Crew Turing have had a really eventful end of term 1. We’ve been spending time as part of the Wise Wednesday sessions looking into the effects of social media on our lives and mental wellbeing.
The sessions have been centred around deconstructing how much time we spend on social media, each crew member looked at their average screen time using their smartphones. We were all gobsmacked that so many people had clocked over 10 hours on one of the days at the weekend!
We also watched The Social Dilemma, the documentary that explores the damage social media has caused to society, focusing on its exploitation of its users for financial gain through data mining. It explains how its design is meant to nurture an addiction, its use in politics, its effect on mental health (including the mental health of adolescents and rising teen suicide rates), and its role in spreading conspiracy theories such as the flat-earthers.
At the end of last term we culminated the work done in Wednesday’s crew sessions by preparing for a debate, arguing for and against the motion:
‘social media has caused more harm than good’,
All crew members prepared speeches as well as rebuttals. I was especially impressed with how maturely my crew took on board the debate, as we’d spoke in the Wednesday afternoon sessions on the difference between a formal and structured debate, and an argument. Both sides were actively listening to the other, and responding to the opposing team’s arguments. I’m hoping that this work will help them prepare for their PoL towards Christmas.
Another activity I have really enjoyed has been following the US presidential election. On Tuesday last week, we examined the presidential system of the US and how the electoral college works. We discussed the merits and pitfalls of this electoral system, as well as learned about the two presidential candidates. Over the following days last week, we were checking the BBC news website to see how the swing states were looking, it was really exciting watching the votes roll in.
We also went on to watch the Newsnight broadcast from the night of the election, and noted down tonnes of key information about both of the campaigns, and the candidate’s policies. Congratulations to Dylan, Mollie and Ralph who managed to call bingo on their note catcher sheets!
I’d like to give a special mention to Jess, who was able to fill in her entire sheet with key information from the broadcast, I was totally blown away. All crew members except one person predicted Biden’s win on Wednesday afternoon, after we did the maths on how many votes Trump would need.
Finally, my crew came back to school knowing that their teachers had been asked to input the data for their habits of work and learning. Last week during academic crew, I created a doc with all of their names and subjects on, so they could predict their HOWLs before the data was released to them. We had really interesting discussions about homework records, effort in class, and it was great to see people showed real integrity if they felt this term hadn’t been their best. I’ve minimised the images below, but blue is excellent, green in good, and yellow is secure.
I was slightly disappointed to see that some students felt that they dipped in certain classes, and I’m expecting upcoming pledges to relate to those lower than average predicted HOWLs. We’re going to review these predictions this coming week once the actual grades are released!