Your+Opinion+Sells

Does Your Opinion Sell?

July 2009
 media type="custom" key="4135581"

Introduction | Tasks | Process | Resources | Evaluations | Conclusions | Teacher Page

Introduction  The words spoken in August by your principal echo hauntingly through your head: "I’ll leave it up to you… Just make sure the student body benefits from your decision." She also gave you her "it’s in your hands and on your head" look. That day in August you and your co-editor of the school newspaper decided to end the 60-year tradition of free weekly newspapers and charge five cents per copy. For this to benefit the students you would buy the school a new computer system for the exclusive use of the newspaper. You figured that $1000 would probably do it, $100 per month for the ten-month school year. But it is now Halloween and you have only earned $72.45. Other students have told you that they don’t feel like a part of the paper and hence have no reason to buy it. Your decision is to get the student body and the community involved in your newspaper by asking their opinion on important topics. In other words, you will be adding public opinion polls to your newspaper to attempt to drum up interest and increase sales. You've always noticed how people perk up and pay attention when the President's approval ratings are shown on television. People always say, "That's our opinion? Nobody ever asked me." People always take interest when some sort of public opinion poll is involved. It seems like a great idea. ⇧back to top



Tasks To avoid the wrath of your principal and the demise of your school's newspaper, you will do the following:  You will complete the "create a plan," "carry out the plan," and "reflection" portions of the webquest as a team going through each section of the Process together. While you are capable of carrying out the process alone, I think working together on each step will enable you to produce a quality product while adhering to the three-week deadline. (Your article and polling information are due in three weeks). To summarize, in three weeks you will hand in:   **Before you start the Process portion of the webquest, be sure to read the desired outcomes in the rubric. These are the things I will be looking for when I grade your final products. Click here to go to the **<span style="text-align: left; display: inline ! important;"><span class="wiki_link">[|rubric] **that will be used to evaluate your work.** <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; text-align: left; display: inline; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 132%;">⇧back to top <span style="font-weight: normal; text-align: left; display: inline; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 132%;">
 * 1) <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Create a sound and reliable public opinion poll involving one, two, or three questions.
 * 2) <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Administer the poll using some means of gathering data. Create a form using Google documents. This is where respondents can enter their opinions.
 * 3) <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Analyze the gathered data using the necessary mathematical concepts.
 * 4) <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Report the findings of the poll in a newspaper article complete with some quotes from the persons who were polled produced using Microsoft Word.
 * 1) **<span style="display: block; font-size: 110%; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">The questions you asked in your poll. **
 * 2) **<span style="display: block; font-size: 110%; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">The raw data you collected while conducting your poll. **
 * 3) **<span style="display: block; font-size: 110%; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">The word-processed newspaper article complete with poll information. **

<span style="display: block; text-align: left; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> <span style="font-size: 164%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: left; display: block;">

<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">As a duo, assume these different roles in the order they are listed. This will ensure that you are successful during this webquest. **
 * <span style="font-size: 164%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: center; display: block;">[[image:spreadsheet.jpg width="83" height="63" align="left"]]Process

<span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">⇧back to top
 * 1) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span class="wiki_link_ext">Historian  - While you act as historians, you will look at articles and other productions which analyzed different public opinion polls. They will be articles written for the Internet as well as articles from newspapers and magazines. You will also learn about the history of two popular and powerful public opinion polls: The Gallup Poll and The Neislen Ratings.**
 * 2) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**<span class="wiki_link_ext" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Pollster (Phase 1) - Now that you have an idea of the history and importance of the public opinion poll, it is time to learn about the mathematics behind the number and type of persons who should polled. Also, during this phase you will learn how to develop the question or questions you will use while administering your poll. The final part of this phase is utilizing your knowledge to develop the questions and randomly choose the sample of persons you will poll.**
 * 3) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**<span class="wiki_link_ext" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Canvasser - With your poll questions written and sample decided, now it is time to carry out your public opinion poll.**
 * 4) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span class="wiki_link_ext">Pollster (Phase 2)  - In this phase pollster turns statistician. Both learn how to and carry out statistical analysis of the data collected during the****stage.**
 * 5) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span class="wiki_link_ext">Newspaper Columnist  - It is time to put it all together… During this final stage you will learn the basics of writing a newspaper article and how to blend in the polling information. Your final writing product will also come out of this stage.**



<span style="font-size: 170%; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: center; display: block;">**<span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: center; display: block;">Resources ** <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;"> <span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);"> ** Math Resources <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);"> Language Arts Resources
 * <span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0); font-size: 140%;">Other Resources **
 * <span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);"> (other places to visit to "jumpstart" your poll or article)
 * [|Ask Dr. Math] - A great place to get your math questions answered
 * [|Math Online Resource Center] - Resources for any math student
 * [|A History of Mathematics by Subject] - A math history by Algebra, Calculus, Statistics, etc…
 * [|On-Line Dictionaries] - Can't remember how to spell it… Go here
 * [|What a Journalist Does] - This whole newspaper thing have you interested, go here to learn more
 * [|SaskatoonPublic Schools Language Arts Resource] - A nice language arts resource center by the Saskatoon School District
 * [|The Writing Den] - Various writing resources for students
 * [|The Swift School for Language Arts] - More resources for students from a school devoted completely to language arts

Search Engines Print Media**
 * [|Metacrawler] - A great "dogpile" type search engine incorporating ten search engines
 * [|Dogpile] - The name should say it all!
 * [|Google]
 * Newspapers - The Patriot-News and USA Today (and any others you can get your hands on) always feature polling results of some sort. Also, check out the USA Today's great graphics.
 * Magazines - Time, Newsweek (and, again, whatever else you can scrounge up) always contain articles inspired by public opinion polls.
 * Math textbooks - Look for information on percentages, random sampling, and confidence intervals (margin for error)
 * English/Writing textbooks - Look for information on grammar, journalism, and writing for newspapers

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">⇧back to top



<span style="font-size: 164%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: center; display: block;">Evaluations

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 130%;"> You will be graded on the poll questions and data you hand in as well as the newspaper article you create. Review the rubric first, so that you know what is expected in order to earn "4".

[|Click here for rubric]

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">⇧back to top



<span style="font-size: 164%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: center; display: block;"> Conclusions <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">

Congratulations on completing your public opinion poll and newspaper article. This was no small task by any standard. Take a moment right now to reflect upon the different steps you followed to create your finished product and take pride in what you have accomplished. From this webquest you have gained an appreciation and an understanding of how public opinion polls work and how newspaper articles are put together. Use this knowledge in the future when you see the results of a poll on television or in the print media to be sure that you are not led to believe something that is not true. I'm sure you will be empowered by the knowledge you now possess. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">⇧back to top

<span style="font-size: 164%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(6, 50, 50); text-align: center; display: block;">

<span style="font-size: 180%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; text-align: center; display: block; color: rgb(6, 50, 50);"> Teacher Page <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I believe this webquest is appropriate for students no lower than a pre-algebra level and right up through any study of statistics in high school. At the different levels your expectations would certainly be different. This webquest begins to satisfy Pennsylvania State standard 2.6.11A.

I wanted to conduct and display real life surveys involving my students for some time. Students have been given a survey project in the past. It involved a much smaller sample group. I can't wait to see the data that is gathered and analyzed in this WebQuest.

⇧back to top