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Media Coverage of Election

  VS.  

In our english class we have been studying the role of bias in writing.  Our teacher had us explore this idea by looking at how various media outlets are covering the US Presidential election.  This project had us using the ATL skill Compare, contrast and draw connections among (multi)media resources.  We looked at how several different news sites wrote about one of the debates that had happened.  We focused on comparing and contrasting the tone of the coverage to identify what bias the various sites might have.

The compare and contrast activity really illustrated how bias can impact writing.  I was surprised how two totally different views could exist when covering the exact same event.  These weren't opinion pieces we were reading, either.  These articles were presented as factual accounts of how the debates had gone. This showed me how important the skill of comparing and contrasting really is.  I need make sure I read different information and resources to form my own thoughts on issues.

Design Project Feedback

ATL Skill Reflection

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What ATL Skill did you learn about?

Give and receive meaningful feedback

How did you practice this skill?

We had to look at a partner's photo gallery for our Design project and provide meaningful feedback on what they had done well and what they could improve.  Our teacher explained that good feedback did more than just tell what was good or bad, it should explain why we liked it or thought it should change.  More importantly, the purpose of our feedback was to make our partner's gallery better, so we needed to give suggestions on how to fix the things that needed improvement. 

Our teacher used something called "The Ps of Peer Feedback".  The Ps are positive comments and polish comments.  That technique was really helpful as we went through each slide of the gallery because. 

We also talked about the importance of listening to the feedback we got from our peers.  We need to see the feedback we get as advice that could make our project better.  

How did this ATL Skill help you in this project/unit/lesson?

Practicing this skill really helped make my project better.  By using the feedback I got from partner, I was able to change the backgrounds of my gallery slides to make my pictures look better.  Also, when I was looking at my partner's gallery I noticed that he had put too much text on each slide and that make the picture less important.  Seeing that on his gallery made me go back and look at my own to see if I had made a similar mistake.  I found two of my slides where I was able to cut back what I wrote to make more room for the photo.

How could this ATL Skill help you in another class/project?

Teachers are always asking us to give feedback to our peers when we are working on projects.  I will use the Ps of Peer Feedback in the future to help me give better feedback to people.  Also, when I found things to change on my own gallery by giving feedback to my peers, it helped me see that it is a really good activity beyond just helping my classmates.  

Share one thing that was hard about using this skill.

The hardest part about this skill is to make the feedback "meaningful".  It is easy to go through and say the things that I like and dislike, but to turn that into ways for the person to improve is hard for me.

Organizing Research

ATL Skill Reflection

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What ATL Skill did you learn about?

-Use appropriate strategies for organizing complex information

How did you practice this skill?

Our teacher gave us different organizers for taking notes as we researched.  We had to choose one we wanted to use for recording our information.  

How did this ATL Skill help you in this project/unit/lesson?

The organizer I chose to use helped me pick questions to try and answer.  It helped me see the keywords in my research and then pick new questions to try and answer.  Every time I found information about question I had, I was able to come up with more questions to try and answer.  When it was time to make my report, I had so much information to use and it was all organized on my chart.   

How could this ATL Skill help you in another class/project?

I will definitely use this organizing chart again whenever I have research to do. It helped keep me on track and kept all my information together for working on the final project.

Share one thing that was hard about using this skill.

The only thing that was hard about this skill was picking the chart I wanted to use. I started using a Venn diagram, but that wasn't helping me in my research. My teacher helped me understand that for my research, a Venn diagram wasn't going to help me organize my information.

Class UN Project

In our Individuals and Societies class we have been studying conflict.  To better understand conflict we examined the dynamics of the Middle East.  While there are many conflicts ongoing in that region we focused mainly on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Before we started studying the the backround of this complex and long running conflict, our teacher took some class time to talk to us about the ATL skill Consider ideas from multiple perspectives.  We talk about how important it is to try and understand complex issues from many different angles.  We practiced some basic role play scenarios where we had to identify the perspectives of the different people involved.  It mostly felt really artificial at first, but when we actually started working on the Middle East conflict, it was actually really helpful.  Knowing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a real issue facing the world really helped try and understand the various perspectives.

The actual project we were working on was a UN Summit simulation to discuss peace talks between the various sides.  We were split into delegate groups and assigned a group to represent.  The options were:

1) Likud party
2) Labor party
3) Fatah/PLO
4) Hamas
5) Arab League
6) Quartet (UN reps, USA, EU, Russia)

I was assigned to the Quartet.  We really had to study and try to understand the perspective this outside group brought to this regional conflict. 

Understanding the perspective of our assigned group was obviously important, but what we soon discovered is that it really paid off to have a good understanding of the perspective of the groups we were negotiating with.  By knowing their perspectives we were better able to reach a consensus agreement.  We incorporated elements in our proposal that would appeal to their perspective on the conflict. 

I can see how this skill will be very useful beyond just his project.  Being able to consider an idea from multiple perspectives will help me deal with any conflicts that I might encounter.

Mount Vesuvius Video

Our Mount Vesuvius video was an awesome project.  Our teachers gave us the task of creating a news show that covered the eruption of Mount Vesuvius way back in 79AD.  We had to cover the story like it was breaking news.  We needed to include interview segments with "experts" on both the science behind volcanoes as well as the religious leaders.  They gave the real facts of volcanic eruptions and the historical perspective on why the event happened.  We also had a chance to make some funny commercials for our newscast.


This was a group project, so our teachers had us really focus on a few ATL skills to help with the group task.  Probably the one that was most important was to delegate and share responsibility for decision-making. Because there were so many scenes that we had to put together, there was no way we could possibly get it all done without splitting up the work.  That is sort of what delegat means; to split up everything that needs to be done into smaller chunks and assign it to different people.  THe teachers gave us so good strategies on how best to delegate.  We needed to look at what everyone's strengths were in the group and decide what parts of the project were good for them to take.  We also needed to make sure that the work was split up evenly.

While this sounded easy, and we split up the tasks very quickly, it ended up being much harder than I expected.  I learned that just because you are put in charge of something, doesn't mean you get to make all the decisions yourself.  My task was to create the commercial for a product we could sell.  I wanted to sell an alarm system for future volcanic eruptions.  I put a lot of time and effort into creating a script and making a prop, but when I showed the rest of the group, they hated my idea.  That caused a big fight and work on our project pretty much stopped.  After I calmed down, I realized that I needed to run my ideas past the group before I put all the effort into making the commercial.  That was the second part of the ATL skill that our teachers we trying to teach us; share responsibility for decision-making.  

This was really helpful information to have, as I was also working on a group project in Korean class.  I shared my ideas with the group before I went and did the work and it ended up being better than what I would have come up with on my own.

Here is my video: