Worksheet
Finding Your Position: GPS Across Media
Compare print, video, and interactive explanations of GPS, weighing how each medium represents timing, distance, and uncertainty.
Grade 8ELAInteractive · Printable
Aligned toRI.8.7
What’s included
- Single worksheet
- Auto-graded online
- 1 Common Core standard
- Printable answer key
- 13 questions
- Classroom-ready
Details
- Format
- Interactive · Printable
- Grade
- Grade 8
- Subject
- ELA
- Question types
- Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer
About this worksheet
What students practice
- Students evaluate the strengths and limitations of media used to explain GPS.
- Students support media evaluations with specific details from an informational article.
- Students recommend presentation choices that reduce scientific misunderstandings.
How to use
Have students read the article and evaluate the described resources; no internet or video is needed. Discuss how a useful model can also mislead.
Curriculum
Common Core standard covered
Weigh the strengths and weaknesses of print, digital text, video, or multimedia for presenting a topic or idea.
Preview
OwlSheets.com
Finding Your Position: GPS Across Media
Evaluate what different media reveal—and what they can hide.
Read
The article describes three proposed learning resources. Base your answers on their stated features.
A Location Built from Time
1A location dot appears almost instantly on a phone, but GPS does not work by having satellites watch the person holding it. Satellites broadcast signals that include timing information and information about their positions. A receiver uses signal travel times to estimate distances. To explain this invisible process, a technology education team is preparing a printed article, a video, and an interactive model.
2The printed article explains that a receiver generally needs signals from at least four satellites to solve for its three-dimensional position and its clock error. A labeled diagram shows distance measurements as overlapping circles on a flat page. This simplified view helps readers connect distance to possible locations, but real GPS calculations involve three dimensions. A note beside the diagram explains that its circles represent a flat slice of a more complex situation. Readers can trace the labels at their own pace; the page cannot show the measurements changing.
3The video builds the explanation over time. A narrator identifies each signal while animated pulses move from satellites toward a receiver. Each distance estimate appears immediately after the pulse that produces it, making the sequence visible. The pulses travel slowly enough for viewers to follow them. A small opening caption says that travel time has been greatly stretched. Without that warning, viewers could mistake the animation's convenient pace for the signals' actual speed. The camera also moves around a three-dimensional model, showing depth that the printed circles leave out.
4The interactive model focuses on the receiver's clock. Users move a clock-error slider while satellite positions stay fixed. The displayed distance estimates change together, and the calculated location shifts. A reset button restores the starting conditions. This controlled experiment lets users explore why timing matters without changing several causes at once. However, the model excludes blocked and reflected signals, and its location marker is always sharp. A successful slider adjustment therefore does not demonstrate how accurately a phone will work beside tall buildings.
5Each resource also states that receiving GPS broadcasts does not itself tell the satellites where the receiver is. The video nevertheless ends with a bright beam pointing upward from the phone toward a satellite. The designer calls this a visual shortcut for the idea of connection. Yet the beam suggests an outgoing message, which conflicts with the explanation.
6The team must decide which features to keep before publication. Faster animation would not necessarily make the video clearer, and additional controls would not automatically make the model more realistic. The resources need to help learners distinguish the actual process from the choices made to represent it.
Evaluate the presentations
Choose one answer for each multiple-choice question. For written responses, explain your reasoning using the article.
- A. Following how a received signal leads to a distance estimate
- B. Testing how a receiver responds when its clock setting changes
- C. Checking the precise speed at which GPS signals actually travel
- D. Inspecting the wording of several labels without time pressure
The video builds the explanation over time.A narrator identifies each signal while animated pulses move from satellites toward a receiver.Each distance estimate appears immediately after the pulse that produces it, making the sequence visible.The pulses travel slowly enough for viewers to follow them.A small opening caption says that travel time has been greatly stretched.
- A. It helps users isolate the effect of changing the receiver's clock error.
- B. It shows that satellite position has no role in calculating a location.
- C. It lets users reproduce how moving satellites respond to tall buildings.
- D. It helps users measure the actual speed of the broadcast signals.
- A. “The interactive model focuses on the receiver's clock.”
- B. “However, the model excludes blocked and reflected signals, and its location marker is always sharp.”
- C. “A reset button restores the starting conditions.”
- D. “This controlled experiment lets users explore why timing matters without changing several causes at once.”
- A. Removing it would explain clock error more directly, but could make the page resemble the interactive model.
- B. Removing it would show depth more clearly, but would prevent readers from comparing distance measurements.
- C. Removing it would let the circles show changing measurements, but would make the labels harder to trace.
- D. Removing it would reduce reading, but could make the flat model seem like the complete real-world process.
- A. Make each pulse brighter so viewers can follow its movement more easily.
- B. Keep a brief “Travel time stretched” label visible whenever the pulses move.
- C. Move the speed warning into a separate teacher guide that accompanies the video.
- D. Remove the pulses and replace their movement with decorative satellite photographs.
- A. It measures actual signal speed more precisely, although the printed diagram offers clearer labels.
- B. It lets viewers adjust clock error themselves, although the printed diagram shows more possible locations.
- C. It reveals depth missing from the flat diagram, although the animation still changes the timing.
- D. It includes reflections from buildings, although the printed diagram better explains satellite motion.
| Supported by this model | Beyond what this model shows |
|---|---|
- A. It removes the viewer's ability to read the opening timing warning.
- B. It prevents the camera from showing the satellites from several angles.
- C. It suggests communication in a direction that contradicts the stated process.
- D. It makes the printed article's explanation of clock error unnecessary.
- A. Signals moving toward the phone, followed by a location calculated inside the receiver
- B. Matching arrows in both directions, labeled as the exchange needed to calculate location
- C. A dot on the phone that flashes whenever a satellite receives the phone's location
- D. A satellite camera zooming toward the person, followed by a dot on the phone
- A. User control weakens the model's value, since keeping satellite positions fixed prevents useful comparisons.
- B. User control supports testing one relationship, but omitted conditions limit what the results can establish.
- C. User control makes the printed article unnecessary, since moving a slider also explains three-dimensional space.
- D. User control makes the model suitable for checking street-level accuracy, since its location marker is sharp.
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