Lesson plan

Standard Deviants

Standard Deviants (originally The Standard Deviants) is a series of educational videos produced in the United States. The name also referred to the troupe of actors and comedians who presented the series. The series is owned by Cerebellum Corporation, founded in the Washington, D.C., area by George Washington University alumni Chip Paucek and James Rena, who created the series to help students learn using humor. As such, the series blended essential information with humorous examples and comic sketches. For example, the English punctuation video illustrates the usage of exclamation points through a sketch in which two characters excitedly play Battleship. The series was originally targeted at college students, but its intended audience became progressively younger over time, eventually described as "for junior high, high school, college and beyond". The original videos, which typically have running times of 1–2 hours, were later adapted into Standard Deviants TV, a series of fifty-two 26-minute episodes on PBS from 2000–2002. They were then retrofitted again into shorter videos for the K–12 school market, which as of 2024 are packaged as two lines: Standard Deviants School and Standard Deviants Teaching Systems. Cerebellum created two other series, both short-lived.…

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Article summary

Standard Deviants (originally The Standard Deviants) is a series of educational videos produced in the United States. The name also referred to the troupe of actors and comedians who presented the series. The series is owned by Cerebellum Corporation, founded in the Washington, D.C., area by George Washington University alumni Chip Paucek and James Rena, who created the series to help students learn using humor. As such, the series blended essential information with humorous examples and comic sketches. For example, the English punctuation video illustrates the usage of exclamation points through a sketch in which two characters excitedly play Battleship. The series was originally targeted at college students, but its intended audience became progressively younger over time, eventually described as "for junior high, high school, college and beyond". The original videos, which typically have running times of 1–2 hours, were later adapted into Standard Deviants TV, a series of fifty-two 26-minute episodes on PBS from 2000–2002. They were then retrofitted again into shorter videos for the K–12 school market, which as of 2024 are packaged as two lines: Standard Deviants School and Standard Deviants Teaching Systems. Cerebellum created two other series, both short-lived.…

Key claims

  1. release date: 1998 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
  2. release date: 2002 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "1998". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. The record states that the release date is "2002". What evidence would count against this claim?
  4. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  5. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1373718839

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.