Monday, 9/26: Writing Workshop 2 + Greek Philosophy

Announcements
1. See updated HW at bottom.

Why 9/11? Is America an empire? 

Watch adults debate that here. Our first Summative Seminar (the week after the DBQ) will include the question, "Is America an empire?" So this might give you good evidence to discuss:



In Class:
A. Writing Workshop 
1. Hand-Outs:

1. Cause/Effect Essay Drafts--look at feedback, clarify the changes you need to make for final revision, hand back to me. I'll return them later for you to revise and submit for Summative Grade.
2. Revised Essay/DBQ Rubric
3. "Formal Academic Essay Don'ts"

2. Collect Greece DBQ drafts.
--I'll check only these things:

• Complete Thesis Sentence + Road Map 
• Body Paragraphs (I'll only check one):
• Full Topic Sentence at beginning of paragraph
• Proper Document inclusion and citation
• Transitions within and between paragraphs

 3. Mini-Lesson: Writing Introductions and Conclusions (Powerpoint here)

B. Greek Philosophy:

Mini-Seminar: Practice making contributions before we have a Seminar Test

1. The Babylonians were not harsh to all the societies they conquered. They were very harsh to the Hebrews in Israel, though. What do you think made the Babylonians decide to destroy the Jewish Temple and deport the leading Jews to Babylon?

2. What was the difference between the Jews, who the Babylonians punished, and the other cultures that they tolerated?

3. What do you know about Jesus? What was his religion? Who crucified him? Why was he killed?

4. What do you know about Socrates? 

5. What do Socrates and Jesus have in common? Why did Confucius' life escape this?

What is philosophy, and why is it dangerous to practice it?

Watch the three videos below:



Confused? See if this clears things up:



HW:
1. Watch this podcast (download it) on Confucianism and Taoism. Since your DBQ will include China, going a bit deeper into these two philosophies will help. Pay attention to specific quotes and main ideas, because they may show up on tests.

2. Watch this clip from The Matrix, and be prepared to discuss how it relates to Plato's Allegory of the Cave:

Week 6: Tuesday, Sep. 20: Philosophies of China

Announcements:

I spent much of the weekend trying to put out fires because of technology, and that consumed time and caused bumps--including unclear HW instructions. So here's the policy: if my instructions are unclear--I mean obviously unclear, not little nit-picky things--then trust me to be reasonable and not blame you. Choose the easier choice: in this case, between "do the worksheets" and "don't do the worksheets," choose the second one. I'll understand and won't penalize you.

But do do the easier choice faithfully--in this case, the readings. (And you should always annotate, at least lightly, when you read. It helps you find the stuff later that you found most important the first time you read. Annotating--light annotating--should be a habit for this class.)


Two Changes:

1. We've Moved: The Moodle server is obviously unreliable. That's not Moodle's fault--it's a good software. It's the fault of the free server. So we're moving to this Blogger site, which is run by Google. Google never goes down. So we can trust that we won't have "site down" problems from now on.
2. File-Sharing Won't Surprise Us Anymore: SAS encouraged Dropbox to share files. Our class discovered that Dropbox has a data limit for file sharing. So I'll be using SugarSync instead of Dropbox now to share files. Nothing will change for you. You'll still just be clicking and downloading links. We just won't be surprised by "service suspended" bombshells anymore.
3. Just to inform you: I'm still working on my Research Methods class for my Master's Degree. My research proposal paper is due to my professor today (and I still have to do the research by reading a lot of books and designing a research experiment, and then carrying it out, so I'm not saying "It's over."). I should have more time to devote to teaching instead of homework starting tomorrow.

Click the link below ("Read more") to see today's lesson notes: