I do not have much to report as far as progress of my ImagineIT project. This is not because no progress has been made. It is because I was ambitious with posting my plans in the last update as well as the spring timeline. The field trip to Riddell has been delayed until March 21, so I have delayed my lessons that corresponded with screen printing and color systems until Tuesday, March 15, 2016. As part of this lesson with the silk screening of the hoodies, we asked each student to select a quote that would be their slogan if they were given 15 minutes of fame to tell the world something. Students gave these speeches in their English class with their peers giving them feedback for improvement after each speech. We took the top 50 students and asked them to deliver their speech to the entire junior class of about 160 students. After that, students voted for their top speaker. We have taken the top 10 and asked them to write a new speech to be delivered Monday about how they would improve public education. At the end of the day, students will vote for their top speaker and the top 3 will be taken out to lunch by the junior team. Before students deliver thier speeches, we are going to ask the entire junior class to take a personality survey, https://www.16personalities.com/ . Students are going to formulate a hypothesis about whether or not their personality will match the top speaker. I will guide students through a lesson on probability and statistical analysis based on the number of students with each personality type in the entire class. I will have more information about this after March 14, 2016 and I will have photos of the hoodies after March 21, 2016.
On a separate note, in addition to the plans I have posted previously, I am planning to host a school-wide primary election. I will have students discuss polling, margin of error, voter turnout, percentages, and other election statistics. This primary will not just be for president, as I want students to understand how important each political race is. I have downloaded a sample ballot that includes all races (yes, including the judges) for the area near the school. I plan to use that ballot for the primary right now. However, in true ImagineIT fashion, I am hoping to escalate the project. I am working with our local alderman and board of elections to see if I can get actual election equipment for the primary. Giving students the real experience of voting on the equipment used in real elections will have a more lasting impact with them.