Use this thread to discuss your questions and comments about how to run the lesson.
This lesson went very well.
The main thing I would recommend is to stress the point that teams need to focus on a more specific aspect of the Internet Censorship or Surveillance subjects. Specifically focusing them on one country’s censorship relative to another’s resulted in more interesting and fact-based presentations, for example. As a teacher, next time, I will be a lot more involved in suggesting certain sub-topics so we get more variation in the class.
Still, it went well with very little intervention or adjustment. Nice lesson!
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I will be out in a few days and am wondering if anyone feels there would be an issue with me assigning them the research portion of this lesson, even though we have only completed through 1.10?
It might be harder for students to understand how the internet works without those 3 lessons that come in between so the research they do might be different than if they had those 3 lessons. Reading the overview and purpose of lesson 1.14 - it calls out a couple times that understanding how the internet works is key to this practice PT. That all being said if you are going to be out it might be the best case scenario for your classroom.
-Dani
@jennifer.woughterm I think your students will need exposure to the topics discussed in lessons 10-13 before they start the Pratice PT. Those lessons teach some important aspects of the internet that they’ll need understand. They will be better able to construct a well rounded Flash talk. I think if you have your students explore some of the general topics in lessons 10-13 and then do the research for the flash talk, they should be successful.
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I would really appreciate it if someone posted so quality EXAMPLES of student work for this Practice PT. Thanks
Here are some scripts from last year’s presentations. I limited my students to 3-5 slides with little or no text to discourage slide reading. They were told that the script should be able to stand on its own. It was also the first major assignment I used Google Classroom for submission so the citations are in a different document. These are mostly 10th graders taking their first AP course.
Student 1:
This is Net Neutrality and Bandwidth Throttling explained in two minutes. Net Neutrality is essentially the belief that all data is to be treated equally. There are many ideas and debates involving net neutrality, but for the sake of this talk, I will be focusing on Bandwidth Throttling. You may have heard this term in the news recently, possibly involving Comcast, one of many ISPs that has repeatedly throttled connections between the end user and intermediaries. End users of Netflix, BitTorrent, and other software, particularly peer-to-peer communications, saw a significant increase in latency while using their programs. This was due to Comcast and other ISPs artificially controlling traffic on their routers and sending packets between the end user and the destination that were designed to interfere with data transmission. Since Netflix makes up a large portion of internet traffic, Comcast decided it would penalize it for its heavy usage. This forced Netflix to pay Comcast a fee, essentially blackmailing the company. A 65% increase in connection speed was observed after the deal. According to Level 3, a company created to connect ISPs to the rest of the internet, accused six unnamed ISPs who degraded their quality of service to basically bribe Level 3 into paying them a fee for heavy traffic caused by certain programs. This action, which is known as paid peering, deliberately hurts the service which ISPs provide for their paying customers. Luckily, the Federal Communications Commission, created in 1934, stepped in and is creating various laws and regulations on how ISPs will proceed with their service. Since the 1980’s the FCC has been fighting for net neutrality and controlling ISPs, ensuring that ISPs and other communication providers continue to run ethically. The internet, designed originally to relay information from one point to another using the fastest route, should continue to be a free media by which individuals, businesses, and other organizations can communicate without the doubt that some entity is penalizing you for using it. So please, be aware if you are being hurt by ISPs just because you are using the services for which you pay for.
Student 2:
Internet Censorship is responsible for restricting access and information, and cutting off networks. This conflicts with the Internet’s guarantee of accessibility and reliability. Internet Censorship should exist, but it should not be abused to restrict the people’s access to the internet as a whole. Internet Censorship has many benefits, as it is capable of restricting explicit materials, viruses and malware, and access to other devices or copyrighted materials illegally. This can be abused however, as the host that regulates the network and router system may block the devices in the system from any material that they do not approve or agree on. Personal information that is used in order to provide legitimate information may invade one’s privacy, as shown in the European Case “Google v Gonzalez”. Google had sued, and lost, because part of enforcing Internet policies included respecting other Internet policies of other nations. America’s belief in freedom of speech had conflicted with Europe’s belief in safeguarding human rights. Internet censorship at an extreme level can lead to the loss of information, as specific nations have policies that completely block documents on topics that may degrade or ruin the reputation of a nation, even if it is true. For example, the Great Firewall of China exists to monitor and block users from accessing certain parts of the Internet. There are also severe punishments for successfully reaching information that would otherwise be illegal in China. Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, was sent to jail for 10 years for emailing information on the Tiananmen Square to the U.S… Censorship can easily be abused to removal information that conflicts with an authority’s belief, and to remove any other perspective. Over 400 million people use VPNs to protect their privacy, or to avoid internet censorship. These 400 million people represent only a portion of people who feel as though their privacy is being invaded, and that the authorities are not always making the right judgement, but abusing their powers as well.
Student 3:
My topic for today is the issue of computer and network surveillance. More specifically, I’m going to be talking about why government internet surveillance is necessary for the citizens of the US. Internet surveillance is simply the monitoring of internet activity, such as surfing the web, contacting other people via email or social media, or making purchases online. The packets of information that messages sent and received online are made of are also monitored.
Although not everybody agrees with monitoring the entire nation, I believe a measure of internet surveillance for all citizens is necessary for the sake of national security and for cutting down on crime. These days, it’s hard to tell who exactly could be a potential threat, and internet surveillance can be used to detect exactly who the threats are, and stop them before they do any harm. Fortunately, government internet surveillance has been used to stop some potential threats, in the past. Now, yes, there have been cases where the government has used internet surveillance in an unethical way, invading privacy and infringing on personal rights, but we shouldn’t abandon the idea of internet surveillance just because it has been used unethically, before.
If the government uses and monitors this kind of surveillance correctly, in a way where although everyone is monitored, only the people participating in suspicious internet activity are zeroed in on, it can still be a great resource for counter terrorism and for protecting the best interests of the US. However, there needs to be guidelines in place for how this internet surveillance takes place so that it is not used in an unethical way, and there should be software and protocol in place that can protect the programs used for internet surveillance and prevent them from getting into the wrong hands.
Student 4:
What is Internet Censorship? Why do we have it? What is its purpose?. According to Wikipedia Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. We have it for many reason, privacy is a main one. Internet censorship can protect personal information that could harm someone if it got into the wrong hands. A moderate amount of Internet censorship is important to have worldwide. A good majority would agree knowing In an Internet Society survey done in 2012, 71% of respondents agreed that “censorship should exist in some form on the Internet”.Positives to having internet censorship is that it can lessen the chance of identity theft. It can strengthens national security. It even protects children from seeing things they should be such as pornography, violent images, graphic videos, etc. Some negatives of having internet censorship is that it can limit you freedom of speech. The government can also use it to hide information from the public. It is estimated that about 80% of the world does not have access to unrestricted internet, which is a good thing. But there is still that 20% left which could pose a threat. Still nowadays information is everywhere. you can simple press a button on your computer and instantly found out cookies, requests, browsing history, and the overall status of a website. With so much information roaming the internet, it needs to be protected. Which is why internet censorship plays such a big part in security. Internet censorship has many layers to do it’s job. Such as technical censorship or also known as technical blocking. Which is used to block access to specific web-pages, domains, and IP addresses. There are three techniques that are most commonly used: IP blocking, DNS tampering, and URL blocking. These methods are used where control over websites are beyond the reach of authorities. So as you can see, Internet censorship is a huge topic that can affect everyone. Which is why it is very important we keep it, to prevent anything bad from happening.
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Thanks so much for sharing. I really appreciate it,
Right before this activity, I had my students do an info graphic on how the internet works by using all the key terms we went over in Unit 1. They basically made their own version of the abstraction picture in the HTTP lesson. It turned out to be a good review and I, as well as them wanted to become a little more familiar with creating info graphics.
I had them hang the info graphics around school. This is just a thought or idea for some. I’ve been struggling on how to catch up some students that missed a couple days, especially since the lessons are hard to do as homework or by yourself and this helped get them back up to speed before the practice PT.
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I love this idea! I wonder what kinds of metaphors students could come up with for the internet. The videos use a lot of helpful metaphors for the different parts of the internet, it would be cool to see what ones students could come up with! Nice idea @joe_padon thanks for sharing!
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I love this too! Do you have more details about lesson plan, and how you got them started in the right direction?
EndofUnit1-Padon.pdf (211.1 KB)
Attached is the assignment I gave them. I had not had time to put a rubric together, but did explain what I was looking for. The rubric will come later. It doesn’t say it in the lessons, but my steps were as follows:
- Go over assignment together.
- Review the article (link in assignment) together as a class of what makes a good infographic.
- Had them draw out the process of the internet first. I thought this would help them make an infographic easier, if they had the steps down on paper. This way they could brainstorm ways to create the graphic.
- If they had any questions as to the vocab, they were to go back to code.studio and review it or find the answer through research. I didn’t answer those questions for them. I wanted them to get the feel of what it’s going to be like on the Explore Task. They need to learn how to learn and be somewhat independent of me and their peers.
- Had them take 10 minutes to explore free infographic tools on the web.
- Pick a tool to use, and begin!
This assignment took them a while. I’m on block scheduling and it took 1 1/2 periods to finish, or roughly 2 hours. It could have taken them longer but I had them hurry a bit as we have a lot to still cover! I like @kaitie_obryan’s idea about creating their own metaphor. This may be a quicker lesson with the same results.
The main takeaways for me as a teacher:
- See if they can draw the path of the internet on paper to test their true understanding.
- Introduce infographics.
Hope this helps!
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Thanks Joe. I like this review idea too. So you did this activity, then they took the Chapter 2 test then the PT? I was thinking about getting the test out of the way then assigning the PT practice.
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do you want video’s of them, or just their papers?
I would love to see both.
I hope it is not too much trouble.
I was considering the options of “live” presentation versus video taped lessons as well.
Thanks for your help
Joe
Not yet. I have all weekend to make a final decision since we just wrapped up Stage 12 today.
Thanks for sharing this idea. I really liked 4) If they had any questions as to the vocab, they were to go back to code.studio and review it or find the answer through research. I didn’t answer those questions for them. I wanted them to get the feel of what it’s going to be like on the Explore Task. They need to learn how to learn and be somewhat independent of me and their peers.
Karen
I did Ch 2 Test first, then this assignment, following it up with the practice PT.
Just as a tip I forgot to mention, it helped when kids drew the picture before creating their infographic, but what seemed to work best was when kids wrote out the steps of how the information would travel and all the underlining details and then input pictures in place of their text. When kids wrote it first, then replaced their description with pictures, their infographics came easier.
@joe_padon the link in the PDF to the article you read doesn’t appear to be working. Do you mind putting the URL in this thread?
Oh sorry! I didn’t even think about the link not working with a pdf. Here is the link: Dos and Dont’s.
This is an old article, but we discussed the major points of it as a class as I believe they are relevant. I also had students who disagreed with some of the examples, which was good, because it got them thinking about how they were going to make their design easier for the viewer.
Many students googled infographics and looked at a lot of examples afterwards to get a feel for them. That might have been more effective.