CocoCast App User Guide
- June 13, 2024
- CocoCast
Table of Contents
CocoCast App User Guide
Curriculum Guide / Lesson Plan
CocoCast: The Buses are Coming: Will You Ride? Experiencing the Bus (Pt 2 of 4)
Overview
In this lesson, students will use the CocoCast app to learn civics and social studies. These lessons are inspired by the Sa Diego Museum of African American Art’s 3D exhibit titled “The Buses Are Coming” of
August 2022. The lessons in this series will leverage augmented reality (AR) and use CocoCast, an app created by Three Space Lab to be used on the iPad, to allow learners to examine an artifact that would be otherwise inaccessible. The choice to employ AR will allow learners to experience the complexity of the emotions surrounding the bombing of the Freedom Ride bus in Anniston, Georgia. The lesson supports the development of oracy and literacy skills as students learn to evaluate historical events. NOTE: This lesson is part two of a four lesson sequence.
In Segment 2, learners will interact with the 3D model of the burning bus using CocoCast.
Subject Area(s): Social Studies/History; English Language Arts
Grade Level(s): 6-8
Learning Standards: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
- NSS-WH.5-12.9
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.R.H.6-8.2
Lesson Duration: 45 minutes
**** First, access the CocoCast app via Verizon Innovative Learning HQ: https://www.verizon.com/learning/ar-vr-apps/CocoCast/22
Then, experience the app via iPad.
Objectives
Students will:
- Recall prior knowledge to identify elements of the Civil Rights Movement
- Clarify their knowledge of events, participants, and geography and explain their understanding
Essential Questions
- How far should a person go to ensure their rights are protected?
- How might we use AR (augmented reality) to better understand historical events?
Pacing
- Engage: 5 minutes
- Explore: 30 minutes
- Wrap Up: 10 minutes
Materials and Preparation
- Smartboard or projector and whiteboard
- Set of learner handouts
- iPad or Tablet with the CocoCast app (minimum one tablet per pair of learners)
Vocabulary
Source: Webster’s Dictionary
- civil rights: the nonpolitical rights of a citizen, especially the rights of personal liberty guaranteed to U.S. citizens by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and by acts of Congress
- direct action: action that seeks to achieve an end directly and by the most immediately effective means (such as a boycott or strike)
- observation: the act of recognizing or noting a fact or the presence of an attribute
- liberty: Webster’s dictionary identifies the following senses of liberty: the quality or state of being free; the power to do as one pleases; freedom from physical restraint; freedom from arbitrary or despotic (see DESPOT sense 1) control; the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges; the power of choice; also, a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant; privilege
- nonviolence: abstention from violence as a matter of principle; also, the quality or state of being nonviolent; avoidance of violence; nonviolent demonstrations for the purpose of securing political ends
- segregation: a) the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart; b) the enforced separation of different racial groups in a country, community, or establishment
Background
Segregation and Transportation (1946)
Photographs provide evidence of some of the ways in which segregationist customs shaped society in the United States, and especially in the South, the customs were supported by law. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) began to contest segregation through the court system. A key victory came when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Irene Morgan in her case against the state of Virginia in 1946. The Court agreed that Virginia’s law requiring the separation of blacks and whites on transportation because they “burden interstate commerce”.
Read the text of the ruling at the Library of Congress [https://tile.loc.gov/storageservices/service/ll/usrep/usrep328/usrep328373/usrep328373.pdf]. However, the southern states refused to conform to the ruling.
The Journey of Reconciliation (1947)
To challenge the implementation of the ruling in the southern states, in 1947,
two activists of the Congress for Racial Equality (known as CORE), Bayard
Rustin and George Houser, organized a two-week bus ride across the region.
This nonviolent direct action took eight black men and eight white men on an
interstate bus from Washington, D.C., through Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Kentucky, and continued in the face of arrests and convictions
of some of the volunteer riders. This action inspired bothRosa Parks in 1955
and the Freedom Riders of 1961-2.
Boynton v. Virginia (1960)
An African American law student named Bruce Boynton purchased a Trailways bus
ticket from Montgomery, Alabama, to Washington, D.C. There was a 40-minute
stop planned at Richmond, Virginia, along the bus route. Boynton went into the
bus station’s segregated restaurant and sat on the side designated for white
patrons. Boynton explained that he was a passenger on an interstate bus and
refused to move when asked to do so by both a waitress and management. After
he arrived, a policeman detained Boynton. He was prosecuted, found guilty, and
punished for illegally continuing to be on the property after being told to
leave.
Boynton filed a petition to dismiss and claimed that his constitutional rights were violated when he appealed his conviction to the Hustings Court in Richmond. The motion was rejected by the Hustings Court. Virginia’s top court upheld the decision. The case went to the Supreme Court, which found that The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 should be interpreted to ban all forms of segregation by race in any type of public transportation. This decision was built on the earlier Morgan v. Virginia case and laid the groundwork for the first Freedom Ride in 1961.
Resources for Further Learning
Arsenault, Raymond (2006). Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial
Justice. Oxford University Press. pp. 53. ISBN978-0-19-513674-6. (book)
Nelson, Stanley, director. Freedom Riders. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/freedomriders Accessed Nov 1, 2022. (documentary)
“Powering Learning about Nonviolent Action.” Home | Global Nonviolent Action Database, Swarthmore
College, Including the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, the Peace Collection, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/ (database entry)
Staff, Montgomery Advertiser. “The Freedom Rides across the South.” The
Freedom Rides Integrate Bus
Stations in the South and Alabama, Montgomery Advertiser, July 30, 2020,
“‘The First Freedom Ride:’ Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE.” Edited by Ed Edwin, HISTORY
MATTERS – The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, Columbia University Oral History Collection, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6909 (first person narrative, 7 minutes)
“The Freedom Riders Reunite 50 Years Later.” Oprah.com, Oprah.com, July 4, 2020, https://www.oprah.com/own-oprahshow/the-freedom-riders-reunite-50 -years-later(video)
Step-by-Step Classroom Guide
-
Engage: 5 minutes
The facilitator prepares learners to use the iPads and reviews norms and expectations around engagement
when working online. -
Explore: 30 minutes
Distribute the iPads to the learners. Invite them to visit the Verizon Learning Lab website to watch the CocoCast demonstration video.
Point out that the CocoCast User Guide is available on the same page of the website.
Next, ask learners to open up CocoCast on their devices and to explore the object they see, the 3D Model of the bombed-out Greyhound Bus from the attack in Alabama in 1961.
Give learners time to explore, and then use the “Visible Thinking Routine: What Makes You Say That?” to guide the learners toward interpretation and developing skills of justification. Ask:
- What’s going on? What might have happened to the bus?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
Wrap Up: 10 minutes
To conclude this segment, the facilitator may ask learners to write a short
response to the following reflection prompt:
- What do you notice about this image now that you didn’t notice before doing this exercise?
- How has your understanding of this image changed?
Note: the facilitator might ask learners to capture the group’s collective knowledge by taking a photograph of the writing on the whiteboard or using an application such as Google Jamboard, FilpBoard, or Pocket to capture everyone’s thinking. Be sure to share the Wonder questions with all learners as they serve as point of departure for the activity in The Buses Are Coming: Lesson 2 of 4.
Ask learners: how does your interaction with this model help you to understand the motivations and impact of the Freedom Riders? Write a statement in which you connect what you’ve learned to the idea of making a sacrifice for a cause that is important to you.
Choose two of the resources from those available to you and find out about the events that led to the image you viewed in CocoCast.
References
- Oprah.com
- The Freedom Rides integrate bus stations in the South and Alabama
- The Freedom Riders Reunite 50 Years Later
- Watch Freedom Riders | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
- CocoCast | Verizon Innovative Learning