THE GREATEST INVENTION OF THE  2OTH CENTURY

PROJECT SCENARIO

Everywhere you go these days you hear about the new millennium, the 21st century, Y2K, and other buzzwords regarding the end of a century and the beginning of a new. So much has happened in the past 100 years, that the 20th century probably can be considered the most innovative century in history. There are things that you take for granted today that were probably only in the imagination of a science fiction writer 100 years ago. If you were to take a look at our copy of the book Look of the Century you can get a feel for what has been a fantastic 100 years. In honor of the 20th century we are going to publish a new book to add to our Media Center collection. A second copy will be presented to our local public library.  Our work, to be entitled The Greatest Inventions of the 20th Century, will take a look back at the past 100 years. You, the eighth grade class with the distinct honor of being the class of 2000, are the authors of this publishing adventure. Each of you will be constructing  a WebEssay to be posted to the Web and an edited print version defending your choice of the greatest invention of the 20th century and its contributions to society.

TASK

Each of you will select, research and defend your choice of the greatest invention of the 20th century. You will research the following essential question.

What 20th century invention has most impacted the United States today?  Defend your choice by explaining the three most significant contributions this invention has made to American society?

You are responsible for answering the following questions to help you answer your essential question.

1. What is an invention?
2. What is your invention and what does it do?
3. Who uses the invention?
4. What was life like before the invention?
5. What changed after the invention was introduced?
6. What have been the positive effects of the invention?
7. What have been the negative effects of the invention?
8. What is the future of the invention?

WEB RESOURCES

Use the following resources to locate information about inventions. You will need to read, search, and then hyperlink from each of these resources for information on your invention.

AITLC Guide to Inventors and Inventions
http://tlc.ai.org/invenidx.htm

Indiana’s Access Indiana Teaching and Learning Center web site links to other web resources about many inventors and inventions. The site is not all inclusive but has indexed many excellent sites as well as the author or organization name responsible for the indexed resource.

In conjunction with the United States Post Office Encarta has created an interactive site on life from 1950 through 1999.  Use the link and topic cards to view history and lifestyles of the last half of the 20th century.

About.com  links to net resources and articles on some 20th century inventions. Check out Historical Inventors, Historical Inventions and the Inventors and Inventions sections.

The publisher of the book How Stuff Works, has put portions of the book online including diagrams and illustrations to explain how everyday things work.

The Louisiana State University Libraries are your first stop to locating information about 20th century inventions.  Tables highlight inventions, inventors, their nationality, and the year their invention was invented.

From the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations, and the United States Patent and Trademark, Inventure Place honors hundreds of inventors and their inventions. Indexed by both inventor and inventions, the Hall presents short biographies with at least one link to a web site for further information.

The site incorporates information from the television series about inventions of the 20th century. The People and Discoveries database contains 120 stories of inventors and inventions.

The University of Melbourne originally began this web site in 1994 as part of the WWW Virtual Library Project. It contains extensive links to scientific, technological and medical historical resources on the web. It may taking some digging but a good source of quality links.

Want more information about life during the 20th century? Then don't forget to checkout the Media Center student resources web page. Look under Language Arts Decade Studies.

PRODUCT

Each of you will construct a WebEssay, to be posted to the Web, and an edited print version defending your choice of  invention and its contributions to society.  Your essays must answer to the essential question and its foundation questions to persuade your reader that your invention is the greatest invention of the century. Your WebEssay should contain at least one picture, hyperlinks to multiple resources on the web, proper citations and a bibliography. Use good web page building techniques including appearance, proper fonts and font size, alignment and hyperlink format.

The edited print essay will be created from the WebEssay, without graphics, hyperlinks and color. Graphics will be provided by our 8th grade art class so do not include them in your final copy. In the word processor you will edit your document in preparation for publication, rewriting some of your essay to have meaning without the hyperlinks of your WebEssay. Your publication essay should include proper title format, Times New Roman size 12 font, paragraph indentation, citations, and bibliography.
 

ASSESSMENT

    Total points - 60