School: Sioux Falls New Technology High School
    Sioux Falls, SD, USA

4 students, ages 14-15 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on March 21, 2010. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s):

Classes and Teachers: Russ Townsend, April Ross

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://

1. Description of Our Team

When our teachers rolled out this project they had us fill out a note card that had two peoples names that we wanted to work with. Then the teachers parried us with one person that we wanted to work with and 2 other people. Our group contains Monica, Emily, Travis and David. Emily, Monica and Travis are 14 years old, David is 15 years old. When we were dividing up the task we went by our strengths, David is good at Technology so he made the flash videos. Travis strength is figuring out problems so when we had a problem he was the one to go to. Emily is a great writer so she helped us all write our parts of the project. Monica’s strength is making sure we are going in the right direction in the project because of this she was the rubric checker. We each did a leader in politics and the arts, this helped us divide up the work so we could be more efficient in getting the project done. We had tons of help from Mr. Townsend who was always there to bounce ideas off and was willing to have us interview him.

2. Summary of Our Project

The main purpose of the Doors to Diplomacy Web Project is to show you the connection between leadership and diplomacy. When we first found out about this project we thought that we could show this connection well because our group considers them selves a leader. If we can find out more about diplomacy we could use that in our leadership roles. In our website we put in different leaders in politics and music and then we showed the connection between them and diplomacy. We thought that this would be a good way to show kids around the world that the leaders today also use diplomacy. In addition to make us more unique we added a Spanish component and we have interactive games and polls.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Our very first barrier was deciding what website builder we should use. There are a lot of good website builders out there and it was hard to narrow it down to find out what one we wanted. To narrow it down, we made a list of pros and cons. Weebly had the most pros so we decided to use that. We wanted to import a video to or website but Weebly doesn’t allow you to import a video, so went though next steps. We figured out that we could put it on YouTube and then put it on the website, we could make it into a Movie Maker and link it onto the website or we could try to put it into Adobe Flash and then put it on the website. Our group decided that we would put it on YouTube and then put it on our website.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Our participation in the Doors to Diplomacy has opened our minds to how much diplomacy is happening around the world. We all just thought it was something that Presidents and Prime Ministers did but we came to the realization that we can do it too.

6. How did your activities and research for this Doors to Diplomacy Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Since we are in a Spanish Global Issues class we decided to add in a Spanish component so Spanish people could understand what our website is talking about. In addition people who want to learn how to speak Spanish can learn select words through our website. As a group we learned how to work together, listen to other people’s ideas, and reaching out to the community to better the world. We demonstrate the relationships among local, regional, national, and global issues. To show this we wrote about leaders from all over the world and showed a problem that that leader is facing and then we brought it back to the community by interview people from Sioux Falls. Through out this project we found ourselves thinking of other people more, reflecting on our leadership, and what we could do to make us leaders in diplomacy.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your Doors to Diplomacy project?

Our group used a variety of different technological recourses like Movie Maker, Adobe Software, PowerPoint, easybib.com for the citations page, books for our leaders, and video cameras to record our interviews. These software and other technological tools helped us complete the website from the Home page to the Bibliography. We pretty much located all of these tools from prior knowledge as well as using the internet to see what we could use to include into our website. I think the most helpful technology we used was Adobe Flash because we used it to create some of our review games for one of our pages.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your Doors to Diplomacy project both on-line and in person.

Our team has acted as ambassadors to show importance of international affairs and diplomacy by talking about how leadership and diplomacy are similar. When Monica went to a Middle School to talk about our school she brought up the website and she talked about the relationship between leaders and diplomacy to future New Tech students. As well as talking to other people about leadership and how they think it affects our community and everywhere around the world. We will connect with our visitors by telling them about ourselves and what they are going to learn by looking at our website. Our group is going to have different activities to encourage people to visit our site. The people that have visited our site or seen it liked what we had to offer such as different polls and games so the site is interactive with our visitors.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

Our group does think that our website will make an impact in the community. We are thinking about putting our website on the School Districts Library Page, so then students from all over the district will see it. We hope to do this so those kids learn more about leaders, how to become a leader, diplomacy, and making a difference in the community. After we are done with our website we are going to be presenting this to our fellow classmates and we might even have panelists come to see our projects. These panelists could include the superintendent of the Sioux Falls School District and the vice superintendent. Since we go to a New Tech school we are constantly working on projects and presenting to people around the community and our class. In the future we can tell people about our website. In additions we go out into the community to schools or business partners. When they ask what we are working on we will tell them we competed in a world wide competition. We will also show them the website and ask them to show it to people that walk into their business. In the future we hope that our website can be reached by people all around the world!

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

We had a lot of help from the community, when we put something new on the website we would ask the other students in our school what they thought of it. If the student gave us a suggestion we would really take the suggestion to heart and try to incorporate that into the website. For our interview we had asked our advisor for this project and Dr. Messick they both were very happy to be interviewed by our team. We also had help from all the different websites out there that had information on a leader that we were researching. Also we would like to thank Weston Lyon who posted the YouTube video; Leaders Use Diplomacy, Do You. We are using his YouTube video on our website.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

We did a lot of research for this website that lead to many discoveries that we made. Monica was surprised when she learned more about the economic recession that happened in the United Kingdom. The recession didn’t hit South Dakota as much as it did other places so it was surprising for Monica to learn that other places not just the U.S was hit by the recession. Emily was surprised that there was a women president in Liberia that is something that the U.S has not had yet. That is one of the reasons Emily picked Ellen Sirleaf for her Leaders in Politics page on. Our project has not lead to other award or recognitions yet but we hope it does!