Graeme

Real life situation:
-    Rupert Murdoch Case – News of the World Scandal

Knowledge Issues:
-    When is it ethical to hack into people phones just to give information to the public? – Look into the simple model and ‘duty ethics’
-    Was the public consistent in their judgments on the scandal? – why/ why not
-    Can the public and the journalists be at fault of a definitional argument?

Ways of knowing:
-    Reason: why journalists go to the extreme lengths to give readers such information
-    I think it is a combination of:
-    Ignorance,
-    Laziness and
-    Pride: although we like to think that we are open-minded, once we get involved we becoming more interested in being the best by any means possible than really establishing ethical ways of obtaining the truth.
-    The fact is that we cannot rely on reasoning to give us knowledge
-    Reasoning on situation to do with todays’ world, the conclusions of deductive arguments are no more certain than the premises they are based on.
-    Emotion: Reaction to the invasion of privacy
-    Perception: the way the public perceives journalists/ newspaper

Areas of knowledge
-    Ethics: was the scandal ethical
-    Natural Sciences: At what point do we say that it is to much to use to available technology and whether we even have the right to use it
-    Human Sciences: Is it appropriate to uses the technology and do we have the right to know other peoples information – wikileaks (news about the government and politics) vs. information for the public (newspapers)

Yep you can get CAS hours from moderating IBS. Joel (deissi) was the first one to get service hours for modding IBS, then Desy (dessskris) also got hours.

If you are interested in moderating, this thread explains what the IBS team is looking for.

ToK Presentation Guide

Knowledge Issues
'Knowledge issue' i.e. issues about knowledge. It would be appropriate here to consider what ToK is all about. Many naturally assume that anything philosophically based is ToK. Understandable, but wrong. ToK is based around three main questions:

• What is knowledge?
  
• How is knowledge acquired?
  
• How do we know what we know?

In layman’s terms, a knowledge issue is a very general question which aims to explore the problems of knowledge and evaluate it. Thus, knowledge issues are usually formatted in the form of ‘How do we know…?’ (this deals with question 3) However, there are other forms such as ‘What is the role of [a way of knowing] in [an area of knowledge]?’ (this deals with question 2).

The knowledge issue must be stated in the introduction of your presentation as it is what your presentation is all about.

For example, ‘To what extend is euthanasia ethical?’ is not a knowledge issue as it does not attempt to answer any of the three basic questions. ‘What ways of knowing can aid us in determining whether euthanasia is ethical?’ is not a well formed main knowledge issue because it is too specific, but at least it is a knowledge issue which deals with question 2.

‘Derived / Sub-’ Knowledge Issues
These are knowledge issues in themselves but are connected to the main theme or main knowledge issue of the presentation and are possibly more focused in nature.

For example, if your main knowledge issue is ‘What is the role of reason in History?’ a linking knowledge issue you could explore would be ‘How can we use Historical knowledge and inductive reasoning to predict future events?’ Your entire presentation should be based around the main knowledge issue and your main theme, but this sub-knowledge issue will allow you to explore one small aspect of 'the role of reason in History'.

Claims and Counter-claims
These are statements which are answers to your knowledge issue or sub-knowledge issues. They are then proceeded with evidence that supports such a point. In a way you can treat this as a paragraph in an essay, its structure is similar to the Point Evidence Explaination (PEE) or Statement Evidence eXplaination (SEX) which you may be familiar with.

For example, for the knowledge issue ‘How do we know whether homosexuality is ‘natural’?’ A claim would be ‘deductive reasoning can tell us that it is not natural.

• the natural goal of all living things on earth is to reproduce;
  
• homosexuality does not allow the possibility of biological reproduction;
  
• therefore homosexuality is not 'natural'.

A counter-claim would be that ‘deductive reasoning has its limitations in aiding us to determine whether homosexuality is natural.’ A discussion on the flaws of premises and reliability of deductive reasoning would then take place.

Real Life Situation
A real life situation is a realistic event, object or scenario that allows you to extract knowledge issues from it or supports your claim, a possible answer to your knowledge issue, by providing evidence. Real life situations can be drawn form anywhere ranging from the news to a book your read to an event that happened on the school playground. The possibilities are endless. Always try to make your real life situation related to you in some way; an incident which happened to you would be perfect.

For example, for the knowledge issue ‘How reliable are our sense perceptions in determining what is true.’ For the claim/counter-claim: ‘Sense perceptions have their limitations in determining what is true,’ a real life situation would be, ‘The time when I was small and saw a ghost’s face appear in the curtain, upon further inspection, it was the folds of the curtain that had shaped into something similar to a man’s face. With the combination of flawed inductive reasoning, sense perception had hindered my knowledge of truth.’

Getting Started
There are two main ways to get yourself started.

• is to find a real life situation which really interests you. You will extract one knowledge issue from it and simplify it to make it into your main knowledge issue your presentation will be based on. From there you find sub-knowledge issues and more real life scenarios to support your claims and counter claims.
  
• is to think of a broad knowledge issue, derive sub-knowledge issues which you wish to explore and find real life situations from there.

There are many ways to do your presentation. It can be a simple lecture, a power point presentation, (if your are in pairs) a dialogue, a role play ect.

The entire presentation should be like a verbal essay, with a focused introduction introducing the main issues, your methodology and how the presentation is structured. A claim should be given first, evidence to support the claim, then the limitations of the claim or a counter claim. The conclusion should sum up the main points in the presentation, it is an opportunity to give your opinion (great for scoring marks on the Knower’s Perspective criteria).


Presenting
As with any presentation, practice makes perfect. Make sure you can be heard clearly and that you articulate yourself well. The nice thing about the presentation is that since it is verbal it allows you to create a lot of links. E.g. ‘referring back to the first slide of the presentation’, ‘this scenario is very similar to the tax the government is enacting next month isn’t it?’ Create a set of notes to aid you so that you know what you will be discussing next. With power points do not cram everything onto the slide, each slide should only have a max of 5 points, they should not be sentences. When showing pictures, make sure it covers the entire slide, what’s the point of having a picture when it's of minute size shoved in the corner?

Most people are scared of the questions at the end, don’t be. The questions asked by your teacher are there to help you. If you’ve missed something in your presentation that is key to answering the knowledge issue, this is the opportunity to gain back marks. If you can’t answer the question simply make a statement or give an opinion. A classic way of avoiding questions is to make your own question, ‘That’s a very good question, but I think the main issue here is….’ But try to answer them because they are very likely to be beneficial. Secondly, the audience can ask questions too. Do not plant a question in the audience; it is obvious and creates a bad impression.

© Keel, www.ibsurvival.com  

icecoldstar, on Oct 12, 2007 - 04:48, said:

My T.O.K. teacher told all the I.B. students to join this site because she thought that I.B. made it.

By graders do you mean your teacher or the IBO minions?  Your teacher is highly unlikely to count your words, whereas the IBO are liable to count your words by using OCR software or other means (humans).  I'd advise you stay under the limit regardless.

I vote for Midnight!

Just got my first semester report today. I failed math.
Lets put it this way, my parents are the type of people who will literally kill me for failing a course!

i was getting a 65% in midterms in math, did soo bad on my math exam, went down to 45%!
i feel like sh**
told my mom, she walked away, havent talked to her since
told my dad, yelled at me, and told me to not go to school tomorrow

the thing with me is that, I really wanted to stay in IB.
mainly because i really wanna achieve something in life, i have a goal like most people, and don't wanna end up doing drugs (like my middle school friends; all of them are on drugs)
i feel lucky i got accepted in IB, and switched schools, or i would have been doing drugs.

I'm in grade 10 btw, and yeah, it's in the "real" IB program yet, but what can i say, i screwed up
I did fine in my other courses, just math..

Also made some real nice friends (dont really have alot of them), for the first time..
funny cause i always wanted good friends, and just when i have some, I have to leave my school.
Well, on top of all this, i've heard alot about how if you fail math in my school, you automatically get kicked out of IB

I don't know what happened to me during the exams. Since grade 7, i've been dying to get in IB (like most people), and now i'm getting kicked out..

Well, thanks for reading this .. uh. ^ scatter of thoughts and sorry for my coarse language ^

Parshant
Just an average everyday boy who thought he understood the importance of education

Maha's summed it up pretty well, http://www.ibsurviva...reation-of-ibs/ here's what I said, it's in post number 4

There is no hierachy really. It depends on many things:
1)Whether or not we need moderators.
2)How active the member is on the forum.
3)What is the quality of their posts, we wouldn't want a moderator with stupid irrelevant and unhelpful posts for example.
4)How well they use the report button, it shows if they know exactly what's right or wrong.
5) In some cases we look at how long they've been in the forum and how they get along with other members, we don't want someone who doesn't get a long with anyone and is always picking fights.
and other factors..

But you get the point, it's not a hierachy  or a post count thing.

If I may say, I don't really see the point in removing the swear filter if it is not used anyway! It's not as if it bites or something. I kind of like the fact that nobody swears here and I'm convinced that having the filter removed would result in some swearing. And, well, some swearing>no swearing, so if I am allowed to give my opinion, then I'd say "Swear Filter Rock On!"

Why do we have a swear filter? The people who view this forum should be, by definition, at least 16. The few who have got into IB at younger ages are in all likelihood ahead of their peers in terms of intelligence and maturity, so even that shouldn't be a problem. I think it's a little insulting to be subject to such childish a system, when clearly we are mature and intelligent individuals. Look at the discussion going in the debate forum! I don't think anyone's going to giggle too much if you let "****" be seen in all its vulgar glory.

It's not even a matter of being able to swear. It's a matter of principle. Why sacrifice any amount of clarity when the only reason against is absurdly irrational given the community?

~Julie~, on Jan 14, 2011 - 03:54, said:

Basically, anything that breaks any of the forum rules, which Austen has ever so kindly already explained. The thing with us is, because we don't have regular members who report bad posts, we need to go through almost every new post/thread made to make sure the forum is tidy and spam less it's a difficult job and I can't thank Austen and Desy enough for being so good at it!

Graeme: Thanks for the kind words

You should be able to access it now. We somehow didn't put in the permission settings for the VIP group to access the forum. Don't know how that happened. Sorry for the confusion!

How about asking the forum, members are willing to help. Most of us aren't VIP and get along just fine without the downloads. You don't need those downloads.

IBStudentB, on Oct 28, 2010 - 21:05, said:

I'm pretty sure you can mention that the experiment is about how people think and organize information without confounding the experiment too much.  If you need sample consent forms you can find some on this forum and on my blog in the appendices of the sample internal assessments.  If the samples don't answer your question, post back here .