Grades for Forum 2

Here's a link to your grades on Forum 2.

• Look up your grade by student ID number.
• The column to the far left is your ID number;
• to the right of that is your percentage grade as a decimal.
• To the far right is the number of points out of 75 that you earned.

Let me know if you have any questions.

If you know you did the post, but don't see your grade, don't panic! I probably just typed your ID number in incorrectly. Just send me an email with the time you posted, your full name, and your ID number and I'll let you know what your grade was.

Forum 2: Breaking Questions Down

Update:

Don't forget to include your name, unless your screen name includes your first and last name. Otherwise I can't credit you for doing the assignment!

If you forgot to include your name, write a second post, saying what time you posted, what your screen name was, and what your actual name is (you can use just a last initial if you prefer).

Background
In our fictional story, Corinne has claimed that Cromwell's Discriminatory Harassment Policy violates her rights to freedom of expression under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

We looked at the first amendment, and looked at an overview of how the first amendment has been interpreted. We found that the court generally tries to balance the interest an individual has in the expression at issue, versus the interest the state (in this case, the state is represented by the school) has in limiting that expression.

We then generated two further, central questions:
1. What is the interest an individual has in free expression? What's good about letting people express their beliefs, even if those beliefs are offensive?
2. What interest does the school have in limiting the expression of offensive or hostile beliefs?

Assignment
Using those two questions as a springboard, generate at least two more questions that you'd want to have answers to, before you could answer the general question about whether the school's policy is unconstitutional or not.

Remember that a good way to generate questions is to throw ideas around, and then turn claims into questions. You can also do some research to help generate further questions. We're getting into a level of depth, now, that will make this assignment challenging, but you can do it!

Post your answers in comment, below.

Answers are due no later than 4 a.m. on Monday, September 6. Ideally, they'll be posted by 6 p.m. on Saturday, September 4.

Confederate flag images (c) William Quigley under Creative Commons attribution/share alike

Grades for Forum 1

Hi all,

Here's a link to your grades for the first forum: Forum 1 - Research

Look up your grade via student ID number. If you posted to the forum, but don't see your ID number, be sure that your post included your name so that I could identify you.

There were a total of 75 points you could earn for this post, so an A+ = 75 points, A=71.25, etc.

The first column shows your student ID number; the next column shows your percentage grade as a decimal, and the last column shows your points earned.

Let me know if you have questions.

Forum 1: Research

We're currently trying to evaluate the claim that it is/is not reasonably foreseeable that the Confederate Battle Flag would create a hostile atmosphere. As part of that, we were researching the ways in which the flag has been used - which groups used it and when, what it symbolized at the time, and how it was interpreted through its history.

All of you wrote about the history of the flag's design during the Civil War in the U.S., and its use by the then Confederate States of America during that war. A few of you mentioned in passing that the flag was used since then by various hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other White Supremacist groups.

The flag's use has a much longer history, though, as it came to be employed again in the 1940s as a symbol of opposition to integration and civil rights. One student included that history in the assignment, and I would argue that that information contributes significantly to our development of the question at issue.

For your forum assignment, answer BOTH questions below. You should write at least one substantial paragraph for each question.

1. How does your thinking develop about the meaning of the Confederate Battle flag as a symbol, as you gain further information about its history and use?

2. What specific steps can you take next time to improve your research, so that you're more likely to learn important facts about the issue at hand? (if you included substantial history about the use of the flag in the early 20th century, please write about what steps you took that helped you find this information.)

Fighting Procrastination

Hi all,

Here are some links to tips for managing the tendency to procrastinate.

Procrastination

Priority Management

Reading for Tuesday 9/24

Here's a link to a PDF of the reading for Tuesday. I'm hoping the books will be in by next week, giving you plenty of time to get them for the next reading.

Case 2: Flag Day

Homework for Thursday 8/19

This assignment will have two parts. Please do them in order - the second part depends on your having thought carefully about the first.

Your assignment should be typed, double-spaced, and in 11- or 12-point font. Put your name, course and section number, and the date at the top.

1. Think about your goals and how this course will fit into them. And think about your goals for the course in particular - not just what grade you want to earn, but also how you hope it will help you gain skills for other course work, decision-making skills about your life, logical skills to use within your future career, and anything else you can think of that requires careful, skillful thinking. Write a few paragraphs about that, first.

2. Once you've completed that, think about what rules for yourself will most help you. We're thinking about rules for within the classroom - that is, rules about how you and your classmates will be expected to behave.

The books for the course, the order we go through materials, the assignments, the lectures, and the grades - those are all part of the pedagogy (the techniques and theories of teaching). That's all my duty to shape. If you knew how to set up a course to learn this stuff, you wouldn't need me :-)

But the etiquette - do you want everyone to be able to leave cell phones on and take calls in class? Text as much as you want? Wander in and out? - also contributes a major part to everyone's success in the course. That's what I'm asking you to think about. Remember that you have to make rules for everyone - you can't have a special set of rules for yourself, and another set for everyone else.

So think about what atmosphere for learning you want to create, and want your classmates to contribute to creating, that will most help you take in the pedagogy. Once you've given that some considered thought, write another several paragraphs explaining what rules you're proposing, and why.

Your completed paper, with parts one and two, should be at the very least one full page - more likely 2 or more.