Introduction

How well do you know your community? How well do you know the issues that concern a family member or close relative? Are communities around California more alike or different? The following activity will send you into your communities to collect information and interview a real person to find out what America is like first-hand.

The information you gather will then be posted as a World Wide Web page that represents some of the thoughts and concerns of your community. You will then use videoconferencing to compare what you discovered about your area with what students from a different community in California found out. You might even compare your findings with students whose insights came from resources on the Internet.

Together you will decide in what ways you face similar issues and how your situations are unique. Finally, you will have a chance to go back in time over 130 years as Alexis de Tocqueville shares his perspective on democracy in the early days of our country.

Scenario & Task

Imagine if you will, the following scene: As the year 2000 approaches, people become fascinated with making conclusions about the century that's drawing to a close and to see exactly where we are as we launch off into the new millenium. Let's say that being the good Political Scientists they are, a group of advanced students and professors from San Diego State University decide to look into the question. But instead of asking Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, or Oprah Winfrey, they decide to collect their information from regular people. They decide the best way to do this is to work with high school students throughout the state of California. Hey, that's you! That's right; your job is to work together as a class to collect two kinds of information:

1. Each of you will survey a parent or close relative to find out his or her opinion about some key issues that concern people today.

2. You will interview the same person, drawing out from them a personal story that shows what it means to them to be an American.

Because this study is being conducted by a university, not the government or a political action committee, we are interested in getting "the Truth." So it's all right if the person you interview loves the country or has nothing but bad things to say about it.

Because this is a multimedia world, instead of writing just an essay, you will be working together to create a World Wide Web site that posts the hard numbers, the stories, and pictures of the people you interview.

The Process

Phase 1 - Introducing the Subjects of Democracy / Alexis de Tocqueville

(1-3 class periods)

Engage students in the topic by doing one or more of the following:

• Tracking Alexis de Tocqueville Treasure Hunt

• Look Who's Paying the Bill! WebQuest

• Videoconference with graduate students from San Diego State University

• An activity of your own

Phase 2 - Organization of Roles and Groups

(1-2 class periods)

1. Students complete the Issues Survey themselves.

2. Students write about a time, place, or event when they had some insight into what America is really about. (This could be entered into the Stories Form or saved and used later as a springboard for reflective writing.)

3. Establish groups and roles. Each role could be handled by a pair of students or one student could conceivably do all three.

   Interviewer - Interacts with the person being interviewed.

   Set up the interview, prepare with printout of issues and question, ask the questions, organize group thank you, type up the interviewee's story for publication.

   Audiotape Engineer - Access to a cassette recorder & microphone.

   Run a short test before the interview, record the interview, work with the Interviewer to type in the story. Eventually, we might be able to create a RealAudio file of up to a minute capturing the best part of the story to play from the Web site.

   Photographer & Illustrator - Has access to and can use a camera.

   Test the camera (video, digital, polaroid, 35 mm, etc. ) before the interview. Take at least 6 photographs during the interview. Try to capture the expression that you think most represents the person being interviewed. Prepare the best photograph for Web publication (i.e., scan, download, capture, convert, etc.).

4. Choose a parent or close relative you'd like to interview. You will be looking for two main things in the interview:
   1. Opinions on some key issues.

   2. A story or shared experience about a time when the person felt clear about what it meant to be an American.

Phase 3 - Data Collection (homework)

1. Students collect the following data from parents or close relatives:

Do you want to print out this list? so it's easier to use with the person you interview?

2. Submit each completed survey using an online form.

Phase 4 - Gathering and Writing Stories (2 days of homework)

During the interview process, besides finding out opinions about the 16 issues above, students will:

1. Ask the person being interviewed to share a story, impression, or description about:

an experience, event, time, or place that
gave you an insight into what America is really about.

Would you like some ideas about what answers to this topic could look like?
You must use a browser that can handle JavaScript like Netscape 2+ or Microsoft Explorer 3+

2. Record the interview on audiotape.

3. Take pictures of the person. Note: You must get his or her permission and a release saying it's okay to use the image for publication. If this is not all right with the person, ask if you can photograph the home in which the interview is taking place or an object that might relate to the story being told.

4. When the interview is over, use the audiotape, your notes, and your impressions to write a description, story, or observation that shares the person's answer to the question about the discovery of what it meant to be an American. Work with your teachers for guidance on the style, length, and aspects of the writing they would like you to focus on.

Phase 5 - Categorizing and Choosing Stories for Publication

(1 class period)

When the stories have been written, the class will read through them all, assigning each to a category that represents some main themes of democracy:

• opportunity / upward mobility
• freedom & equality
• community
• individuality
• diversity
• justice
• religion
• patriotism
• other themes...

Stories that relate to these themes don't have to do so only in a positive light. For example, a writing could relate to the second-class treatment of black soldiers during World War Two and still fit in the category of "patriotism" or "freedom & equality" depending on the emphasis of the story. Also notice that if you don't see a theme that matches a writing, you can create a new category.

So, all the writings are there in class: now what do you do?

1. Blank out the name of the author(s) and replace it with a 4 digit number you will remember, but that most other people don't know is related to the author(s) (i.e., the last four digits of phone numbers work well - unless everybody knows everybody else's phone number!).

2. Collect and shuffle all the writings.

3. Gather students into small groups (4-6). If students worked together to get the interview and image, re-organize students into new groupings so they can look at and discuss the writings with fresh perspectives.

4. Spread the writings out among the groups equally. This could be one writing per student or one per group depending on how the class and groups were set up.

5. Student groups then read the writing(s) given to their group. After everyone has read (or heard) the writing(s), they decide as a group which theme / category best match the writing(s). Write down the code number of the writing(s) and the category you chose as the theme(s).

6. Pass the writing(s) to the next group and do the reading and categorizing thing again. Remember to write down the code numbers and themes. Do this until all writings have been read by all students.

7. At the chalkboard or overhead, list all the themes that anyone in the class assigned to one of the writings. Then, next to the themes, list the code numbers of the writings that people assigned to that theme (go with majority rule here). After this process, the class will be able to see, 1) how many themes are represented and, 2) which writings go with which themes.

8. Depending on the number of writings your class wants to post on the Internet, you might want to sort the writings by theme and choose the one or two best for publication on the Web page you'll be creating. You might want to publish everyone's. A lot depends on the technology resources you have available to do the wordprocessing and scanning/converting that comes next. One thing to remember is to Post No Page Before It's Sage. This means you want to be sure what you're publishing to the world is ready and worthy of it.

Phase 6 - Technology Workshop

(1-2 class periods or Lab time)

As mentioned, how you work this next phase depends on the technology you have available and the skill of the students in using it. If this is the first time you've done an activity like it, keep things simple and have a small group of students complete the tasks. If you've got loads of computers and if everybody in the class is an old hand at word processing, scanning, using graphics software, etc., get in gear and get on with it!

Preparing to create the Web Page requires that you have:

• typed and saved the stories as word processed files (interviewer & audio engineer)

• scanned / converted / digitized, etc. the photograph (photographer)

Then you can:

• Add the stories to the Web Page.

Your teachers will coach you through saving images in the right format and sending them to the Web server (ftp).

Phase 7 - Video Collaboration

(2 class periods)

Students will explore the Web pages they just created as well as the Web pages created by the class they are partnered with. After spending a class period learning about each others' stories, keys issues from the data collection and the related percentages, the paired classes will come together to present their findings to each other. Discussion will follow to compare and contrast what was found online (using "Democracy Online in America") or in the other community if both classes used "Life in Our America." Together, on videoconference, students will group main themes of the stories to arrive at a broader unerstanding. A Venn diagram will be use to compare the 5 main issues raised by the people interviewed by each class. San Diego State University Political Science graduate students will coach the high school students in looking at the data in a variety of ways to gain new insights. Concluding statements arrived at through a joint effort of the partnering classrooms will summarize the comparison between the communities.

Conclusion

This activity began with the questions:

• "How well do you know your community?"

• "How well do you know the issues that concern a family member or close relative?"

• "Are communities around California more alike or different?"

By interviewing people close to you, you have gained information and insights that could not have come any other way. How well do the opinions you collected and the stories you shared match up with what you hear about America on television, the radio, or the press? If they are different, which is the real America? If they are the same, have they always been this way? You might wonder what our country looked like just as it was getting started as the United States of America. Through the power of video teleconferencing and the expertise of a scholar, you will be able to do just this when Alexis de Tocqueville comes alive on October 30th, 1996. After the presentation feel free to ask, comment, or compare the America described by Tocqueville with the Life you discovered in Our America.