At the end of this six week session, our Eagles will deliver a world changing speech: standing in the shoes of a historical figure, at a particular time, in a particular place.

Learning to move people, to call them to action, is an important skill for a hero.  But the Speech Quest is about more than writing, polishing and delivering a powerful speech.

Eagles also will be required to use Expedia, Trip Advisor and other travel related sites to create an itinerary and budget for a multi-day trip to visit the city where their speech will be delivered, including touring historical sites, museums and other point of interest.

While planning the trip, Eagles will make a “bare bones,” “luxury” and “actual” budget, so they can learn to make the difficult trade offs in time, money, breadth, depth and comfort that traveling requires.

Also included in the Speech Quest is the requirement to create a Google Earth guided tour of the city, including street level views of the sites to be visited, including pictures, images and historical commentary (if you haven’t tried Google Earth – it’s an amazing tool.)

Even the introduction to these tools and the various adventures and expositions has raised important questions, like:

“Why do we travel?”

“Is it for new adventures and new experiences or to learn deeply about a culture?”

“Is it better to spend a little time in many places, staying in hotels, or to spend an entire week or month living with one local family?”

Learning to ask questions is as important as the final product.  So is making difficult tradeoffs between time, money and goals. So is learning new cutting edge tools.

All a part of becoming a hero in the 21st century.