Timeline

Day 3 Post/EdCafe

Today in class we made our first attempt at an "ed cafe" where we took turns leading eight minute discussions in small groups.  We discussed the rights in the first amendment.  I think that this little experiment went really well.  It certainly could have gone better, but it was amusing and educational.  I really liked being able to hear all of our classmates ideas on these things, as well as to be able to express our own views.  The main issue that we had was keeping the discussions going.  In every group I was in there was a point where we ended up sitting there with nothing else left to say.  More preparation on our part might have helped prevent that.  I think that my problem with my preparation was that i had expected more discussion.  That didn't really happen because we all agreed on pretty much everything.  It was a little disappointing because of that.  Maybe if we end up doing an ed cafe with something more controversial it will be better in terms of discussion.  We'll just have to wait and see what we end up doing later on, I guess.

Day 1 Post

On Friday, we talked about the Bill of Rights and the conflict over the Constitution between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.  As it turns out, their thoughts were heavily influenced by the influx of unusual alligators that were migrating down the coast during the infamous Canadian Alligator Scandal of 1785 that occurred just a few years before the Constitution was signed.  These alligators were of a special sort from northern Canada that emitted radioactive waves with mind control properties.  After they reached Florida, where they currently reside (they hide out deep in the everglades and try to avoid people, so if you weren't told they were there you would never know), they realized what they had done and used their telepathy to send a message back to the writers of the Constitution.  The message went as follows: "Sorry."  It was then that the Bill of Rights was added and everyone was happy (for the most part).
Actually, Friday was a half day and we didn't have class.  In the words of the alligators, "sorry."

Today in class, we actually did talk about the Bill of Rights!  We also talked about scandals! We read the amendments and then read a scenario where a man, Madonna, and some party-goers were all arrested.  We had to figure out which amendments were violated in the scenario.  There were a lot.  (Ex: searching property without a warrant, double trials, unfair trials, cruel and unusual punishments...).  Everyone ended up being freed! (We'll get you next time, Madonna!).  It was good fun.  It would have been even more amusing to incorporate all of the amendments.  Just imagine Madonna and a bunch of inebriated party-goers forming a militia and arming themselves with squirt guns and the police not being able to do anything (until they inevitably broke some law.  Rowdy and inebriated people do that sometimes, you know?).  Actually there was nothing to suggest that they had been drinking, but I like to think that they were because it makes the squirt-gun thought more amusing.  Madonna would lead them into battle screaming like an ancient warrior then little streams of water would start flying and landing a few feet in front of her.  Their facial expressions would be fabulous.  Oh my gosh, i am getting so off track.  The Bill of Rights is great, it gives the people.. well, rights, so Madonna and multiple party-goers aren't cruelly and unusually punished or any assortment of other things (and neither are the rest of us).  Well, that's what we did in class.

Day 5 Post

Yesterday in class we made infographics! Yay!  They were about the three branches of government.  I worked with Mackenzie and Emily.  The inforgraphic was about the three branches of our government which we spent some time learning about before starting the infographics.  We ended up not finishing ours in class (you just have to be precise with it, you know?) so I took it home and finished it since I had the least to do after school.  This infographic can even be found right here on my blog.

Today in class we read about Federalists and Anti-Federalists.  We filled out a paper with a partner about whichever group we got the reading about.  I got the Anti-Federalists! Yay!  I guess they were a little unrealistic about some things (we cant have every single person in the country say their thoughts on the government.  It would take forever to make decisions!), but they were totally correct in saying that we needed a Bill of Rights.  After we filled that out, we were assigned numbers that corresponded with someone who read about the other group.  We then filled out the other side of the paper that was for that group.  Afterwards we made a magazine/poster/thing (I can't remember what it was called) about one of the sides.  We were assigned the Anti-Federalists.  We ended up rushing towards the end so my drawings got progressively worse as we rushed to finish up.  It's okay though, they still get the point across.  That's really all I have to say.

My Friends Are People

I now present to you my lovely spreaker podcast.  I felt completely ridiculous, but it was good fun to make.  It did take at least nine tries for me to get it right though.  I just cant good do word stuff today like right syllable thing.  If I made another podcast made entirely of my reactions to myself messing it up it would be composed entirely of angry growling and a few semi-logical rambling sentences where I say ridiculous things (ex: civic values are good in people.. my friends are people..  It's great..) with long pauses in between and then told myself that I needed to start over.
By the way, my microphone is being a complete goon and having unfortunate zappy static-like background noises that really irritate me.
 

Infographic! Yay!

Day 3 Class Post

Friday in class we went over the syllabus and our upcoming assignments to eliminate confusion and prevent us from being angry with Mr. Boyle.  His plan worked, and (as far as I know) no one has any harsh feelings towards him.  Good for you, Mr. Boyle.  Anyway,  We're all clear on our assignments now.

Today in class we worked in groups to answer questions about different plans for the executive branch of our government.  The plans we went over were the Virginia Plan, the New Jersey Plan, and the Hamilton Plan.  Reading all of the different ideas brings up the question of whether our system is the best or if something else would be better.  When I think about this, I like to focus on the Hamilton Plan.  The plans all had their similarities and differences, but the one with the most striking differences was the Hamilton Plan.  It was rather similar to a monarchy, in fact.  The leader would continue to lead so long as he was doing a good job.  Now that's an interesting idea.  It makes sense because a good leader is good for a country, right?  But then again, aren't new people with new ideas good for it as well?  I feel that the answer to both of those questions is yes.  So would it be better to have a set number of years or unlimited?  With a set number of years, you might end up with a great leader who cant continue.  If the term is unlimited, that leader can just keep leading.  That seems like it could be a good thing, but then again new ideas can always be beneficial to the government.  There is also the issue of a bad leader.  Who's to say that a bad leader will give up power when you tell him to?  If you have someone to oversee him and stop his shenanigans then that hopefully wont be too big of an issue.  The concern is still there though.  Unlimited terms definitely have a few issues.  I was thinking of a way that we could combine the two and thought "hey, why don't we have an option to keep a good leader longer, but not indefinitely?"  Then I felt really silly because that's what a second term is for.  Our system kind of does combine the two types of systems.  We can keep a good leader if we want to, but instead of keeping them indefinitely we just give them a little more time.  Then they have to step down.  It's nice because it allows to have good leaders for a while and new people and ideas.  In the three plans that we went over, none of them allowed for re-election.  I wonder why that is.  Could they have assumed that they wouldn't have leaders they wanted to keep? Probably not.  They seemed to have high hopes for their lovely new country.  Maybe they felt that they would need new ideas coming in.  Or maybe it was so everyone gets the same amount of time to be president so it was fair.  Or maybe they were afraid to have a ruler for too long.  That could come from having a king for so long.  Many people wanted to get as far away from a monarchy as possible, so they could have wanted shorter terms to allow for the maximum input from the people.  Regardless of their reasons, it's really interesting how they came up with all these different ideas and managed to decide on one system that seems to work rather nicely.

Day 1 Class Post

Yesterday in class, we were broken up into groups to determine what different people at the Convention of 1787 thought about different issues.  These issues were as follows:

• Proportional representation vs. equal representation
• Bicameral congress vs. unicameral congress
• Election by the people vs. election by state legislatures

My group had the document for "election by the people vs. election by state legislatures."  We found out about the viewpoints of Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, James Wilson, James Madison, Charles Pinckney, and Oliver Ellsworth.  Out of these seven men, four supported election by state legislatures, and three supported election by the people.  The arguments for election by state legislatures included:

• People can be easily misled
• The state legislatures know more about government, so are more fit to make these decisions
• The legislature wont support a new government if they don't have a say in it

Those who supported election by the people backed it up with:

• It's the whole point of democracy
• A government is more stable with the people's support
• It's essential to a free government
• You get better representatives that way
• It's the only security for the rights of the people

Both sides made good points.  Personally I agree with the side that argued for election by the people.  I'm all for people having say in government.  A government is nothing without the support of its people.

Today in class, we started by taking a quiz on the preamble.  I'm pretty sure that at least half of the class was singing The Preamble Song in their heads while taking it.  I know I was.  Afterwards, we broke up into groups again to share what we wrote in class the day before.  This way we ended up with the opinions on all of the issues instead of just the one we got information on yesterday.  We then went over it as a class and then moved on to talking about the compromises that were made.  Compromise is great.  The government really needs to learn how to do that.  Instead, they're just like "Oh, you don't agree with me? Well let me say it again, only louder!  Or maybe I'll write it with fancier wording to trick you.  Oh, do you have an opinion?  Yeah, well mine is better, so shush.  I SAID SHUSH!"  Okay, okay, I made them sound way more childish than they usually are, but I think I got my point across.  Everyone is just so stubborn.  Things would actually get done if we could all talk things out and have respectful debates and compromise.  On the topic of respect, what is up with pretty much everyone in government just saying horrible things about their opponents rather than saying good things about themselves?  The voters end up with a thousand half-true reasons to not vote for any of the canditates, but hardly any reasons to vote for any of them.  Why do we all have to make it a choice between lesser evils?  Okay, I'm getting off topic.. uh.. just compromise, guys.  You can say why they're wrong, but say why you're right, too.  And please, please, just try to work together.  

Wow, I didn't realize that writing about today's class would make me feel so.. talkative. (bloggative?... actually, no.  That's a horrid word.)

Family Civic Values

Family Civic Values on Rewindy

Rewindy has decided to be quite the stupidface and only open up the text for the pictures when he feels like it (about one in three times).  If the text doesn't pop up on any one of the pictures, just reload the page once or twice.  It's there, I promise.

Artifacts

What three artifacts could someone find in the future that describe you the best?

I would say that the three things that would give someone the best and most complete impression of me would be my computer, my phone, and my fabulous case full of books.

My computer is the perfect artifact for someone to find since it contains a huge amount of info about me.  Now, we're going to pretend that they find my computer exactly as it is now, even though that's unlikely.  Chances are they would find Future Me's computer, which would undoubtedly have some different things.  Anyway, they can find out a lot about me from this thing.  The first thing they see is the desktop.  They see my wallpaper, which tells them that I like a certain tv show.  Nothing too big there, but it's still information.  They also see my desktop icons, which there are very few of, and those that are there are extremely unobtrusive, so they can guess that I dislike having things all cluttered up.  They also have access to my email, my files, and the internet.  If they were to read my email messages, they learn who some of my friends are, what volunteer group I'm a part of, what books I get from the library and how often I get them, what sites I have signed up for, and that recently those sites have been all history related for some odd reason.  When they look at my pictures, they learn what my hobbies are, what my friends, pets, and I look like, some tv shows and movies I like, and they either find out a bit about my sense of humor, or they take those things seriously and think that I'm really really strange and they'll probably feel very confused.  When they look at the rest of my files, they can find my entire music library, as well as many essays and stories I've written in the past.  You can learn a lot about someone from their writing and their likes and dislikes.  They now have a pretty decent picture of who I am.  There's still the internet left to look at.  Keep in mind that search/internet history is a very powerful thing.  The first thing they get when they click the internet icon is my homepage.  They will either think that I'm some wacko who is convinced that the almighty LHC is truly going to destroy the world, or they'll figure out a little more about what I find amusing.  They also have access to all of my bookmarked sites.  From the fact that in my bookmark bar there are only icons (they don't have site names with them) that have been arranged in order by color, they can see how I like to organize things.  Then they either find out more about my sense of humor and what I find amusing, or they just think that I'm an incredibly strange person who cant keep track of the days of the week and looks at blogs consisting entirely of pictures of toast because I am genuinely interested in nicely browned and perfectly crunchy bread.  From the other bookmarks, they find out just how much I like astronomy, and that I watch a lot of movies and shows online.  If they can access my internet history then oh boy will that yield some info for them.  By the time they get through all of this they will know my name, my face, and a whole lot about me.

While my computer gives them a pretty good image of me, the information it supplies is lacking something.  It  has very few records of my conversations with people.  My phone on the other hand, is full of these.  Again, we're pretending that it is my phone in my current state, so it has records of loads of text messages, and this allows them to just go and have a grand old time reading through my conversations.  They can find out how I speak, how my friends speak, what we talk about, and all sorts of other things.  This information can add to, confirm, and disprove things that they determined from looking at my computer (for example, I do, in fact, know what day of the week it is, okay?!).  They will also learn that I use "goon" as some odd mixture of an insult, a term of endearment, and a few other things that I can't remember the words for right now.  I also have pictures on my phone, so they will learn many things such as the fact that that I like dinosaurs and wearing silly hats (and they can infer that I like dinosaurs wearing silly hats as well).  If they take this info and combine it with the info they gathered from the computer, then they have a huge amount of information on me.  Probably not as much as our Google Overlords have, though.  Or maybe more.  I like to think that Google hasn't gained access to my files (or my brain, for that matter).

The third artifact was a bit more difficult to come up with.  I didn't really think that I have one other thing that I could use that would describe me.  My disorganization means that my sketchbook is empty and my drawings are all scattered about, so they all would become individual things, and just one doesn't make a good artifact.  We're only using Current Me's things, so I can't put Future Me's telescope since Current Me hasn't saved up enough money for it yet.  All that I could come up with that was singular was my fabulous case full of books.  Yes, I mean my bookcase.  But I refuse to write it as "bookcase" here because that would just be the case and not the books.  "Fabulous case full of books," on the other hand, makes it obvious that the books are in the case, so they can now be used as my artifact since a fabulous case full of books is singular, even though it contains multiple books.  This works that way, right?  Even if it doesn't, we can pretend it does, can't we?  Okay, let's get on with it.  Even though a decent record of what I checked out from the library is on my computer, the Future People would have an incomplete picture of what I read since it does not include the books I don't check out from the library.  I have books from when I was younger and books from now.  They would be able to get an idea of how my tastes have changed over the years.  Actually it'd more likely that they would think that I read at a 5th grade reading level then every once in a while whip out a nice big book to confuse people.  Or maybe they would think that I'm using the big books to look smart while I'm actually at a 5th grade reading level.  The possibilities are endless.  I sure hope they realize that they're from multiple times in my life, otherwise those poor Future people will feel unnecessarily perplexed.  Regardless of whether they figure this out or not, they can still infer a lot about me.  A book can tell you so much about it's reader.  They could find out all about my interests and possibly a lot about my mind and personality, but how much they figure out in the personality area really depends on how much they want to analyze these things.  Ultimately, the fabulous case of books doesn't add too much to their knowledge about me.  If they knew that I'm referring to it as my fabulous case of books then maybe they could draw some conclusions from that.

So that's that.  Future People can get a pretty impressive amount of information about me from only three artifacts.