Letter of Intent: Schools are the future of History
The Problem
Philadelphia's cultural institutions need a boost. With the power of #Steem, this Philly history initiative @phillyhistory is starting to get closer to its goal of exploring history and empowering education through new technology. Our goal is to generate funds through steem to ignite the historical cultural sector of Philadelphia and we are making great progress. Day by day, new ideas pop up for where our funding should go at #LoI2018. Here's mine:
The Project
Don't stop the steem
The students of this History Initiative have added a large amount of steam to the #steemit world and thus created the potential for further growth in the crypto-currency world. Why donate money in a one-time sum, when we could hand over the keys to brilliant young minds who could continue to add local history to the life of all #steemians while working on something academically and personally beneficial?
**That's why I propose, we continue to build steem to catch the attention of the whale organization, The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia.
Why Now?
The Fund is coming in hot off a huge and successful fundraising effort that combined a love for the Eagles, Coffee, and supporting public schools.
This shows an organization that is active on social media and tapped in to Philadelphia culture. But most importantly, connected to the public schools.
I got my Foles-gers, did you?
Desired Outcome
By turning our Philly history steem-it keys to The Fund, a whale of an organization, we would have the potential for a program to grow inside the Philadelphia Public Schools. Through the connections of the organization, it would be possible to link up with interested school groups, teachers, and students who had time and interest of creating an enormous online database of Philadelphia history posts at #steemit.
Students could work on their writing, while doing primary source historical research, on a modern platform and raising crypto-currency for their school projects. Such actions would build personal research portfolios, increase writing skills, and add to the written record, Philly history written by Philly students.
Texting? Nah, writing a post on steemit!
What do you think? Could it work? Should we just work directly with the schools? Are Cultural Institutions more useful than schools for making Philly history and the cultural sector great?
100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative @phillyhistory. This crypto-experiment conducted by graduate courses at Temple University's Center for Public History and MLA Program, is exploring history and empowering education. Click here to learn more.
This is a great post and I love the idea of using a public platform like Steemit to encourage students to improve their writing and researching skills, especially when there's a direct reward for well-written posts.
I wonder about the ethics of using students' work to raise money for their own classrooms, especially when so many students within the Philadelphia School District struggle with hunger, poverty, and/or homelessness. Do you think there would be room for students to determine where they would want their SD to go, whether it's the school, their own families, or maybe even other cultural institutions? Are there any other ethical considerations we should be keeping in mind?
Good point regarding the ethics of students essentially working to support their schools. Perhaps a separate institution, like the National History Day Philly, could encourage students to write about their findings and the process. (Calling @chelseareed)
There are large organizations that are whale-like in scale and then there are actual Steemit Whales who hold the reins.
I think there's a lot of merit to the idea of getting a large traditional org with lots of potential up and running with and on Steemit, but don't you think they'd need training, mentoring or incubation? How can we use our resources to gain that kind of traction?
Nice post. Great job from a great person with an awesome personality.
Nice one buddy.
Upvoted!