About Newz Crew
Newz Crew with Jim Lehrer.
In collaboration with the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Global Kids has launched Newz Crew, which combines Global Kids' unique, interactive approach to public policy education, youth leadership and online learning with NewsHour's media content to stimulate rich online dialogues involving youth in the United States and around the world. The official launch on March 1, 2004, was preceded in February 2004 by a beta group that was implemented with 60 students from around the country who discussed such issues as the situation in Iraq, the Democratic primary, and education reform.
Students from Canarsie High School in Brooklyn in Global Kids' Power of Citizenry Leadership Program were integral in creating Newz Crew. Approximately 15 students met in weekly after-school leadership training workshops and activities to hone leadership and digital literacy skills and to help shape the Newz Crew project. In the coming months, they will manage Newz Crew message boards and guide the site. The Newz Crew site features a 'Teacher's Lounge" that will provide educators with curricular materials related to current events and enable them to involve their classes in the site's dialogues. Articles and lesson plans, written and produced by NewsHour and Global Kids, will be made available to educators and youth twice per month. The best of the dialogues will be posted in the Featured Dialogue section, which is scheduled to run for two years.
The Newz Crew Group.
Over the course of this project, Global Kids anticipates that Newz Crew will bring 2,000 students into the Youth Circles, with an estimated additional 200,000 others reading along, and address the critical need for civic engagement projects created by and for youth online. Newz Crew offers youth a safe environment for self-_expression, putting them at the forefront of designing the content and form of the project, and using the Internet to offer opportunities for reading, writing, critical thinking, statistical analysis, online dialoging, analyzing media, and civic engagement.
Newz Crew and the Youth Circles are structurally unique among online youth dialogues in five ways: Only a small number of active participants per group are involved (restricted membership); Participants begin and end at the same time (short, shared timeframe); Participants adhere to a set of expectations (ground rules); The dialogues are guided with a soft touch (indirect facilitation); and Global Kids youth leaders develop the project and monitor individual groups (youth monitors). By following these guidelines, youth experience a meaningful, constructive and dynamic interaction with peers around the world, encountering new ideas and perspectives in what the New York Times has called, "the antithesis of stereotypical teen chat."
Newz Crew has been invited to present to educators at the United Nations, the Tech To Go conference at Adelphi University, and the annual National Educational Computing Conference.
Newz Crew is supported with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Time Warner Foundation.
