Collaborative Persuasive Writing: Transportation of the Future
Goal: To understand why changes in transport occur and explain possible evolution of transportation in the near future.
Objectives
Students will be able to…
Activator
Log in to Edmodo to join our group, “Getting There” (access code is: tqz962 ) Answer the poll questions that have been posted to get you thinking about what direction transportation might be headed in this century:
Activity
For this project, we will first analyze a variety of media to determine the following:
To participate in this project, you will need to follow these steps:
Objectives
Students will be able to…
- Write a one-page persuasive paper supported with facts and reasons
- Describe three changes that have historically occurred in transportation
- Explain one aspect or element of transportation that has not changed
- Analyze and critique a variety of media
Activator
Log in to Edmodo to join our group, “Getting There” (access code is: tqz962 ) Answer the poll questions that have been posted to get you thinking about what direction transportation might be headed in this century:
- Do you think more transportation or less transportation will occur in the future?
- Which do you think will be the dominant mode of transportation of people in the year 2100?
Activity
For this project, we will first analyze a variety of media to determine the following:
- What factors affect how people and goods are transported?
- What transportation methods were used over 100 years ago?
- What transportation methods were developed in the 20th century?
- What new innovations have we developed for transportation so far in the 21st century?
- What are current proposed concepts or ideas for transportation?
To participate in this project, you will need to follow these steps:
- Join our “Getting There” group at Ning: http://transportation.ning.com/
- Answer one of the five questions above by using the “Discussion Forum” section of our Ning group. Post your response to all questions for the prompt. In addition, post a link to a website you got the information from. Then post at least one photo or video to the appropriate section of our Ning site to illustrate your answer.Use your classmates’ forum responses and posted links, photos, and videos to learn more about all five questions to help you write your paper.
- Write a persuasive paper to explain how transportation should change or stay the same in the 21st century, and why. This writing assignment will create a persuasive argument for where transportation is likely headed in the future. To determine this, contributors should think about: (1) How and why has transportation changed and evolved throughout history? What has changed and what has stayed the same? (2) What are the needs of transportation and how are those needs changing? (3) What is likely to change and what is likely to stay the same, based on our needs and our emerging technologies? (4) Edit and revise your paper to have a solid introduction, stance, supporting reasons, and conclusion.
- Submit this draft to the teacher on Edmodo.
- Log in to MixedInk and upload your draft: http://mixedink.com/MrG/Transportation
- Read and rate your classmate’s papers.
- Since we are writing a collaborative paper as a class, you will be allowed to pull and use pieces of your classmate’s papers (this is not normally allowed if you are writing something of your own.) If you find information that you think is better written or supports one of your statements better, pull it from your peer’s paper and insert it into your own in a logical location that makes your argument stronger.
- Working in small groups of 4 students, you will do another read of these merged/revised papers and rate them again. Having a group discussion, you will continue to merge the best pieces together into a paper for your group.
- Finally, we will read all group papers, rate them, and discuss as a whole-group class which pieces we should keep and merge into a final paper.
