Lesson 2: The power of knowledge and skills!
Living Democracy » Textbooks » Lesson 2: The power of knowledge and skills!Students prepare their presentations of media devices
| Learning objectives | The students realise the diversity or the limited number of media devices that they can use. They are given background information about media and how to use media by the teacher. |
| Student tasks | Preparing a media exhibition in the classroom, and furthering understanding of how one specific media device works. |
| Resources | Personal media devices, school media devices, teachers’ handouts for Unit 9, lessons 1 and 2, students’ handout. |
| Methods | Depends on the set-up chosen by the teacher. |
Lesson description
At the end of lesson 1, the teacher (or a group of students) should prepare a table on which the exhibition should be placed. If the room can be locked up safely, the students could bring their devices in earlier and let the exhibition grow slowly. The teacher should accompany the students when they collect the devices and answer any questions raised. Parents should also be informed about why the students need to take their media devices to school.
2. Once the exhibition is complete and has been nicely arranged, the teacher could appoint “exhibition experts” – students who will be responsible for the exhibition and who can support their class-mates. It is self-evident that the students must be considerate and careful when handling the devices at this stage.
3. The students (with help from the teacher, if necessary) should make a list of which groups of students work on which devices. The time of the presentation should also be included in the list. Depending on the size of the class and the number of devices chosen, more than one lesson might be needed for the presentations (see student handout).
The list should be hung up so that everyone can see it – it will thus also help self-directed learning. The list could look like the one below:
|
Media device |
Group members |
Date and time of presentation plus length of time needed |
| Video recorder |
Tim, Mirca, Susanne, Mario |
Wednesday, 14 February, 09:00; 20 minutes |
| Digital camera | Lena, Lisa, Sof e, Jan | Wednesday, 14 February, 09:20; 20 minutes |
| … |
As an addition to this lesson, the teacher could prepare a short input which he or she presents after the exhibition (approximately 10 minutes). There are two ways of doing this, (but well-informed teachers could also prepare other input):
Media in democracy. The aim is to show students the function that media have in our society. For primary school students, this can be basic information which helps them to increase their understanding step by step (see teachers’ handout for Unit 9, lesson 1).
Dealing with television. As an alternative, the teacher could prepare an input about the topic “dealing with television”, if this fits better into his or her concept of teaching (see teachers’ handout 9.2).
These inputs do not have to be evaluated. Their function is to increase the students’ background knowledge step by step. As in many other cases of knowledge transfer, it is possible that the students will not understand all the details. This has to be accepted in such complex situations and the teacher should decide what he or she expects of the students.
