Student+Audience

The Merrillville Community School Corporation has a very diverse population. We are considered to be an urban fringe school due to our proximity to Chicago and Gary. Many of the students are transient, but just as many have grown up in the Merrillville school corporation. Our schools are divided up into five elementary schools that feed into an Intermediate school servicing both 5th and 6th grade. The students then go into one Middle School, 7th and 8th grades and onto the High School which has its' own Freshman building.

Merrillville Intermediate School

 * Enrollment is over 1,000 students
 * Class sizes in the Intermediate School are around 25 - 28
 * Over half of the school is on free/reduced lunch
 * Almost 75% of the school is of Black or Hispanic origin.
 * Has a certified Library Media Specialist in the Media Center

 Many of the students at MIS posses the necessary information literacy skills needed to succeed at this project. Others who have transferred in from other less fortunate school districts may need to be brought up to speed. The great thing about this project is that it utilizes social networking sites that the students are already familiar with. Edmodo is the only one they may not know about and it is very similar to Facebook, so they should have no problem navigating it easily. When students are not as advanced in their information literacy skills more one on one time is needed to help them understand what the expectations of the project are. An extra one on one mini lesson on using Inspire or how to evaluate information should give them the confidence to do research and ask questions as needed. This should not be too much of an issue due to the teacher and media specialist creating a custom search in Google. Many of the students will have already done inquiry-based projects in Elementary school or even 5th grade. I think this project will be one that is interesting to them because they will get to use sites they are already familiar with and usually do not get to use at school. I think that is a highly motivating factor of what makes this project so exciting. They also can download the app for all four types of social media to their phone, because even if students do not have internet access at home, they all have fancy phones. In the real world they already update their facebook status, tweet, and blog from their phones or personal computers. This project is just another extension of that.

Merrillville High School

 * Enrollment is at 2,288 students
 * Class sizes are around 17 - 30
 * 40% receives free/reduced lunch
 * Almost 75% of the school is of Black or Hispanic origin
 * Has two certified Media Specialists and two Media Centers
 * Has an 87% graduation rate.

 If the students have been in the MVSC for any amount of time, the students arrive at MHS with many of the information skills needed to succeed with this project. This project will generate excitement because of its' similarity to the NCAA bracket. Students who are not familiar with the NCAA bracket idea will require a quick overview of how the bracket works and then should be able to complete the project with no problems. Students who need more instruction about appropriate sites and information evaluation will be able to receive one on one time with the media specialist while the other students are working. The atmosphere in the media center is always one of casual learning. The media specialist is there to answer questions and to guide. The students need less direction at this age and I have found that the more I "teach" in a traditional sense, the more the students get bored. When I hand them a project, I go over it and then let them work on it independently, I have found that the students are much more excited to do the work, and take ownership for their project.