Lesson 12: Don’t Take My Stress Away!

Lesson 12: Don't Take My Stress Away!

Objective:

Students will read the Huffington Post article titled Don’t Take My Stress Away to spark their interest about how they spend their time, and will continue to read reports critically to look for claims that may or may not be based on data.

Materials:

Article: Huffington Post’s Don’t Take My Stress Away found at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-cahn/dont-take-my-stress-away_b_2090203.html
Data collection devices

Essential Concepts:

Generating statistical investigative questions is the first step in a Participatory Sensing campaign. Research and observations help create applicable campaign questions.

Lesson:

Become familiar with the Stress/Chill Campaign Guidelines (shown at the end of this lesson), particularly the questions, to help guide students during the campaign (see Campaign Guidelines in Teacher Resources).
Ask students the following questions and conduct a brief share out of their responses.
1. Do you know anyone who seems to be always stressed or anyone who seems to be always chilled? Answers will vary by class.
2. What are some observations you have made that make that person extremely stressed or chilled? Answers will vary by class.
Inform students that they will be learning about some high school students who view stress as a part of life in the Huffington Post article titled Don’t Take My Stress Away.
Provide students the link to the article and allow time for them to read it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-cahn/dont-take-my-stress-away_b_2090203.html
As they read the article, students should note whether they agree or disagree with the authors and should write down their comments and/or reactions to the article in their DS journals.
Ask student pairs to share if they agree or disagree with the authors of the article and why. Conduct a Share Out of student responses.
Inform students that for this unit, we will be investigating how stressed or chilled they are at certain times of the day.
Students will collect data using the Stress/Chill Participatory Sensing campaign. They will add the Stress/Chill campaign to their list of available campaigns either through the UCLA IDS UCLA App or via web browser at https://portal.idsucla.org
Ask students to complete their first survey.
After students have completed their first survey, use a random number generator to generate two random times a day for the next 6 days (RStudio example given below). It is recommended that you create 6 sets of random numbers so that students are polled at different times each day.

Example for RStudio (assuming students are awake between the hours of 7:00 am and 11:00 pm):

> sample(7:23, size = 2, replace = FALSE)

Note: If a time falls within the school day, it is up to the discretion of the teacher to use this time or not.
Based on the times generated, ask students to set reminders on the IDS UCLA App for the next 6 days. Students without a mobile device may set reminders using a method available to them.
Focus students’ attention on the Stress/Chill survey questions (you may display the questions on the Campaign Guidelines document). Ask students to generate three statistical investigative questions that could be answered using the Stress/Chill data.
Then, ask them to write down in their DS journals some predictions about what they think they will see after they collect some data.

Class Scribes:

One team of students will give a brief talk to discuss what they think the 3 most important topics of the day were.

Homework

For the next 6 days, students will collect data for the Stress/Chill campaign either through the IDS UCLA App or via web browser at https://portal.idsucla.org