Dear Puget Sound Teachers:

PugetSoundOff.org is a new website devoted to helping teens get involved in their local communities.

PugetSoundOff.org allows youth to engage in civic learning and express their opinions and interests with other area teens and community leaders using such multimedia as online videos and blog posts.

The site offers you and your students a set of tools to publish blogs, issue polls, form topical groups, post events and photo galleries, and more. It enables students to show their work. Teachers of any subject can use the new site to enhance or supplement their lesson plans and to make learning more fun. Using PugetSoundOff.org can help instructors teach students powerful new skills they will need in order to succeed in today's increasingly technologically-driven society.

Puget Sound Off is not a MySpace. PSO does have some networking tools, but is intended for teens with a public message. The site has strong content rules, provides for flagging of potentially inappropriate content and is monitored by a youth editorial council and staff. To encourage responsibility and diverse community viewpoints, all posts are open for viewing. Registration is required to post.

Here are a few ideas on using the site:

• English Teachers! Use the site to teach your students how to blog. Students can post their own writing, see what other students are doing, and comment on one another's creative and analytic pieces. Create a video story and share it.
• Social Studies Teachers! Publish commentary and hold discussions on local issues. Groups of students can use the site to promote their causes.
• Art Teachers! Have your students post their work online, giving them a sense of pride by sharing their work.
• Science & Math Teachers! Enable students to share questions, articles and links, or findings with each other and other students. Use a poll or blog to collect data.
• Foreign Language Teachers! Encourage your students to blog in the language they are learning.
• Clubs and Teams! Post events and reviews. Create a "group" for planning, announcements, and building support.

Join our launch competition!

On Sept. 1, PugetSoundOff.org, in partnership with the Seattle Times, is launching the Sound Off for Action competition. We are challenging teens to use the website to raise awareness about the Puget Sound-area issues and ideas they are passionate about and to inspire others to take action. Contestants will have the opportunity to win a mini-laptop, flip video camera or iPod shuffle.

Submissions are open on PugetSoundOff.org until Dec.1.

Please share information about the competition with your students. We also hope you utilize PugetSoundOff.org and help your students today become the online leaders of tomorrow.

Request a classroom visit

Use the contact form at http://pugetsoundoff.org/contact if you have questions or would like someone from Puget Sound Off to contact you about using the site in your classroom.

Additional Resources 

Access, Analyze, Act: A blueprint for 21 st Century Civic Engagement. This curriculum is designed to help you discover the power of social media for teaching media and information literacy, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and technology skills while developing students’ understanding of the political, social and economic issues facing our country.

New Mexico Media Literacy Project: Resource for media literacy information

Journalism 2.0 How to Survive and Thrive (A digital literacy guide for the information age). This guide provides a lot of information and activities to improve digital literacy skills. Local writer from News Tribune put it together with support from the Knight Foundation.

The first generation of “Digital Natives” – children who were born into and raised in the digital world – are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed. But who are these Digital Natives?

Project New Media Literacies - Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.

Click here to see this cool video discussing the importance of equipping young people to engage with media.

This project has been built through the efforts of the City of Seattle Department of Information Technology, YMCA of Greater Seattle - Metrocenter Branch, and the University of Washington Center for Communication & Civic Engagement -- in cooperation with community youth organizations and teens from across the city.