Week 5 Announcements - Last Week of Class!

Announcements

1. This week is the last week of our short summer session course.  Please be advised that all assignments are due no later than FRIDAY, JULY, 1, 2011 by 11:59 PM AZMST.  Due to the grading deadline stipulations for online summer classes, I cannot accept late assignments as I need to have everything finalized and final grades entered soon after this final date. Please be sure you've done the following assignments by the deadline: 
1. Week 5, Blog #1 (25 points)
2. Week 5, Blog #2 (25 points)
3. Week 5, Blog #3 (5 extra credit points)
4. Extra Credit Blog Comments (Must be sent via email according to instructions in the Course Information tab under Extra Credit Opportunities)
5. Extra Credit Cyberspace Cafe Comments
2. Final office hours will be held Monday (June 27) on Google Chat beginning at 2:30 PM and lasting until 4:30 PM.  Please feel free to get on chat and say hello or ask any questions you may have about the course material.

Week 5: (June 27-July 1, 2011): Youth in the New Millenium - Youth, Technology and Efforts for Change - Last Week of Class


This final week we'll be covering materials on tensions among technology use as it relates to youth.  We'll begin on Monday (today) by exploring some arguments from both ends of the spectrum - on the one end we have Dr. James Paul Gee, a researcher here at ASU, who discusses the importance of preparing children to learn in a constantly shifting, increasingly technologized context by using new technologies to improve literacy and learning.  On the other end of the spectrum is Dr. Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University, who discusses the detrimental aspects of increasing technology use among young people more generally.

On Tuesday, we'll be covering aspects of youth and digital access to discuss the impact of the digital divide.  This problem -- the lack of equal access to new information technologies for students, particularly students in low income areas -- was given quite a bit of attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the explosion of internet technologies were becoming more apparent in everyday life.

Finally, on Wednesday, we end our exploration of the course content with an exploration of youth activism.  In this course, we've discussed various problems and issues facing youth from a wide variety of social justice lenses.  We've also covered some innovative solutions to these problems.  I like to end the course with an exploration of innovations to social problems plaguing youth that have been advanced by young people themselves.  Too often we forget the power that young people themselves display when they organize around social justice issues affecting them and try to enact real, on the ground change.  Two examples of this focus on both a national and international perspective.

The first organization, Free The Children, was started by a young child who got together with other young people around the country, lobbied for change at the capitol, and created a youth social movement to end child labor practices and provide schools to children who are unable to get an education.  The second organization is a collaborative effort between university researchers at City University New York (CUNY) and local children to examine and research the social problems affecting their daily lives.  By collaborating with the students as co-researchers, the university effort tries to create a learning/research partnership with the students to focus on the problems the students feel need to be addressed most urgently.  The final video is a story about an organization started by a young woman in India when she was 17 years old.  The organization is dedicated to  making child-friendly cities in India and features a very innovative approach to education and community-based learning.

Thursday and Friday do not contain any new materials as I want you to use the time to finish your reflection posts and take advantage of any extra credit opportunities you wish to do.

I'll be posting at least one last blog post this week on Friday as a wrap up for the class.  Until then, I look forward to reading your posts and hearing your thoughts about the materials this week.

I hope to chat with some of you during office hours today.  If you cannot make my office hours, please feel free to post questions in the Cyberspace Cafe. See you in cyberspace!