Service Learning Project

Title: Increasing Youth Voter Participation.

Area of service: Civic Responsibility

Grade level setting: 9-12 (preferably 11-12)

Subject learning: American History/Civics

Unit description

Investigation of needs: First students will research typical voter turnout for young people and will examine why young people tend not to vote as often as older people. Students will hypothesize reasons that explain this voting trend and consider political issues that are most relevant to young people.

Preparation for service: The students will research various voter surveys and think of good questions. These questions will be discussed by the students and the students will compile a class voter turnout survey using a tool like surveymonkey.com. Here is an example of a voter turnout survey I made which includes questions that are likely to show up on a class voter turnout survey. Click Here to take survey

Students will send this survey to their voting age friends and relatives and collect the data. The class can break up into groups and analyze the results for each question and come back together as a class to discuss the findings. As a class, the students will discuss the best possible ways to reach young people and increase voter turnout based on the data.

Action: Since this step depends upon the data collected by the class, examples of action may be creating posters for display on the campus or using their social networking sites as places to promote voting.Students will use whatever resources necessary to raise awareness and increase voter turnout. Perhaps they will try to influence young people by creating a podcast or video and broadcasting the project over the school's tv station.

Reflection: This project would best be done during an election year as it will be easier for these students to analyze the effect of their activism. After the election ends, the students (either in groups or individually) will present what they learned from the data collection process and analyze how their participation influenced others in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, podcast or poster.

Demonstration of learning and impacts: This project would be a great supplement to an American History or Civics course during an election cycle. It is imperative that students not only that voting is important, but learn how to encourage others to participate in this process. Also, it is important for students to learn how to collect and understand data and then, based on the data, choose an effective course of action.

Celebration: After the election is over and students have presented their findings, the class should have a "political party" and celebrate with food. Students can dress up in their patriotic attire and the teacher can give away prizes for the best dressed patriots.

Standards met:
» SS.912.C.2.2: Evaluate the importance of political participation and civic participation.
» SS.912.C.2.3: Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels.
» SS.912.C.2.5: Conduct a service project to further the public good.
» SS.912.C.2.8: Analyze the impact of citizen participation as a means of achieving political and social change.

NETS:

.	Research and Information Fluency
	Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:
	a. plan strategies to guide inquiry. b. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media. c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. d. process data and report results.

5.	Digital Citizenship
	Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior. Students:
	a. advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology. b. exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity. c. demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning. d. exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.

Web applications used:
Students will use an online survey creator like surveymonkey.com, which is free. I had never used this website before and I was easily able to figure out how to generate a multitude of questions. This application is a great way for students to formulate the types of question they want to ask and is in a format that is easy for people to fill out.

It is likely that students will have a social networking page and their pages will likely become an important part of this service learnign project. They will use their pages to send the survey to voting age friends and relatives and to raise awareness about youth voting.

Furthermore, students may find online news sources and may want to submit editorials or opinions to express their passion about a particular issue and set an example to show that young people are paying attention to political issues.

Also, many students will choose to present their finding and personal action to the class in the form of a powerpoint presentation or podcast.


Assessment: Students will be assessed on particpation as everyone will have to contribute to the question generating process in creating the survey. For instance, part of the grade will concern that each student contributed to the survey creation and will need to have at least 5 voting age people complete the survey. Students will get fewer points for fewer returned surveys. Also, when students present their findings and report their particpation to the class, the teacher will assess whether or not the students acted appropriately considering the data collected (For instance, if 70% of the surveys returned showed that the people get their news from the internet, then a student who becomes active in online discussion boards and posts links to news stories on his facebook page would be appropriatelt acting considering the data.