I used a two-part project with my Grade 9 Academic Geography class in an attempt to promote the use of technology along with using higher order thinking skills (Bloom's Taxonomy).
The first step involved researching a Canadian Resource Mega-Project. The assignment can be found here:Mega-Projects. They presented the project using Prezi, which for most of the class was a new presentation application to learn. The project required that they find out the background of the mega-project, advantages and disadvantages of the project for Canada/Canadians, and perhaps most importantly, the different viewpoints of the different stakeholders involved (ie government, local residents, environmental groups, etc.) This required higher order thinking skills such as comparing, investigating, and creating. They completed the prezi's and presented them, revealing that some of the students did indeed use these higher order thinking skills, where others mainly found information, copied it, and read it. This made for a good learning opportunity as we were able to look at the differences and learn the importance of synthesizing the information and being able to explain in your own words.
The second part of the project got the students to work in a group as a specific stakeholder regarding the proposed Keystone Pipeline. The groups were given different roles like Canadian Government, US Government, TransCanada Pipeline, US Oil Companies, Local Residents, Environmental Groups etc. This required the students to put themselves "in the shoes" of those groups. The first step was to research the project, and find out as much as they could about how their assigned stakeholder would feel about the issue. Then, they used IMovie on the Ipads, to create a 2 minute video which attempts to convince others of their point of view. They filmed clips of themselves playing the roles, and grabbed appropriate pictures and videos online to make their video as convincing as possible. They were also able to add text and music to make their video more informative and convincing. This part of the assignment can be found here: Keystone. Many of the students really enjoyed using IMovie and the Ipads, although we did encounter several "technology glitches" along the way
*Note - Higher Order Thinking Skills are shown in bold
The first step involved researching a Canadian Resource Mega-Project. The assignment can be found here:Mega-Projects. They presented the project using Prezi, which for most of the class was a new presentation application to learn. The project required that they find out the background of the mega-project, advantages and disadvantages of the project for Canada/Canadians, and perhaps most importantly, the different viewpoints of the different stakeholders involved (ie government, local residents, environmental groups, etc.) This required higher order thinking skills such as comparing, investigating, and creating. They completed the prezi's and presented them, revealing that some of the students did indeed use these higher order thinking skills, where others mainly found information, copied it, and read it. This made for a good learning opportunity as we were able to look at the differences and learn the importance of synthesizing the information and being able to explain in your own words.
The second part of the project got the students to work in a group as a specific stakeholder regarding the proposed Keystone Pipeline. The groups were given different roles like Canadian Government, US Government, TransCanada Pipeline, US Oil Companies, Local Residents, Environmental Groups etc. This required the students to put themselves "in the shoes" of those groups. The first step was to research the project, and find out as much as they could about how their assigned stakeholder would feel about the issue. Then, they used IMovie on the Ipads, to create a 2 minute video which attempts to convince others of their point of view. They filmed clips of themselves playing the roles, and grabbed appropriate pictures and videos online to make their video as convincing as possible. They were also able to add text and music to make their video more informative and convincing. This part of the assignment can be found here: Keystone. Many of the students really enjoyed using IMovie and the Ipads, although we did encounter several "technology glitches" along the way
*Note - Higher Order Thinking Skills are shown in bold