Adventures in Africa

Engage

This year, the world famous Adventure Tours Inc., is promoting exciting trips to almost every country in Africa.  The manager has heard that your class is one of the best in the business for doing Internet research and creating superb documents that use images, photos and a variety of fonts. 
They would like your class to create a series of magazine advertisements that promote the theme of Adventures in Africa. 

These ads will need to be attractive, colorful and most importantly, contain interesting information about the country your group selects.   You will need to include a brief outline of the important facts about the history, culture and exciting things to see in the country you have chosen.

You should begin by making sure you are familiar with the area you have chosen.  As you look through the sites in the Explore section, use a word processing program to record the information you find so that you do not have to go back to the sites over and over again.
 
You should focus your research on the following topic areas:

Find some general facts and information about Africa. 

Check the site that contains a map of Africa and select a country.  You may wish to print a copy of the map on that site.

Select the country that your team will focus on.  Hint: One of the websites listed in Explore contains some profiles of each country.

Collect information about the people, the history of the country and some interesting sites that people might want to visit.  If you are really good at searching the Internet, you can find some sites that are not listed in the Explore section.  

There are also two tours of Africa included in the list of sites.  Be sure to go on a tour so that you can see what the people looking at your advertisement might want to do.  There are some questions for you to answer in the Explain section.  You should look at them before you take the tours.

Explore

You will need a computer with access to the Internet for your research and a word processor to record your findings.   Look at the explain section to help you direct your research to the appropriate goals. 
Africa.com
http://www.africa.com/

The Living Africa
http://library.thinkquest.org/16645/contents.html

About Africa.  People and history
http://library.thinkquest.org/C002739/AfricaSite/1Main.shtm

The Knowing Trail – An Exciting Virtual Adventure in an African Forest
http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/pagegen/wok/index.html

National Geographic (Map Machine)
http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine/index.html?id=362&size=medium&left=-17.3&bottom=-34.6&right=51.1&top=38.2
Map of Africa

National Geographic – Test your knowledge of Africa
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/world/games/brainteaser/brain.html
Test your knowledge on Africa

National Geographic – Map with several stories about each country
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/africaarchive/map.htm
l
Web cam showing animals that come to a pond in Botswana – live in the fall
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html

If you want to review internet searching visit www.NortelLearniT.org and look at the Discovering the Internet tutorials.  Review the Imaging training videos from Nortel LearniT (www.NortelLearniT.org).

Explain

Now that you have explored the resources provided and discovered a few of your own, you are ready to organize your information to prepare for your advertisement.  Before we get working on the advertisements, you were instructed to take the two tours (the Knowing Trails and the Living Africa).  As you go through the tours, try to find the answers to these questions.  Have fun!

The Knowing Trail http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/pagegen/wok/index.html

1. The Goliath Frog is: /1
a. not found in Africa
b. the biggest in the world
c. the rarest in the world
2. The strangler fig tree kills its host by _______________. /1
a. Growing over the host and shutting out light.
b. Causes the host to become diseased with its sap.
c. Sucks up all of the water from the host’s roots.
3. What is a ranger responsible for? 1
a. Protect the forest from poachers and illegal miners
b. Take people on tours of the forest for money.
c. Take pictures of people with the animals
4. A Giant Millipede helps the forest by:
a. eating polluters  b. eating dead plants c. eating dangerous bugs /1

5. A researcher’s job is to? /1
a. capture animals for zoos
b. Study the forest and work closely with rangers and government
c. Organize law documents to protect the rangers
6. The largest predator in the Ituri is? /1
a. the leopard    b. an elephant  c. the Dwarf crocodile

7. Like the Goliath Frog, this animal is one of the largest of its kind in the world? /1
a. Tree Hyrax  b. Baboon spider  c. African Giant Rat
8. Who said: “We can help save the forest by understanding it better.”? /1
a. Therese   b. Tausi   c. Kenge
Tour the
 website “The Living Africa”, and answer the following questions:

The Living Africa http://library.thinkquest.org/16645/contents.html

9. It is thought that humans began living in Africa? /1
a. 10 million years ago
b. 2000 years ago
c. 7 million years ago

10. The total population of Africa is ? /1
a. over 680 000 000 people
b. 650 000 000 people
c. 320 000 000

11. The Sahara Desert is. /1
a. the largest in the world b. the hottest in the world c. smallest in the world
 
12. How many babies badgers do honey badgers normally have? /1
a. One to four
b. 10
c. One to three

13. The Nile river takes its name from the Greek word meaning ? /1
a. deep and wide water  b. fast flowing c. river valley

14. The Nile plays a vital role in: /1
a. Agriculture b. fishing   c. neither a or b

15. With a total area of about 11,750,000 sq. miles, Africa is : /1
a. the largest continent  b. the 2nd largest continent  c. not a continent

16. The black colobus and the mountain gorilla are: /1
a. both primates
b. do not have toes
c. Large, shy animals

Wow.  What a lot of information in those two tours.  You should have found out a lot about the people, animals and land of Africa. 

Elaborate

It is time to work in your groups and get your magazine advertisements ready.  You should probably look at a couple of travel magazines to see how they set up advertising for tours.  Remember to include the name of the company, Adventure Tours, in your ads. 

Begin by writing your summary paragraphs including what you have learned about Africa during your research.  Include what you have learned about the history of Africa, the people, the land and wildlife.  You should describe the country that you have selected to promote in a separate paragraph.  Be sure to make your description interesting so that people will want to go there after reading it.

Collect the images that you are going to use.  Edit your images where you feel necessary using a drawing program or photo editing software.   You should review the section on “working with digital images” in the digital imaging videos found at www.NortelLearnit.org.  They might need to be rotated or cropped for the ad.

You and your partner will need to decide which images you will be able to use. 

Before you go to the final product, you should plan the layout of your advertisement carefully.  Where do you want things to go?  Who will you be trying to convince to go (adults, kids, families).  How will you make it eye catching and interesting to look at?

Evaluate

Evaluation Rubric

Group evaluation:  What did each of you contribute to the task.  How did you divide the work? Self Evaluation: What did you learn? What do you know about Africa that you did not already know?

Extend

Now that you have done your magazine advertisements, you can display them throughout the school.  Offer to tell younger classes about Africa. 

You can take your information and create a web site about Africa, using your information and the links that you have gathered.