What if you could design a city?

In my post of September 8, I shared a graphic from the BBC News (Technology) website that showed ideas of what a city of 2050 might look like.

With another article, students can be encouraged to imagine their own ideas for the 'perfect' city. The article, on the same website, poses the question, "What if you could deisgn a city from scratch?" to four experts (and two children).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21032725

The four experts are:

• Guru Banavar, IBM's chief technology officer
• Steve Lewis, chief executive of Living PlanIT
• Tom Steinberg, founder of MySociety
• Carlo Ratti, Senseable Cities Lab, MIT

Each expert explains what they would include in their design, and why.

Students can first brainstorm their answers to this question and make a list of features they would include. Then discuss the various merits, advantages and possible disadvantages of each idea. Afterward, they can compare their ideas with those of the experts questioned.

A different activity would be to print out each expert's answer, and give one to each of four student groups. (Each answer is fairly short, ranging from 220 to 302 words.) After reading and discussing the information, each group presents the idea to the rest of the class. The class could then discuss the merits of each and come to a consensus as to which one they would choose if they were on the City Planning Committee.

Quiz: Who wants to be a millionaire?

The BBC Science website has an online quiz: Can you work your way to success? By answering a few questions, you can find out if you have what it takes to become a millionaire!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/millionaire2/

The quiz has only 5 multiple choice questions, and is said to be taken from the book, Think Yourself Rich (by Sharon Maxwell Magnus).

I took the test a number of times, giving different answers, to see which results I would get according to the different answers. The questions focus on those attributes that are associated with "success," at least in terms of being successful at work and earning money.

Example question:  Your boss is on holiday. Do you:

1. Come in later and leave earlier?
2. Work as normal?
3. Work harder - you want to impress your boss's boss?

I think it's not difficult to guess that answer 3 is the "right" one.

It would be interesting to have students take the quiz to see if they have what it takes to become millionaires. But in class they could discuss what their idea of "success" is. Does success on the job involve making a lot of money? Or are there other factors for students that are also important?

Another interesting activity would be to have students discuss why the "right" answers indicate that someone has more of an ability to become rich (or achieve "success"). What do they think are traits common to those who have achieved this kind of success.

Students could also brainstorm other questions for such a quiz, according to the characteristics they think are typical of self-made millionaires.

There is also room here for discussion of cultural differences, since this is a British-focused quiz.

The city of 2050

Thinking about what life might be like in the future is always an interesting topic for our students. They are the ones who will be designing and building the technology we will use, the cities we will live in, and the societies that will exist.

This BBC website has a page that "takes a look through the crystal ball to imagine what city life might be like in 40 years' time."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23524249

A large graphic is displayed, with various features labelled. You click each picture to read a short description of the feature. These features are:

• Delivery drones
• Farmscrapers
• Smart networks
• Smart buildings
• Shopping
• Sensor networks
• Urban spaces
• Human network
• Robo-texis
• Living street lights

Each description includes a picture, and is short enough to use for lower-level students. It would be interesting for more advanced students to choose one of these features and add more information (either through research or according to their own ideas).

Groups in different areas of engineering could also focus on those features they feel will be related to their current or future professional field.

News articles in levels

The website News in Levels has short news articles written in three levels: Level 1 is extremely simple - suitable for beginners to low-intermediate; Level 2 is more advanced; and Level 3 is the original article (suitable for upper-intermediate to advanced).

http://www.newsinlevels.com/

Each level has, in addition to the text, an audio component in which someone reads the news article. Levels 1 and 2 are read very slowly and clearly, and level 3 sounds like a "normal" news report (also reading the news text of the article). Each level highlights and explains "difficult" words for that level. The original news story (level 3) also has a news video (time 0.57).

Here's an example of the 3 versions of the first sentence from the article Some Cars are Not Safe:

1. People from the USA do a test. They test cars. This test has a name of "crash test."
2. The Institute for Highway Safety carried out a new safety car crash test.
3. A new safety car crash test has found that half of the vehicles tested were rated "marginal" or "poor."

The words highlighted as "difficult" are in 1. crash; in 2. carried out; and in 3. marginal.

These articles suit a range of levels, and are particularly good for lower-level students - it's often difficult to find texts for very low levels. They're good for both classroom use and for students to use at home to improve their reading and listening skills.