| Body | The purpose of this activity is to enable learners to recognize the influence of African diaspora in local Latino communities and to raise awareness of said diaspora through the creation of a project, ideally with an augmented reality tool. This activity will require learners to engage in authentic conversations in the target language with their fellow classmates and members of a local Latino community. It is designed to take place over several days in class. For a novice version of this activity, click here.
Objectives:
Learners will be able to:
-
Identify African influences in local Latino communities.
-
Engage in authentic conversations with local members of said communities in order to gauge their knowledge of African influences in their cultures.
-
Create a comprehensive project to showcase the African influences within the targeted community.
Mode(s): Interpersonal Communication, Presentational Writing, Interpretive Reading, and Interpretive Listening
Resources:YouTube Video, Video and Research Handout English / Spanish, Portal Handout English / Spanish, Ingress app, Aurasma Studio, Aurasma app, Aurasma Instructions Handout, mobile device with video and photo recording capabilities
Procedure:
-
Introduce learners to African diaspora in Latin America by having them watch YouTube Video. As learners watch, have them take notes regarding how African diaspora has influenced present-day culture in Latin America on the Video and Research Handout. This handout is divided into two sections. The first section applies to information shared by documentarians and is in both English and Spanish. The second section is in Spanish only and gives a preview of the research recorded by the documentarians.
-
After learners are done taking notes, have them answer the final questions on the Video and Research Handout by allowing them to search the internet in the target language to explore one African influence that is evident in Latin America. This research should take roughly 30 minutes. When the research is done, learners will share what they learned with partners and the class in a Think, Pair, Share format.
-
Next, learners will be introduced to Ingress, a place-based mobile app that they will use to explore a local community in which the target language is largely spoken. Give learners roughly 20 minutes to download Ingress on their mobile devices in the target language and to pick a faction to represent. Learners will conduct the next steps of this activity in groups of 2-4 members, so they need to be sure to select their factions in those groups. Also, take care to ensure that each group is comprised of members who researched differing influences in Step 2.
-
Next, have learners brainstorm questions in their groups that they might ask someone who speaks the target language regarding their knowledge of African diaspora. The teacher should approve these questions before Step 5. If you need help to guide your students in the creation of these questions, check out this blog.
-
On a field trip following this approval, learners will explore a local Latino community while playing Ingress for one to two hours. As they play, they must defend and hack at least five portals within the community. At the location of each portal, they will search for and document evidence of African influences within the local culture. In addition, they will use the questions that they brainstormed in Step 4 to interview at least one member of the community in the target language regarding his or her knowledge of the African influences that the learners discover. All of these observations and interactions will be recorded by the learners on the Portal Handout. Teachers must emphasize to that in order to complete Step 6 of this activity, learners should record the interviews in video format and should take as many pictures of the physical locations and items discovered as possible.
-
The learners will then regroup as a class and share what they learned. Teachers should be sure to ask the learners the following questions:
-
What types of places did you visit? Were they important community areas? Why or why not?
-
What African influences did you note as you traveled through the community?
-
Were the people that you spoke to aware of those influences? Is it important that they be aware of those influences? Why or why not?
-
Next, learners will promote the African cultural influences that they explored. This promotion can take place within the local learning community (school) or the larger community as a whole. Using Aurasma Studio, a free augmented reality tool, learners will use the photographs that they took in Step 4 as trigger images to create auras that provide additional information regarding the cultural and historical importance of the images to people who view the images with their mobile devices. In order create these auras, learners will overlay the images with video information about the origins of the influence selected. This video information may include the interviews that the learners conducted in Step 4 or information that the learners record of themselves explaining their research on the cultural history of the influence selected. For more information on how to use Aurasma, please see the Aurasma Instructions Handout.
|
|---|
