Each week you will be responsible for reading, watching, or listening to some newsworthy publication. You can choose to read a column in a local, regional, or national paper, magazine, or periodical; you may elect to listen to a podcast, talk radio, or online radio; or, you may watch the news, a youtube channel, or another form of online video. The point being, you will educate yourself for at least 30 minutes a week on current events in our world.
Your weekly assignment is simple:
- Consume the required minimum 30 minutes of current events information
- Craft a response to the current event (at least 200 words)
- Respond to at least two of your peers' responses (at least 75 words)
That's it!
Of course, your responses must be thoughtful and full of commentary. Please do not summarize (beyond the first sentence) your 30 minutes of current events findings. Instead, figure out the importance of the information you have consumed on an individual, local, regional, national, and/or international level. While I'm certainly asking you for your opinion on the current events, I do not want you to stop simply at your opinion--please do the requisite research. If you disagree with a policy, go beyond "X politician/event/region/whatever sucks!" Determine what you disagree with it and make sure your reasoning is empirical, not emotional.
Similarly, when you respond to your peers, go beyond "I agree/disagree with your post!," or "You're so smart/stupid, X!" Please do your peers the due diligence of responding to their ideas and implications--perhaps your current event is somehow related to the event that your peer discussed? Find the thread of reasoning and follow it!
Beyond the required 30 minutes per week of somehow consuming current events (less than 5 mins a day), this project should not consume more than one hour of your time.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please let me know in the comments below.
Educationally yours,
Mr. De Ceglie
What if the Earth Stopped Spinning?/What if The Sun Disappeared?
ReplyDeleteMovies such as "The Day the Earth Stood still" raise the obvious question of "what would happen if the Earth stohped spinning?" If the Earth stopped spinning your body would be carried by a gust of wind equivalent to the wind/ force produced if a bomb were dropped. Your body would be carried through the air and you would have no control over your body or your landing destination. There would be massive fires and extreme erosion, and the chances of you surviving definitely would be slim to none. If the Earth were to stop spinning I would want to be on mars when this happens. The further I am from Earth the less I have to worry about getting hit by a flying cow. Moving along, if the sun disappered everything will more than likely freeze over and Darwin's Laws of Natural Selection will kick in truly testing us. While the sun will never disappear it will probably just fade (just like all of my hopes and dreams) when that deciding day comes. First, I would most likely die of starvation after everything stop photosynthesizing. To conclude, I'd much rather have the sun disappear versus the Earth stop spinning.
Kobi,
ReplyDeleteFirst, move this to the correct posting "Current Events for the Week of September 15-21."
Well, Kobi--either way we're all dead. Why do you think scientists discuss this question? Neither of these events will happen in our life time (although, I suspect that, given a long enough timeline, both will occur--but the sun would have to disappear before the earth stopped spinning due to laws of gravity and motion). So, in other words, what's the implication?