Using Social Media in Education Part 4

You can read Part 1 of the series here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

Putting it all together

Where are you going to take your students?

In this post, I would like to outline an example project that combines social media with traditional classroom resources. Before I get to that, I just want to comment on differentiated instruction.

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, differentiated instruction offers teachers strategies and tools to accommodate the various learning styles and ability levels in a typical classroom. At the core of differentiated instruction is the identification of the core learning objectives a teacher may have for a particular class, week or module. Differentiated instruction also provides teachers with strategies for aligning these objectives with the curricular content of other disciplines to create cross curricular activities. These types of activities allow teachers to create learning opportunities for students that reflect the ways different information and skills work together in the real world. Hopefully the example below will demonstrate this. If you just want to read how we used social media in the project and skip the details, you can click here.

Planet Project

This project was originally designed for a grade 11 class, with approximately 65 students, and took place over two weeks. The project included participation from the students’ English U.S. Literature class, U.S. History class, Math class, and Music class.

Project Objectives

U.S. Literature

Concept

• Literature provides us with insight into the values of a culture at a particular time in its history.
• Different types of literature can provide us with insights into different aspects of the same culture.

Content

• Select passages from the U.S. Constitution
• Select historical documents from the colonization, settlement and revolutionary period of U.S. history
• Poetry and writings from the same period

Skills

• Generate contracts and other simple legal documents
• Generate propaganda promoting nationalism
• Generate editorial newspaper articles describing specific events

U.S. History

Concept

• Colonialism is driven by a variety of factors: economic, political, religious, social and natural
• Relations between a colony and the home country can be impacted by a variety of stressors
• Relations between different colonies can be impacted by the relations of the different home countries

Content

• Select readings from the textbook and historical documents from the colonization, settlement and revolutionary period of U.S. history
• Maps and graphs showing the outward expansion of colonial movements
• Demographic data from the same time period

Skills

• Accurately predict colonial expansionist movements in hypothetical situations
• Accurately predict the impact of certain stressors on a colony and its relations with other colonies

Math

Concept

• Economic factors are important drivers in political and social decision making
• The success of a political enterprise is often determined by economic factors
• Careful maintenance of financial records is essential to a wide variety of political and social initiatives

Content

• Select readings and exercises from the textbooks focused on basic accounting skills
• Select readings and exercises from the textbook focused on statistical analysis of data and generating documents to show statistical trends.

Skills

• Generate simple accounting documents
• Analyze statistical data to find trends that can be useful in decision making
• Generate graphs and charts based on statistical data gathered from the students’ own experiences

Music

Concept

• The music of a particular culture can provide us with greater insight into political, cultural and religious beliefs and values
• The environment in which a culture exists can greatly impact its artistic movements
• Different musical styles can produce different emotional reactions

Content

• Sample of national anthems  from various countries with different natural conditions
• Music theory and practice

Skills

• Produce a national anthem that reflects the cultural and political beliefs of a specific colony.

Basic Project Description:

1. Students are divided into groups of 5 to 10 students (depending on total class size)
2. For the purposes of the project, 1 day is equal to 1 month in the universe of the project.
3. Each group is assigned a mission to establish a successful colony on one of 5 planets.
4. These planets are:
   • Earth 2: The planet most similar to our own; abundant resources for agriculture, however mineral and fuel resources are scarce. There is also a relatively advanced indigenous population that violently opposes any colonist effort to establish a permanent base of operations.
   • Ice Planet: Abundant water supply and fuel can be found in the form of frozen natural gas. However, resources for growing food are scarce and the planet is geologically unstable (shifting ice). The general environment is also harsh and encounters with aggressive, carnivorous fauna are common.
   • Fire Planet: A geologically unstable, volcanic planet with a rich supply of mineral resources. Mining, metallurgy and chemical industries can be easily established, however the planet’s violent natural environment makes it difficult to grow food or access water. There is a limited population of non-aggressive fauna.
   • Desert Planet: Abundant oil and natural gas supplies, however the natural environment makes access to reliable food and water resources almost impossible. Unpredictable sand storms can also quickly destroy any structures and may last for days.
   • Air Planet: A series of islands floating in the atmosphere above a gaseous planet. Water can be harvested from the clouds and the planet provides natural gas for fuel; however, space for agriculture is severely limited. The entire colonization party cannot fit on one island and so must initially occupy three different islands. Travel between the islands is limited to air transportation.
5. All colonial parties will number 100 colonists and will be supplied with the following:
   • 1 Air transport ship
   • Fuel for 2 return trips to another planet
   • Food supplies for 2 months
   • Water supplies for 2 months
   • Building materials needed to establish temporary shelters
   • Minimal weapons and ammunition
   • $100,000.00 to establish trade relations
6. The students are to act as the first governments of these colonies. As the government, they are responsible for:

• Determining who will fill the roles of President, Vice-president, Treasurer, Trade Commissioner, Military Commander, and Cultural Minister, and what the specific responsibilities for each of those roles will be based on the type of government system they choose to adopt.
• Determining the primary industries in which the colony will engage and what products and services they will offer for trade
• Writing the Colonial Constitution
• Writing the Colonial Anthem
• Creating a map of the colonial showing key buildings and industrial areas
• Maintaining all financial and demographic data of the colony.
• Participating in the Interplanetary Congress and writing all trade agreements with other colonies.
• Creating a newspaper for the colony, with articles posted daily about the political, social and financial status of the colony.
• The Interplanetary Congress takes place every two days, and provides colonial leaders with the opportunity to establish, grow, or terminate trade relations with other colonies. It is also used as a forum where colonies can air their grievances with others in trade and military matters.

Project Grading: The project ends with a presentation by the group for the teachers, during which the show the progress their colony has made over 1 year. This progress can be shown through financial and demographic data, the state of their trade relations with other countries. They also need to present their Colonial Constitution, the map their colony and perform their Colonial Anthem. Project grading is based on how successful they were at meeting performance criteria established on rubric at the start of the project.

Notes about the Project:

Obviously, the project took a lot of planning on the part of the teachers, but not as much as you may think. Most of us already had the core material we needed, so we focused on creating opportunities for the students to put this information into practice. Mainly, it came down to logistics, looking for curricular overlaps, sharing information and determining how we were going to grade the performances.

We were very lucky to have a large group of 65 students. This allowed us to create smaller groups for each colony, so the students had more individual responsibilities, and assign two groups to each planet, which gave us an additional layer of competition and potential conflict (two colonies selling exactly the same products and requiring exactly the same resources).

Most of the colonies chose to manufacture and engage in trade the way you would expect given their resources: the Air Planet focused on selling transportation technology and bought food, weapons and fuel; the Fire Planet sold weapons and supplied the metal needed for manufacturing and bought food, water and transportation technology; Earth2 supplied food to the other colonies and bought weapons and transportation technology; the Ice Planet supplied water and alternative fuel and bought food and weapons; the Desert Planet supplied most of the fuel to the other colonies and bought food and water.

The “Interplanetary Congresses” were great learning experiences for the students. Good and bad deals were made, promises were broken, and conflicts arose between colonies. Questions were raised about the nature of trade and finance, the real value of constitutions, laws and national symbols, the role of government in international relations, the true worth of goods and services, the impact of media perceptions and reporting on important decisions, and the treatment of indigenous populations.

In the end, we teachers spent the majority of our time as mediators and advisors, helping students with their decisions about trade, referring them to resources that could help and overseeing conflict resolution.

In the next post, I’ll discuss how we incorporated specific media channels into the project and the impact it had on the students.

Is there anything you would want to add to a project like this? What other departments or areas of study could be included?

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