Good vs. Bad x 2 Classes!

1) Welcome to English 10 times two classes!

In order to get ready for our combined group visit with DW Wilson, we have decided to spend some time getting to know one another first. And, we need to get some questions ready to ask him - about the story we all read, about his experience growing up in small town BC, and about writing.

First Some Author Deets:

The Author - BIO
The Book - Once You Break a Knuckle





2) Mix-it-up Handshakes...

• Slide, Slide, UH! and name and favourite movie
• Fists, Twist, Rocket Ship and name and best book ever read
• Slap, Slap, Ankle Tap and name and share something you are good at

3) Small Group Discussions - Once You Break a Knuckle is about "Good people doing bad things." So, let's talk about bad things and good things....

Question One - What are the signs that something you are about to do is bad?
(Okay, on your netbooks click on this link - please use a group name to post with...
http://wallwisher.com/wall/badchoice)

Question Two - What are the signs that something you are about to do is good?
http://wallwisher.com/wall/goodchoice

4) Whole Group Discussion - what do these questions have to do with the story, "Don't Touch the Ground"?  Quick Review -------->  Whole Group Discussion --------> Teacher "draw" your thoughts on the board.

5) Question Creation - Everybody must take all that we've discussed and think of at least two questions to ask DW Wilson on Monday - this does not mean you have to ask that question, it just means that you are ready.

Next Utopia Questions

IV. Children and Education


     1. Would the number of children per parent be limited in your utopia?
          A. If so, to how many children?

     2. Would children live with their parents?
          A. If not, what would be their living arrangements?

     3. What rights would children have?
     4. Would restrictions be placed on children’s activities
          A. If so, what restrictions? 

     5. How would children be educated?
          A. Who would be the educators?
          B. What rights would children have in deciding what they learned?

     6. Would your utopia feature sex education of children?
          A. If so, who would conduct it?

     7. Would the traditional higher education system be retained, modified, 
             or discarded?
          A. If modified, how?
          B. If discarded, how would your utopia conduct higher education? 

The Group - Chapter 4

1) Marks! 

• Progress Sheets are still missing the essay mark and the blog mark.
• Check your folders

2) Next (and yesterday's) Utopia Building Questions - who is keeping notes?

I. Scope

     1. Would your utopia be a global utopia?


          A. If not, would it be a nation state? A bioregion? A city? An eco-vill             age? A mountain? or other type of intentional community? If none of              the above, what?

II. Goals & Values


     1. What would be the fundamental values of your utopia?
     2. What would be its goals?
     3. Would individuals choose their own goals and values, or would their goals
          and values be those of your utopian ideology?



III. Members/Citizens

     1. If your utopia was less than global, what would be the characteristics of
          its population?

     2. Would it be open to all, or would you select its members?
          A. If you’d select members, how and why would you do so?
          B. What would be the criteria for membership?

     3. If your utopia was small in size, would you find the physical site or the
               community members first? Why?

     4. What would be the rights of the members of your utopia?

     5. What would be the duties of the members?

     6. Would there be social stratification (e.g., owners and renters, different        roles for males and females...) in your utopia?

     7. If there would be social stratification, what roles would different class        es of individuals play? Why?

3) Review Chapter 2 and 3

4) Read Chapter 4

5) Time to work on chapter questions... or, just for fun: A Twitter contest! Tweets from 2112!

Watch for the Mutant! And UTOPIA...

The Original Book Cover

1) What do you think of the novel so far? What is the story making you think of in our own world?

2) Introducing the Utopia Project

What does your perfect world look like?

What are the people, jobs, living spaces, geography like?

Does Utopia look like this?

Like this?

Or, maybe like this?

Why would we want to engage in something called Utopian thought?

UTOPIA PROJECT:
- 1 - 3 people working per utopia
- A map/drawing/series of images of your utopia is required - this must be made by students... not just an image of the internet. 20 marks
- A 5 minute slideshow presentation - that presents the name, ideals and goals of your utopia. In class, we will focus in one certain questions everyday. Your answers to these questions must be directly or indirectly put forward in your slideshow. All members of the group must speak. (I will introduce you to slideshow platforms). 36 marks
- A one page summary/manifesto. If you put this up beside your map, anyone to reading it will understand the mission of your utopia. 24 marks
- Make it larger than your interests right now. Think big!

3) I read Ch.2. You read Ch. 3.

4) Work time for questions and utopia group planning.

Beginning The Chrysalids

1)Reminder - send Ms. Colborne your Life Online blog link to tara.colborne@sd71.bc.ca

2) Library - Take out The Chrysalids

3) Introduction - Read:

The Chrysalids is set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war. The situation we entertained on Friday has happened - the world as we know it has ended and you are entering a sort of back-to-basics form of living somewhere in Newfoundland.

David, the young hero (protagonist) of the novel, lives in a tight-knit community of religious and genetic fundamentalists, who exist in a state of constant alert for any deviation from what they perceive as the norm of God’s creation, deviations broadly classified as “offenses” and “blasphemies.” Offenses consist of plants and animals that are in any way unusual, and these are publicly burned to the accompaniment of the singing of hymns.

Blasphemies are human beings—ones who show any sign of abnormality, however trivial. They are banished from human society, cast out to live in the wild country where, as the authorities say, nothing is reliable and the devil does his work. 

David grows up surrounded by admonitions: KEEP PURE THE STOCK OF THE LORD; WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT.

4) Read - teacher reading... (about 15-20 minutes)

Keep in mind, all of our discussions about dystopias, our social experiment on Friday...

5) Begin Questions

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2_H3hKK6a0zdEh1b21QbjRqd00 

It's the end of the world as we know it...

(And I feel fine)

Today - a role playing sort of game to gear up for our novel study of The Chrysalids.

The Context:

It is 2034, and the world has been devastated by an insane act of terrorism – nuclear bombs have devastated most places on Earth. You are one of 22 people to make it into a local shelter. This shelter will run out of food and clean air in 36 hours, and there is only room for 8 people to transport to the last safe place on earth -  a remote village in Newfoundland. There, the animal world and agriculture seems to be barely be viable, but they believe that there is hope to rebuild human society. The going will be rough. They will need a hard working community that is intelligent and able-bodied; they will also need people who are willing to reproduce  However, due to limited resources, they are willing to take only 8 more people into their community, the community that will become the redux of humanity. 

It has been peacefully agreed that each person can make a one minute presentation arguing why they should be saved. Then there will be a vote… the top 8 will be evacuated to the transport plane immediately.

What else do you need to know? The earth has to start over again...

• Draw names
• Draw order of Presentations
• Presentations – can add in comments about others…
• Cross Debate - Rebuttals
• Votes
• Results
• Discussion

Blog topics - again...

1)      How is our world like the Matrix?

2)      How has your life been a hero's quest so far? (Use the Hero’s Quest handout).

3)      What is your digital detox goal? How hard will this be? How will you make sure you make it? How will you keep honest? What do you think you will learn?

4)      Technology changes us. What has your personal experience of technology been?

5)      Describe how attached you are to Hal/The Matrix/the internet of things online... How often do you text, surf, game, Facebook, etc? How is your life better for the internet? What negative impacts is technology having on your life? Are you addicted in any way to these things? How do you know? How might you be different if you were not so attached to "Hal"?

6)      Read an article and respond - what does this say about our culture, our life online?  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll

7)      What do we need to be good people (in life and online)? Look at our brainstorming sticky notes.

8)      What do you think we need to do to reduce the power of bullies (mean people online and in real life)? What would you say to school groups? How would you teach your peers about bullying, hate, trolling, etc…?

9)      Tell a story about the positive power of the internet? There are many stories of hope, positive revolution, boundary breaking connectivity,

10)   MANDATORY - Find an online article on one of the newspaper websites: Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ or The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ and carefully write and post a comment on one of the articles. Put up a link to the article and the comment you posted on your blog.

ALSO TO DO:

-          Check the rubric.

-          Email Ms. Colborne your blog link. tara.colborne@sd71.bc.ca If you are not willing to share your blog with everyone, please tell me in that email.

What about the positive point of view?

1) Let's not forget what's positive about the new online world?

2) PERMA - and if you ever find yourself, or your friends, really down because of life or life online, remember PERMA.

3) Time for life online blogs. Check out these award-winning student blogs. Remember to add photos, images, video for fun and bonus marks!

Inquiry Question, then the library...

1) First, a personal story...

2) Inquiry Question (and new blog topic): What do we need to be good people (in life and online)?

3) In the Library

• Make sure you have 4 blog entries - aim to engage! Make them interesting to read... 
• Create them in Microsoft Word first - in order to use spell check, etc... Save each entry to your L:drive.
• Upload your blog entries to your blog. 
• For every blog entry, add at least one image.
• Consider adding related videos.
• Make sure you to keep in mind the rubric.
• And, please email a link to your blog to me - tara.colborne@sd71.bc.ca 

A Troll and The Good and Time to Work

Read - what does this say about our culture, our life online?  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll

Watch - what does this say about our culture, our life online?

Time to work on blogs. Library?

Blogging Continues...

1) The Test Came Back! Return and finish marking the short story the short story test.

2) Interim reports and... Who has not handed in the essay? Names up.

3) Life Online Continues - how's that Digital Detox plan coming?

Imagine being out on a long space journey with a small crew, on a mysterious mission... only the intelligent computer that runs everything seems to know what is really going on...




4) Blog Topic - describe how attached you are to Hal/The Matrix/the internet of things online... How often do you text, surf, game, Facebook, etc? How is your life better for the internet? What negative impacts is technology having on your life? Are you addicted in any way to these things? How do you know? How might you be different if you were not so attached to "Hal."

Relevant Fact: Did you know that the human brain is extremely plastic (changeable)? It can change dramatically more easily than you think...

5) How to jazz up your reflective writing:

I am really connected a lot to the internet. I totally use my cell phone all the time, even when I'm half asleep, I text. I sometimes think that maybe I should be different but then I don't know what to do so I stop thinking about it. I must spend two hours a day on Facebook. It's dumb but usually I am trying to do homework at the same time.

How can we make this weak paragraph better?

6) To the Bookable Lab

Life Online Begins

1) Discussion: How is technology a blessing, a gift to humankind? How is technology a curse, a dreadful embodiment of the worst in humankind?

2) What Marshall McLuhan said. 

• "The medium is the message." This is not just a hippie-trippie Sixties saying.
• He knew that technology was not just a tool. Technology changes us.
• Compare to what was said when radio first came out, "We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value."
• My personal experience - a reader, a thinker, first computer, Myst, online teaching, my sister got me onto FB in 2007, addiction?, thinking is changing, but feel more creative, self-induced FB coma, I am calmer, kinder, better... so what's the moral of my story? Was this my own little hero's quest?
• So, technology is making us less focused, more anxious, more mean... but maybe also more creative, and more open to new ideas... maybe.

Excerpt from The Shallows.

3) Digital Detox Challenge - inspired by http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/digitaldetox

Everyone in this room is going to establish a digital detox goal. The goals will vary. The ideal goal is to give up FB or texting for one week. 

What will you learn about yourself? 

The person in the class who most impresses me with their detox will win a gift certificate to Avenue Bistro. 

4) Blog topic today: What is your digital detox goal? How hard will this be? How will you make sure you make it? How will you keep honest? What do you think you will learn?

Blog Writing Begins!

1) What is reflective writing? 


Reflection is a form of personal response to 
experiences, situations, events or new information. 
It is a ‘processing’ phase where thinking and learning 
take place. There is neither a right nor a wrong way 
of reflective thinking, there are just questions to 
explore. 


Reflective writing is:
• your response to experiences, opinions, events or new information
• your response to thoughts and feelings
• a way of thinking to explore your learning
• an opportunity to gain self-knowledge
• a way to achieve clarity and better understanding of what you are learning and thinking about in class
• a chance to develop and reinforce writing skills
• a way of making meaning out of what you read and discuss in class

Reflective writing is not:
• just conveying information, instruction or argument
• pure description, though there may be descriptive elements
• straightforward decision or judgement (e.g. about whether something is right or wrong, good or bad)
• a summary of course notes
• a standard formal essay

2) Your Matrix Response - what did you decide that our world shares in common with the dystopian world in The Matrix? 

3) The Hero's Quest - read it over and discuss. How was Neo's journey a classic her's quest? Write notes on page one beside each step to show what happened in the movie. Work together.

4) Blog Writing Topics: (Drafting Lab is booked)

How is our world like the Matrix?

or

How has your life been a hero's quest so far? (Use Neo as a character foil and compare your struggles to his, if you like.)

Minimum of 8 sentences - for tomorrow.

(If your blog is still not up and running, or you forgot the password, just write in a google doc or a Word doc for now)

Wednesday!

1) Who needs to finish the test?

2) Congrats on completing the first unit!

3) Finish the Matrix

DECodiing the Matrix Metaphor

1.      What would your perfect world (utopia - A place, state, or condition that is ideally perfect in respect of politics, laws, customs, and conditions) look like?

2.      How was The Matrix a dystopia?

3.      How are we in a matrix right now? This is the metaphor...

4.      Why might someone want to stay in the matrix?

5.      BLOG TOPIC – What does your world share in common with the world of the matrix? Draw a Venn Diagram on the back page to get your ideas started.