Good afternoon and welcome to the weekend!
Lots of interesting information and content to go over today. Generally, I liked how class went! We still have to work on listening to each other when someone is talking, as well as some focus issues. However, I especially loved all the ideas you were coming up with at the end of class! Let's keep it going!
Essential Questions: In what ways are cultures and countries interconnected? What are the factors to consider in the development of a Palestinian state? - The second question is a new one, built off of our final project (which just so happens to be based off the first essential question).
Soundtrack: "Paris, Tokyo" by Lupe Fiasco. Lyrics here. This is a fantastic song for thinking about traveling around the world, and seeing all sorts of different cultures and countries.
AGENDA 4/24/09:
News Brief
Middle East Map Quiz
The Israeli-Palestinian Problem
Final Project
Homework: Come to class with an idea ready to work on for final project. Read blog recap!
I would like you to bring in one concrete idea for what you are going to do for your final project. This will be recapped in great detail below in the Final Project section.
News Brief: Iris is going to bring something in next Tuesday, but we were able to (after a ridiculously long wait) identify some events that are going on in the world.
Haze talked a little bit about guys with clown hair throwing clown noses at the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the recent United Nations conference on racism. A good recap of that can be found here: LATimes.com - Iran president's remarks prompt walkout at U.N. conference.
I also mentioned this really big debate about torture that is going on right now. Specifically, I talked a little bit about waterboarding, the tactic that many people say is torture.
An opinion piece on the whole matter that I think is worth reading can be found here: RealClearPolitics.com - Even If It Works, US Shouldn't Torture.
From the article:
But no matter how hard one tries, one cannot credibly argue that, while waterboarding was a crime when committed by the Japanese in World War II, it is not a crime when committed by the United States in the 21st Century.
One of the opposing views can be found here: WashingtonPost.com - Congress Debates Fresh Investigation Of Interrogations. A quote:
Very, very interesting stuff. After talking for a bit, we went straight into...
Bush administration veterans, led by Cheney, are poised to renew a high-volume debate over the efficacy of the interrogation methods and, more broadly, the approach to terrorism that Obama's predecessor took after Sept. 11, 2001. Cheney called this week for the release of more memos that he said would demonstrate how effective the tactics were. And in an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity, he made it clear that he is ready to wage a battle over who is right.
"The threat is there. It's very real, and it's continuing," Cheney said. "And what the Obama people are doing, in effect, is saying, 'Well, we don't need those tough policies that we had.'"
Middle East Map Quiz: Thank you for being quiet and focused on this. I took a gander (great word) at these, and most of them look okay, at the least! Remember that it is so important to know where these places are, especially when the United States is fighting wars in two countries in the Middle East! I will have these graded and back to you on Tuesday.
The Israeli-Palestinian Problem: This section of class was devoted to learning a little more about the conflicts in Israel. I handed out the notes from the PowerPoint (please come see me if you were not in class for this) and went through this presentation, asking you to take notes about things that were interesting (or in some cases, what I had just told you to write down):
I am not sure if I like how my handing out the PowerPoint notes relates to a seeming lack of attention to the presentation. Today we were much better than the last time, but still, I would really appreciate your attention and focus when I give you a break and do not make you take enormous amounts of written notes for each slide to stay focused. I realize that some of you doodle to stay focused, but please know that I might be calling on you to see if you understand what I am saying if I don't see that I have your attention.
Something that came up during the PowerPoint was my love for the Olympics, and how the recent Opening Ceremony in Beijing was one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen. Here is a video of it, or at least, the first few minutes.
Final Project: Transitioning from the presentation and using all of the information we have learned about different cultures across the Middle East, I handed out the final project for this unit, which can be downloaded here:
We read this together as a class, and as promised we will go through many different aspects of what I am asking you to do over the next few class days. Again, your homework is to think of an idea that you can bring in to start working on (and get my approval) for next class. I want you to have fun with this! Do something that you really enjoy doing and will look forward to sharing with the class!
As I said in class, the main point of this assignment is not to try and determine a Middle East peace plan between Israel and Palestine. There are some classes that do that exercise, and while I think it can be incredibly valuable, I want our class to create something that can help get us to that point. I heard many good thoughts in class today, and I also listed out a few options in the assignment. Please come see me or ask away in the comments or e-mail me if you have any questions about this project!
I was glad to see that we ended up with a good 15 minutes or so to think of ideas for the project. Most of this was good work, but please remember to be considerate of our neighbors next door when you are discussing your amazing ideas. :-)
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Consider Krishna and Haze members of the Redeem Team at 2nd lunch basketball. I worked up quite a sweat! It is difficult to go from no practice all week to playing in a full court game. My shot started falling better near the end. Haze had a few threes and Krishna was great at cutting to the hoop. Thanks for playing fellas!
The Blazers play tonight at 6:30, on KGW (Channel 8), and ESPN. The series is tied 1-1, so it is a very big game! I am not too confident about our team tonight, but I am hoping that they will come out and prove the doubters wrong! They play again on Sunday at 6:00 PM, on KGW and TNT. Also, I should be working hard all weekend on Lewis and Clark stuff, so please fire away in the comments or on e-mail, and I will probably get back to you quite quickly! Enjoy your weekend! Thanks for being great students! :-)
Hey Mr Fritz, I read the recap; well most of it is because I don't have much time on the computer, I have to go do something, but about the middle east project; even though I would naturally not like doing a project but I think it was a interesting question. Me and Alex already studied about Israeli-Palestinian conflicts though, in the first semester.
ReplyDeleteIsmael,
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading! For the project, do something that you really enjoy doing and make it relate! We can talk about this next week if you want. I'm glad you have some background knowledge on the conflict - you have an advantage over most of the rest of the class!
Yeah I guess even though I at first I thought give every one a gun and but a fence around the country, haha but I don't think that is a solution, I wont say my other thought so no one else takes it but I may work with Alex, if we are in partners; do we do our own paper and then make a visual together, then type each a paper of what we think about it?
ReplyDeleteIsmael,
ReplyDeleteThat is sort of the mentality that Israel has right now. They are incredibly well armed (by the United States) and have mandatory military service.
For the project, yes, you need to type up separate papers about what your product is about.