement To engage primary and secondary students in taking small daily actions toward the accomplishment of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and to connect them with one another in communication about their shared actions. To encourage peer discovery and learning through shared experiences. To lay the foundation for successful youth-driven civic engagement. To humanize data provided by DevInfo through shared dialogue, personal connections, and offline civic action. Organizational Overview The Take Action project is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, graduates of the Global Education Technology Program at the University of Michigan-Flint, and In- Global, an organization that designs and implements innovative educational technology projects. Recently 280 participants, 8 classroom teachers, and 2 graduate students were connected in a month-long pilot project that focused on participating in daily actions to help meet the United Nation s Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Developed in the Summer of 2009, Ben Rimes and Kira Christensen, the co-creators, worked under the mentorship of University of Michigan-Flint Professor Jeff Kupperman to develop an online com- Take Action Project Proposal! 2

3 munity. Ben Rimes and Kira Christensen serve as the main points of contact for the participants, as well as lead designers of the educational curriculum. The Interactive Communications & Simulations Group at the University of Michigan provides the server space and connectivity for the project. The Take Action project builds upon the idea of committing random acts of kindness, but orchestrates those actions into a coordinated effort, rather than performing them at random. The actions are all derived from the MDGs, a set of human development goals which all of the United Nation s member countries are committed to achieve by the year The goals focus on eliminating poverty, providing universal education, promoting gender equality, improving child and maternal health, combating HIV, and ensuring environmental stability. The path to achieve these goals are all connected to a strong desire for global partnership, not just among governments and NGOs, but between citizens as well. Youth, teachers, and their parents, visit the Take Action website to discover the daily action or deed that everyone will perform that day. After they have taken action, they login to their account on the website and register that they ve completed the deed for the day. As participants register their action they will also share the story of completing their action through text, video, or audio, which they post to the site s forum. Each action has it s own discussion thread, so different forms of the daily action can be shared and commented on. If the action of the day calls for the Take Action community to find a way to reduce their wa- Take Action Project Proposal! 3

4 ter use by 3.5 liters for the day, the users have a way to share their specific steps taken to perform that action. The Take Action community members can also assign karma to other participants comments, videos, or other media. Giving karma to another participant is a way for our users to highlight creative actions and inspiring or higher quality comments. The incentive to acquire karma ultimately promotes actions and comments that have a greater impact in moving the community towards achieving the MDGs. During the month-long pilot in February of 2010, the participants successfully took small daily actions provided by the educational curriculum designers, and then shared their experiences with one another using the commenting system in the project website. The 8 participating teachers successfully dialogued with students throughout the pilot, and as an indirect result, produced posters, discussions, and books that addressed several of the MDGs. Three hundred books were written for Books of Hope, a tangential project which has been successfully managed by the My Class Cares organization for several years. A measured 8% increase was observed in students awareness of achieving the MDGs. In addition our results suggest that as a result of this program more students felt that when their actions are coordinated with others they can make an important contribution. Take Action Project Proposal! 4

5 Through our pilot of the Take Action project, we found that effective teacher-leaders in pilot classrooms were crucial to successful engagement. Teachers who had more confidence in the impact of the project, had the most actively involved students. Another motivator for participant involvement were the actions themselves. Participants were most likely to take part in small daily actions they could complete off-line in the real world. These off-line actions, actions they could see, touch and hear, were 28% more likely than average to be acted upon than other project actions. The power to act within one s local community for the greater good is where Take Action s strength lies. In fact, the sense of having an impact, even though it may be a small difference, increased by 8% by the end of the project. Our findings made it clear that given strong leadership and off-line actions, students will participate and engage in global citizenry. Problem Statement Nation states around the world have been documenting significant declines in civic engagement for several decades. Studies from Cornell 1 and Cambridge 2 in the past decade have recognized the decline in civic engagement at the national level in many countries, but have noted the increasing positive impact that local and global communities are having on human 1 Tolbert, Charles M., Lyson, Thomas A., &, Initials. (1998). Local capitalism, civic engagement and socioeconomic well-being. Social Forces, 77(2), Retrieved from 2 Stolle, Dietland, & Hooghe, Marc. (2004). Inaccurate, exceptional, one-sided or irrelevant? the debate about the alleged decline of social capital and civic engagement in western societies. British Journal of Political Science, 35(1), Retrieved from doi: doi: /s Take Action Project Proposal! 5

6 development. Robert Putnam, a leading global scholar on social change, documented the importance that being a regular part of an organized group has on an individual s well being 3. The Take Action project forms a bridge that connects local communities to a larger global network of action takers. However, the pathway from this social apathy to full civic engagement is a slow process. It is difficult to understand why one should care about global issues, let alone how one is able to take some sort of deliberate action to help the world. Individuals must ask both how and why they can be most effective in addressing the Millennium Development Goals, before they can truly bring about significant change within the world. This is daunting in terms of time an individual has to commit, trying to visualize such a large problem, and finding effective ways to sustain engagement levels without falling back into a sense of apathy. Our project has been successful in engaging students to make the jump from self-education and service-learning, the first step on the path leading from apathy, to the more important step of peer-education and discovery. Educating your peers requires careful thought and reflection. The Take Action project is successful in allowing its participants to explore the process of not only learning about the Millennium Development Goals, but also sharing and teaching others about why and how they are taking action to achieve the MDGs. 3 Smith, M. K. (2001, 2007) 'Robert Putnam', the encyclopaedia of informal education, Last update: October 14, Take Action Project Proposal! 6

7 The simple premise of acting on one small action a day effectively moved, enlightened, inspired, engaged our first pilot s participants. Working with data provided by DevInfo, a database which houses United Nations data on human development, several classrooms explored not just how many impoverished people exist in the world, but they began to explore the very notion of how poverty is defined within their own community: I found that [Take Action] gave my students initiative to find out information on their own. The initial question or action posed sparked curiosity and interest. Jennie Ho&aday, Lapeer County Education and Technology Center Throughout the project pilot, data taken from DevInfo was turned into small and creative daily actions designed to help youth better understand the complex data. The data provided by the DevInfo database is readily available, yet without a basic understanding of statistics the database is effectively inaccessible. The Take Action pilot successfully made unique personal and humanizing connections between the pilot participants, the data, and the global issues that the data represents: I loved how much Take Action be(ed my students to look outside of themselves and to think )om a new point-of-view. Let's talk about Kayla. This is a girl who would rarely come to class. Her home life was a wreck, and her attitude was even more disastrous! Even on days when she hadn't been in my class, I noticed that she would have posted to the Take Action blog. She was into it! Although her responses Take Action Project Proposal! 7

8 showed extreme signs of anger and ignorance, I know she felt empowered by the fact that she was being heard. And then, of course, she felt humbled and redirected by those who would respond to her [sometimes obnoxious] posts. If I could be involved in something like Take Action again (especia&y as a yearlong commitment), I would certainly want to intermingle the task of the project with the goals and standards of my curriculum. Megan Mathison Wynia, Minneapolis Public Schools Objectives The Take Action project, in conjunction with DevInfo s goal to reach 20,000,000 users, will reach 200,000 youth and educate themselves and others about the Millennium Development Goals. The Take Action project will help 120 classrooms become centers of peer education for their schools. The Take Action Project will record the number of youths taking daily action to determine the types of actions that participants will act on. The Take Action Project will support sharing, conversation, and peer education through the use of it s commenting system, guided by the educational curriculum designers. The Take Action Project will motivate students to use evidence-based decision making based on the simple daily actions they ve taken. Take Action Project Proposal! 8

9 The Take Action project will help students make personal connections, adding a human element to the data provided in the DevInfo database. Activities/Work Plan Take Action began as a project through the University of Michigan - Flint s Education in Technology Global Program. The project s aim is to reach youth of all ages, K-12, utilizing the classroom as the means of implementation. From July 2009 to December 2009 the Take Action Project s concept was conceived and developed and the Take Action website was built. In February 2010 we completed a month-long pilot including the classes of 8 teachers in elementary and high school classrooms in four U.S. states and we analyzed and evaluated data from the project during March June 2010 collected data and participant pre and post surveys were used to evaluate the initial pilot. During the next phase, from July 2010 to June 2011, the educational curriculum designers will revise and redesign the site alongside the project manager, and web development team. The team will also design a structure for integrating the project s goals with both the core subject areas curriculum (Science, Math, Language Arts, Social Studies) and data provided by DevInfo. The lead educational curriculum designers, and project manager will present at educational conferences the findings from the evaluation of the initial pilot. They will make connections with educators for the second pilot, to expand participation to 20 classrooms in Take Action Project Proposal! 9

10 5 countries. By January of 2011, the lead educational curriculum designers will write and revise video tutorials and training for participating teachers to complete in preparation for the second pilot, which will run in the Spring of The pilot classrooms will complete a predetermined set of survey questions, administered by the Educational Curriculum Designers, before and after the pilot in order to evaluate the site with completion by June July 2011 to June 2012, Take Action will integrate with DevInfo through daily actions appearing alongside relevant data within DevInfo and a link on the main page to Take Action. Interconnection with The Big Question project will be coordinated and designed by the Education Curriculum Designers and the Project Manager in collaboration with The Big Question design and curriculum team. Daily actions will be based upon DevInfo data, but influenced by local and global interests as derived from The Big Question s global ask the world campaign. Interconnection with the Peace Chat project will allow youth who are participating with Take Action to move past the small daily actions to the development of larger community-based projects. Concept and site design by the Education Curriculum Designers and the Web Development Team will be completed by December of 2012 with successful integration by March The third pilot will expand to 40 classrooms in 10 countries. To complete training for all teachers involved teacher-leaders will be trained by the educational curriculum designers to assist with support and guidance in each participating building. Additionally, training for the Take Action Project Proposal! 10

11 technology used and effective teaching strategies for participating classroom teachers in developing nations will be developed. Moving forward, the Take Action project will continue to run as a project in classrooms lead by the teachers with access to tutorials, training, and support. It will also expand into an independent project open to worldwide users and participation. Evaluation Methods Using the Ruby on Rails web development platform for creating the Take Action Web community lends itself well to data collection. Ruby on Rails is a web development language that is database driven, so we will be able to easily document how many users act on a specific action or "deed," what date a deed was featured as the Action of the Day, how many karma points a user receives, how many times karma is given and received between users, and what Millennium Development Goals link to each Action of the Day. Daily web site traffic will be collected with Google Analytics. Surveys bookending the project at the start and end will focus on youth attitudes towards service-learning, awareness of the MDGs, and their thoughts on how much their actions impact world around them. Data pulled from the web site will include comparisons of users to the actions they complete, the number of users who complete each particular action, us- Take Action Project Proposal! 11

12 ers who gave and received karma, actions completed compared to the number of people who visit the site according to Google Analytics. These measures are necessary to gauge the level of engagement with the project. For example, are the participants visiting the site, but not sharing their daily action, or are they simply registering that they ve taken action without contributing to the conversation? Impact The world needs help. Youth especially have an innate sense of commitment to the needs of the world because they will be in charge someday and the world s problems will be theirs, but how do they do anything about this? Take Action will facilitate the important first steps from engaging students in service-learning to becoming peer educators. Being educated on some of the hardest pressing issues on the heart of the world, and then being able to speak in an educated way about this with other youth and adults is a powerful catapult into becoming adults who are actively engaged in their world. The Take Action platform prepares students to learn more than just what they can do to make a difference but how they can make a difference. Empowering students in this way engages them and fosters the development of actively engaged citizens. The U.N. Millennium Development Goals are big ideas with big goals that have a short five years left to be accomplished. It will take every bit of effort, creativity and work to make it Take Action Project Proposal! 12

13 happen by 2015, and that s exactly what Take Action aims to get across to the participating youth. What you do makes a difference, no matter how small. We must all do our part. Not only will Take Action engage students in small daily actions that has them participating in making a small difference each day, but it will also bring to life the serious data DevInfo and other organizations have compiled in order to show the world what is going on. Not everyone knows how to react to or even read this rich statistical data. However, people do know how they feel when they help others and they do know a genuine thank you when they hear it. Individual to individual, human to human, one story to another is how we will start educating the current generation that must prepare to change the world for the better and not for the worse. 4 Year Budget Ed Development Action Creation, Coordination, and Facilitation of Project 2 Educational Curriculum Designers (180 hours/year for 4 $50/hour per designer = $18,000 per year, $72,000-4 years) Conceptual Website Redesign & Thematic Core Content Area Unit Development 2 Educational Curriculum Designers (360 hours for 1 $50/hour per designer = $36,000 - one time cost) Take Action Project Proposal! 13

14 Evaluation Journaling of Student/Teacher Interaction, Survey Creation and Administration, Google Analytics Analysis 2 Educational Curriculum Designers (60 hours/year for 4 $50/hour = $6,000 per year, $24,000-4 years) Web Development Redesign of Website & Database Web Development Team (500 hours for 1 $50/hour = $25,000 - one time cost) Continued Maintenance & Management Web Development Team (200 hours/year for 4 $50/hour = $10,000 per year, $40,000-4 years) Outreach Domestic (U.S.) Take Action Project Proposal! 14

15 Travel to Partner Locations, Conferences, and Facilitation Meetings with Classrooms 2 Educational Curriculum Designers ($1,000/trip for 4 5 trips a year per designer = $10,000 per year, $40,000-4 years) Project Development Manager ($1,000/trip for 4 5 trips a year = $5,000 per year, $20,000-4 years) Conference Fees & Registration 2 Educational Curriculum Designers ($300/conference for 4 3 conferences a year per designer = $1,800 per year, $7,200-4 years) Project Development Manager ($300/conference for 4 3 conferences a year = $900 per year, $3,600-4 years) Promotion Printed Materials & Publications ($2,000/year for 4 years = $2,000 per year, $8,000-4 years) International Travel to Partner Locations, Conferences, and Facilitation Meetings with Classrooms 2 Educational Curriculum Designers ($2,500/trip for 4 4 trips a year per designer = $20,000 per year, $80,000-4 years) Take Action Project Proposal! 15

16 Project Development Manager ($2,500/trip for 4 3 trips a year = $10,000 per year, $40,000-4 years) Promotion Printed Materials & Publications ($1,000/year for 4 years = $1,000 per year, $4,000-4 years) Web Outreach ($10,000/year for 4 years = $10,000 per year, $40,000-4 years) Admin Continued Development of Resources for Project & Coordination of Efforts between Educational Curriculum Designers and Web Development Team Project Development Manager (1000 hours/year for 4 $50/hour = $50,000 per year, $200,000-4 years) Equipment Software ($2,000 - one time cost) Hardware ($10,000 - one time cost) Supplies Take Action Project Proposal! 16

17 Paper, Data Storage, Misc Office ($500/year for 4 years = $500 per year, $ years) Indirect (9% of Total Cost) TOTAL Year One - $240,000 Year Two - $160,000 Year Three - $160,000 Year Four - $160,000 Four Year Grand Total - $720,000 Summary Take Action amplifies the simple idea that the small things we do matter and when coordinated together they make a big difference. By involving youth from around the globe, using curriculum tailored for effective classroom use and real data from DevInfo, Take Action will create a community of educated, informed and engaged global citizens, ready to take the lead in caring for the world and the people in it. Thank you for reviewing and thoughtfully considering our grant proposal. We appreciate the time, effort and resources that you put toward enhancing the general welfare in our world. Take Action Project Proposal! 17