Big Brother is watching you! In this lesson, students will explore facial recognition technology. The lesson features a video discussing how law enforcement and other organizations use facial recognition and the potential dangers it presents. Students will learn and practice the future perfect tense, the future perfect continuous tense, and related vocabulary. The lesson includes plenty of engaging discussion activities and worksheets developed for both adults and teenagers, ensuring a thought-provoking and interactive learning experience.

Lesson Objectives

Grammar: Students will learn and practice the future perfect and future perfect continuous tenses. They will focus on using these tenses to talk about actions that will be completed or will be continuing at a specific point in the future. Examples will include "By 2025, I will have graduated from university" and "By next month, I will have been working here for three years."

Listening: Students will improve their listening skills by engaging with a video that discusses the use and implications of facial recognition technology. They will listen for details on how the technology works, its applications, and associated ethical concerns, particularly noting how future tenses are used to predict technological advancements and societal changes.

Speaking: Students will engage in discussions about the advantages and dangers of facial recognition technology. They will use future tenses to express their opinions on how this technology might change society, discussing scenarios where technology could either benefit or infringe on personal freedoms.

Vocabulary: Vocabulary development will focus on terms related to surveillance and technology such as "facial recognition," "CCTV," "database," "civil liberties," and "totalitarian." These terms will be used in context to help students discuss the subject matter more effectively.

Homework: For homework, students will complete exercises that involve using the future perfect and future perfect continuous tenses to describe future events related to technology, personal goals, or societal changes. They will create sentences like "By the end of the decade, we will have fully integrated facial recognition in public security systems" and "In five years, I will have been living in this city for a decade."

Video

                                                Have you ever had a weird feeling that someone was watching you? Watch this video to learn how facial recognition technology has developed, how it’s used by law enforcement and other organizations, and why it may be dangerous. 
												
                                            

Video Transcript

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

high-def [adjective]: short for: high-definition; showing very clear pictures on a screen or producing very clear sound

facial recognition software [noun]: software making it possible for a computer system to recognize a digital image of somebody's face

civil liberties [noun]: all your rights to do, think, and say whatever you want as long as this does not harm other people

essential [adjective]: necessary or extremely important

totalitarian [adjective]: relating to a government having almost complete control over the lives of its citizens and in which political opposition is not allowed

machine learning [noun]: the act of computers changing the way they perform tasks by analyzing and learning from new data, without any human activity needed to change the program

database [noun]: a large amount of information stored in a computer system in such a way that it can be easily accessed and modified

hotspot [noun]: a popular and exciting place frequented by many people

CCTV [noun]: closed-circuit television; a system sending television signals to a limited number of screens, that is used in public places to prevent crime

surveillance [noun]: the act of watching a person or a place

apparatus [noun]: a machine used for a particular purpose; machinery

ethic minority [noun]: a group of people sharing culture, tradition, language, history living in a country where the majority of people are from a different ethnic group

legitimate [adjective]: allowed; with accordance to the law

MIT Media Lab [noun]: a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

measurements [noun]: the length, height, width, etc., of something

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