Humanities: Point of View, TED Talks, and Little Brother 4

Hi folks,

Mr. Ryder and Mr. Dunbar are out this afternoon and you are all recovering from a week of Harajuku Fun Madness.

Today in class you have a few different tasks to complete.

The first is the Flocabulary #1 quiz.  It is in your e-mail.  Thank you for being honorable when you take the quiz.  That’s why we love you, folks.  You are good people.

After taking the quiz, watch the video at this link.  Notice how Adam Mordecai , a blogger at Upworthy, added little time code notes for the readers of his blog.  That’s important for the next step in your day.  Make sure you check out his notes though HERE.

After watching that video, take a look at this collection of TED Talks that Mr. Dunbar pulled together. After watching one of them all the way through, create your own time stamp notes a’la Adam Mordecai.  You should have at least 7 time stamp notes, and three of them should connect to Little Brother in some way.  Post a link to the video on your blog as well as your time stamp notes.

And finally, Little Brother Organizer #4 is available.  You will need to watch this video on Point of View to help you out.

 

H/W:

Complete all of the above

Read Little Brother

Work on Little Brother organizers  (All are due by May 17)

BLOG BLOG BLOG!

All Classes (Especially Humanities & 9 CPI): What a Teenager Did

This article showed up on the CNN.com homepage today.  (Side note: Not a lot of news seems to be on CNN.com’s homepage these days.  The fact I thought to even check is kind of remarkable.)

These stats weren’t shocking to me.  Nor was the article that followed them.

What I thought most interesting, though, was the power that adolescent learners a.k.a. students like you have in making an authentic difference.

Emily-Anne Rigal made a difference.

Jeremy Turley made a difference.

What will you do? Humanities students?  9 CPI students?  Your projects might be the first step toward something even more amazing.

Humanities: “To This Day” and Tolerance Work

Over break an amazing model of a tolerance project was posted by the spoken word artist, Shane Koyczan.

We will be watching the piece in class.   Go to the video and the discussion boards by going to this 9 CPI blog entry.

Besides it just being incredibly powerful, consider how it fulfills our project criteria.  Koyczan develops the characters in the poem (based on real people) into figures with whom we empathize by using the same techniques as Harper Lee and other creators.  We get a sense of the values, beliefs, family structures that populated his childhood.   He certainly develops a theme around tolerance and the lasting affect of intolerance on one’s identity.

What essential questions does this poem answer?  What essential questions might Koyczan ask us to consider if he were in the room right now?  Blog about these two ideas.

Then get to work on your own projects.

Think about your audience and where you want to affect the most change.

Within this class?

Within this campus?

Within this community?

Around the world?

And then do it.

All Classes: To This Day Project by Shane Koyczan

Bullies called him “Pork Chop.”