Individual and Community Podcasts

For today's reading response, I asked students to record a phone message of two or three sentences describing what they thought the individual's responsibility to his or her community is, and what they thought society's responsibility to the community was. The answers have been wonderful, succinct, nuggets about civic and social duty.

Bigger Classroom #37 - Matt's Individual and Community Podcast

Matt argues for random acts of kindness, and suggests helping people as a first step to community involvement.



Bigger Classroom #38 - Jeff's Individual and Community Podcast

Jeff outlines the responsibilities of the individual to contribute to the well being of the community, and the community's responsibility to provide law enforcement, maintain roads, and provide quality education for everyone.



Bigger Classroom #39 - Patricia's Individual and Community Podcast

Patricia suggests that it's the individual's responsibility to help the community as best he can--for example, paying taxes and volunteering--and the community's responsibility to provide things like food, heat, or a wheelchair ramp if the individual can't provide them for himself.



Bigger Classroom #40 - Dawn's Individual and Community Podcast

Dawn argues that everyone should be a committed member of society, from brain surgeons and nuclear physicists down to the ordinary person, and that society's responsibility is to make sure that every single individual is taken care of.



Bigger Classroom #41 - Hank's Individual and Community Podcast

Hank believes that the individual's responsibility is to be an integral part of the of group and to contribute to the greater good of the community, and so far as they are able, not to be a liability or a burden. The community's responsibility is to protect the individual's Constitutional rights, and contribute to the greater good of the individual.



Bigger Classroom #42 - Linda Moody's Individual and Community Podcasts

Linda believes the individual's responsibility is to be fair to all other individuals and not discriminate, and that society's responsibility is the same--to not look down on people with less money, for example, as so often happens.



Bigger Classroom #43 - Linda May's Individual and Community Podcast

Linda framed her response neatly in a way that focuses on mutual support. The individual's responsibility to his or her community is to encourage and support the community's members, help their neighbors, and to be proactive in the community. The community's responsibility is to encourage members to take responsibility for their actions and to support themselves.



Bigger Classroom #44 - Bonnie's Individual and Community Podcast

Bonnie says the individual's responsibility to community is to be as self-sufficient as possible, and to help others while being honorable and ethical. Society's responsibility is to be trustworthy and dependable in upholding the duties entrusted to them.



Bigger Classroom #45 - Nate's Podcast

Writing to Learn Online Survey (Help my teaching and win a prize)

I have a short 10-question survey I am asking students to answer. This is optional and does not affect your standing in the course. I'll use the results of the survey in designing future courses and in an article I plan to write about online writing in College Writing I and II at Franklin Pierce.
To recompense you for your time completing the survey (5 to 10 minutes), you can be entered in a drawing for a small Mystery Prize or several consolation prizes if you enter your name in the final question.
If completing the survey online is not convenient for you, you may complete it on paper in class Wednesday. If you plan to complete it online, please do so before 5:30 Wednesday so I can enter you in the drawing and distribute prizes.
Click here to take survey

Gabcast Messages

I'll post any phone messages that I get far enough in advance of class time here on the blog. If you'd like to listen to them hot off the press, go to our Gabcast channel http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&id=12483

Last Class Project: "Dear Professor Mendham" Letters

Hi all: For your last group in-class project you're going to write letter from a fictional future professor to Tracy about the skills and knowledge you've gained from CWII. If you want to see some examples, see this previous blog post: http://biggerclassroom.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-youll-learn-in-college-writing-ii.html.

Review of Spying on the Home Front

Hi all: I asked Linda to review Spying on the Home Front, and share her thoughts so that other students would know whether it would be useful and interesting to view themselves. Here's her response. (Thanks, Linda!)

Here is what I got out of this. I hope others will watch it.I finally got it to work.

I watched Spying on the Home Front- Frontline

It was very interesting in the fact that no American is safe and secure as far as the fact that they can be spied on from the government and not even know. In December 2003, the Las Vegas New Year's celebration was almost cancelled because there was word that there could be a terrorist attack. Every record for Las Vegas casinos, hotels, airlines and rental car agencies was looked at from the FBI for the 2 weeks prior to New Year's. The celebration went on and a lot of people's privacy was invaded. People don't even realize that they are affected by this.
Choice Point and Lexus Nexus are 2 ways of getting information on anyone and there is nothing anyone can do about it. They are privately owned companies so the Privacy Act does not apply to them. It's a scary thought to think that anyone can get your personal information.
There was a lot of evasion of questions from authorities when asked questions by Frontline right up to Alberto Gonzalez, who at the time was Attorney General. Most questions when asked were answered by the comment, "I'm not a liberty to say" or "That's classified or confidential" or "I don't have permission". I find this very disconcerting because what are they trying to hide from us?
What is going to happen in the future? Are we going to give up our rights so that we can have more security? There should be a happy medium.
I think that everyone should watch this so that they know exactly what is or is not going on with our government. They say they are trying to protect us, but at what expense?

Linda Moody

You and Akakii, Paying for the Snow Day

In order to provide you with your money's worth of educational experiences in College Writing II, I will be providing you with two options for deeper discussion of Nikolai Gogol's classic story "The Overcoat."

Option A: Answer two discussion questions about "The Overcoat" (which will be posted on the blog) using the Comments link, and then respond to one of the comments that someone else has left to one of the discussion questions.

Option B: Use the write a "Five Minute Paper" and respond to a classmate's 5 Minute Paper.

Whichever option you choose, please complete your initial response by midnight on Saturday, December 15th, and and reply to a classmate's response by noon on Monday, December 17th.

Discussion Question 1 (of 2)

Do you believe that Akakii Akakievich is made a better man by the experience of saving for and finally acquiring his new overcoat, or is he made worse by it?

Please respond with a reply of three or four sentences, explaining in what way he is made better or worse, and support your answer with evidence from the book.

Click on the Comments link below (next to "Posted by Tracy Mendham at 8:29 AM") to answer.

Discussion Question 2 (of 2)

Although "The Overcoat" can be read as a tale of perfect poetic justice, for the moment let's look at the story as a tragedy. Please say which you think is the greater failure in "The Overcoat": Is it the story of an individual's (Akakii's) failure to meet the needs and requirements of his community, or the community's failure to meet the needs of the individual?
Please write a reply of three or four sentences in which you argue for either individual or societal failure, supporting your position with evidence from the text.

5 Minute Paper

Please click on the Comments link below, and spend five minutes writing your response to the following question: What does "The Overcoat show us about the world as it really exists?" Write in roughly the form of an introduction paragraph for an essay you could write about the topic. Write the best answer you can in five minutes, and submit your answer.
Then, read your classmates' responses to the exercise, and complete a three minute peer review of one of their five minute papers, borrowing from any of the styles of peer review we have used in class.
[This was originally going to be a chatroom, but the chat tool seemed to be losing the responses, learned after the tragic loss of a five-minute paper. I'll make another post with the chatroom in case anyone wants to experiment.]

"5 Minute Paper" Chatroom UNDER CONSTRUCTION

This is the chatroom that doesn't seem to be working correctly, but I'll leave this post up in case it's only my own computer that's hinky and not the Meebo Chatroom service. Use at your own risk!
Please click in the chatroom box below, and spend five minutes writing your response to the following question: What does "The Overcoat show us about the world as it really exists?" Write in roughly the form of an introduction paragraph for an essay you could write about the topic. Write the best answer you can in five minutes, and then hit the Enter key to submit your answer.
Then, read your classmates' responses to the exercise, and complete a three minute peer review of one of their five minute papers, borrowing from any of the styles of peer review we have used in class.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

If you're hooked on Orwell or just want more context for the reading, the full text of his novel 1984, (of which "The Principles of Newspeak" is an appendix) can be read at http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/.
An excerpt from Chapter One:

It was always at night — the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vapourized was the usual word.

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:

theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother —

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door.

Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved heavily towards the door.

(http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_p_1)

"Ultimate Discourse" Podcasts

I reviewed the podcasts from your "Ultimate Discourse" responses again as I evaluated journals, and took the opportunity to add tags and descriptions to them. Here they are again:

Bigger Classroom #35 - Shelby's First Podcast

Shelby chooses the film Ever After for her response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."



Bigger Classroom #34 - Cliff's Podcast

Cliff chooses the novel Lord of the Flies for his response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."



Bigger Classroom #30 - Nate's Podcast

Nate applies Doctorow's claim that fiction tells us "without shame what people do with their bodies and think with their minds" to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code



Bigger Classroom #29 - Linda May's First Podcast

Linda applies Doctorow's statement that readers experience what the character experience ("This is the way it is, it will say, this is what it feels like,") to Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook.



Bigger Classroom #28 - Dawn's Podcast

Dawn applies Doctorow's statement that fiction "will know [characters] nightmares and blinding moments of moral crisis" to Robert Heinlein's book Job.



Bigger Classroom #27 - Hank's Podcast

Hank applies two of Doctorow's statements to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Doctorow notes that "The fiction writer...understands the homage a modern up-to-date world of nonfiction specialists pays to his craft--even as it isolates him and tells him he is a liar," and that "Weather reports on television are constructed with exact attention to conflict (high-pressure areas clashing with lows)."



Bigger Classroom #33 - Jeff's First Podcast

Jeff chooses All Quiet on the Western Front for his response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse"



Bigger Classroom #26 - Patricia's First Podcast

Patricia chooses Stephen King's The Green Mile for her response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."



Bigger Classroom #25 - Linda Moody's Podcast

Linda relates James Patterson's The Honeymoon to EL Doctorow's assertion that fiction "distributes the suffering. It says we must compose ourselves in our stories in order to exist."



Bigger Classroom #24 - Bonnie's First Podcast

Bonnie chooses the movie Heidi for her response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."