Of all the challenges facing us in this century, some may find it self-indulgent that I spend an entire week on my number one "pet challenge.” One of my objectives Tuesday morning is to look and see how obesity, a "lifestyle disease" -- let's be honest, a "lifestyle epidemic" -- is directly connected to the environmental and cultural challenges that face our nation and our planet.
Further, I think one of the simplest solutions available to combat obesity (at least on a personal level) is the same solution we can use to address other problems like pollution, climate change, and water shortages. The solution is to "live intentionally." That's a fancy way of saying, "think about what you are doing." If you eat less and exercise more, you will lose weight. If you cut off lights, switch to more energy efficient appliances, use only the water you need, and check the plumbing; then you can reduce your carbon emissions, decrease your energy consumption, and waste less water.
I am curious about whether or not these individual decisions and individual actions can be scaled up to larger cultural entities like families, schools, neighborhoods, towns, cities, and states. A central question of mine is “Can little things add up?” In other words, do personal decisions and personal actions really add up and help us solve problems? Or are we just too disconnected? (Mr. Beitleman originally presented this question to me – in a more elegant manner – last spring. I know he will be hitting on some of these cultural issues and this idea of “emergence” as the class continues.)
We will start with an over view of the raw data (see the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website for the latest info), but we will quickly turn the Point of View (POV) from the state, to the individual. What’s your POV on obesity? How do you keep from being another statistic? Imagine you’re one of the Arizona Quints and H.I. McDounnough is in your nursery. How do you see the world? That’s the angle I want to take. We’ll see where it goes.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Living Intentionally: Food and Activity Log
I am distributing a food and activity log in class, but if you lose it, consume lots of calories, or exercise like mad, then you can get more food logs by clicking on this link .
Friday, January 16, 2009
Blog Assignment: "This Blessed House" by Jhumpa Lahiri
We didn't get to discuss Jhumpa Lahiri's "This Blessed House" but don't fret: you'll now get the chance to write about the story on your blog!First, as an aside, that is Jhumpa Lahiri to the left. Think about the image in terms of logos-pathos-ethos. Goal: persuade someone to buy a book. How is that image doing it? Is it the persuasive mode one might expect? (You don't have to write about that. I just want you to think about it as we approach, in two weeks, our segment on Media and the Rhetoric of Marketing.)
FYI: here's a recent Time magazine interview with Lahiri.
For your blog entry, you're free to respond to "This Blessed House" in any way you see fit, but I'd like you to steer yourself towards some of the things we talked about this week in class: namely Culture and the Persuasive Modes. If you're stuck, here are a few prompts, any one of which will suffice for a blog entry:
- While the approaches to Culture I suggested this week -- "relativist" and "fundamentalist" -- are intended to be primarily denotative (and basically neutral in connotation), they are on opposite sides of the spectrum. How is "This Blessed House" interested in A) the idea of "relativism" and "fundamentalism," and B) what happens when the two have to interact?
- What does "This Blessed House" have to say about contemporary American culture? (Think about the different [even divergent] ways Twinkle and Sanjeev navigate their particular cultural/social circumstances and what they get out of it. Which navigational style is more "successful?")
- True/False: A short story is a particularly effective (a.k.a., "persuasive") way to deal with cultural issues. Explain your answer.
- Or whatever you want to write about.
Logos-Pathos-Ethos Cont'd
Just to close the loop on class this morning:
FYI: Here's a link to an interview with Karen Armstrong, who wrote the shard of text we talked about today.
Here's a pretty good on-line summary of logos-pathos-ethos, with examples of each.
Here too is the biographical note in A History of God, the book in which said shard appears:
A follow-up question:
Bio notes are primarily "ethos" delivery devices. They seek to establish the authority of the author -- her qualifications to write the book in the first place. Armstrong's tries to establish her authority by citing several different qualifications. In the comments section to this post, please identify the three most compelling elements of the bio note and why you think they make you more inclined to grant Armstrong's authority or credibility.
Some follow-up observations/invitations:
1. One thing I want to impress upon you is that you make evaluations and decisions based on "logos" (reason), "pathos" (emotion), and "ethos" (the credibility of the person/entity trying to persuade you) everyday, in just about every human encounter. Often, these evaluations aren't at the conscious level.
2. I invite you to start thinking about them consciously, especially in relation to the media you consume. Does one of the modes tend to persuade you more than the others? Less?
3. I also invite you to start thinking about whether the media you consume tends to appeal to these three persuasive modes in a balanced way, or if one mode tends to get more (or less) "play" than the others.
FYI: Here's a link to an interview with Karen Armstrong, who wrote the shard of text we talked about today.
Here's a pretty good on-line summary of logos-pathos-ethos, with examples of each.
Here too is the biographical note in A History of God, the book in which said shard appears:
Karen Armstrong, one of the foremost commentators on religious affairs, is the bestselling author of A History of God (1993), The Battle for God (2000), Islam: A Short History (2000), and Buddha (2001), among many other books. Having spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, she left her order in 1969 and took a B.Litt. at Oxford, taught modern literature at the University of London, and headed the English department of a public girls' school. She became a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1982, and in 1983 she worked in the Middle East on a six-part documentary television series on the life and works of St. Paul. Her other television work has included "Varieties of Religious Experience" (1984) and "Tongues of Fire" (1985); the latter resulted in an anthology by that name on religious and poetic expression. In 1996 she participated in Bill Moyers's television series "Genesis." She teaches at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and Teachers and was awarded the 1999 Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award. She regularly contributes reviews and articles to newspapers and journals.
A follow-up question:
Bio notes are primarily "ethos" delivery devices. They seek to establish the authority of the author -- her qualifications to write the book in the first place. Armstrong's tries to establish her authority by citing several different qualifications. In the comments section to this post, please identify the three most compelling elements of the bio note and why you think they make you more inclined to grant Armstrong's authority or credibility.
Some follow-up observations/invitations:
1. One thing I want to impress upon you is that you make evaluations and decisions based on "logos" (reason), "pathos" (emotion), and "ethos" (the credibility of the person/entity trying to persuade you) everyday, in just about every human encounter. Often, these evaluations aren't at the conscious level.
2. I invite you to start thinking about them consciously, especially in relation to the media you consume. Does one of the modes tend to persuade you more than the others? Less?
3. I also invite you to start thinking about whether the media you consume tends to appeal to these three persuasive modes in a balanced way, or if one mode tends to get more (or less) "play" than the others.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Have You Established Your Blog Yet?
If not, why not? When you set up your Blogger account, e-mail me (tjbeitelman [at] asfa...) with your URL so we can link to it on the class blog. Remember: no identifying characteristics on the blog (namely, your name), which counts for the URL address.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Climate Change: A model Problem
If good thinking = good writing, then I wanted to challenge myself to distill my approach to teaching about climate change into a few paragraphs.
My objective for tomorrow is to teach all of you the basic science of climate change and get us thinking about specific reasons climate change matters. The first thing I am going to do is talk about what climate is, and the fact that climate change happens...naturally. Then we'll look at some natural, regular climate patterns. Before going forward we need to understand what green house gasses are, and what the green house effect is. Then we will look at an example of past climate change and the results of past climate change (believe me, they are net positives for our species). Finally, I will show you some data that suggest climate change is happening now, and that human behavior is the cause. If there is any time, we will look at one of my favorite questions, "So What?"
Tomorrow's talk and next week's research is not intended to be the end of our investigation of climate change. It is intended to open up the door to further discussions and research, and to teach us how to use the tools of scientific inquiry to get to the heart of an issue.
I will be leaning heavily on a couple of government websites for images and maps. I encourage you to look at these sites and some others as well. The websites I've been getting into are www.nap.edu (the national academies press) http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ (a NASA site that has all kinds of cool maps), and the UN's Department of Environmental Development (UNEP) . There is a wealth of information and evidence out there on climate change. Look around, look for good evidence, and post it to your blog. Two things to keep in mind: one, there is no controversy about climate change, the debate centers around how much the climate is changing; two: what evidence do you trust, and why?
My objective for tomorrow is to teach all of you the basic science of climate change and get us thinking about specific reasons climate change matters. The first thing I am going to do is talk about what climate is, and the fact that climate change happens...naturally. Then we'll look at some natural, regular climate patterns. Before going forward we need to understand what green house gasses are, and what the green house effect is. Then we will look at an example of past climate change and the results of past climate change (believe me, they are net positives for our species). Finally, I will show you some data that suggest climate change is happening now, and that human behavior is the cause. If there is any time, we will look at one of my favorite questions, "So What?"
Tomorrow's talk and next week's research is not intended to be the end of our investigation of climate change. It is intended to open up the door to further discussions and research, and to teach us how to use the tools of scientific inquiry to get to the heart of an issue.
I will be leaning heavily on a couple of government websites for images and maps. I encourage you to look at these sites and some others as well. The websites I've been getting into are www.nap.edu (the national academies press) http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ (a NASA site that has all kinds of cool maps), and the UN's Department of Environmental Development (UNEP) . There is a wealth of information and evidence out there on climate change. Look around, look for good evidence, and post it to your blog. Two things to keep in mind: one, there is no controversy about climate change, the debate centers around how much the climate is changing; two: what evidence do you trust, and why?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Beitelman's 21.C Portfolio
For you to understand my approach to this class you must first understand my approach to myself. I think of myself primarily as a writer. Writers write and so will you this semester. But what do I mean by "write"? Here are the four basic (if not exactly self-evident) truths I hold about writing:
Writing is not a subject matter. This is pertinent to this class because you need to know that I do not come to it with a body of knowledge to impart to you. My goal is to model how I engage ideas. Putting words on a blank page/screen is one important way I do it. Reading -- slowly, closely, actively, widely -- is another. We'll do a lot of both in this class.
Writing is an act of connection. Connection to a reader, of course, but also connection to a particular subject and even connection to yourself. Flannery O'Connor said she wrote to find out what she knew. Connectivity is, therefore, interesting to me in general because it's an important way I connect to the world around me. I'm particularly interested in the ways the 21C. makes it easier and more difficult for real human beings to connect to one another. I also have a hunch that connection -- and the empathy it produces -- will be critical to finding solutions to the issues we'll talk about in this class.
Good writing is good thinking. Most of the writing process happens before and after the words go on the page. That makes it maddeningly difficult to know when you're actually done. Getting right with that requires a certain mindset. Writing is simply a mode of thinking that values deliberation and the need to probe assumptions -- even dearly held ones -- from various angles. Good writers are curious people who don't just ask how but why. They not only are comfortable with open-ended questions, they seek them out. I realize that's just one way to define "good" thinking, but that's how I define it. And it seems to me the 21st C. is all about some open-ended questions.
Make it interesting. As a writer, if you're not interested in what you're writing about, nobody else is gonna be either. I offer you the following three pods of my own peculiar interests, as they relate to the 21C. I'm going to be inviting you to live with me in each pod for a while, carving out your own personal space as you do it. I don't have answers; I just have questions. Lots of questions.
The Perpetual Marketplace
Central Questions and Concerns:
--Bottom Up vs. Top Down Movements.
--Mass Media, Branding and the 24/7 Rhetoric of Marketing.
--Credit, Consumerism, and the Global Economic Meltdown.
Source Material:
--Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson.
--The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
* The "Source Material" will inform our discussion but you won't be asked to read these texts in their entirety. I'll likely present a "book report" on them and the concepts they discuss, and you can borrow them from me if you're interested in reading further.
The Culture of Fear
Central Questions and Concerns:
--What are we afraid of and why?
--Fear as a Brand: Terrorism to Talk Radio.
Course Text:
--White Noise by Don DeLillo.
Source Material:
--The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner.
--The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner.
The Role of the State
Central Questions and Concerns:
--What is a ("our") government supposed to do about all this stuff?
--How do deficits and entitlements work and what role do they play in a government’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities?
--How do individuals fill in the gaps?
Course Texts:
--Declaration of Independence/Constitution.
--The Fog of War (documentary) by Errol Morris.
--On-line dailies and periodicals tracking geopolitical trends, with emphasis on the performance of the Obama administration.
Source Material:
--The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.
--Millenials Rising: The Next Generation by Neil Howe, William Strauss, and R.J. Matson.
Writing is not a subject matter. This is pertinent to this class because you need to know that I do not come to it with a body of knowledge to impart to you. My goal is to model how I engage ideas. Putting words on a blank page/screen is one important way I do it. Reading -- slowly, closely, actively, widely -- is another. We'll do a lot of both in this class.
Writing is an act of connection. Connection to a reader, of course, but also connection to a particular subject and even connection to yourself. Flannery O'Connor said she wrote to find out what she knew. Connectivity is, therefore, interesting to me in general because it's an important way I connect to the world around me. I'm particularly interested in the ways the 21C. makes it easier and more difficult for real human beings to connect to one another. I also have a hunch that connection -- and the empathy it produces -- will be critical to finding solutions to the issues we'll talk about in this class.
Good writing is good thinking. Most of the writing process happens before and after the words go on the page. That makes it maddeningly difficult to know when you're actually done. Getting right with that requires a certain mindset. Writing is simply a mode of thinking that values deliberation and the need to probe assumptions -- even dearly held ones -- from various angles. Good writers are curious people who don't just ask how but why. They not only are comfortable with open-ended questions, they seek them out. I realize that's just one way to define "good" thinking, but that's how I define it. And it seems to me the 21st C. is all about some open-ended questions.
Make it interesting. As a writer, if you're not interested in what you're writing about, nobody else is gonna be either. I offer you the following three pods of my own peculiar interests, as they relate to the 21C. I'm going to be inviting you to live with me in each pod for a while, carving out your own personal space as you do it. I don't have answers; I just have questions. Lots of questions.
The Perpetual Marketplace
Central Questions and Concerns:
--Bottom Up vs. Top Down Movements.
--Mass Media, Branding and the 24/7 Rhetoric of Marketing.
--Credit, Consumerism, and the Global Economic Meltdown.
Source Material:
--Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson.
--The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
* The "Source Material" will inform our discussion but you won't be asked to read these texts in their entirety. I'll likely present a "book report" on them and the concepts they discuss, and you can borrow them from me if you're interested in reading further.
The Culture of Fear
Central Questions and Concerns:
--What are we afraid of and why?
--Fear as a Brand: Terrorism to Talk Radio.
Course Text:
--White Noise by Don DeLillo.
Source Material:
--The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner.
--The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner.
The Role of the State
Central Questions and Concerns:
--What is a ("our") government supposed to do about all this stuff?
--How do deficits and entitlements work and what role do they play in a government’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities?
--How do individuals fill in the gaps?
Course Texts:
--Declaration of Independence/Constitution.
--The Fog of War (documentary) by Errol Morris.
--On-line dailies and periodicals tracking geopolitical trends, with emphasis on the performance of the Obama administration.
Source Material:
--The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.
--Millenials Rising: The Next Generation by Neil Howe, William Strauss, and R.J. Matson.
Inquiry Essay Assignment
This is your opportunity (challenge?) to do some longer form writing in the class. I'm envisioning this as a personal essay (3-5 double-spaced pages; i.e., in the neighborhood of 1000 - 1500 words) in which you deal with a particular aspect of 21C. Challenges -- maybe an offshoot of one of your blog posts, maybe something we've covered in class that you want to think about more deeply, maybe an area we don't cover that you're interested in on your own.
I'm not thinking that this is a "school" essay, per se. What we want is an extended, insightful consideration in written form that focuses on some class-related issue you care about. The details are negotiable. At some point in the next month or so, we'll spend a class period sharing your preliminary ideas for how to approach this assignment. With that said, here are some ready-made approaches that might yield an interesting inquiry essay:
1. Write about an important way your own cultural identity (or one of them) influences your personal approach to some aspect of human health and disease. (Food consumption is one that jumps out and screams, "Pick me!" but there are lots of others.) Talk to other members of that cultural group. What do they think? How does their opinion influence yours? In order to really make this compelling, you'll want to paint a vivid picture of the culture itself. Think about using the tools of narrative and description to help your reader empathize with you.
2. Write an open letter to Al Gore. Write in your own voice, citing examples and anecdotes from your own life, explaining 1) why you care about climate change, 2) what you think the role of a public figure like him should be in tackling the problem, and 3) what you think your role as a high school student in Birmingham, Alabama is and/or should be.
3. Write an essay about the way(s) -- positive and/or negative -- your cultural/intellectual identity is shaped by the media you consume. Use your media log as a springboard.
These are just suggestions. We'll probably add a few of these in the next couple of weeks. You can ignore them or tweak them to suit your purposes. If you feel completely stuck, come talk to us sooner rather than later.
I'm not thinking that this is a "school" essay, per se. What we want is an extended, insightful consideration in written form that focuses on some class-related issue you care about. The details are negotiable. At some point in the next month or so, we'll spend a class period sharing your preliminary ideas for how to approach this assignment. With that said, here are some ready-made approaches that might yield an interesting inquiry essay:
1. Write about an important way your own cultural identity (or one of them) influences your personal approach to some aspect of human health and disease. (Food consumption is one that jumps out and screams, "Pick me!" but there are lots of others.) Talk to other members of that cultural group. What do they think? How does their opinion influence yours? In order to really make this compelling, you'll want to paint a vivid picture of the culture itself. Think about using the tools of narrative and description to help your reader empathize with you.
2. Write an open letter to Al Gore. Write in your own voice, citing examples and anecdotes from your own life, explaining 1) why you care about climate change, 2) what you think the role of a public figure like him should be in tackling the problem, and 3) what you think your role as a high school student in Birmingham, Alabama is and/or should be.
3. Write an essay about the way(s) -- positive and/or negative -- your cultural/intellectual identity is shaped by the media you consume. Use your media log as a springboard.
These are just suggestions. We'll probably add a few of these in the next couple of weeks. You can ignore them or tweak them to suit your purposes. If you feel completely stuck, come talk to us sooner rather than later.
Day-One Reflections
Wow. Can you write "wow" without an exclaimation point? I did. How cool was it to get the plane off the ground? Mr. Beitleman and I have been planning this course for the better part of a year, yet neither one of us knew what to expect this morning. I read an interesting quote from Dwight Eisenhower this week. He was talking about success during battle. He said something like, "planning was crucial for victory, but the plans were completely useless."
I want to echo that idea. You can over-think something. You can plan too much and go down in flames if you're not flexible. Bottom line: you've got to fight the battle with the army you have. Or, in the case of Duke Ellington, you've got to arrange a song for the band you have. To use a metaphor the ASFA faculty worked on earlier this week, "you've got to run a river with the people you've got in the raft."
One of our keys to success in this class will be flexibility. My former mentor, David Kesler, used to tell us to "go with the flow" when doing ecological field work. I take that to heart, and I think that approach will serve us well in this class and in this century. Going with the flow does not mean you don't have a plan or an objective. You absolutely have a plan and an objective. How you modify the plan to reach your objective is what allows you to be successful. There's a word that describes what I'm talking about. Do you know what it is?
I want to echo that idea. You can over-think something. You can plan too much and go down in flames if you're not flexible. Bottom line: you've got to fight the battle with the army you have. Or, in the case of Duke Ellington, you've got to arrange a song for the band you have. To use a metaphor the ASFA faculty worked on earlier this week, "you've got to run a river with the people you've got in the raft."
One of our keys to success in this class will be flexibility. My former mentor, David Kesler, used to tell us to "go with the flow" when doing ecological field work. I take that to heart, and I think that approach will serve us well in this class and in this century. Going with the flow does not mean you don't have a plan or an objective. You absolutely have a plan and an objective. How you modify the plan to reach your objective is what allows you to be successful. There's a word that describes what I'm talking about. Do you know what it is?
Challenges You Expect/Want to Meet
These are the challenges you identified on Day One:
- Social Apathy/Unawareness
- Sustainable Living
- Decrease in Biodiversity
- Disease Prevention and Treatment
- Food and Agriculture
- Water Shortages
- Sustainable, Renewable Energy
- Waste Management
- Rise in Poverty
- Depleting Resources
- Diplomatic Cooperation
- Advances in Technology
---How they affect future jobs
---How they change social interaction
---How they impact the environment (+/-)
- "Nerve Research"
- Education
Sounds like we're all in the same ballpark, and we should be touching on most of these topics at some point, to some degree during the semester. Remember, too, that you're in charge of your own angles of inquiry. If we don't "cover" something you're interested in now (or something you become interested in), your blog, your inquiry essay, and your final project are all tools you can use to explore that area of interest.
- Social Apathy/Unawareness
- Sustainable Living
- Decrease in Biodiversity
- Disease Prevention and Treatment
- Food and Agriculture
- Water Shortages
- Sustainable, Renewable Energy
- Waste Management
- Rise in Poverty
- Depleting Resources
- Diplomatic Cooperation
- Advances in Technology
---How they affect future jobs
---How they change social interaction
---How they impact the environment (+/-)
- "Nerve Research"
- Education
Sounds like we're all in the same ballpark, and we should be touching on most of these topics at some point, to some degree during the semester. Remember, too, that you're in charge of your own angles of inquiry. If we don't "cover" something you're interested in now (or something you become interested in), your blog, your inquiry essay, and your final project are all tools you can use to explore that area of interest.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Essential Facts: Part I
Thoreau famously wrote that he started his little experiment near Walden Pond (he called it "liv[ing] deliberately") in order to "front the essential facts of life." In some ways, that's the project of this class -- fronting essential, unavoidable, and in some cases frightening facts about the world, both in the present moment and in the near future. The thing is, we probably don't have the luxury of holing up in a little shack in the woods as we do it. And it certainly seems like we don't have much time for extended deliberation.
The "21st Century Challenges" we identify and consider in this class are not the only challenges you and the generations that follow you will face. Nor are they necessarily, at the core, new. What is, perhaps, new about the challenges we "cover" in this class is the pace and volume (both in terms of amount and noise) at which we're encountering them. One of the hypotheses I'm starting out with is this: in the 21st Century, more stuff is happening faster (and louder). Or at least it seems that way, and perception often poses as reality.
In particular, I'm interested in looking at the cultural forces at play in the 21st Century. For starters, what is "culture"? Is there -- or will there be -- such a thing as a global culture? How are 21st Century commerce, communications, and connectivity shaping culture -- and vice versa? Maybe most important, what role do these cultural forces play in the various challenges we face, and can they be better utilized to find sustainable solutions?
Practically speaking, when it's my turn to take the reins, we'll engage these questions day-to-day in class by reading, writing, and talking about them.
The Essential Facts: Part II
When I have the reigns of the class we will be looking at what I consider to be some of the most important challenges facing humans in the 21st century. These challenges have been “boxed” into three modules entitled “Human Health and Disease”, “Food, Fuel and Water”, and “Climate Change.” All of these challenges have a scientific underpinning, and we will be using the tools of science to probe these problems; however, these problems cannot be solved through scientific inquiry alone.
Therefore, we will take a “two-pronged”, but synthetic, approach to each challenge. Ideally we will grapple with big issues together by reading, talking, visiting with professionals, and performing experiments. The first approach is called “reduction.” That is to boil an issue down to, “what do I know?” We will move past reduction and into the second approach by learning what other people know in order to make sense of the entire picture. Essentially, I want you to see how emergent properties of a system can be resolved through measured, reductive approaches, and through discussions with others.
The first question we are going to ask you is “Why are you here?” As many of you know (and the rest of you will soon learn), I won’t ask you to do anything I won’t do myself. So, why am I here? I want to dig deeper into, and be more focused on, topics that I believe will be major challenges to citizens of the 21st century. These are topics that I am also personally interested in. I want to dig deeper into these issues, and avoid recycling the exact same thing I have taught over the past four years. One of my ulterior motives is to continue honing the teaching tools I have been using for the past two years, including a writing model I call CEER, facilitating discussions between students with different perspectives, and using new technology to teach basic science concepts.
This is a new course, and it is a “thought experiment.” As Mr. Beitleman likes to say, “we will be building the plane in the air.” I predict some turbulence. This class won’t necessarily be easy, and it may be downright uncomfortable some days. Pragmatically, we might not get as deep on an issue as you like. All of these problems are okay. Our goal isn’t to teach you what to think, but to continue developing your critical thinking skills. I want you to walk out of this class capable of interpreting 21st Century challenges, and contributing to potential solutions.
Blogs: Rules & Regs
One of the ways you're going to engage the material of this class is through your very own personal blog. I use the term "personal" advisedly and you should too: it's not a personal document; it's a public, "professional" one.
By that I mean basic rules of decorum for academic communication apply: your posts should pertain to the class and they should be appropriately G-rated in every respect. While your posts can convey a sense of your individual voice (yes, it's okay to use "I"), your writing should be considered, engaged, and it should conform to the basic rules of grammar. (The same applies to your comments on your peers' class blogs as well.) This isn't your Facebook page; it's an academic document. Another note: do not display your full name or any contact information anywhere on your blog.
Any links or images you post should conform to these basic rules as well.
The minimum requirement will be one autonomous post per week. It should relate to that week's course material in some way, though interesting oblique relationships are probably acceptable. Most if not all of these weekly posts should include a link and your commentary on said link.
You may, periodically, be assigned an additional blog post based on a specific prompt.
You are also invited to post on your own -- focusing on your own areas of interest that relate to 21st C. Challenges. Again: all posts must be pertinent to this class. Use this blog as a model; Mr. Reardon and I are effectively doing this assignment as well. Watch what we do and follow suit.
By that I mean basic rules of decorum for academic communication apply: your posts should pertain to the class and they should be appropriately G-rated in every respect. While your posts can convey a sense of your individual voice (yes, it's okay to use "I"), your writing should be considered, engaged, and it should conform to the basic rules of grammar. (The same applies to your comments on your peers' class blogs as well.) This isn't your Facebook page; it's an academic document. Another note: do not display your full name or any contact information anywhere on your blog.
Any links or images you post should conform to these basic rules as well.
The minimum requirement will be one autonomous post per week. It should relate to that week's course material in some way, though interesting oblique relationships are probably acceptable. Most if not all of these weekly posts should include a link and your commentary on said link.
You may, periodically, be assigned an additional blog post based on a specific prompt.
You are also invited to post on your own -- focusing on your own areas of interest that relate to 21st C. Challenges. Again: all posts must be pertinent to this class. Use this blog as a model; Mr. Reardon and I are effectively doing this assignment as well. Watch what we do and follow suit.
We'll link to each class blog on the righthand column, that way we'll each have access to a real-time record of all twenty-one 21stC. paths of inquiry this semester.
To set up a blog, click here and follow the instructions. You'll need to establish a G-Mail account if you don't have one already. If you have questions, ask me and I'll walk you through the set-up process.
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