Generation YES Blog

Congratulations to Hill City Elementary School/Longfellow Middle School for winning the Kansas in the World Award for Excellence in International Education 2008!

Longfellow Middle School and teacher Scott Parker have been part of the GenYES program for ten years, starting when GenYES was a federal Technology Innovation Challenge grant. At Longfellow, GenYES students help teachers throughout the school integrate technology in their classrooms, and in TechYES, 7th and 8th grade students do projects to gain a technology literacy certification. Students worked on Rural Symposium projects and tied them into international studies through the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN). See the student projects here.

Longfellow GenYES students have also been at the forefront of working with Liberian students who are part of the new Liberia Renaissance School of which GenYES founder, Dr. Dennis Harper is a board member. Their Liberia projects are on the LREC/LMS website here.

In addition, many of the TechYES/GenYES students are involved in the “Schools Fantasy League” program based on England’s Premier League soccer. This project is designed for schools to take part in an exciting, engaging activity that promotes collaboration, learning and cross-curricular connections. Longfellow Middle School is recognized as a “Champion School” as the first USA school to be involved in the program.

Congratulations to the Longfellow students and Scott Parker! This is a well-deserved award indeed.

Sylvia

We are just as proud as can be here at Generation YES! Edutopia has chosen it’s annual Daring Dozen, twelve people “reshaping the future of education” - and Dennis Harper is on the 2008 list.

From Edutopia - Even as the most optimistic activists in education begin to feel alone and unheard in the wilderness, we find evidence that the ranks of reformers are growing and their pleas for technology integration, project learning, integrated curriculum, collaborative learning, new methods of assessment are having more impact.

The GenYES vision, Harper says, is one of collaboration between students and teachers. The educators, he emphasizes, provide the content and the pedagogy, while the kids are deeply involved in helping instructors employ the classroom technology as a learning tool. When this approach fails, he says, it’s “because we expect teachers to do everything. It always gets me that you have to argue the case that kids should be doing things in schools.”

Read more here…

Congratulations to all the amazing educators of the Daring Dozen and the Global Six 2008!

Daring Dozen 2008

• Nidya Baez
• Charles Best
• Douglas Christensen
• Sakhalin Finnie
• Edwin Gragert
• Maxine Greene
• Dennis Harper
• Van Jones
• Barbara Morgan
• Pablo Munoz
• Michelle Rhee
• Roger Weissberg

Global Six 2008

• Clotilde Fonseca
• Laurie O’Donnell
• Feysal Osman
• Heba Ramzy
• Derek Wenmoth
• Claudia Zea

I just spent nearly three weeks in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Both these West African nations have been through some recent bad times. While in Liberia, President Ellen Sirleaf presided over the groundbreaking for the Liberia Renaissance Education Complex. Check out her groundbreaking speech. Of course, the new school will utilize the Generation YES way with students being an integral part of the way the school operates.

While in Monrovia I had the pleasure of meeting with members of the Liberian chapter of the Taking It Global organization. Check out this organization’s projects and learn about its founder Michael Furdyk. Michael is a perfect example of what an empowered tech-savvy teenager can accomplish.

The young people I met with had a very clear idea of how both technology and youth can rebuild a nation. If any of you are interested in corresponding with these agents for peace in Liberia, you can email them at yocadsorg2003@yahoo.org.

Dennis