Submitted by: Akeela Tyson
School: The Academy at Virginia Randolph
Summary
Students will assume the role of historical researchers, working in collaborative groups of two or three, for Tyson University@ The Academy of Virginia Randolph. It is the year 2099 and due to a series of accidents America is facing a fresh water crisis and is lacking engineering resources to aid communities which are some distance from rivers. The historical researchers have been given the task of reviewing the aqueduct systems used in Ancient Rome to determine if this ancient technology could be used to improve the availability of fresh water. Researchers will prepare an electronic presentation that explains how aqueducts aided Ancient Rome.
TIPC Ratings
After being presented with the task of researching the ancient Roman aqueducts to determine if they would be able to provide fresh water to their community, students formed research groups and decided which digital tools they would use. Students were able to select one of the digital tools they’d previously used in class. Students used the digital tool to communicate and document researched information.
After being presented with the task of researching the ancient Roman aqueducts to determine if they would be able to provide fresh water to their community, students formed research groups and decided which digital tools they would use. Students selected one of the digital tools they had previously used in class. Students had to assign each other tasks to research and substantiating information about the aqueducts. Students used the digital tool to communicate and document researched information. Once they finished their documentation, they read over their information, checking to make sure they had answered their questions and provided images.
After being presented with their task, student cooperative groups created questions that they used to help drive their research. There were times that they found that they had to delve deeper and change their questioning in order to arrive at the information that they need. Finally, the collaborative groups discussed the validity of the questions created to determine which questions would be used in the presentation.
Students discussed the benefits and challenges of the different software programs they could use to create their presentation. They decided to use Spaaze in this presentation because it allowed them to research and document their information with the same digital tool. The students used the notebook entry to document the questions, answers, and citations. The students also added video and images to help provide visual information.
Student Artifact
