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This project allowed us to dive deep into the potential effects of emerging technologies
on social relations. It also helped us understand The Wave better, and exploring these ideas
through the format of class lessons taught by students made it a lot easier to get everyone
involved and hear from a variety of different perspectives, as opposed to just class discussions.
It’s a bit hard to make a lesson on something that is so broad and hypothetical, especially since
genetic modification and artificial intelligence have not yet reached the level of complexity that
we described. Social relations is an incredibly broad topic and it doesn’t have defined
boundaries. Its influences on human life are so deep and complicated that it’s often difficult to
recognize them. The broadness of our topic and the rapid progress in the technologies we
researched did allow us a lot of flexibility in the content we covered, because we were able to
We were each able to learn a lot about the effects of a specific technology on social
relations because we each researched a different one, and then shared what we had found with
each other to build the foundation of what we would use for our lesson. We evaluated both the
positives and negatives of the effects of social media, genetic modification, and AI on social
relations. We found that although it might be easy to think cynically and assume they have only
negative effects, there are also important positives to be considered, including promotion of
global social connection, accessibility of knowledge, and eradication of disease. It’s interesting
and incredibly important to think about and discuss the effect these technologies will have on
mental health - social media allows lonely people to find communities in relatively low-stress
environments, but it also opens the doors for more complex and intense cyberbullying, as well as
jealousy and perceived isolation. Increased interconnectivity inherently leads to increased levels
of anxiety and depression because it’s easy to see the worst sides of people as well as the bad
happening everywhere in the world. Genetic modification will increase societal elevation of the
wealthy as superior, but will people be able to tailor their children to be at a lower risk of mental
health conditions? Artificial intelligence has the capability to provide lonely people with instant
companions or therapists who are designed to have incredible emotional intelligence, but will
they ever be able to replace real humans? Will talking to only AI increase feelings of isolation
and worthlessness? These are the kinds of hypotheticals we tried to explore with our
presentation, and it actually helped broaden our perspective to hear from our classmates and
The main feedback we received from the class was that although we were well-
researched, our slides and our explanations were too wordy, and that the simulation we created
was too complicated. We spent more time on research than we did on creating the actual
presentation, which led to it not being as engaging or well-made as it could have been. People
from class said things like “you guys clearly know your stuff” and “good explanations.”
Concerning the simulation, they said that it was “a little confusing but you put work into it and it
had a lot of nuance.” Some people liked the simulation a lot, others liked it but thought it was
confusing, and others just thought it was confusing. We also spent a lot of time on the
simulation, and tried to go very in-depth and cover different aspects of social relations, which is
If we were doing the project again, we would spend more time working on the
presentation to make it more concise and more aesthetically engaging. We might also choose ona
area of focus for the simulation so we could create an engaging class activity without making it
confusing and time-consuming. It would’ve been a good idea to do a practice run on the
simulation so that we could have foreseen any possible difficulties - instead, we just assumed it
It’s important to consider the perspective of the people you will be teaching when
creating a lesson. When you have researched something in-depth or spent a lot of time creating
something, you know it well, and it is easy to assume that others will too. We should have taken
a step back when we had our presentation and simulation and asked ourselves what it would look
like and feel like for people listening or participating. If we had made a greater effort to do this,
we might have caught some of the features that made our lesson less engaging or easy to
Some of our mistakes from this project illustrate the difference between learning and
teaching. When learning, you can find and take in as much information as you want in a way that
suits you personally. When teaching, you have to choose the information that is most important
and find a way to get it across that will allow the most people possible to learn the material and,
Overall, this project taught us both about the lifeboat and technologies we researched and
about teaching. The research phase allowed us to find areas that interested us and find
information to help us get a comprehensive view of our lifeboat and technologies. The lesson-
making phase gave us an opportunity to look at the vehicles through which an instructor can
convey information to students. We chose to include a Google Slides presentation to cover basic
information, a simulation to help students analyze the nuances of the effects technologies can
have on social relations, and a discussion to allow students to get their questions answered and
share their own ideas about our topic. The feedback we received from classmates gave us a
chance to see the pros and cons of the teaching tools we chose, and how you can maximize their
effectiveness.