How a problem-solving group of 6th graders helped found the
'Beacon of Honor - Awakens Our Flag' service
[Note: Beacon of Honor as of March 1, 2018 has been re-branded as Flag Steward]
Here's the heartening story of Ms. Lori Wheeler's Heritage Elementary 6th graders:
In January of 2016, I (a USMC Veteran mentor) presented a patriotic nonprofit project idea to Ms. Wheeler's 6th grade class at Heritage Elementary in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. All three of my kids attended Heritage Elementary from 2005-2014 and my Junior Achievement, Heritage Run Club, and other volunteer efforts were supported by Ms. Wheeler during that time. So, she was familiar with my teaching style and penchant for creatively engaging with students. The purpose of the patriotic project I presented was to create an authentic learning experience for the kids. We would empower them with technology that would showcase their writing skills and multimedia capabilities to the Highlands Ranch community by telling the stories of the Veterans honored at the Highlands Ranch Veterans Memorial. They would bring the Veterans' stories trapped inside their dedication bricks to life by using the Beacon of Honor technology platform that I had launched in November 2015. So, I started off by teaching them the basics about the new, location-based beacon technology I had been experimenting with and how it can interact with mobile apps. Then, I showed how the combination of a beacon with an app can bring an object to multimedia life - such as the U.S. Flag in their classroom. Within a few sessions the kids were helping to program and lead a daily Beacon of Honor ceremony to make their Pledge of Allegiance more meaningful.
Here's an example BoH-AoF ceremony they filmed to submit their project to the Create Something Great symposium.
In January of 2016, I (a USMC Veteran mentor) presented a patriotic nonprofit project idea to Ms. Wheeler's 6th grade class at Heritage Elementary in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. All three of my kids attended Heritage Elementary from 2005-2014 and my Junior Achievement, Heritage Run Club, and other volunteer efforts were supported by Ms. Wheeler during that time. So, she was familiar with my teaching style and penchant for creatively engaging with students. The purpose of the patriotic project I presented was to create an authentic learning experience for the kids. We would empower them with technology that would showcase their writing skills and multimedia capabilities to the Highlands Ranch community by telling the stories of the Veterans honored at the Highlands Ranch Veterans Memorial. They would bring the Veterans' stories trapped inside their dedication bricks to life by using the Beacon of Honor technology platform that I had launched in November 2015. So, I started off by teaching them the basics about the new, location-based beacon technology I had been experimenting with and how it can interact with mobile apps. Then, I showed how the combination of a beacon with an app can bring an object to multimedia life - such as the U.S. Flag in their classroom. Within a few sessions the kids were helping to program and lead a daily Beacon of Honor ceremony to make their Pledge of Allegiance more meaningful.
Here's an example BoH-AoF ceremony they filmed to submit their project to the Create Something Great symposium.
Then, during the week of February 14, the students took the project plans in a new, more personal direction. That week the students discovered and became motivated to fix a flag communication issue within their school district. The President called for the U.S. flag on all public buildings to be lowered to half-staff in honor of Justice Scalia from February 13th to the 20th. On Tuesday, February 15th, when the students returned from the President's Day holiday, the students realized, via the Beacon of Honor app and ceremony they conducted each morning, that their U.S. Flag on the school flagpole should be at half-staff. The students informed the school's front office, but they said they had not received an email from the district telling them to lower the flags. So, for 2 more days, the front office was informed by the students to lower the flags and they were denied because an email had not been received. And, this was the case for 4 out of 5 schools throughout the district. So, the students got motivated and decided to address this situation with the district by writing their Assistant Superintendent and telling him of this flag problem. That Thursday afternoon an email went out from the district informing schools of the correct flag status. From that moment forward, as the kids correctly put the flags at half-staff on Friday, February 19th, the students decided to focus the Beacon of Honor project on helping schools, students, and staff better informed of the U.S. Flag status. They began what is now called, the 'Beacon of Honor - Awakens Our Flag' project, a tech-driven civic-minded class project building better student citizens.
Here's an inspirational outdoor ceremony the students conducted in March using their BoH-AoF service.
Before I knew the kids took it upon themselves to start contacting school principals to introduce their Beacon of Honor - Awakens Our Flag (BoH-AoF) project. They genuinely and inspiringly wanted to help other schools use cutting-edge technology to properly honor Our Flag and all the patriotic stories woven into it. They scheduled some presentations with principals at their schools and invited others to visit Heritage to experience their BoH-AoF project firsthand. They went all the way up the school district chain of command and eventually invited and presented to the Douglas County School District (DCSD) Superintendent, Liz Fagen, Assistant Superintendent, Ted Knight, Chief Technology Officer, Sethi Guatam, and many others. The DCSD leaders were so impressed with their presentation skills, passion for this project, and dedication to help other students and schools become better citizens, that they immediately gave them a grant to deploy Beacon of Honor - Awakens Our Flag devices at 22 schools.
GO HERE to read the district story about this project
[ Ms. Wheeler's class presenting the Beacon of Honor - Awakens Our Flag project to the Superintendent and several other DCSD staff leaders and school Principals ]
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Upon returning from the winter break, the team reduced the number of ceremonies to twice per week. This was based upon feedback from a teacher survey about the BoH ceremonies. The majority found the ceremonies to be beneficial to students, but wanted to reduce the frequency to make the ceremony more impactful. So, for the rest of the school-year we recruited more student readers and content developers - including some first graders who were learning about America's symbols. There were several times when I received feedback about how much the ceremonies were positively affecting students in the classrooms and those gaining confidence by leading the ceremonies over the PA system. As the 2016-17 school-year and the Beacon of Honor's testing phase 2 came to a close, the project grew from 1 classroom of 22 students to 2 schools reaching approximately 1,100 kids. We learned three important items to improve for this 2017-18 school year: 1) create one special "Flag Day" per week to perform in individual classrooms or broadcast the ceremony school-wide, 2) ensure the ceremony script is completed in less than 2 minutes, and 3) recruit a Beacon of Honor ambassador or group of ambassadors for each school / classroom to pull up the 'PlaceApp' and its BoH content each morning, be responsible for making sure the U.S. Flag is set at the right position, lead the weekly pre-Pledge ceremony, and make sure classrooms are displaying and following along with the weekly pre-Pledge ceremony content, delivered via the app, on the classroom screen.
[NOTE: Also, during the 2016-17 school-year, a separate high-school test of BoH was established to use it to relay daily 'U.S. History Moments to Remember' to 11th grade U.S. History classes. This program did a good job of engaging students, but is too difficult to scale using the current software. The next generation software, version 2.0 of the PlaceApp, should provide a more scalable solution for history classes to use this service to bring historical places to life.]
For this 2017-18 school year, we're putting the finishing touches on the new version 2.0 PlaceApp software and its integration with the Beacon of Honor project. We expect the software completion in December 2017 and a pilot program to begin in January 2018.
... So, stay tuned on all fronts ...
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Here's a short video demo of what BoH-Awakens Our Flag v2.0 delivers.