Period 1: Nonviolence and Gandhi, Day 6 - Class Recap

A photo I took last summer at the Portland Japanese Garden. Really an incredibly beautiful place! Some of you are investigating aspects of Japan's culture for the paper, so that is how I am making this relate. :-)
Good morning Period 1!

Despite the chatter during the time when you should have been working on actually writing your paper, I thought that today was absolutely excellent. Thank you for the involvement in all parts of class: for bringing things in to talk about, to asking lots of great questions about how to write the paper, and meeting with Mrs. DeFrance and myself. Thanks for that! Please work hard on getting the rough draft of this paper done for Tuesday!

Essential Question: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? - As I said in class, I am sure there are many of you that are researching parts of conflict. I am hopeful that we will be able to come back soon to talking about Gandhi!

Soundtrack: "Hands Held High" by Linkin Park. Lyrics (Warning: explicit - I played the clean version of the song before class) here. I read a few of the verses off - definitely a song that relates to conflict and responses to it! Thanks for the suggestion Randi! :-)

AGENDA 5/29/09:
News Brief
Writing the Paper
Quiet Base Group Work
Conferences

Homework: Rough draft of paper due for peer revisions! Read the blog and ask questions!

We went over this quite a lot in class, so I am expecting that everyone is clear about what I am asking for you to do for next class. A typed copy of a rough draft, that your base group will peer review and edit. Again, if you have any questions or concerns, please be asking away in the comments! I will try as much as possible to clear things up!

News Brief: Plenty to talk about today! We started out the conversation by Brandon telling us about a mosque bombing that he had seen on the bottom scroll of the news this morning. In all probability, that was what this article is referencing: LATimes.com - Iran blames Sunni extremists, U.S. for deadly mosque bombing.

This sparked a discussion about the recent terrorist plot that the FBI broke up last week, that was supposedly going to be about attacking synagogues (Jewish places of worship) in New York City. A good article about this, and how it came to be found out (or possibly created), can be read here: NYTimes.com - Informer's Role in Bombing Plot.

For some reason, we then detoured into talking about the World Cup in 2010, which is in South Africa and Mustafe said he is going to. So cool! I think we talked about this because I mentioned the Champions League (in Europe) Final between Barcelona and Manchester United on Tuesday, which Barcelona won 2-0. A recap of that game can be read here.

Continuing on the sports vein, someone mentioned that there is a Chinese basketball player that is 7'9" - Sun Mingming! Here's an article about him (the picture is totally insane): The Canadian Press - China's seven-foot-nine Sun shining in Japanese basketball league. I mentioned that the taller basketball players are, the more prone to injury they are. I remembered reading about this on ESPN's True Hoop, and was able to find it again! Here it is: ESPN.com - Would a 60-Foot Man Really Be Unable to Walk? Really interesting!

We also talked about the Obama administration creating a new position for internet security (which is sorely lacking in the world). You can read about that here: CNN.com - Obama expected to announce 'cyber czar' position.

For another reason entirely, we talked a little bit about ethanol fuel. Right now, there is a big push to blend ethanol (which is usually made out of corn here in the U.S.) with gasoline, so driving a car does not pollute as much. What people ignore is just how much money it takes to make ethanol, and if it is really doing any good at all for the environment (due to all the other costs that it takes to make it). Two years ago, my mom wrote a good piece on her blog about this (she knows her stuff), and convinced me to write a research paper for a college course I took on the possible benefits and costs to ethanol. Anyway, you can read her blog post about it here: AmandaFritz.com - Oregon State biofuels study. Also, another piece of information that I think is interesting when it comes to this can be found here: AmandaFritz.com - A Biofuels Fact. In the comments, you can also see that the corn it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol once would feed a person for a year. Wow!

I also mentioned that Portland (and a lot of the state of Oregon) has started requiring that every gas station blend their gas with 10% ethanol. An article on that can be read here: KGW.com - Oregon gas stations required to sell ethanol fuel.

We also talked about General Motors probably about to declare bankruptcy (and the Italian car company Fiat now owning Chrysler): CNN.com - GM bankruptcy still likely despite deal. Again, this means that GM has to restructure all of their debt, not completely go away. Really hard times for American car companies!

Whew! Zack T. ended this section of the class up with this article: BBC News - Sudan army takes town from rebels. This is directly related to the genocide in Darfur (which, by the way, the United Nations does not say is a genocide, mostly due to China having veto power as well as a lot of relations with the Sudanese government for oil, which is one of the reasons why many people wanted the U.S. to boycott the Olympics in China this last year).

Thank you so much for this really interesting conversation! Continue to be paying attention to the world around you! :-)

Writing the Paper: During this section of class, there was a really fantastic discussion about the finer points of citing a source and how we want you to write the paper, which would be impossible to entirely recap on the blog. However, if you were paying attention in class, I feel pretty confident that you understand what is going on. If not, please ask questions in the comments about how to construct a paragraph and cite a source! Remember, we do not want you using a ton of direct quotes. Pick a couple really key ones, and summarize the rest! You still have to cite them, but now you are showing me what you think about your research!

Remember that the format of the paragraphs is there to just give you a general idea of the sequence that we want: topic sentence, concrete detail, concrete detail, commentary, concluding statement. Those do not all have to be single sentences! In fact, if you elaborate each point, your paper will probably be much easier to write!

Again, let me know if you have any questions about all of this!

Quiet Base Group Work: Perhaps I should have underlined "Quiet" here, because I really doubt that most of you used this time effectively. I wanted you to check in with each other about how things are going with the paper, then get right down to writing your rough draft. Some of you chose to utilize this time, some did not. During this, we also did...

Conferences: Mrs. DeFrance and I really like doing these. It is always awesome to get to check in with everyone! I started from the bottom of the class list and she started from the top. If you did not get to chat with either one of us today, the questions that I asked were: how are you feeling about your research question and sources? Does this paper make sense? Do you need any help with it? Do you feel confident about writing the rough draft this weekend? Finally, I showed everyone their grade and gave out ways (if possible) to get it up.

Thanks for visiting with us! I really value the opportunity to sit down and chat one-on-one, because that happens way less frequently than I would like.
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Okay, there you have it! What a busy day and end to the year! Keep working hard with me please!

I will be working at the airport tonight (Friday) for the last time ever (sad times), so I will not be able to post and respond to comments from about 4 PM until after 10 PM. Other than that, I will be working hard all weekend on grading and getting the rest of the year ready to go, so most of the time I will be online ready to get back to you.

Big games in the NBA! Mr. Hardin's Lakers play the Denver Nuggets tonight at 6:00 PM on ESPN. The Cleveland Cavaliers (or really, the name should just be "The Team that LeBron James plays for) play the Orlando Magic on Saturday at 5:30 PM on TNT. If Cleveland or Denver do not win, they are out!

Speaking of sports, I am super excited to get to finally watch a little bit of the French Open this weekend. I love this time of year! The Stanley Cup finals start soon in hockey too. Woo hoo!

Have a great weekend everyone! I will see the ballers during second lunch. For the last time, if you are confused or concerned about anything about the paper (or in the class) please either comment or e-mail me! :-)