We had some good discussion on some of the topics class members are
also discussing in debate class. These included the Republican
primaries, Payroll taxes, and the shift in foreign policy to the far
east. Obama is planning to pay more attention to North Korea and
China. North Korea has recently developed nuclear weapons and is
technically still at war with South Korea. China is the second largest
power in the world, and we have several economic issues with them:
buying up US debt, a trade imbalance, and alleged currency manipulation.
Not many students have been completing the assignment to make a
blog post. We discussed whether they still wanted to do that, and they
voted in favor of blogging. Some asked what they should write. It just
needs to be a short post on something you found interesting in the
news. Casey summed it up very well when he said you need three elements
for a good blog post: 1) a link to your source, 2) a short summary or
quotation, and 3) your opinion about it. There are good examples on the
blog already.
If you are still having trouble deciding what to write, you could
try this trick to overcome writer's block. Just start writing. About
anything. Once you get started, it's easier to keep going. Shift your
topic to the news, and write like you are telling your friend about.
Throw away a first part, and you are done.
The assignments for this week are:
1) Read or watch the news as usual.
2) Create a blog post about something interesting in the news.
3) Read chapter 1 of Understand Power, by Noam Chomsky. (You
should still finish reading the 1000 Year War, if you haven't finished
that yet.)
4) Review European geography. We will hopefully have a quiz on European countries next class.
No comments:
Post a Comment