Introduction
Hello everyone,
Today we will continue the discussion we started last Thursday by looking at accidents from a more optimistic view. We said that accidents affect your physical, economical or psychological well-being, but that is not always true. This Saturday morning, we will investigate a little bit about those that had a positive effect on people.
A happy accident is a common English expression (idiom) that refers to an unplanned situation that has a positive effect on people's lives. Examples of happy accidents in daily life can be:
- Looking for your keys and finding money instead.
- Taking a wrong turn and finding a faster route.
- Adding the wrong spice to a meal to find a delicious flavor.
Just like regular accidents, some have a greater impact than others. Try to think about happy accidents in the history of mankind and let's start our webquest.
Task
The Final Product!
Objective
- To explore different stories and news about ground-breaking discoveries that were not planned.
By the end of this Webquest, you must creat a short presentation about an impressive event in the past that affected somebody in a positive manner.
To share this with the rest of the class, you are expected to prepare a short oral presentation with one of your partners. All the instructions and resources can be found in the "Process" section of this webquest.
Process
Before you start, open a new Power Point presentation
Avoid Google Translate!
Use "define:" on Google, Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com to find the definition of new words.
1. Bob Ross
- Click here to read the Wikipedia article about Bob Ross to get some context about him.
- Using Google, YouTube, or any other search engine, find information about Bob Ross's famous meme: "Happy accidents".
- Read this news and reflect on how much he affected a generation with his TV show "The Joy of Painting".
- Watch a clip of his show where he uses the idiom "Happy accidents"
- Answer this question in your first slide: What was a happy accident for Bob Ross?
2, Happy accidents... Now bigger!
- Click here, here, here, and here to read about happy accidents in history.
- There were many happy accidents in the history of mankind!
- Now, it is your turn to find out more.
- Choose two of those happy accidents and find three different websites that talk about exclusively those events. (only use websites in English.)
- Find one video online about each of the events you chose.
- Fill in the following table with the information you found:
| Happy Accident # 1. |
|
| Happy Accident # 2. |
|
3. Why did you do that?!
- Explain the reasons you had for choosing each of the above happy accidents.
- Create six new slides.
- Slide 2 has only images that illustrate your reasons for Happy Accident #1.
- Slide 3 has only images that explain the history behind Happy Accident #1.
- Slide 4 has only images that explain the consequences of Happy Accident #1 today.
- Slide 5 has only images that illustrate your reasons for Happy Accident #2.
- Slide 6 has only images that explain the history behind Happy Accident #2.
- Slide 7 has only images that explain the consequences of Happy Accident #2 today.
- Write in the "Notes" section of each slide what you will say when it appears.
4. Finish your Power Point presentation.
Your presentation has 8 slides:
- The answer to the question in the first step.
- Slides 2 through 7 from the third step.
- The table in step 2.
Send your final presentation to my email and prepare for an exposition on Tuesday.
Evaluation
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| Creativity | Images are generic and cause no impact or are too few | Images show some resourcing but are not enough or cause little impact | Images are related with the topic and cause some impact | Images are related with the topic and cause impact, but the layout is somewhat simple | Images are shocking/impressive and the layout of the presentation is unique |
| Accuracy | No sentence uses correct grammar | Less than half the sentences use correct grammar | Half the sentences use correct grammar | Most sentences use correct grammar | All sentences use correct grammar |
| Coherence | Images show no relationship with the notes | Few images show a relationship with the notes | Some images show a relationship with the notes | Most images show a relationship with the notes | All images show a relationship with the notes |
| Completeness | One or two slides created |
Three slides created | Four or five slides created |
Six or seven slides created |
All slides were created |
| Resourcing | No references to new websites | One new website was referenced | Two or three new websites were referenced | Four to five new websites were referenced | All six new websites were referenced |
Conclusion
Happy accidents are a part of life. Some of them create unique moments in history. They gave us everyday items, medicines, and other things without even knowing.
Even movies have their own happy accidents as you can see in this link. They also affect individuals and give us things that we use everyday.
Just like the butterfly effect, every action can lead to success or failure!
Credits
Full links to the pages used in this Webquest are:
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+happy+accident
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiom
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wrong%20turn
https://www.merriam-webster.com/
http://www.dictionary.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ross
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/oct/19/ksps-celebrates-painter-bob-ross-with-birthday-par/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tq5vXk0wTk
https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/10-history-happiest-accidents.htm
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-10-inventions-were-made-by-mistake-2010-11
http://www.top5.com/top-5-happy-accidents-in-history/
https://gizmodo.com/5936349/9-scientific-breakthroughs-that-happened-by-accident
https://lifehacker.com/how-to-make-happy-accidents-happen-more-often-1148657518
http://www.cracked.com/article_20096_6-iconic-movie-scenes-that-happened-by-accident.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_17134_5-accidental-inventions-that-changed-world.html
http://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-477-a-sandwich-caused-wwi-20-real-cases-butterfly-effect/
Images used in this webquest were obtained from:
https://cdn-jpg2.thedailymeal.com/sites/default/files/1-add-spice-shutt…
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57279e15b09f9558b2eb3f3d/t/57338a3d7da24f544e3261bd/1496892816271/
https://tenor.com/view/bob-ross-happy-accidents-gif-7215839