Go for a Walk: Learn and Connect with Your Community

Purpose & objective

The purpose of the tour is to model a guided community walk and share the process and tools needed to create this type of learning experience for their students.

Participants will be introduced to a variety of roles they can use as they walk and observe their environment-roles like journalist, anthropologist, or artist.

Participants will learn easy ways to use their phone, a notebook, and Google Maps to capture different multimedia artifacts and their locations while out and about.

Participants will learn how to make a brief audio, video or written reflection about their discoveries during the walking experience.

Participants will be identify the strengths and weakness for presenting various artifacts and reflections -- tools shared include Google Slides, Wakelet, Snap, and a shared website.

Participants will walk away from our session knowing how to plan and organize guided walks with their own students.

Outline

Part One (15-30min)
A. Think/Pair/share related to the power of walking and getting outside and how it jumpstarts thinking and learning.

B. Share frameworks to focus the walk and think about what artifacts to collect:

Learn History through Landmarks
Make scientific observations, collect data
Meet People in your Community: i.e. Humans of New York
Create Art - A video, Insta Reel, TikTok
Examine your own self - Mindful Walking, Health Walk, Technology Free
Engage with Public Art

Part Two.(45-60 minutes)
A. Participants learn how to use the recording tools we have available. -- phones, drone, drawing notebooks, recorders etc. to create and capture images,videos, data and their own thoughts.

B. Review our planned walking route and think about where one might collect info.

C. Venture out the convention center doors and take a guided tour of downtown Denver. Make planned and impromptu collection stops.

Part 3 (15-30 min)
A. Return to our starting point. Participants present artifacts they have collected on the walk. i.e. interviews, photos, videos, journal entries, drawings, surveys, maps.

B. We will share various tools for participants to share about their walk with a larger audience -- Padlet, Wakelet, Snap, a website.

C. Participants will discuss ways to take this experiential learning structure back to their own educational environment.