Topic 19. Sometimes It All Works

For some strange reason I cannot make myself unsubscribe to the AP World History listserve.  There is something useful on the thing maybe once every month.  Most of the time a bunch of middle aged, history teachers argue over things that have nothing to do with World History.  In the midst of one such discussion, a teacher decided to try to change the subject by posting something useful.  He suggested using the Miniature Earth video in class to give students some perspective as they embark on their Thanksgiving celebration.   I watched the video and thought it would be a good thing to show.  Of course, I figured it was political and probably had a few errors (what historian wouldn't), but the overall message can't be denied. 

Of course, other teachers had the same thought and set out to debunk the usefulness of the video.  A teacher posted a link to a site that pointed out all the mistakes in the Miniature Earth video.  I went to the site and read the critique.  I quickly realized the person who posted the critique site had not watched the Miniature Earth video posted.  The Miniature Earth video has been around for a number of years and the critique site had been written several years ago.  Apparently, the people who produced the video saw the critique and addressed the issues in an updated version.  The updated version reflects the criticism.  The new video makes more precise arguments rather than generalizations and has taken out several statistics that the site criticized as hard to prove (such as what percentage of the world population are homosexuals). 

The cool thing about this exchange on the listserve was that the internet created this whole conversation and would create many more in the classroom.  The video is circulated on the internet.  The critique of the video was published on the internet, the producers read the critique, and then updated the video based on the critique.  Teachers found the video online and then recommended it to other teachers through a listserve.  Then teachers went online to examine the validity of the claims in the video.  The teachers then shared the critiques with other teachers.  I got a two fold lesson out of this video for my students.  They learned they were pretty lucky in life and they learned about doing a little research on stuff you find online before you take it as truth.