Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
6 f <br /> incorporation of student vision and creativity into the product of Shaping Orange County's <br /> Future. <br /> The students will be given an opportunity to provide direct input to Orange County's vision <br /> through a variety of means. Students will be taught a variety of basic planning concepts through <br /> interactive educational presentations, design exercises, a cooperative countywide field survey <br /> held in conjuction with other schools, hands-on planning technology experience, and consensus <br /> building facilitation. These meetings and events will be documented by video and tape cassette. <br /> Following the initial in-class visits, a curriculum designed to improve general written, oral, <br /> problem identification and solving, mapping, and artistic expression will also generate essays, <br /> video recordings, and artwork of the students on the way they feel about the county and the shape <br /> it should take in the future. These documents and drawings along with the video clips will be <br /> shared with the Shaping Orange County's Future Task Force, elected officials, interested <br /> citizens, and the students themselves in a multimedia presentation sculpted from materials <br /> collected from the in-class meetings and assignments. Portions of these documents will be <br /> incorporated where applicable into the Task Force's final report to the elected officials. At the <br /> end of the in-class presentations and project curriculum, 50 of the students from each grade level <br /> will attend an intensive, day-long planning charette where they will learn more planning design <br /> techniques, work with students from other parts of the county (within the two school districts), <br /> and provide more input into the final product of Shaping Orange County's Future. <br /> This Youth Visioning Effort would benefit the overall education of the participating students by: <br /> introducing them to community planning processes and the multi-disciplinary profession of <br /> planning; <br /> o enhancing the student's oral and written communication skills; <br /> o providing leadership and consensus building skills; <br /> ac, showing how many things they are learning in school are interrelated and come together in <br /> the"real world"; and <br /> o most importantly, allowing their voices to be heard in shaping the future of Orange County. <br /> Shaping Orange County's Future will be able to provide excellent staffing service to the students <br /> through the coordination of the four local government jurisdictions involved, two school <br /> districts, and students of UNC at Chapel Hill. More specifically, Shaping Orange County's <br /> Future offers: <br /> a professional planning staff from three jurisdictions; <br /> o volunteers from UNC's Department of City and Regional Planning; <br /> o the collaboration of teachers within the two public school districts; <br /> o the capacity to use the information gleaned from the Youth Visioning Effort in the Shaping <br /> Orange County's Future initiative;and <br /> o the application of previous youth education experience with a less intensive Shaping Orange <br /> County's Future pilot project scheduled for this Fall with area 5th graders. <br />