Globalisation and the Digital World Resource Pack

A “6 week course”, built around a variety of PowerPoint Presentations and supporting documents, designed to help you teach the Globalisation and the Digital World Unit of the OCR Specification.

I found this set of documents buried on my hard drive the other day and I know very little about where I found it, its creator (J. Ellison who may or may not work did work at Langley Park School for Boys but is now at Sydenham High School) or creation (circa 2016). That aside, I do know the title refers to a section on the latest (2017) OCR A-level Sociology Specification called, spookily-enough, “Globalisation and the Digital World”.

More-interestingly, the pack of materials I’ve managed to somehow acquire refers to it being a “6 week course” which, taking this at face-value, means it’s a set of resources and activities specifically designed to teach this section of the course – potentially a huge time-saver, even if you decide to customise the base PowerPoints to the needs of your particular students (you may want / need to do this because some, if not all, of the supporting materials may well be a little too advanced for some students – and then some. The Castells article, for example, is likely to prove well beyond a lot of a-level students so you might want to think about replacing it or summarising it).

The only alterations I’ve made to the original slides are:

1. Removing specific references to textbook pages (because there’s no indication as to which textbook they refer). You may want to edit the PowerPoints to include specific references to the textbook/s you use with your students.

2. Changed YouTube links to play inside the Presentation.

In addition, you may want to add slides containing activities, notes and so forth you currently use in your classes. My way of thinking about this resource is to use it as the base for materials you normally include in your teaching – a basic structure, in other words, around which you can hang whatever resources / activities you normally use / do.

To get the resource you have a couple of options:

1. If you’d prefer to download the whole thing in one go, this Globalisation zip file will do the trick. Although I tend to avoid compressing files in this way – because not everyone understands how to decompress them – if you know what you’re doing (either using a free program like WinZip or, if you’re using Windows 10, the built-in file decompression tool) this is the quickest and easiest way to download the files.

2. You can download each section by clicking the links to PowerPoints and Documents I’ve provided. It’s a bit more long-winded but easier if you’re not on speaking terms with zip files.

1. Introduction
PowerPoint: Introduction to Globalisation

2: Globalisation and key terms
PowerPoint: Globalisation key terms
Docs: Globalisation key terms grid | OCR Teaching Guide | Chomsky

3. The Sociological Debate 1
PowerPoint: The Sociological Debate
Docs: Carter | Castells | Jurgenson | Joyce

4. The Sociological debate 2
PowerPoint: The Sociological debate 2
Doc: Sociological perspectives

5. Age
PowerPoint: Age Identity and digital communication
Docs: Age, digital media and identity | Identity and digital comms

6. Social Media and Age
PowerPoint: Social media and age debate
Doc: Digital technology and youth

7. Gender
Doc: Gender and digital communications

8. Relationships
PowerPoint: Relationships and digital communications

9. Conflict, change and social movements
PowerPoint: Conflict, change and social movements
Docs: Social Movement Grid | Joyce (as above) | Jurgenson (as above)

10. Cultural Homogenisation debate
PowerPoint: Cultural Homogenisation
Docs: Castells (as above)

11. Exam Practice
Docs: Example Questions | Sample Questions | End of Unit Test

To complement the Resource Pack you might find the Globalisation and the Digital World: Revision Stuff useful. It’s a different author but it’s all focused on the same sort of stuff…