Monthly Archives: May 2018

getting to 80% voter turnout

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I’m attending “Getting to 80%: A Symposium Advancing Voter Participation,” a discussion of the “moonshot” goal of raising US voter turnout to 80% (It’s at the Harvard Kennedy School.)

The historical context is not easy to find online, so here are two graphs that should be viewed together. The first graph, derived from sources like this, shows votes cast per people who were allowed to vote. In 1840, that meant white men (property restrictions having been dropped in most states by then); just above 80% of them voted. In 2012, that meant every citizen at least 18 years old, except for some people with felony convictions, and just under 60% voted. So the story is one of decline, mostly during the late 1800s and early 1900s. A common explanation is that powerful, identity-based, grassroots parties gave way to expert-driven government with weaker parties and less at stake in most elections. The question is how we can get back to 80% in a new political environment.

The other graph (from here) shows the proportion of the whole population that has cast popular votes for president. It shows dramatic improvement over time, with the expansion of the franchise, albeit with some stagnation in recent years. The question is how we can push the line higher to approach 80% for the first time.

Opportunities with NCDD Sponsor Org Common Knowledge

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NCDD sponsoring org, Common Knowledge Group [also founded by NCDD board member Susan Stuart Clark] recently sent out their newsletter with updates on the work they’ve been up to and we encourage you to check it out! They offer free facilitation webinars on active listening and dealing with difficult behaviors; initially designed for librarians, they are great for other agencies and practitioners as well. Learn more about the opportunity coming up at the Code for America summit, recent community engagement work, and a nice shout out for our upcoming conference NCDD2018! You can read their updates below and sign up for the Common Knowledge newsletter here.

Community Engagement in Action Newsletter

Code for America Summit 2018
Interested in the intersection of community and civic technology? Join Common Knowledge at the Code for America pre-summit workshop on Wednesday May 30. We are pleased to be invited back to share our insights about how user-based design is at the heart of effective community engagement.

See all pre-summit workshops here.
Register for the main summit here.

“This workshop drew rave reviews from participants at the last Code for America Summit, and we are delighted to welcome Susan back to offer it to more of our community.”

Effective Community Engagement Requires User-Based Design
LED BY: Susan Clark, Founder and Director, Common Knowledge Group

Knowing when and how to invite community input into government decisions has become an essential skill for civic leaders. This interactive workshop is for those who have worked at the state or local level to increase civic participation and can bring their experiences of what went well and what didn’t. We’ll unpack differences between “civic culture” and “community culture” to show how to enhance the resident’s experience while also building trust. You will learn how local governments are using lean, iterative approaches to design, invite and report community input. Participants will leave with tools they can use right away for more  inclusive, informed and sustained engagement.

This year our featured guest will be Alex Khojikian, Deputy City Manager, Redwood City.  Alex is doing pathbreaking work coordinating in-person networks and digital networks. 

Free facilitation webinars for libraries and other local agencies
Our colleagues at the California State Library invited us to design and lead two webinars on topics of highest interest for experienced facilitators. We partnered with libraries to share best practices and case stories. The one-hour recordings feature elements from our most popular trainings, plus skilled local leaders who are transforming the role of libraries in their communities.

Facilitating Multi-Dimensional Listening:Helping Groups Identify Common Ground while Acknowledging Differences
Many of us are familiar with the practice of “active listening.” This webinar helps experienced facilitators and discussion leaders learn how to help the entire group listen together more skillfully for clues to where there might be common ground while respecting differences that arise.
Click here to listen.

Facilitating Constructive Contributions:Dealing with Difficult Behaviors
Basic facilitation skills involve keeping a group on topic and on time. But what happens when a participant needs special attention? This webinar identifies common types of disruptive behavior and multiple methods for facilitators to keep the conversation constructive, including meeting design and preparation that helps bring out the best in people.
Click here to listen.

Successful Community Engagement around Housing
With the goal of creating more community momentum for housing in San Mateo County, four cities were awarded grants from Home for All and technical assistance from Common Knowledge: Burlingame, Portola Valley, Redwood City and Half Moon Bay. There are PDF summaries from Burlingame and Portola Valley about their positive first phase results. In both cases, there has been a significant shift in how both the council and the community view each other, as well as the possibilities for moving forward to accelerate housing decisions.

Fall 2018 NCCD Conference: Connecting and Strengthening Civic Innovators
Our country’s current political climate has people yearning for a different way to interact, including the ability to listen to one another with more understanding, to work more effectively across differences, and to improve how we make decisions together and engage in our democracy. Many people don’t know that that there is a robust network already in place, the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation. Common Knowledge Director Susan Clark is an NCDD board member and she invites you to join her November 2-4, 2018 in Denver for NCDD2018. See what NCDD conferences are like at www.tinyurl.com/ncdd2016vid.

Are you already working in this field? Call for Session Proposals for NCDD 2018 is now open through May 23rd. More information is available at www.ncdd.org/26478.

the weakening bond between millennials and the middle class

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(New York City) In lieu of a substantive post here today, I’ll link to a post of mine on the Biden Forum (the blog of the Biden Foundation), entitled “the weakening bond between millennials and the middle class.”

I begin:

Americans born between 1985 and 2004, known as “millennials,” are numerous enough that their generation will dominate the electorate for decades to come. Political commentators often depict millennials as egalitarian, activist, and relatively well-educated, and thus poised to support a middle-class economic agenda. But that portrait describes just a minority of the generation. In truth, many millennials are far from reaching the middle class, are skeptical about government, and are disengaged as citizens.

At the Biden Forum, I reflect on what that may mean for politics and policy.

NCDD2018 Session Proposal Deadline Extended Until 5/23!

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A few weeks back we announced the call for session proposals were open for the upcoming 2018 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in Downtown Denver, November 2-4. We’ve had great proposals come in so far and have seen folks collaborating on the NCDD discussion listserv to develop exciting sessions.

We’d like to give more time for the network to connect with others and craft their session proposals, so we are extending the deadline and now accepting applications until May 23rd!

If you’re still looking for collaborators on your sessions, you can review the calls for session partners that some of our members have put out on the discussion listserv – check out the session inquires from the last few weeks in our listserv archives or consider joining the listserv and ask for collaborators yourself! Click here to read our advice for potential session leaders.

Remember the super early bird tickets are NOW AVAILABLE! Get yours at this great low rate before it goes up!

Here is some guidance for those thinking about presenting sessions at NCDD 2018…

Our theme for the 2018 conference is Connecting and Strengthening Civic Innovators, and we invite workshop proposals that in some way build upon or engage the ideas around this theme.

NCDD 2018 is taking place the weekend before the November midterm elections and these are vital times for using the skills and tools of the dialogue and deliberation community to continue to bring people together. We have heard from so many, both in our field and particularly those unfamiliar with D&D work – how do we come together and talk with each other despite the divisiveness that pervades our society? There are many in our country that are unaware of the D&D field’s work to better engage people and improve democratic processes.

Our goal of the conference is to explore how to bring dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement work’s many tools and processes into greater visibility and practice within our society. At the conference, we will dig into how to bring D&D to the more widespread awareness and use by:

  • Cultivating new partnerships and connections with other fields utilizing these approaches, including government, libraries, and journalism;
  • Developing our skills, and building our toolkits to address the emerging needs of the communities we work with and live in;
  • Making the case for public engagement, by elevating the stories of how people are coming together across divides, making decisions and taking action together, as well as demonstrating the value and impact of this work;
  • Growing the skills of D&D in our young people, and cultivating leaders who are drawn to D&D;
  • Building the skills and capacities of others in our communities to do this work;
  • Reaching out to and engaging with those less drawn to D&D, including conservatives, activists, and others;
  • Highlighting the ways D&D can be fun, and exploring innovative methods for public engagement – including the arts.

We invite session proposals that will highlight the work being done to tap D&D into the peoples’ daily lives, build democratic participation, and better expose D&D work through the above connections. Your proposal will be evaluated, in part, by its relevance to our theme and goals.

We are thrilled to see what session folks develop for NCDD2018!

Florida Civics EOCA Review Resources

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It’s that time of year again, where we start preparing our kids for the upcoming Civics End of Course Assessment here in Florida. So here are some decent resources from across the internet that you might find useful. Of course, we must always keep in mind that any review should begin with making sure your kids are familiar with the Civics Test Item Specifications, because it tells you, and them, exactly what they need to know.

specs

 

 

But let’s start our review resource tour with the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute‘s own pride and joy.

Civics360

Civics360 is a free, interactive civics review tool to help Florida students improve their understanding of civics. It provides a flexible approach to instruction and review, and features:

  • Narrated Students Friendly Videos review the important content for most benchmarks
  • Viewing guides for each video
  • Student Friendly Readings for each Benchmark Clarification, available in English, Haitian-Creole, and Spanish
  • Vocabulary activities
  • End-of-Course Assessment-style guided review questions for each benchmark
  • End-of-Course Assessment practice tests
  • Additional Civics Resources to Facilitate Learning and Review

You can sign up for Civics360 here. It’s always free, but registration IS required!

The Florida Practice Tests (ePATS)

TestNav

Here you will find a practice version of the Civics EOCA. This will give you some sense of what the assessment is like and how to use the different tools for an online version of the test, as well as what the questions are like. This is provided by the Florida Department of Public Instruction.

Florida Students Civics Tutorials

tutorial

We have written about these tutorials before, and they are the first resource I recommend for both instruction and review. They are excellent for a flipped classroom model as well. If you are planning on using them as a review resource, I recommend assigning students only the parts of the tutorials they need, and it would be more effective to perhaps set these up in learning stations across the classroom. You could require that students screen-capture or write down responses to the assessment elements in order to ensure completion and comprehension.

Florida Virtual School Resources

RRSFLVSThe recorded review sessions, available for free at the bottom of the FLVS page, do a good job covering elements of each of the four reporting categories that will be assessed on the EOC. Because they are about 2 hours long, you will want to preview each one and determine where you might want students to focus their attention. They may also provide you with a model for your own approach to classroom-based reviews. I especially appreciate how an effort is made to integrate assessment elements. Please be aware that you will need to download Blackboard Collaborate to run the videos. 

You will also want to check out the FLVS Civics EOC Practice test, which may be of use to you, though as with anything, you should decided how effective or appropriate it will be for your kids. Again, however, this shouldn’t be the first time that students are being exposed to these types and styles of items. Answers to the practice test items are available here. Note that answers are actually explained as well, which is an excellent element of review. I would suggest actually having students explain WRONG answers. If they can tell you why an answer is wrong, they should have a much easier time of figuring out why an answer might be right!

Civics EOC Boot Camp Model

We wrote about this review model before, and it may be one that you find useful as well. It worked well for Randall Middle School, and it is a positive way to mix things up a little for both you and your students. We explored this model in great detail in this post, and I encourage you to take a look and see if it is something you might like to do.

 

TEACHER WEBSITES

Civics With Mr. Kula

Kula

Mr. Kula, social studies teacher at Westpine Middle School in Broward County, has compiled a number of quality content rich and illustrated study guides for the Civics EOC that could be useful for you. While they don’t cover every benchmark, what IS there is effective, and broken down by topic. These would be appropriate for students to use in conjunction with a written review or in small groups using an ‘expert group’ teaching model.

Mrs. Hirsch’s Civics Page

hirsch

Mrs. Hirsch, a teacher at Fruit Cove Middle School in St. John’s County, has gathered a number of excellent tools for EOC review. The EOC Content Review sheets that she has provided are well done and engaging, and definitely worth sharing with your own students:
Q1 Civics What You Need to Know

Q2 Civics What You Need to Know

Legislative Branch Content Review

Executive Branch Content Review

Judicial Branch Content Review

Civics Assessment Strategy Guide

Kotkin Strategies

Here is an EXCELLENT and short powerpoint covering strategies for the EOC.

Ruckel Middle School Civics Flashcards

ruckel

Ruckel Middle School, in Okaloosa County, has developed a tool using Quizlet that provides students with flashcards for review. These might be useful as a bellringer or exit slip activity as you wrap up content this year and start to transition to in depth review.

 

These are just a few of the quality review resources that you might find beneficial. If you have any additional resources to share, please shoot me an email or leave it in the comments!

Tapping in D&D Work with Engaged Journalism

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While this piece on the growing movement of engaged journalism was written last fall, we find its lesson to still be of great importance. NCDD sponsoring org, the Jefferson Center wrote on the increasing emergence of engaged journalism, a facet of journalism that seeks to elevate the needs of the community, not just push out click-bait style media. Something that has become quite apparent lately, is the seeming disconnect between the work of the D&D field and the public’s awareness this work is going on – a phenomenon that can significantly be decreased with stronger relationships with community-centered journalism and better exposure of the many efforts going on in the field.

Public News Service gave excellent coverage of last week’s National Week of Conversation that we encourage you to check out:

There is a lot of still-untapped potential between the D&D community and our media makers. The NCDD network has been deepening our relationship with journalists over the last several years, exploring how the D&D community can create stronger partnerships with journalists; and it is our hope to continue to nurture this bond. For additional exploration on how to improve this opportunity, check out our Journalism-D&D Confab call, our podcast with Journalism That Matters, and the recorded media panel from the last NCDD conference in 2016 (click here for the recording). Below is the article from the Jefferson Center and you can also find the original here.

Exploring Engagement & Participation in Journalism

Journalism has had a rough couple of months (or years, if you’re watching closely). News agencies are discredited, criticized, and attacked daily. Partisan news outlets seem to spring up every week, making it difficult to find neutral information.These trends compound another major problem in the journalism world: with the growth of social media, ad-blockers, and the domination of Facebook and Google (and soon, Amazon) in the digital advertising market, traditional models of ad-supported journalism are collapsing. Many citizens also don’t see the news, on a local or national scale, as representing their needs and interests. This is not just a crisis for journalism, it’s a crisis for our democracy.

Like us, many organizations are rolling up their sleeves to embrace the challenge, supporting engaged journalism approaches. Engaged journalism seeks to inform and empower communities, with news organizations prioritizing community needs above those of advertisers. Engaged journalists use the knowledge and talents of their community to cover critical stories and challenges. Instead of driving profit through clickbait news, engaged and participatory journalism focuses on (re)building relationships between journalists and the communities they serve.

What are others doing?

Around the globe, a few large newsrooms, startups, and nonprofits are experimenting with new business models, leading community engagement efforts, working to restore local trust in news, and building a sustainable subscriber base of community members.

To target media “deserts” in rural and urban regions of Ohio, where traditional media outlets don’t exist, Journalism That Matters is exploring deliberative ways to design local news media and information communication systems. Similarly, the News Voices initiative from Free Press uses community organizing and public engagement events as a way for journalists to carve out a new niche in their communities by supporting citizens. Hearken offers newsrooms a model called “public-powered journalism” to meaningfully engage the public throughout the development of stories.

If you’re interested in diving into engaged journalism yourself, visit Gather, a platform to support community-minded journalists and other engagement professionals. The site officially launches October 2nd, 2017, but for now you can explore their mission, request to join, and follow the latest engagement strategy stories on their Medium page. Gather is a product of the Elevate Engagement workshop, which explored how engaged journalism can help communities thrive. After the workshop, our director Kyle Bozentko worked with engagement strategist Joy Mayer and journalist and author March Twisdale to draft the Elevate Engagement Manifesto,which establishes guidelines and goals for this emerging community of journalists, media researchers and educators, and engagement practitioners.

Research, support, and will to try audience-driven and collaborative journalism is just starting to take off, but there are a few barriers in the way. Many small and medium-sized news outlets might hesitate to embrace engaged journalism because of a lack of organizational capacity, uncertainty about the impact of new techniques, or a fear of losing their long-held identity. However, the growth and determination of the programs and organizations above (and these are just a few examples) could help provide the capacity and resources to make long-lasting changes in local journalism.

The Role of the Jefferson Center

We’re excited to announce the launch of Your Voice Ohio and Media Seeds, two collaborative programs that will test, evaluate, and refine sustainable methods for engaging and serving communities through better, more participatory journalism. We’ll explore the complementary roles of public deliberation and discussion, community organizing, digital engagement, media collaboration, and other journalistic approaches in helping communities, and journalism, thrive. Dozens of print, radio, and television newsrooms have already signed onto Your Voice Ohio to create a statewide news collaborative. The collaborative will share experiences and align reporting resources to better serve more Ohio communities.

Media Seeds, through a partnership with Journalism That Matters, will support media innovations in communities lacking daily local news. The project will support community residents and stakeholders using JTM’s “Create or Die” model, which includes community dialogue, innovation gatherings, and community communication pilot projects.

These projects are funded by a $250,000 grant from the Democracy Fund and a $75,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, with additional support from individual donors. These projects build on the work of Your Vote Ohio during the 2016 election, focused on supporting journalists to produce political coverage tailored to the diverse needs of communities across Ohio. Your Voice Ohio and Media Seeds are also a way to move forward the principles, goals, and values our organization committed to in the Elevate Engagement Manifesto. Joy Mayer was also a recipient of a Knight Foundation Grant under the “Trust, Media and Democracy” initiative.

Our main goals:

  • Through experimentation and shared learning, increase the capacity of newsrooms around Ohio to practice engaged journalism.
  • Partners will create new examples and local case studies of engaged journalism, with more detailed information about implementing engaged journalism practices.
  • Provide better comparative data about the value of engaged journalism approaches, as multiple communities systematically experiment with similar efforts.

You can download our official press release, visit the official Your Voice Ohio website, and follow the program on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

You can find the original version of this article on the Jefferson Center’s site at www.jefferson-center.org/exploring-engagement-participation-in-journalism/.

**The Jefferson Center recently did a follow up piece on this effort which you can find at www.jefferson-center.org/conversation-to-build-collaboration/.