Net.Create Middle School Activities

Greek voting Network Overview

In this 8th-grade World History lesson plan, students will read Greek Myths and write 6 word biographies of themselves. Students then build onto a network visualization, demonstrating connections among gods, locations, mortals, and characteristics. Students will add themselves to the network, indicating gods, mortals, locations, or characteristics they identify with and analyze the interactions among the Greek nodes and their classmates’ nodes.

Lesson Overview

Resources

  • Net.Create: Greek Voting Network - blank
  • Net.Create: Greek Voting Network - with student profiles & teacher selected proposed changes added

Learning Target/Goal

Students will evaluate the benefits and challenges of the Greek voting system and how it relates to voting challenges in other political systems.

Standards

Identify cultural contributions of Classical Greece, including politics, intellectual life, arts, literature, architecture, and science. Aligns with (8th grade “World History to 1500” in Alabama

Lesson Background

In this 8th-grade World History lesson plan, students will propose classroom changes that will then be voted on individually, as groups, and using characteristics of people living in Ancient Greece using the Net.Create Greek Voting Network. Students will create network visualizations that represent proposed classroom changes and use filtering to see how the “winning” proposed changes vary based on voters’ characteristics.

Lesson Plan

Activity #1 Proposals of classroom changes

Before

  • Prior lessons should address key aspects of Ancient Greek political systems
  • Students have prior experience using Net.Create

During

  • In groups, students brainstorm 3 proposed changes to class rules and procedures. Once agree upon, students add these 3 proposed changes (per group) to Net.Create as nodes
  • Once all groups have added their proposed changes (and optionally, make brief presentations arguing for their proposed changes), students vote Individually on proposed changes by creating an edge between a node with their name on it and the proposed change they are voting for.
  • Next, groups agree on proposed changes as a group and vote by connecting their group node to the changes they vote for with an edge.
  • Demonstrate, using filtering, the different outcomes in voting when based on individual responses and group responses. Compare these to democratic voting systems and republic voting systems.
    • For democratic voting: Press “views” on the right. In the top “Node” views section, choose “Type”, “does not contain”, Group”. Press the “Reduce” view option to filter out individual-student nodes and remove their edges.
    • For republic-based voting: Node Type Does Not Contain Student. Make sure the Reduce view is still selected, so that group nodes and their edges are removed.
  • Suggested discussion questions:
    • What is it that you care about that made you vote this way as an individual? How does it connect to you as a person?
    • What’s popular (what got the most votes)? How do you see yourself reflected or not reflected in the group voting?
    • How does changing the view to filter out the votes of different voting-type nodes (group vs student) change our understanding of the context in which we voted?
    • Do you feel like your vote mattered? Why/why not? Was it different when it was individual voting vs. group voting?

After

  • The teacher chooses 3 of the proposed changes and adds to network with student profiles created (50% should be male, 70% of the men should be landowners, 40% of the men should be citizens and landowners)

Activity #2 Voting with Characteristics of People in Ancient Greece

During

  • Randomly provide each student with a number, student find that number node and vote on one of the teacher-approved laws by connecting a node representing them to the changes they vote for with an edge
  • Teacher indicates the change with the most votes based on all student voting. Teacher then using filtering to remove votes based on who could vote in Ancient Greece.
  • Ask students:
    • How do individual data points look similar or different from that pattern? What might that mean?
    • How do the different ways of looking at this data change what we see?
  • Ask students to play with filters themselves.
  • Class discussion about differences in outcomes, comparison of network to Greek and US voting
  • Suggested discussion questions:
    • How did it feel to have your vote count or not-count? What does that network capture (or not capture) about your experience?
    • Why do you think the Greeks used this system?
    • What parallels can you think of in US History?
    • In social media, many things are “voted” on through views, likes, comments, etc. Do you feel like all “votes” matter in social media?
    • Do you think some people take on an attribute in social media that isn’t their own attribute? For instance, do some people pretend to be older/younger? A different gender? From a different background? Why might they do this?
    • How does it impact a network diagram if people are pretending to have attributes that they don’t?