Use this thread to discuss your questions and comments about how to run the lesson.
U4L2 says: Collect: Students will need to revise their stories tomorrow. Hold onto their activity guides or ask them to do the same so that they can update their assumptions tomorrow.
But I don’t see where we do that in U4L3.
After coming from U3 where we didn’t have much reading its sort of a shock to be presented with 5 articles and a recommendation of 15 minutes! I wonder if you guys could make a recommendation on which one is the best and then put the rest under extensions? The meat of the lesson seems to be the digital divide activity so I am worried about spending too much time on the articles.
Hi Caroline,
Thanks for pointing this out. Responses to a few issues:
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U4L2 Collecting the Activity guides…I think the revisiting is something that got cut from the subsequent lesson and we didn’t realize we mentioned it there. I have updated both U4L2 and U4L3 to say the collection is optional in U4L2 and to add a thinking prompt in the wrapup to U4L3 to think back to the assumptions you made just yesterday with google trends. I think the effect is basically the same - after reading how google flu went wrong we want students to think critically about their explorations with google trends the day before.
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On reading. Sorry for the shock. The 5 articles are all relatively equivalent. I would guess that the Time article is probably the shortest and most digestible.
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Time on the articles - spend it, but favor discussion. Once distributed I really don’t think it would take more than 10 minutes for students to read/skim the articles and get the gist - enough to discuss what happened with Google Flu at least.
It’s okay if “Check your assumptions” bleeds into another day - it also has opportunities for homework if you can give it. Perspective: Lessons 2 and 3 are really one topic broken into a sequence of three big thoughts: 1. Working with big data is great (google trends) 2. Working with big data can lead to bad stuff (google flu) 3. a big reason for some of the bad stuff is related to the digital divide and the fact that big data doesn’t always capture or represent everyone.
Hope this helps,
-Baker
My students enjoyed the articles and got a good start on thinking about assumptions. As a teacher, I feel like they are just scratching the surface, but I think that is perhaps some of the scaffolding that is being built in right now. I will know if it is working for the first PT this unit!
Usually there is a link in the lesson plan to a downloadable version of the video for class. Do you have a version that can be downloaded?
The reason I ask is because students who are absent need access to videos we’ve watched in class. If they are trying to do the make-up work while at school (say, during a study hall), my school blocks youtube and they can’t watch the video.
Hi Chiara, thanks for asking – we provide download links for videos that we have created, but for external videos like this one on Google Flu trends, we don’t own it so don’t have a download link to provide (and can only provide the youtube link). I hope that answers your question, though I know that means your students doing the makeup work in school will not be able to watch it.
Thanks,
Sarah