About this Project

Twenty-two well-trained graduate students (nearly all are in-service teachers) enrolled in Technology and Social Studies, a course in Lesley University's Technology in Education Master's degree Program, collaborated from brainstorming to final production in order to create the original curriculum, for all students grades 1-12, of the Growing Voters and Election 2004 curriculum project. The goal is to help students participate in and understand the larger significance of the 2004 Presidential election.

Why? The underlying motivation for the project is that students need to be motivated early to participate in the American electoral system and that learning socialization through school lessons can significantly build this. Literally growing voters during the school years may contribute to an antidote to the persistent low voter turn-out rate in the US.

Curriculum Highlights:

• Technology tools help students to communicate, to express themselves and their understanding of the material to others. The tools enable excellent vehicles to engage and motivate student interest in these projects, including reporting, debating, giving presentations, exchanging and comparing interview results, electronically sharing scrapbooks, and voting in a mock national election.
• This curriculum project created a free web-based list of internet links that anyone can use. This hotlist of websites was vetted by Lesley-trained graduate students, most of them experienced teachers. With this pre-selected set of tools, teachers may be empowered themselves, and not have to face research over the entire internet. And for their students, teachers may feel more comfortable allowing them to explore these sites, knowing they have been screened by a reliable source.

Contributors:

The curriculum development group consisted of two teams of graduate students/teachers who were enrolled in Technology and Social Studies developed Growing Voters and Election 2004. The Project Leader was Lesley University Professor Jo-Anne Hart (hart@mail.lesley.edu)