Happy New Year! Today we begin our last 13 classes before the end of Semester 1 and you finish Social Studies 8. Our last topic for consideration is the Renaissance.
As discussed in class today, some people view our current time as a new renaissance. (Renaissance means rebirth.) We read most of an article from the Tyee (an on-line newspaper) entitled Idea#10: The Reinvention of Nearly Everything by Phillip Smith, an expert in the field of digital publishing. Mr. Smith wrote about some big ideas that are changing the whole world's access to radical ideas which allow ideas to rapidly come to life faster than ever before. One of the ideas Mr. Smith explained as having a huge impact was TED talks. Your homework tonight is to find a TED Talk which is between 5 -10 minutes long about an idea you think could change the world. You need to be prepared to share which video you watched and which idea you think will change the world. (You may watch at school if you don't have access at home.) This assignment is for extra credit points.
This is the start of our project which will take the next 3 weeks. To understand whether we're in a renaissance today, we need to understand the European Renaissance and what the big ideas were then. We need to know who the "big thinkers" were and what their "big ideas" were and how they changed the world after the Middle Ages.
Our project will be to identify who the big thinkers are today, what the big ideas are and whether this time period we're living in could be considered a renaissance period. Working in small groups, you will read/view/research a topic area (science, art, philosophy, inventions, government/economy) during the European Renaissance, then cover the same topic area in today's time. Each person in the group will write an article or create a digital artifact (podcast, video, slide show, etc.) to embed into our Zeen (an electronic magazine) called The New Renaissance.
Tomorrow, after your input, I'll post the rubrics for evaluation of work in the next 12 classes.
The prescribed learning outcomes that we'll be meeting are:
Applications of Social Studies:
- identify and clarify a problem, an issue or an inquiry
- gather and organize a body of information from primary and secondary print and non-print sources, including electronic sources
- interpret and evaluate a variety of primary and secondary sources
- plan, revise and deliver written presentations
- co-operatively plan and implement a course of action that addresses the inquiry initially identified
- identify period of significant cultural achievement, including the Renaissance
- describe how societies preserve identity, transmit culture and adapt to change
- demonstrate awareness of artistic expression as a reflection of the culture in which it is produced
- describe various ways individuals and groups can influence legal systems and political structures
- describe the impact of technological innovations and science on political, social and economic structures
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