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ED 2272
Urban Education
Spring 2018
Grassroots Organizing in Education Website

Website proposal due: April 5th by 5:00 p.m.
Peer review of websites:  May 1st at 8:30 a.m.
Websites due:  Friday, May 18th at 5:00 p.m.

Purpose

This assignment is designed to enable you to see the action students, teachers, parents and communities are taking to ensure high-quality urban education in response to problems and challenges facing a particular city. You will situate the local challenges you investigate within the national context. You will gain valuable research skills and learn how to design a website that conveys information effectively.

Essential skills

  • Evaluating web-based and social media sources
  • Utilizing academic data bases
  • Analyzing scholarly and professional articles
  • Synthesizing various sources of information
  • Designing a user-friendly website
  • Establishing a hierarchy of information
  • Analyzing information through writing
  • Referencing sources (websites, social media, videos, images, and journal articles)

Proposal

  • Description of the problem/challenge you are investigating
  • Rationale for the city you will be studying
  • Links to and descriptions of two grassroots organizations in the city you are studying
  • Links to and descriptions of two grassroots organizations addressing the problem/challenge elsewhere in the US
  • An APA-formatted bibliography of the 2 peer-reviewed and 2 professional articles about the problem/challenge
  • Difficulties you anticipate in conducting this project

 

Components of the website

There is no pre-determined format for the website.  Part of your assignment is learning how to organize information effectively in order to convey content that others may utilize.  Here is what you must include:

  1. A description of the problem/challenge and how it is manifested nationally and in your focus city
  2. A 500-word statement about the principles of organizing and education (can be drawn from your paper)
  3. A synthesis of the grassroots organizing in your city and nationally in response to the problem/challenge
  • Who is involved?
  • How have they organized?
  • Which issues intersect with their concern about the problem/challenge facing urban education?
  • How has their work affected the problem/challenge?
  • What are the obstacles they are facing?
  • What has been the impact on organizing for those involved?
  1. Links to a minimum of 8-10 grassroots organizations addressing this topic (can be webpages or public Facebook group pages). At least 4 organizations must be based in your focus city
  2. A two-to-three sentence description of each grassroots organization
  3. A synthesis of two peer-reviewed journal articles on the problem/challenge (must have been published in last 3 years)
  4. A synthesis of two professional articles on this topic (must have been published in last 3 years)
  5. A 750-word statement about what you have learned about grassroots organizing and urban education through this project
  6. APA references for all cited material and images (you may use captions)