Dear
Teachers,
Thank you
for your overwhelming interest in the election project! Almost 200 courses have
already registered and we expect more to join us over the summer and the early
fall. As announced in my email last
week, here are some updates before the summer holidays.
- The results of the ‘state
lottery’ are out! We have assigned the U.S. states and posted the results on the Teach
About U.S. platform. You will find the list of states and participants
under “U.S. Election” > “State Lottery Results” (or directly here).
Obviously, the 50 states were assigned more than once. Should your
predictions for the same state differ, the state’s vote will be decided by
how the majority of the courses predicted its outcome. (The states were
assigned at random, except in cases where teachers informed us about
existing school partnerships in their registration form.). The registration
for the project is not closed. If you know colleagues who would like to sign
up, feel free to forward this information.
- A live demo course for the
election project is available. You can find it under “U.S. Election”
> “Demo” (or. directly here). This
is an early version of the project course. Most materials are already
available. We are currently finalizing task cycles on more recent issues as
well as the teaching notes and the selection of political cartoons. We
encourage you to take some time to familiarize yourselves with these
materials. We need your help: If you find any dead links, typos or
anything else that seems odd to you – including your own pedagogical
suggestions (additional materials, support and scaffolding, …) – please simply
post them in the anonymous feedback form that is included on every page of
the course.
- We will begin to create your personal
Moodle courses at the end of this month. PLEASE NOTE: Different from previous
project cycles we will only create Moodle courses for those teachers who
notify us that they’d like to have one. Because in previous project
cycles, many colleagues only used their Moodle courses as a resource bank
for downloading worksheets etc., we would like to save our resources –
human and electronic. If you plan to limit your work with the project curriculum
to downloading worksheets, copying task assignments, showing videos etc.,
you can do this using the demo course. If you indeed would like your students
to work online on the platform (e.g. with forum discussions, online
assignments etc.), please send Katja Krüger an email and kindly indicate approximately
when you will begin your work. She will then create a Moodle course for
you and provide you with a unique enrollment key.
- The Virtual Town Hall (i.e., a
meta-course available to all teachers and students in the project) will be
made available later this month. This course will include a meeting area
(forums for teachers and students) and a teachers’ corner where participants
can discuss election topics, find current course updates, announcements
etc. All election project participants with an account on www.teachaboutus.org will have
access to this course.
- We concluded our webinar series on Wednesday and introduced participants step-by-step to the Moodle course, main curriculum contents, and basic course administration options. We also invited practitioners – teachers who are already working with our curriculum – to share their experiences. The webinar has been recorded and posted in our online seminar section (see here). We recommend you take a look at this presentation before or while reviewing the online course. The recordings of the previous three online seminars with U.S. election experts are available as well (incl. our speakers’ slide presentations).
We will resume our project updates after the summer holidays. In the meantime, feel free to browse the U.S. Embassy’s MeetUS program. Feel free to approach us with questions you might have. We look forward to an exciting school project with you and your students.
Enjoy the summer, do something nice, and be well!
All the best,
Joannis Kaliampos
on behalf of Teach About U.S. and our partners
Joannis Kaliampos
Projekt Teach About U.S.
Institute of English Studies
Leuphana Universität
Universitätsallee 1
21335 Lüneburg
Fon. 04131.677-1662
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