Sunday, July 25, 2010

Simpler Web 2.0 tasks

Simpler Web 2.0 tasks could be set up to involve students from different centres in joint investigation, decision making, negotiation and publishing.

In each case, I would try to find a discussion topic, such as:
  • Living in the country vs Living in the city
  • Boarding school vs Day school

But this is a little dated and boring and doesn't involve necessarily involve much web material. A more interesting alternative would be:
  • Ban blood sports like fox hunting and bull fighting!!
  • Festivals should be fun, but sensible and safe!!
  • Immigration dilutes a country's identity!!

These topics allow for webquest-style investigation, video links of festivals such as Pamplona or Corre-foc, consideration of current events and news headlines, as well as personal opinions and cultural norms and values.

Reading or writing or discussing these topics will be language rich: modals of obligation and supposition; narrative tenses - including the perfect for what has changed so far; futures and conditionals; linkers and text referencing devices, etc.


Possible outcomes

  • Development of guidelines
  • Publication of a leaflet
  • Letter to... (authorities, european commission, newspaper, etc)
  • Comments (in blogs, on webs - such as BBC News)
  • Glogger posters for school
  • Wiki
  • Online asychronous debate between schools - with different rounds in the different languages

EXAMPLE: 'Families are no longer in fashion!!'

Stage One

- find TV ads which feature the 'typical' or 'model' family and send these links to their overseas partners
- analyse the ads, identify the stereotypes and prepare and send a questionnaire about what families are really like
- get back the results of the questionnaire and jointly with their overseas partners, create a summary document

Stage Two

- find videos, documentaries, etc of families in the past
- interview family members
- pass on this information to their partners
- create a short play with dialogue and narrator based on this information and video this
- post and comment on each others' videos

Stage Three

- study language related to statistics, graphs, trends, etc
- read 'serious' articles and find statistics about population growth and change in family structure/
- read articles about the stay-at-home generation
- produce an information leaflet or poster warning of the changes/dangers

Final stage - optional??

Bring everything together in a performance for a younger age-group:
- commenting on the stereotypes of families
- telling them about families abroad
- telling them about families in the past
- warning them about how families are changing

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