World Issues - GCW4UR
Overview World Issues is a very unique critical thinking course taught by Mr. Torlée. This course opened our mind, eyes, and opinions to various issues occurring around the world. This year was a special second semester because the new 45th President in the United States of America, Donald Trump, was inaugurated. The new president provided the class with critical rich content throughout the semester. Governed by Mr. Torlée, we were led through the course with key assignments like the global awareness survey, role of social media, rants, the great debates, and splat. In return, our mindset changed to consider different views and our brains were initiated to analyze global issues. Assignments Global Awareness Survey For our first assignment, we surveyed students at Innisdale about global issues. The survey’s results showed the percentages of students that were aware of global issues and current events. In addition, we analyzed our surveys to identify whether we had intentionally or unintentionally written biased or informal questions. Role of Social Media In this assignment, the class broke into small groups and chose a country that was involved in the "Arab Spring." We examined the role of social media within these countries which led us to analyze if the effects were positive or negative. Rants Perhaps one of the most interesting projects were the rants. The rants were inspired and stylized in the manner of Rick Mercer's rants. In pairs, students filmed themselves presenting a rant on a world issue (e.g., GMOs, climate change, the rise of nationalism). In part two of the assignment, solutions to each rant were created and filmed in a humorous way by another pair of students. The rants were a lot of fun, featuring different camera angles and different personalities! The Great Debates
Arguably one of the most intense and competitive projects, the class was split up into teams and was given a “pro” or “con” on a controversial world issue. The teams learned how to set up their cases in a court situation and debate each point. The rest of the class had a separate time to join into the debate. This project showed everyone's inner anger and boldness but also taught us how to view opinions differently and to think critically. SPLAT Small groups each chose an article from "The Economist" that featured a world issue. Each group read their article and selected any terms, people, and places of which they were unsure. Each group then created profiles for the people, terms, and places in a unique way and presented their profiles to the class. The objective of this project was for us to learn how important it is to understand every word and aspect of literature. |