No matter what happens in our digital world, learning the skills of verbal persuasion -- being able to influence others with carefully crafted words -- will remain important. These resources and materials may be useful to teachers who want to introduce their students to strategies for being persuasive in writing.
Quick question: If you wanted to make a difference when you were a kid, how did you do it?
For me, "making a difference" meant setting up a lemonade stand at the end of the driveway and selling cups of sweet goodness to raise money that I would send off to the causes that I cared about. And while I really enjoyed the entire process, I didn't make significant change in the world. There were only so many neighbors willing to buy lemonade!
Even as an adult, "making a difference" usually meant delivering food to a homeless shelter or serving meals to the needy on Thanksgiving -- and while both of those practices made a difference in the local community, both of those practices had a limited impact on life beyond my community.
Things have changed for anyone who wants to make a difference today. Using simple digital tools to raise awareness about causes in a process dubbed clicktivism, we can draw attention to the issues that we care about easily.
While many question whether clicktivism is a productive form of activism -- clicktivists often have short attention spans and issues don't draw attention for long enough to result in sustainable change -- for kids with few real options for "making a difference" simply because of their age, using digital tools to get behind causes can be incredibly rewarding and productive.
Need some tangible examples of how kids are using digital tools to raise their voices and support their causes in public ways? Here's three:
The Ryan's Well Project - When he was in first grade, Ryan Hrelijac learned about the fact that many people around the world don't have access to clean water. Since then, he's been working to raise money and awareness about the issue of sanitation in the developing world -- and since then, he's helped to build 713 wells in poor communities.
Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference - When she was in the fourth grade, Laura Stockman lost her grandfather -- who she loved almost more than anyone -- to brain cancer. To honor him, she decided to do simple things to change her world for 25 straight days and to write about her efforts on her blog. When her story got out, Laura's plan spread into a 16 month project that inspired people around the world -- including other kids just like her -- to get involved in social change.
Be Straw Free - In February of 2011, nine year old Milo Cress learned a shocking fact: 500 million plastic straws are used every DAY in our world. Knowing that plastic takes thousands of years to break down in landfills, Milo decided to take a stand against straws. Since then, he's built this website, which shares details about simple ways that people can work to make their communities straw-free zones.
The lesson for teachers is a simple one, isn't it? No matter how old they are, our students WANT to make a difference in their world. Using digital tools to raise awareness is a great strategy for tapping into that desire to get involved -- and a great way to incorporate traditional academic skills into real-world activities that resonate with kids.
Salem Middle School Kiva Club Video
Characteristics of Convincing Evidence
Before our students can fully take advantage of the ability to make a difference, they need to learn more about being persuasive. Digital tools didn't make Ryan, Laura or Milo influential. Digital tools just provided the opportunity to share their influential ideas with a wider audience than kids generally have access to.
In this activity, we will look at three types of convincing evidence – stories, statistics, and star statements -- that students must master before their digital change efforts will succeed.
One of the best tools for giving students the opportunity to practice verbal persuasion are blogs. Blogs are powerful because they provide students with a transparent forum to reflect around the issues that they care about. More importantly, they provide a very public audience and a sense of empowerment and voice that resonates with kids. Finally -- like collaborative conversations -- blog comment sections provide opportunities for authors to have their thinking challenged by readers.
Take a look at how students used a blog in my classroom to wrestle with the income disparity between American oil companies and the Nigerians who work for them. Then, look at how I turned blog comments into new sources for challenging conversations for my kids.
The work that my students did as a part of a project to raise awareness around the genocide occurring in Darfur a few years ago is also a good example of using blogs to influence. This bit is an open letter to the president of the Sudan at the center of the genocide and this bit is a push-back piece written by a student who wanted to challenge the thinking of her peers.
Tips for Creating Successful Classroom Blogging Projects
Like any other digital project, classroom blogs require structure in order to be successful. Simply creating a blog and then keeping your fingers crossed hoping that kids will create the kind of content that you can be proud of is a strategy that is bound to fail. The following handouts can be used by teachers to provide structure to classroom blogging efforts:
Teacher Tips for Blogging Projects : Over the course of his time blogging with students, session presenter Bill Ferriter has learned a TON of lessons about how to successfully manage classroom blogging projects. This handout details 10 important tips that you might want to consider before starting your own classroom blogging projects.
(This content can also be found on pages 56-60 of Teaching the iGeneration)
Tips for Leaving Good Blog Comments : One of the mistakes that teachers make when setting up blogging projects is overlooking the role that comments can play in the blogging lives of their students. This handout is designed to help students find ways to contribute to classroom blogs through comment sections.
Blog Entry Scoring Checklist : This handout is designed to help teachers -- and potentially other students -- to spot the kinds of traits that define the best blog entries. It is useful for helping to define the characteristics of quality content for students in the early stages of their blogging lives.
What Will YOU Take Away From These Lessons?
Now that we've worked through our lessons on verbal persuasion, it's time to do a bit of reflecting. What lessons did you learn here that you think you'll be able to use in your classroom immediately? Was there anything that made real sense? Is there anything that you’re still struggling to understand? What questions about verbal persuasion remain unanswered for you?
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