Overview

This six-week We the Jury Unit examines the processes of selecting juries and applying the concepts of reasonable doubt, "innocent until proven guilty," a "jury of your peers," and the death penalty. They study how the demographic composition of the jury influences its verdicts, and analyze how unanimous verdicts create fairer trials. Students explore these issues through many class discussions, a jury selection simulation, weekly current event write-ups based on online research, development of charts and graphs to analyze issues, and a culminating performance assessment of a Mock School Newspaper that incorporates editorials, charts, graphs, photographs, and news features that relate to the unit and the cases. The OJ Simpson and 12 Angry Men trials are featured documentary video cases.

The goal was to use technology to enhance the learning process, to increase student technological proficiency in preparation for the world beyond school, and to demonstrate to the students that the Internet is a critical tool for maintaining civic awareness. With the exception of the jury-simulation exercise and the documentary videos, the entire unit was created using web-based resources (the Michigan State University Death Penalty Information Center was particularly helpful).

As part of planning this unit, I created a personal web site that was used as a quasi-classroom web site and reference for selected resources. I also developed sample assignments that students could use as models for their work (Sample Death Penalty Graph, Sample Mock School Newspaper), and created extensively documented lesson plans with many hyperlinks to the web resources used to create the lessons, as a ready-reference for future enhancements (example: History of the Death Penalty). Students used Excel, Word, Publisher, the Internet, digital cameras, and my teaching school's network to access assignments and resources, as well as to hand in work. Some students had previous experience with these technology tools, while others learned to use these tools for the first time.