Grant Wrangler
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Google Teacher Newsletter Summer 08
The U.S. presidential elections are capturing the attention of America's youth like never before. A divisive political landscape and increased use of online video on YouTube and other video sites has provided an opportunity for students to be exposed to and get more engaged in the election process. We'd like to tell you about a project and a tool that we've created to help you leverage the excitement of the elections:
1) To help students express their thoughts about the issues that matter to them most, we've partnered with the National Writing Project on Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future, a writing and publishing opportunity for high school students. With the support of their teachers, students will write a persuasive letter addressed to the next president, highlighting the issues they care about and which are relevant to their lives. Topics will be chosen by the students themselves to reflect their specific regional and age-related interests. Google Docs will allow teachers to incorporate peer review, revisions, and publishing into support of the student letters. Participating students will publish their letters online to a Letters to the Next President website for their peers, parents, and the public to read. The registration deadline is Sept. 8, 2008.
To learn more, visit: http://www.nwp.org/r/letters2president
2) The presidential candidates are leveraging online video extensively this election year to communicate to the voting public. We can listen to candidate's speeches, watch debates and town hall meetings, and hear commentators and pundits talk about the candidates and the issues. To help students wade through these videos, we've created an Elections Video Search Gadget. Interested in a particular issue? Simply enter a query to search hundreds of hours of political footage and advertisements to find relevant quotes and excerpts about that issue, in particular. Our hope is that by using and exploring politics with this gadget, students can cut through the chatter and develop an interest in the issues and challenges confronting the nation this election season and beyond.
To learn more about adding our gadget to your iGoogle page, visit: http://www.google.com/educators/videosearch.html
Or - to learn more about all of these features, just visit: http://www.google.com/educators
