In the month of February, CIVIX held three consecutive Democracy Bootcamp events in Alberta in collaboration with various educators’ conventions:
- Edmonton | February 6th | North Central Teachers’ Convention Association
- Calgary | February 13th | Calgary City Teachers’ Convention Association
- Edmonton | February 27th | Greater Edmonton Teachers’ Convention Association
Read below for a short recap of these events!
The days started with a session on the impact of Student Vote as well as a preview of lesson plans and programming resources.
Teachers Jennifer Keay and Alix Esterhuizen took time to present their tips and tricks for running the Student Vote program at the NCTCA and CCTCA conference, respectively.
The next session focussed on the PoliTalks program and included strategies for creating a discussion-friendly classroom and facilitating constructive conversations with a focus on exploring how our cognitive biases can make it difficult to talk about politics.
Each event held a “State of Democracy” panel, featuring experts discussing current challenges to democracy, including growing divisions, disinformation and distrust in institutions, as well as strategies for how to address them.
Our first Edmonton Bootcamp panel was moderated by Graham Thomson and featured panelists David Kahane, Oksana Kishchuk, Jana Pruden, and Senator Paula Simons.
Calgary’s panel was moderated by Jason Markusoff and featured Duane Bratt, Michael King, Oksana Kishchuk and Cheryl Oates.
Our final Edmonton Bootcamp panel was moderated by Jana Pruden, and featured Margie Patrick, John Santos, Laura Stolte, and Graham Thomson.
The event also featured a beta-test of CIVIX’s brand new community consultation card game, Tipping Point! Taking on the role of different stakeholders, participants deliberated to come to a consensus on what features to include in a hypothetical community development project. Given finite resources, participants had to negotiate between the priorities of their stakeholder group and what would be best for the community as a whole.
The last session introduced the new CTRL-F: AI Literacy lessons and explored how new AI tools work and how they can be used responsibly in the classroom, followed by practical tips on how to identify AI-generated content.
A special thank you to all participants, our sponsors and the Alberta’s Teachers Association (ATA).
