Instructions+and+guidelines

toc =Instructions and Guidelines=

0. Using wikispaces
If you don't know how to edit pages on Wikispaces, you can find help clicking here. If you'd like to see a video tour, click here. Please, read the HELP page and watch the video so that you can take advantage of everything Wikispaces can offer you.

Extra task
In case you've already finished the tasks that have been set, don't forget to visit the Newsflash page.

1. Week 1 - Who are you?
In this task, you are supposed to write about you. It's recommended you add a picture to show others who they're interacting with. If you choose to upload a picture of yours, please remember NOT to upload a high definition picture - adjust it to web-friendly size. Some questions that may help you with your text are:


 * 1) Where are you from?
 * 2) Where do you live?
 * 3) Have you got any hobbies? What do you do in your free time?
 * 4) What would you like to be in the future?
 * 5) What do you expect from this project?
 * 6) How can you help others?
 * 7) What kind of help do you want from other students?

You should write your text on the Who's who? page.

2. Task 1 - Where do you live?
This task is all about the place where you live. It would be nice if you could add pictures or videos from the places you are talking about. You can write pretty much anything you want about the city you live in. Here are some questions to get you started:
 * 1) Where do you live?
 * 2) What's your city like?
 * 3) What do people usually do there to have fun?
 * 4) What do **YOU** usually do in your free time?
 * 5) If you were to show a tourist around, where would you take him or her?
 * 6) Are there any places near your city worth paying a visit to?
 * 7) What's the weather like there?
 * 8) Are there any typical foods in your city?
 * 9) What's your city famous for?

You should write your answers on the Task 1 page.

3. Task 2 - Education
The educational system in one country differs a lot from the educational system in another country. What's YOUR country's educational system like? What's your school like? Which subjects are compulsory? What about the transition between one grade from another, or from one level to another? Apart from these questions, here are a couple others to get you started. Remember, these are just ideas!


 * 1) How old are kids when they first go to school?
 * 2) How old are people in each grade they go to?
 * 3) What is the organisation of your educational system, e.g., primary and secondary school?
 * 4) How does your access to higher education take place?
 * 5) What are the mandatory subjects at school? What about the optional subjects you may take at school?
 * 6) What do YOU think about the educational system of YOUR COUNTRY?
 * 7) Are there differences between public and private schools? What are they? What about universities?
 * 8) What is YOUR school like?
 * 9) What time do classes begin and what time do they end?
 * 10) What are the subjects you study?
 * 11) What sort of extra-curricular activities can you do at your school?
 * 12) What are the things that your school doesn't offer that you'd like it to offer?
 * 13) What do **you** want to study at university? Why? What university degree is the mainstream in your country?
 * 14) If you could make **three** changes to your country's educational system, what would these changes be? (This **MUST** be done collaboratively - use EDMODO or Google Docs for that)

You should write your answers on the Task 2 page.

4. Task 3 - Festivals
At our school here in Argentina we have been working on festivals from the US and the UK. We watched this video about the history of Glastombury festival: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10356174 and we read about Bonfire Night in England and Thanksgiving day in the US. You may want to search for some information about them on the net and share with us your findings. However, I'm sure in your countries there are lots of interesting and fun festivals going on, so why not write about them? Here you have some questions that may help you to organise your ideas. You might want to share videos and photos too.

1) What is the name of the festival? 2) When does the festival take place? 3) Why does it take place? 4) What do people wear? 5) What do they eat? 6) Why do you like it? 7) What is the story behind it? 8) What was your experience when you last attended it?

You should write your answers on the Task 3 page.

5. Task 4 - A vision of students today
In the Spring of 2007, a professor of Anthropology asked his 200 students how **they** saw their education. Their task was to create a 3-minute video in which they added their vision of what it's like being a student today. To help them with their task, the students collaborated on a document on Google Docs and wrote the script for a video. Before you start writing anything, watch the video.

media type="youtube" key="dGCJ46vyR9o?rel=0" height="390" width="480"

What is your impression of the video? Do you think that you could produce a video like this one talking about **your** (all of you) vision of education today? Do you agree with the message of the video? You can read more about this project here.

There are three other videos to help you with this task. The first video has been created to help teachers in the public education in New Brunswick, Canada. Watch the video:

media type="youtube" key="EjJg9NfTXos?rel=0" height="390" width="480"

What do you think about the changes proposed by the video? Do you think that these changes have already happened in your school? If yes, can you give examples comparing how things used to be and how they are now? If no, how long do you think it will be before these changes actually take place? Do you think these are good changes? Would you be more interested in school if such changes were to take place?

This other video was nominated the Best educational use of video in 2010. It's here mainly to give you some food for thought as you think about the topic.

media type="youtube" key="0VSymMbMYHA?rel=0" height="390" width="480"

Finally, this is a longer video that will also provide you with some food for thought. It was a lecture given at TED, one of the most important conferences about world issues in which experts are invited to talk about their area of expertise. In this video, Sir Ken Robinson talks about the need for a shift in the education paradigm. Do you agree with what he says?

media type="youtube" key="zDZFcDGpL4U?rel=0" height="390" width="640"

Now, you have talked about education in general in task 2, now it's time to get more personal and try to really answer questions 6, 8, 9, 10, and especially 11 from task two. I'm sure the videos will give you some more food for thought, right? The questions to help you answer the task have been asked along the text for this task. Make sure you read it carefully. Don't forget that this is supposed to be seen as a vision of **students**, in the plural. This means you'll really have to collaborate in order to build a unified text, at least one for each country, that includes the opinion of all of you.

Answer this task on the task 4 page.

6. Task 5 - TV and Internet
Many people spend their free time in front of the TV or, more frequently nowadays, in front of the computer screen. However, people in different countries have got different preferences even when it comes to these two widely used devices/services. For instance, do you know that in some countries ICQ is more popular than MSN? What about Orkut versus FaceBook? Have you ever heard of other social media services/sites such as Hi5, Badoo, or Multiply? How do you use the Internet? What are the most popular TV shows? Share some information on these two items, and try to say why you think some things might be more popular in some places than in others. Do you think this might be explained by a cultural characteristic? Why do YOU use the services you do online? What would make you change it to a different kind of service? What about TV? What makes a TV programme popular in your country? What is it that most people tend to watch?

Answer this task on the task 5 page.

7. Task 6 - Collaborative story
What if you were asked to write a short story collaboratively that takes place in your city? Imagine the characters are people your age (or maybe not), but you've got the freedom to create their lives, their problems, and what's good and bad in their lives. Think about their expectations towards life and the things they'd like to do. Your story has got only two rules: rule 1 - it's got to be written by all of you together; rule 2 - do not use foul language. This means you'll HAVE TO read what the other people have written so that the story makes sense. You will also be split into groups, and each group is to work on a different story. Each page will have a different beginning of a story, and you have to continue it from there. Don't forget to add pictures to illustrate your story wherever possible.

>> Paola Röpke Alves >> Jônatas Vieira Dantas
 * 1) Group 1 - go to page 6.1
 * Rafael Ros Lelis Caixeta
 * Erika Mayara Correia
 * Letícia Eunice Leotti Santos
 * Daniel Gouveia de Menezes Lyra
 * Marcela Campos Camargos
 * Geórgia N. da Rocha
 * 1) Group 2 - go to page 6.2
 * Raíra Caroline Souza da Silva
 * Ivan Ros Isaac de Queiroz
 * Lays Akemi Saiki
 * Maria Eduarda Valette Ilorca
 * Cristiano Leite de Araújo
 * Bruna Jordão Neiva
 * 1) Group 3 - go to page 6.3
 * Marcela Heloísa S. de Faria
 * Arthur Froese Buzogany
 * Mariana Silva Cavadas
 * 1) Group 4 - go to page 6.4
 * Gabriel Diogo de Araújo
 * Lucas de Faria Paz Petrocchi Rodrigues
 * Lara Liz Guedes Guimarães
 * Julianna Barros Fernandes
 * Murilo Olivieri e Jorge

8. Task 7 - Content and language
First of all, welcome back from your holidays. I do hope you've had enough time to relax and re-energise for the upcoming semester. This semester is slightly shorter than the first semester, so we're going to try and do something a bit different. If you all work properly, we can perhaps continue with variations of it for a while longer. If by any chance you start using the time for other things, then we'll go back to the original plan.

Most of your stories are still unfinished, so you may also work on them. There are also some language mistakes that need to be corrected. Please, make sure you check that out.

And now...

In TASK 7 you'll have the chance to integrate what you're studying at Sigma, or something you need to learn for your PAS/Vestibular. I'd like each one of you to choose ONE important person in ONE specific field of study: mathematics, physics, literature, history, geography, biology, languages, philosophy, or any other subject. For example, you may choose Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Aristotle, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Machado de Assis, William Shakespeare, Pitágoras, King Henry VIII, Dom Pedro I, or anyone else who has been an important figure in history. In this first week, you're going to choose the person you would like to study a bit more about and write a short text explaining YOUR REASONS for choosing this person. You are not supposed to write a biography of the person or anything like that. This first text has to be a PERSONAL text containing YOUR REASONS only. Some of you will have two classes to do this, others only one. If you have finished, please go back to TASK 6 and try to help by correcting any language mistake there.

On the page for TASK 7 you have to write your text. Use the following format:

- YOUR NAME - NAME OF THE FAMOUS PERSON YOU'VE CHOSEN - SUBJECT - Your reasons.

On the following week you'll have new instructions. I hope you all write your texts this week.

7.1. Learning in depth
**IMPORTANTE** : Será a primeira vez que usaremos outra plataforma para o desenvolvimento do projeto. Caso as regras não sejam cumpridas à risca por uma pessoa só que seja, esta tarefa será CANCELADA. Caso você não esteja satisfeito com a tarefa, apenas me informe e sugira alguma outra coisa. Não estrague algo que outras pessoas podem estar gostando. É expressamente proibido o uso do Facebook para outros usos que não os descritos na tarefa.

You will now create a Facebook page for the person you've chosen. In order to create the page, you MUST read this document and FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS:



After you have created the page, you'll share the URL address to your page on this page so that others can visit your page. Your task will be to post as if you were the person you have chosen. The very first task for you is: "21 things you may not know about me". This is your first post on your Facebook page, and you should list 21 things about "you".

After this is done, you'll be posting pictures, information, and reacting to your friends' posts as your character. You can also post pieces of news from Newspapers with a comment that you think your character would make. In addition to posting to your page, you'll HAVE TO post, every day, comments on at least 4 other people's updates.

9. Task 8
Have you ever visited the TED website? It's a site in which you can find videos recorded from TED conferences. These are lectures and presentations given by experts and leading figures in many fields of human knowledge, from science to the environment. These videos are also classified according to the mood they're likely to set: inspirational, persuasive, courageous, funny, etc. In this task, this is what you'll have to do:

1. Visit the website: www.ted.com 2. Choose one of the videos to watch. 3. Watch the video. 4. In the TASK 8 page, you'll have to SHARE the link to the video you watched, AND ANSWER the following questions: a. Why have you decided to watch that video in particular? b. Did the video live up to your expectations? c. What was the most interesting thing you learned from the video? d. Would you recommend it to friends? e. What was the main idea expressed in the video? f. Is there any other comment you'd like to add about the video?

Even if you don't like the video, you'll have to share it on the page under your name and say why you didn't like it. **DO NOT** use YOUTUBE videos.


 * This task has been suggested by Daniel Lyra. If you'd like to suggest any other task, please do so. There's still time for us to do other things, and it'd be nice to hear what you'd like to do.