Twenty-First Century Challenges: Grades 6-8

Great Moments in Communications

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Overview

Students assemble a timeline to understand how communications technology has evolved, and relate the invention of the Internet to earlier inventions.

Objectives

  • Assemble a timeline of communications inventions
  • Relate the development of the Internet to other great moments in communications history

National Educational Technology Standards for Students © 2007

Source: International Society for Technology in Education
  1. Technology Operations and Concepts
    1. understand and use technology systems.

Home Connection

Download the Home Connection sheet related to this lesson.

Site Preview

No Internet site is used in this lesson.

Materials

  • Activity sheets (3)
  • Scissors; adding machine tape (6 feet per student); paste

Introduce

  • Invite students to consider what makes the world seems smaller than it did one hundred years ago. Ask: How do new ways of communicating make the world seem smaller? Guide students to consider the increased speeds at which goods and people travel around the world and how much easier and faster it is to send and receive messages and information.

Teach 1

  • Distribute the activity sheets.
  • With students, read and discuss each "great moment." Make sure they understand which BC date is the earliest and that all dates not followed by an abbreviation are AD.

Teach 2

  • Distribute the remaining materials and tell students they will construct a timeline.
  • Have students cut apart the "great moments" boxes and put them in chronological order. Next, have them sketch their timelines on the adding machine tape, showing where each event will go. Suggest they use zigzag lines to represent long periods of time without events.
  • Have students paste the "great moments" on their timelines.

Teach 3

  • Have students examine their timelines and describe any relationships between the communications inventions. Help them consider commonalities such as the printed word, electricity, and sound, and such issues as distance, time, and dependence on other developments and inventions.
  • Invite them to hypothesize which inventions had to happen in order for the Internet to exist. For example, the Internet uses transatlantic cables, telephone lines, computer programs, television (video) images, satellites, personal computers, and hypertext (information management through links).

    • Assess

    The following items assess student mastery of the lesson objectives.

    • Ask: Which ways of communicating were invented a very long time ago? Which are the most recent?
    • Ask: Which prior invention was most important to the invention of the Internet? Students should support their answers.

    Extend

    The following activity can be added for students who completed this lesson in a previous grade.

    • Have students interview someone who grew up before the invention of the Internet. Then ask them to list five major changes that the Internet has brought about in daily life.

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