New York Experience

Objectives:

New York Experience is a ritual that is at the core of Landmark High School's ninth grade curriculum. Every Friday, an Advisory of approximately 20 students venture out into the city to "experience" New York City. Students learn about where they live, its history and how they are citizens of a community albeit a metropolis. The Teenager's Guide to New York City project is a way to solidify this essential part of the curriculum and to excite the students. This project would start out small and focused with one Advisory and then will be expanded to include the whole ninth grade.



Project Description:

(as distributed to students)

"The Teenager's Guide to New York City"

By now, you have visited various landmarks and interesting places in New York City during New York Experience on Fridays.You have completed assignments and reflections in your journals and collected souvenirs. By the end of the year you will have "experienced" New York City in a way that is rare for a teen. You will become "experts" on the city having visited over 20 locations - landmarks, museums, wildlife centers, neighborhoods, interactive technology centers and more! Now it is your responsibility to share your knowledge with other teens and create a " Teenager's Guide to New York City"

Assignment:

You will create a guide to New York City based on your New York Experience journals that explains:

  1. Where you went
  2. Directions to get there
  3. What you did and saw
  4. What you learned and why you would recommend it to others

Format:

Because this is an official guide that is meant to be published, it must look professional. Your advisor will help you with this process later on but here is the fun:

  1. You will use HTML to create a "virtual guide" on the computer.
  2. You will learn to scan and useimages .
  3. You will learn how to use digital video.
  4. Your project will be posted on the Internet.

Step one: the Collection Phase

  1. Before you even think about a format you should start typing your journal assignments. Try to add details using the directions listed under "Assignment" above as a guide. Try to picture yourself on the trip you are writing about and "guide" us while you write. You will use a text editor and then code your work in HTML.
  2. Your journal needs to be more detailed than ever. Remember to do those assignments and reflections regularly. It is easier to remember stuff when it is fresh in your head. Remember to collect souvenirs. These will be useful to remember trips and can be added to your guide to make it more colorful.
  3. We will be using the digital and video camera on trips so we need to prepare interview questions and make list of the shots we will need. When we are back in class, we will also video skits that reenact New York History or do mini documentaries on the places we visited.

Step Two: Planning Phase

Once we have been on a good amount of trips, we must start putting it all together to create guides of the city that will be interactive using our words, pictures, souvenirs and video clips. But we need to be organized and plan ahead.

Steps:

  1. Plan our site. How will pages connect? What will the front page look like? We will use index cards to carefully plan out what will go where.
  2. We will pay close attention to our "fron page" because this will introduce people to your guide and give them directions on how to use our site.

Step Three: Production Phase

This is where the real fun begins. We will start creating our pages getting on the computers and learning to code. Three students from our class will be experts and train other students to use the program. Learning how to write HTML will be our first focus. We will learn how to scan images and download our video clips. Your projects will start to come alive with sights and sounds.

Steps:

  1. Create a home page.
  2. Create your text objects and paste in your write-ups
  3. Create graphic objects and paste in images.
  4. Create video action.

Step Four: Revision Phase

Finally we will revise our pages, check for typos and make sure that everything works. We will check all of our links to see if they go to the right places and do any last minute editing.

Step Five: Publishing Stage

Now we get to see the fruits of our labor and invite our friends and families to get "on line" and check out our Teenager's Guides to New York City.