Colorado students blog inauguration experiences

High school students from Colorado participating in the “When History Happens” project have been in Washington D.C. this week experiencing the events surrounding the inauguration and sharing some of their perceptions on their official trip blog.

Thursday Thomas Prewitt wrote: 

It was amazing to be a part of history and be a part of the atmosphere of everyone is so excited about a new era in American history. Arethra Franklin sang a song of freedom and it sounded like it was straight from her cd of her glory days. In the middle of a song an elderly black man began to cry, and it was pretty moving.

In addition to attending the inauguration, students have been seeing Washington-area monuments and other buildings. After visiting the Library of Congress, students “D.S. and C.H.” wrote:

I don’t even know how to describe the Library of Congress other than it took my breath away. The outside of the Library is beautiful but the inside was absolutely amazing. There were marble columns, statues, marble cherubs, mosaics and stain glass. The amazing part was that every tiny detail was not just done because it looked nice, each and every carving and mosaic was created to represent something in American history. Each detail not only added beauty but significance to the Library.

It is fantastic to learn about students not only being able to experience the historic events in our nation’s capitol this week, but also being encouraged to constructively use social media tools like blogs as well as digital cameras to document their learning journeys. This type of technology use by students was the primary focus of Philadelphia teacher H. Songhai’s 2008 K12Online Conference presentation, “What Did You Do in School Yesterday, Today, and Three Years Ago?” Kudos to Colorado teachers Michelle Pearson, Barb Figg, Kelly Jones-Wagy, and Sally Purath for accompanying and supervising these students during their Washington D.C. adventures and putting these concepts of becoming “digital witnesses” into actual practice for all the world to see!

The students’ and teachers’ project website, “Case Study: The 2009 Presidential Inauguration,” will eventually include “On-Street Podcasts” and photo slideshows.

In addition to posting on the trip blog quoted above, students and teachers have been provided with an opportunity to post directly onto a blog set up by the Rocky Mountain News. The 19 comments (to date) on the group’s initial January 14th post “A trip of a lifetime!” reveal that an audience IS reading, listening, and responding to the thoughts being shared by these fortunate learners.

At NECC 2009 in Washington D.C. this summer, I hope we’ll see many more student storychasers like these! Field trips to local, national, or international destinations can provide WONDERFUL opportunities to practice digital ethics and digital citizenship. Don’t be put off by the fact that student blog posts include some grammatical and spelling errors. OF COURSE mistakes like that are going to appear when students are permitted to write and publish directly to the web. THAT IS FINE. As with any activity, we only get better by PRACTICING, and encouraging students to WRITE REGULARLY for an authentic audience via a blog is one of the best ways to improve writing skills. All the parents, educators, and others involved in this trip and digital learning project should be VERY proud of the exemplary work they and their students have done to date via this project. As California educator Marco Torres likes to observe, “the Internet is a global stage.” These Colorado students have now become exemplary actors and actresses there. :-)

I look forward to continuing to follow the learning journey of these teachers and students after they return home and continue to publish as well as remix their experiences of the past week with us all!

Hat tip to Peggy O’Neill-Jones for letting me know about this student project, which is affiliated with the larger Colorado “Teaching with Primary Sources” initiative involving the U.S. Library of Congress and many other project partners.

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