Introduction
This webquest was developed out of my experiences at the
Teachers' Institute on Parliamentary Democracy in Ottawa
and Victoria.
I came away from these outstanding profession development
opportunities with a strong desire to create lessons that
would get my students excited when learning about BC government
sytem. This webquest is one of the results of my efforts.
In this webquest, students will examine their own political
beliefs, create groups and research provincial political
parties. They will create a music video that demonstrates
their political beliefs.
Learners
The lesson is anchored in Civics 11.
In order to complete the music video portion of this lesson,
the students will have to be able to work with computer
software such as powerpoint. If they are comfortable with
other mulitimedia software such as Adobe Premier of Moviemaker,
then they can use it.
Curriculum Standards
- apply critical thinking skills including comparing,
questioning, summarizing, drawing conclusions, and defending
a position
- demonstrate effective research skills including accessing
information, assessing information, collecting data, organizing
information, presenting information
- demonstrate effective written and graphic communication
skills, individually and collaboratively
- describe the key features of prominent 20th and 21st
century political and economic ideologies including communism,
conservatisim, fascism, liberalism, and socialism
- assess the role of beliefs and values in civic decision
making
- analyse key provisions of the Canadian social safety
net and their impact on Canadian society
Process
Examine Your Own Political Beliefs (do this on your
own):
On your own, you will do the following things:
1. To begin, you need to get a sense of some of the big
political issues facing British Columbia. It's
time to read up on the issues.
2. After reading up on the issues, it's time to record
your own political beliefs
on a chart. On the chart, you must write down at least
two opinions that you have about each issue. After you write
down your opinions, rate the issues in order of importance
to you. (This means that the issue that you rank as #1 is
the one that you care about most.
3. Find classmates with similar political beliefs and form
a group. You are now a political party.
Research Federal Political Parties (do this as a group)
4. Have a discussion with your group about your political
beliefs. Every person in the group needs to have a chance
to state their top 5 issues.
5. After everyone in your group has had a chance to speak,
it is time to make your first group decision. As a group,
choose your 3 most important issues.
6. Now it is time for your group to research 12 of the
provincial political parties. You are trying to find
out how the parties feel about your top 3 issues. You want
to know which party matches the matches the beliefs of your
party the best. Divide up the work so that each group member
only needs to look at a few parties.
Record your findings on a chart.
7. Get back into your group and share your research information
with the rest of your group. Complete your chart by recording
the information that your other group members gathered.
8. Now that your chart is finished, your group needs to
decide which provinciall political party matches the beliefs
of your group most closely.
Create Music Video (do this as a group)
9. It is time to create an amazing music video that expresses
the political beliefs of your party. Begin by deciding on
the beliefs that you want to express in the video. Next,
your group needs to create a storyboard (the rough story
of what is going to happen) for the video. Decide on what
type of show you want to create (powerpoint, video in which
you act, a collection of video clips and photos from internet
etc.) Create your storyboard by sketching out what happens
in each scene of your movie. You can do this on paper, or
you can use an on-line tool called Storyboard.
All shows must follow these rules:
(a) the show must be created with
some type of mutimedia software (powerpoint, adobe premier,
moviemaker etc.)
(b) the show must be set to music
that emphasizes the message of the show
(c) the show must clearly show your
political beliefs
(d) the show must contain at least
three
statistics about BC that back up your views
(e) the show must end by stating
which provincial political party has your vote.
10. Now that you have completed the storyboard, it is time
to assign jobs to each group member so that you can actually
create the music video. You need someone to be the researcher
(person who goes on-line and finds pictures, video clips,
and statistics). You need someone to turn the storyboard
into a detailed plan (this might look like a script). You
need a technical person who actually works with the software
to create the show. You might need a videographer (if you
choose to use a camcorder).
11. When you finish the show, upload it to youtube.com
and then send the link to the following address: shawna@mapleleafpro.net.
When you do this, a link will be created from your youtude
video to this site.
12. Watch the other music videos that are posted on the
site and then cast your vote.
Resources
You will need access to a computer lab so that students
can complete internet research on the provincial political
parties. The computer will also need to be loaded with a
multimedia software such as powerpoint.
After the students finish their powerpoints, you need to
put them onto youtube. To do this, you will need a program
that changes the powerpoint show into an AVI show so that
it can be seen on youtube. If you don't have a program to
change the powerpoint file to AVI, you can download one
for a 30
day free trial. If you don't have a youtube account,
you will need to set one up.
Example of Political Beliefs
Chart
Example of Provincial
Party Comparison Chart
Evaluation
In this webquest, the students will be graded on the following
areas: Personal Beliefs Chart, Federal Party Comparison
Chart, Self-Evaluation of Work in Group, Music Video. Click
here to view rubrics.
Conclusion
This webquest helps student to develop their own political
beliefs. Reseaching political parties has a lot more meaning
for students when they compare the beliefs of each party to
the ones that they hold. The video show is a creative way
to get the students to think about political beliefs even
more deeply. Each step of the webquest brings to student further
down the road to being an active citizen.
Credits
Wikipedia, Elections BC and Webquest were the main sites that
I used to create this webquest. Click
here for a complete list of my sources.
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