Gavin Johnson (Home – ITGS at SWA)
Give kids the issue – student go out and find different sources. Otherwise they just focus on the one source.
Collaborative discussion using – EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing
Society and Technology movies:
- iRobot
- Minority Report
- Surrogates
Ways to encourage discussion:
- Use forum as a way (rather than blog) to encourage students to explore the issues.
- “Jerry Springer” show activity
- To improve written answers: take two written answers and create a wiki for each. Two groups work separately on a model answer using the assessment rubric.
GLOBAL ISSUES SOURCES:
www.bbc.com (go to specific technology or health or location pages)
Global Issues Network (EARCOS conference one a year in Asia)
avert.com (statistics)
United Nations page (can subscribe for daily networks on Wire)
NPR podcasts (www.npr.org), ex: This American Life
Nova the world in balance. I think www.nova.com?
Ideas:
1. Have them research different sides of the issue before they debate/converse.
2. Have them research different sides and don’t tell them which side they will debate until they arrive in class.
3. Forums (Moodle?) – have the comment and discuss and they can’t repeat ideas that other students said
4. Have them discuss a future global issue that might happen in 5 years
5. In a TOK class they were on an “island of knowledge” and they rotated around to different island of the different types of knowledge, you can 5 people at each island and they have to rotate around each island and discuss their topic. (I think I wrote this down correctly – please correct if needed J )
6. Give students a role to play, ex: Director of Greenpeace, to discuss. They have to learn about different stakeholders.
7. Discuss without talking: using big pieces of paper, quote in the middle (provocative). They have a conversation with written words, then switch papers and comment on other discussion, then post around the room and walk around with pens and make them comment.
8. Jerry Springer talk-show with class – pick a host, audience members can ask questions
9. Quickfire Challenges (from Chef show) – give them a time limit, given a topic and they have to make a storyboard to make (they will then pass on their storyboard to a different group but don’t tell them first), then pass on the boards and the next groups uses flipcams to record 3 pieces of the storyboard and then later discuss. The video might only be 30 seconds. Brings up communication discussion. Good activity to do in the beginning of the year.
10. How to take discussions to writing papers – model low, medium, high level examples, have them grade them, teach them about the rubrics, etc peer grading, give them a timed period to write about it and then have them in groups grade the responses with a rubric. Do it again and again so they get used to format and you can give them the say question so they can write about it again and improve. Have to work with them over and over.
Topics:
– AIDS
– Elections in Afghanistan
