Course Description:
21st Century Storytelling: What's your story? What's your big idea?
In an exponentially changing world of technology and shifting demographics, students will self-select research projects from Science to the Arts. With full autonomy, students will explore their interests and passions, researching and curating their findings via various social media platforms. They will learn, leverage, and hone their digital literacy skills.
With inspiration from TED Talks by Tony Wagner, Sir Kenneth Robinson, Sugata Mitra, Salman Khan, Daniel Pink, Angela Lee Duckworth, Ben Dunlap, and more, we will focus on Wagner’s “survival skills” for the 21st Century such as Agility and Adaptability, Initiative and Entrepreneurism, and Accessing and Analyzing Information.
Through prompts, projects, games, and blog posts, students will practice effective oral and written communication skills as well as collaborate in critical thinking and problem solving. Students will also learn the perils that exist in a digital age, discussing privacy and plagiarism in the information age.
Each student will post to personal blogs and produce a final project (their own variations of a TED Talk) using visuals with a digital presentation.
Prerequisite: Intellectual Curiosity.
Learning objectives:
Foster and inspire intellectual curiosity - where students develop their own topics and pose their own questions; then, research learning networks and leaders in their respective fields; assess and synthesize their findings; ultimately, they will articulate their idea/story/argument through new media.
The course website: http://storytellingjterm.blogspot.com
A list of topics that will be covered:
Learning objectives:
Foster and inspire intellectual curiosity - where students develop their own topics and pose their own questions; then, research learning networks and leaders in their respective fields; assess and synthesize their findings; ultimately, they will articulate their idea/story/argument through new media.
The course website: http://storytellingjterm.blogspot.com
A list of topics that will be covered:
- Independent research and curation
- Motivation and intellectual curiosity
- Online learning communities & MOOCs
- Data analysis and infographics
- Demographic shifts
- Plagiarism
- Collaboration
- Privacy and digital footprint
- 21st century skills
- Digital Literacy Skills: Prezi, iMovie, Blogger, Twitter, and more.
Projects and activities to be undertaken:
- Personal Blog
- Class Blog
- Brainteasers and games
- Discussions in class and online
- Culminating Presentation on Independent Research
- We will take virtual field trips - hoping to Skype or Google hangout with guest speakers.
- Tony Wagner's "Seven Survival Skills"
- Sugatra Mitra: "We Need Schools... Not Factories"
- Daniel Pink's "FedEx Day"
- Paul Taylor's The Next America
- John Seely Brown's A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change
- Daily blog posts
- Participation in class discussions
- Participation in online discussions
- Final presentations
- Laptops for students who do not own them.
- Video and audio recording hardware would improve the quality of the final presentations.
