Proposal: PBL for Disaster Relief:
-- School Model & K-12 Curriculums
LuLu
Introduction
The Forever Eden (HTTP://www.ForeverEden.ORG) will serve as an international education resource website for disaster relief. For administrators, it offers educational community rebuilding tool/model after-disaster, based on culture, population, family and society value, local relationships and funding. For educators in disaster area, it shares up-to-date curriculums for K-12 teachers for disaster release with the purpose of teaching knowledge, and healing the students from the suffering. For educators out side of the disaster area, it’s an online community to contribute and share the curriculums as well as connects with the world; for students out side of the disaster area, it’s an opportunity to access the primary source to understand the disaster and life value, understand sharing knowledge and engaging life from the friendships through internet collaboration as well as learning through different people in this unlimited world. Potentially, it will be an international NGO registered in different countries and serve the educators and students in disaster area, with the associated NGOs, schools, educators and students.
The mind map with related resource is shown in the following link. http://www.mind42.com/pub/mindmap?mid=51e29c15-e6e8-4df2-bdd9-453d712fb198
Picture 1. Snapshot of the screen, click the link above to see more information about developing map.
Resource List
The Forever Eden is a K-12 school policy, school model and curriculum collaborative website for the NGO for disaster relief
The resource for the will include:
• Natural Disaster Deference Database
http://ndrd.gsfc.nasa.gov
• Special Site on Development Research Center of the State Council
http://www.drcnet.com.cn/DRCNet.Channel.Web/subject/subjectIndex.aspx?chnId=4024
• Red Cross Disaster Relief for Education
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/eduinfo/
• The Disaster Database Project
http://learning.richmond.edu/disaster/index.cfm
• Dealing with Disasters
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/dealing_disasters/
• Asian Disaster Reduction Center
http://www.adrc.or.jp/index.php
• Sentinel-Asia Project – Disaster Management Support System
http://arrs.adrc.or.jp/adrc/MyMap/adrc/index.jsp?AUTHORIZED=yes&USERPROFILEKEY=1132191860541&ACTIONKEY=RefreshAction&MAPDIR=401&lang=en
• Emergency Events Database
http://www.emdat.be/Database/terms.html
• Friendship Site and Assistantship
http://www.inquiry.uiuc.edu/index.php
TODO List
l School policy and model for disaster relief: student centered education policy instead of the traditional achievement-timeline system. The creativity, culture and art will be specially emphasized. From Standley’s high Tech school in Alaska, there is no F for any students and students are encouraged to teach and share with other students to get an A. The school is a community, all students are sisters and brothers taking care of and sharing with each other.
l The peer program is building the friendship and assistantship in the global wide.
l Curriculum for K-12: All curriculums are under the Creative Common copyright protection. It’s a Blog style; everyone can contribute, everyone can rate and comment for each other. We are trying to build the network for the teachers have a devotional heart to support the children and schools. The world is without boundary.
l Associated NGO: The associate NGOs and related
Why We start the Forever Eden for Disaster Relief
• There are researches on the disaster relief, database on the disaster rebuilt, but the practice of the research and the feedbacks of the curriculum were few (need do more research on what have been done in history). There is no way for human-being to prevent and avoid the natural disaster within the natural power, but there will be a hope for all if the world classroom becomes flat with the technology and internet.
• Risk for children who experienced the natural disaster:
A number of psychological symptoms have been observed in children following disasters, including fears, sleep problems, depression, separation anxiety, somatic complaints, and conduct problems (Delamater & Applegate, 1999). As Delamater & Applegate said and I am quoting here, “when the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been applied to children, studies have found symptoms of PTSD in children following natural disasters (Lonigan, Shannon, Finch, Daugherty, &Taylor, 1991; Pefferbaum, 1997; Vogel & Vernberg, 1993). For example, recent studies have shown a high rate of PTSD symptoms in school-age children following exposure to a severe hurricane (La Greca, Silverman, Vernberg, & Prinstein, 1996; Vernberg, La Greca, Silverman, & Prinstein, 1996). There is also evidence of PTSD among children exposed to other types of severe trauma such as sniper attack (Pynoos, Frederick, Nader, Arroyo, Steinberg, Eth, Nunez, & Fairbanks, 1987), kidnapping (Terr, 1983), witnessing violence (Kinzie, Sack, Angell, Manson, & Rath, 1986; Saigh, 1989), and sexual abuse (Kiser, Ackerman, Brown, Edwards, McColgan, Pugh, & Pruitt, 1988). Available studies of children suggest that symptoms of PTSD are related to degree of exposure to life threat (Pynoos et al., 1987) and levels of parental distress (McFarlane, 1987), and may persist for long periods after the disaster (Galante & Foa, 1986; Kinzie et al., 1986; Terr, 1983).”
From Delamater & Applegate, their research found the 18 months delay of PTSD if the children were from minority, single-parent families or social stressors. They are in higher risk for some delays in their development and healing.
• Different background of children, or disaster area need different model and policies.
A significant percentage of children were rated by their mothers as having delays in their overall development: 31% at 12 months post-hurricane and 15% at 18 months post-hurricane. While these numbers seem fairly high, they may not be elevated for the population of children attending Head Start programs, who are more likely to be from minority, single-parent families experiencing a variety of economic and social stressors. Children growing up in such stressful environments may be at risk for some delays in their development. According to the result above, the school policy should be various in terms of area and the website will offer different model and policy, depends on the disaster area, general social level in nation wide, the development plan and human resource management.
• Different students needs different education plan. Recent school system is timeline based for the achievement and the new Forever Eden schools will focus on students’ personal achievement to decide their timeline of education. No one will fail and everyone is going to be prepared for the leadership and life-long learner.
Action Plan
1. Research on what have been done in disaster relief in education field; specially pay more attention to the technology and internet for knowledge and education.
2. Build the collaborative website
3. Register an NGO in Hawaii and recruit and promote
4. 1st Fund raising – through internet
5. Keep the Blog growing and Develop the network and connection with the people who are interested or already contributed to the similar area.
6. Put into action: the school model and education concept will be practiced in Chengdu, China. The initial connection is built and the leader in local DOE approved the research team to enter and coach with the ESL and interview.
7. Develop the network: contact with ChinaCare, World Vision, YWAM and related legal international NGOs active in Mainland China or Hong Kong.
8. 2nd fund raising (different languages) – through internet and if it’s possible, will consider the conference
9. Develop the team.
10. Research team go to Sichuan, interview, survey for the research data collection as well as the video resource; (Storyboarding for the video)
11. Produce the Video series;
12. International Conference
Evaluation
Being pro-active, I evaluate myself by action. All steps above without action will be counted 0. The Fund raising is will be transparent to the board members and donators. Step 1 to 7 is predictable if the action is made. The rest of the steps will be various and adapted to the reality.
Reference
Standley, M. & Hutchings, K. (2000). Global Project-based Learning with Technology. Visions Technology Publications.
Delamater, M. A., & Applegate, A. M. (1999). Child Development And Post-traumatic Stress Disorder After Hurricane Exposure. Traumatology. Vol. 5, No. 3, 20-27. SAGE Publications
Lonigan, C., Shannon, M., Finch, A., Daugherty, T., & Taylor, C. (1991). Children’s reactions to a natural disaster: Symptom severity and degree of exposure. Advances in Behavior Research and Therapy. 13, 135-154.
Vogel, J., & Vernberg, E. (1993). Children’s psychological responses to disasters. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology. 22, 464-484.
La Greca, A., Silverman, W., Vernberg, E., & Prinstein, M. (1996). Posttraumatic stress symptoms in children after Hurricane Andrew: A prospective study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 64, 712-723.
Vernberg, E., La Greca, A., Silverman, W., & Prinstein, M. (1996). Prediction of posttraumatic stress symptoms in children after Hurricane Andrew. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 105, 237-248.
Pynoos, R.S., Frederick, C., Nader, K., Arroyo, W., Steinberg, A., Eth, S., Nunez, F., & Fairbanks, L. (1987). Life threat and posttraumatic stress in school-age children. Arch. General Psychiatry. 44, 1057-1063.
Terr, L. (1983). Chowchilla revisited: The effects of psychic trauma four years after a bus kidnapping. American Journal of Psychiatry. 140, 1542-1550.
Kinzie, J. D., Sack, W. H., Angell, R.H., Manson, S., & Rath, B. (1986). The psychiatric effects of massive trauma on Cambodian children: I. The children. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 25, 370-376.
Kiser, L.J., Ackerman, B.J., Brown, E., Edwards, N.B., McColgan, E., Pugh, R., & Pruitt, D.B. (1988). Post-traumatic stress disorder in young children: A reaction to purported sexual abuse. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 27(5), 645-649.
McFarlane, A.C. (1987). Posttraumatic phenomena in a longitudinal study of children following a natural disaster. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 26, 764-769.
Galante, R., and Foa, D. (1986). An epidemiological study of psychic trauma and treatment effectiveness for children after a natural disaster. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry. 25, 357-363.
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Galante, R., and Foa, D. (1986). An epidemiological study of psychic trauma and treatment effectiveness for children after a natural disaster. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry. 25, 357-363.
