Overview of Paradoja

Opening Screen

 The opening screen showing the title of the program and the picture of two very different looking women is used as an introduction to the program- generating ideas and vocabulary and creating the context for the ensuing discussions. Clicking on either photo calls up a video segment, the first clues to the society, the culture, and the issues addressed in the program. What social classes or ethnic groups coexist in this society, where do they live and work, what is their educational level, what are the relations between them, what types of conflicts are likely to arise? Once students offer a few ideas or hypotheses based on their observations, they can compare their first impressions with the information on the "Población" screen selected from the Información menu.

Themes and Opinions

The beauty contest Quicktime (6.3 MB)   Daily life Quicktime (5.8 MB)

The Indice de Temas Screen presents the six themes available.

Official View of the Contest

Commercial Aspects

The Contest and Real Life

Feminism and Popular Protest

Portrayal of Indigenous Culture

Perspectives

These themes are the organizing structure in Paradoja through which students can access the material. Each theme can be selected by clicking on its photo.

The Tema Screen presents the theme's main video clip and allows the user to select an opinion.

 

The Opinión Screen presents opinions or comments about the theme. Clicking on the photo calls up a video segment.

Additional Features

1. Full transcript with annotations

2. Spanish-English glossary, accessed by clicking on any word of the transcripts, information cards or annotations.

3. Information pages - graphics and text on population, geography, economics, politics, etc.

4. Activities (Tareas)

Comprehension activities were designed for each theme to guide students' exploration; to check on their understanding of the issues discussed; to provide the opportunity for writing practice, and to encourage further research of the materials provided in the program or World Wide Web resources. Students can write out their responses in a notebook that opens up with the selected task under the "Actividades de Comprensión" and can print out their responses in order to keep them as reference for class discussion.

 

Interpretative activities were designed to allow students to develop or expand creatively on the themes of the program through a communal notebook. In this communal notebook students write and share with other students their comments, reactions and opinions regarding the themes presented in the video, and also save their work in a special field so that other students can respond. Accordingly, the Notebook has three parts: the designated activity, a composing section, where students complete the task assigned, make changes and edit, and an archive of responses where students' written comments are marked with the current date and saved. This archive thus functions as a small database of students' opinions about a specific issue which is then shared by the whole group and/or can become the basis of new tasks.

5. Web page on Peru - accessed from the program itself with links to current resources on Perú, thus allowing students to get more information and draw comparisons with the data presented in the program.

____________________________

1996-1999 MIT Language Learning and Resource Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts