District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support Educational Technology
Technology Toolkit

Africa
Manchester-Essex Regional School District

Description of Activities

After studying the continent of Africa, each student chose a different African country to study. The teacher distributed paper copies of a PowerPoint template with the major components for research: physical characteristics, resources and industry, climate, population and growth rate, life expectancy, language and customs, medical resources, literacy rate, food and shelter, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), technical level, and transportation.

The students used books, encyclopedias, online encyclopedias, and the Internet to gather data and enter it into their templates. Then the teacher evaluated the templates and each student designed his or her own PowerPoint presentation [PPS].

Students entered the raw data about their countries into a shared spreadsheet so that each student could have the data for all the countries. Students used the sort function in the spreadsheet to rank their individual countries in relation to the other African countries over several criteria: GDP, literacy, life expectancy, medical resources, population, and growth rate. Students then used this data [PDF] to determine if the country would be considered developed or developing.

During the time that students were researching Africa, the art and music teachers provided activities to help make students more aware of African customs. In art class students designed and constructed African masks, while in music class they explored African drumming [MOV].

For the culminating activity, each student used the data in the shared spreadsheet to determine the stages of development for the all the countries that were studied. Then the students presented their PowerPoint slide shows to share their research.

  View movie [MOV]

  View accessible movie [SML]

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Universal Design/Inclusion
The fact that this project used mixed media allowed students with different learning styles to participate successfully. Because this assignment is so rich, the teachers could easily adapt the requirements to meet various needs.

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