Complexity & the Future
Teacher Resources
Driving Question: How might complexity increase in the future?
You’ve trekked across the Universe and traveled billions of years into the past. Now, it’s time to look back on what you’ve learned in order to see the future.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe how complexity increased from the Big Bang to the present.
- Investigate how complexity might increase in the future.
Vocab Terms:
- AI (artificial intelligence)
- climate change
- complexity
- future
- technology
Opener: Complexity & the Future
To teach this lesson step, refer to page 2 of the Lesson 7.1 Teaching Guide.
Our Openers and Closers Guide will provide more information about these short, but important, activities at the beginning and end of each lesson.
The Universe has gotten a lot more complex since Unit 1—and so have you! Let’s look back at how we got here.
Our Collective Future
To teach this lesson step, refer to page 2 of the Lesson 7.1 Teaching Guide.
Could AI be the next threshold? This conversation in our online teacher community considers AI and the future.
You can’t predict the future without knowing a little something about the past. In this article and activity, you’ll squint your eyes and try to see what’s coming next.
Threshold 9
To teach this lesson step, refer to page 3 of the Lesson 7.1 Teaching Guide.
The blog “Engaging students with video” provides four steps to help your students get the most out of videos in the classroom.
If there is—or there ever was—life on Mars, it doesn’t look like the little green men imagined in science fiction. But life could exist there and elsewhere in the Universe. Peer into the final threshold: the future!
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Guiding Questions
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Before you watch
Preview the questions below, and then review the transcript.
While you watch
Look for answers to these questions:
- Why do some astrobiologists think that there might be life on billions of other planets in the Universe?
- What could a possible future threshold be?
After you watch
Respond to this question: What role do you think you’ll play in the next threshold?
Key Ideas
Closer: Complexity & the Future
To teach this lesson step, refer to page 4 of the Lesson 7.1 Teaching Guide.
You’ve got 13.8 billion years of knowledge locked away in your mind. What were the highlights?
