Kids Join 7 Year Walk With "Out of Eden Learn": Dr. Liz Dawes Duraisingh of Harvard's Project Zero

Oct 03, 2014, 11:56 PM

The Social Network Show welcomes Liz Dawes Duraisingh to the October 3, 2014 episode.

Liz, a Principal Investigator at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Project Zero shares information about Project Zero and the Out of Eden Learn project. Liz co-directs Out of Eden Learn and tells us how they came to collaborate with Paul Salopek's Out of Eden Walk. Paul Salopek is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is taking a seven-year walk around the world and creating a chronicle of human life on Earth. The Out of Eden Learn project is the key education partner to the walk and is teaching kids about the world and our connection to it. Liz gives examples of the teaching methods used and the positive aspects that result. To learn more about this project, you can visit the website, http://learn.outofedenwalk.com/

Liz Dawes Duraisingh is a research associate and principal investigator at HGSE’s Project Zero where she co-directs Out of Eden Learn, an online learning community designed to accompany journalist Paul Salopek’s seven-year walk along the migratory pathways of our ancient human ancestors and his experiment in “slow journalism." In Out of Eden Learn, diverse groups of school-age students are invited to slow down to observe the world carefully and to listen attentively to others; to exchange stories about people, place, and identity; and to reflect on how their own lives connect to bigger human stories. This work builds on Dawes Duraisingh’s doctoral research, which explored the ways in which young people use the past to help make sense of their own lives, identities, and values, for which she won the 2013 Larry Metcalf Exemplary Dissertation Award from the National Council for the Social Studies. She was previously a middle and high school history teacher for eight years, working in both England and Australia.

Learn more about Project Zero and Out of Eden Learn Blog