In this quarter-length elective, it is impossible to cover all Digital Literacy standards with projects that produce high quality work. Instead, students choose the projects at the start of each quarter.
AI App Analysis: What is Artificial Intelligence? How does it work? How is it like "thinking"? We'll pick one of these browser-based AI demonstrations, break it down, and create reports that make it understandable.
Ask Safety Sam Advice Column: Build an online safety "multi-user" advice column blog and resource to educate all Renaissance students (and their friends) about how to be safe online. Students first "ask" a question, inventing a challenging situation and asking for advice. These questions are collected and then volunteers respond to them, referencing experts, research and providing explanatory material in their answers, which are then reviewed by the group.
Brain Research Website: Learn about aspects of the human brain function that contribute to Internet Addiction, and how these aspects are related to adolescent brain development. We will watch The Social Dilemma, then map what we know and want to know. We'll conduct research to add to our map with links to trustworthy sources and report our research by creating a website, perhaps titled "This is your brain on social media".
Cultural Exchange Project: Identify a partner classroom in another part of the world, using any personal connections educational resources we can find. Once partnered, students in both countries (or states) create and find video clips about their experiences going to their schools and living in their communities, and put together a montage video and soundtrack to share with partners, commenting on similarities and differences.
Cyber Security Checklist: Develop a website to help students and parents get and stay safe on their devices and in their practices. Students research top cybersecurity threats that attack individual users, and create or add to a web resource with a checklist. They then present this resource to relatives and friends in the context of a "home cybersecurity check-up".
Digital Footprint Analysis: Document personal patterns and content issues of social media use (Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and others). List all apps used (and approximate frequency / duration of use), identify capacity to delete previous posts and comments, change account name, and permanently delete account. Build a database of "sketchy" posts to evaluate and remediate potential issues.
Digital Portfolio for Passages: Create a web-based portfolio for student-led family conferences and Passages presentations. Design and develop the site, add an "about me" page, and then add examples of best work as artifacts. Put together at least one thematic exhibition of artifacts to tell a story about who you are, what you love, and how you are growing through example work.
Fake News Fitness: Learn how to tell truth from lies online. Choose a critical public policy issue used by political disinformation campaigns to polarize citizens, such as origins and responses to Climate Crisis or ways to protect against, contain and treat COVID 19. Find and evaluate online sources of information and disinformation, and trace these back to source claims, evidence and reasoning. Present findings in pages that model best practice.
Google Coaches: Train students and parents to use Google apps. Although the majority of schools in the Springfield Public School District use Microsoft Office applications, a few schools (HS Commerce, Rise Academy, Lyceum Prep and Renaissance) use Google Apps. Students and parents new to Renaissance need training. We will create training resources, and deliver training on demand as community service.
Hacked! The Solarwinds Story: We will examine the greatest computer hack every made and create an exhibit that is understandable to other students. Last spring, Russia successfully hacked eighteen thousand organizations, including top-secret US military units and critical energy companies, collecting data and compromising systems for months. It is hard to imagine the impact of this hack, but we can see how it was done.
The Misinfopedia: There are so many ways that people get lied to online and on television now that at least a third of the country believes things that would amaze you. How does misinformation work, and where and how does it show up in our lives? We'll contribute to an encyclopedia of misinformation creating web articles.
Misinformation or Not? Social Media Feeds: Unlike newspapers and news websites, what shows up in social media feeds can come from anywhere, and often is deliberately designed to look true but be false so that it attracts attention and gets comments and shares. We'll create a group social media feed where we post true and false stories, as an exercise for others to see if they can tell what's misinformation and what's not.
Music Video Remix: Create a YouTube Video of a favorite song, using only media that is self-created, "Creative Commons" tagged, approved for use by owners, or considered fair use for education under current US Copyright Laws. Identify and hold a purpose for the remix, so that it is more than a random illustration of the song. Remix videos will be curated in a website that can be pulled from for student online publications.
Newspaper & Literary Magazine: Learn to code HTML & CSS and build online publications. Collect the best work of Renaissance students from the previous term, and code from text articles into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and linked media and sources to create a high quality student publication. Market the publication to students and teachers for reactions and future submissions.
Screen-Free Week: Organize a campaign to go "screen-free" during a school vacation (or weekend) to highlight our additions to screens and help us find alternatives that connect us more to other people and to our local environment. Project includes creating a survey about Internet addiction, a report on survey results, an update of a "Screen Free Week" website, and event planning and promotion.
Social Media Survey: What programs are the students of Renaissance using for social media, and how do they use them? How many hours a day do they spend, and what impact is this having on their lives, in school and at home? We'll conduct a schoolwide survey and then analyze the results, and share our analysis with the rest of the school.