During the 4th quarter, 9th grade students of African American history created 30-second commercials.  Several components of the project included the following:

• Inquiry: Students defined their own questions and topics about African American history (1865-present)
• Research: Students researched "freedom and liberty" (as described in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights) and related each to their inquiry
• Collaboration: Students worked together to write a non-fictional profile of a historical event and how it relates to freedom and responsibility --- with 3 MLA citations.
• Presentation: Students used a variety of media (iMovie, garage band, blip.tv, Wikispaces) to organize and
  share their non-fiction profile essays and 30-second commercials.

Here are a few student samples:

Danny Weinman's take on Martin Luther King, Jr.

During the 4th quarter, 9th grade students of African American history created
30-second commercials. This project was successful in a variety of ways:

3rd Annual Ski/Board/Tube Trip!!
Saturday, Feb 14, 2009
Mandatory sign-up and planning Meeting this Friday, November 21st after school
3:15pm in Ms. Thompson room (Room 211)
See Mr. Best or Mr. Sherif for more info.

Today in Advisory we talked about the balance between passion and direction. Some students joked that they were passionate about Philly, or food --- I love sushi! Others mentioned books, dance or poetry. We also tried to understand the differences between personal and general passions; "I love the Phillies" is very different from "I am passionate about getting into a good college."

Over the next few weeks, we'll be thinking and writing about --- and discussing --- personal passions. For example, I shared my passion for African percussion and how it made me feel connected to people and grounded on this earth.

Congratulations to Christopher D. Lehmann! He has received official recognition for the prestigious Outstanding Young Educator Award, sponsored by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). This annual award recognizes the contributions of educators across the US. From the ASCD:

Congratulations! You have been selected to move forward to the next phase of the selection process for the 2009 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA) Program. The selection committee was impressed by your personal statement and would like to conduct a video interview with you before selecting the final cadre of honorees and the Outstanding Young Educator Award recipients.

Our 10th grade students are participating in Independent Learning Plans (ILPs) during their sophomore and junior years. The ILP is designed to provide stimulating learning experiences in professional environments outside of school. Each week, students spend about 4 hours working on their ILP with their sponsors. For example, students are working with photographers, law firms, bike shops and museums.

Our Advisory students will be posting some comments in their school-based blogs.

From Mr. Best:

"Frisbee Fridays" start today, 9/5/08. Meet in the cafe after school, or at the fields at 22nd and Ben Franklin Parkway. No experience necessary.

(And if you don't know what Ultimate Frisbee is, you definitely need to be there).

As part of 9th-grade students' investigation in to "integrationism" and "separatism" within African American history, students were asked to create a 30-second commerical about topics from 1865-present. Click on the link below for examples of students' work:

30-Sec Commercial: MLK's "I have a Dream..."

30-Sec Commercial: Emmett Till

30-Sec Commercial: Obama

For more detailed descriptions of the research and writing process, see "Research/Essay Process" and "30-Second Commerical" notes below.

Research/Essay Process

1. Class brainstorm on African American history topics, 1865-present
2. Individual brainstorm on students' "top 10" list with 3 "What I know..." and 3 "What I want to know..." questions
3. Extended research with identification of three APA-style citations for the top 3 of top 10 topics
4. Identification of supporting images
5. Coaching for a thesis statement and corresponding outline
6. Peer and teacher editing of rough and final essay drafts

30-Second Commercial_Student Guide:

Once students devloped a liteal understanding of an aspect of African American history, they then began to work on the 30-second commerical. Below is an outline of the student guide:

For this assignment, you will take on the role of a video editor/production artist within a publicity firm. Your assignment is to create a 30-second commercial that advances the thesis statement of a much larger and more extensive position paper of the individual or organization who has hired your company. The commerical project outline is based on the thesis statement, research and arguments within the history essay. Although you will be using 21st century tools, you will be appealing to the audience of the time in which your topic ocurred.

In order to complete the project, you will have to present an outline of your commercial to classmates (and teacher) for review. You will upload an MS-word based outline of their 30 second commercial on Moodle and in Print.

The outline should include the following:

1. Name and your topic
2. Thesis statement
3. 6-8 supporting slides (for about 3-5 seconds each); the slides may take on the following format, or you can modify them as needed:
   1. Introduction phrase
   2. image
   3. supporting phrase
   4. image
   5. supporting phrase
   6. image
   7. concluding phrase (and contact info).
4. Production notes:
   1. sources for images, voice-over, sound files (if any)
   2. benefits of particular arrangement of texts/words

This outline will be used to guide the PowerPoint, Keynote, or other media* format commercial.

* If you elect to use another media format, please be sure that your colleagues (students, teacher) have the software to open and read it.

I admit that I have been pretty pessimistic about the worthiness of some aspects of educational technology. For example, I wasn't really sure that students' websites would really be that worthwhile. Why? Because I sensed that students were (and are) just learning how to become scholars ---and learning how to publish/present their ideas. Would 9th graders be ready to go live with th e educational technology? Would they have anything to say that would contribute to academic discourse?

Now that we have finished our studies of Western African kingdoms (Feb, 2007), students are preparing to post their own websites. They asked some very deep and worthwhile questions---Inquiry is one of SLA's core values---and then they conducted focussed research.

I was astonished to see that these 9th grade students were actually creating new understandings of the Western African Songhai Empire. They answered unique questions and innovative ways. For an introductory link, check out this website: http://www.scienceleadership.org/~gsherif/Site/Songhai.html.