Using Discussions (Multimedia)

Web Tool:

Industry:

Women in Engineering

“Women in Engineering” is an activity that utilizes Voicethread.com (group audio blog) to facilitate and document on-line discussion around women in the engineering field after reading a related blog and viewing a video. This activity also focuses on building vocabulary, note-taking and summarizing.

Outcomes:

The learner will be able to:

  • Reflect, build vocabulary building, and summarizing
  • Express an opinion in a culturally acceptable manner

Preparation:

  • Note instructor needs to create a voicethread account before starting this activity; collect a series of images that represent your topic; carefully script out short opening comments for each image or use questions.
  • Talk about the need to prepare, create, and edit long before learners sit down to 'publish' their ideas (publishing provides added incentive to perform well and take ownership of work)
  • Review feedback conversation gambits
  • Review other gambits such as “this reminds me of.... I wonder... I noticed....”

Delivery:

  1. Introduce the activity
    • Teach the tool if necessary
    • Remind that tools can transform collections of media, like images, videos, documents, and presentations, into a place for a conversation
  2. Do the activity
    • Example on VoiceThread
      • Read the Engineering Professional blog and respond using Voicethread to post comments on. You could also watch a video. For example: Women in Engineering-Celeste Baine.
      • Note unfamiliar vocabulary; define vocabulary; create a list to share with a partner
      • Answer these questions:
        • Do you agree with the William Hastings' opinion about women in engineering?
        • What do you think about the comment that more than 1/3 of engineers in China are female?
        • Reflect on the male/female brain comment
  3. Additional practice:
    • Summarize ideas from the reading and the comments posted into two or more paragraphs.

Activity Reference Links:

The Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) skills addressed by this activity are:

  • Listening
  • Speaking
  • Reading
  • Writing