01.31.07

Cores 1-4:

1. Day 2 of trying to get Learnerblogs to cooperate.
2. If it will:
   • Post your Sem2_Week4 Weekly Authentic and Del.icio.us post.
   • Comment on other Del.icio.us posts.
   • Nominate for Authenticity Awards.
   • Work on Personal Curriculum.
3. If it won’t
   • Door Number 3.

01.30.07

Cores 1-4:

1. What should the graduation requirements for high school be?
2. Post your Sem2_Week4 Weekly Authentic and Del.icio.us post.
3. Comment on other Del.icio.us posts.
4. Nominate for Authenticity Awards.
5. Work on Personal Curriculum.

01.29.07

Core 1:

• Present the digital stories and talk about why these things are perfect?
• Why should we be searching for perfection?
• How do these “ideal things” show us what we want out of society?

Core 2:

• Write-On: In working with the timeline of the 19th century, what trends did you find that we haven’t talked about yet?
• Start reading from Romanticism.
• How do the concepts of romanticism surface in the writing of Romanticism?

Core 3:

1. Write-On: Why do we tell stories?
2. Go over the project outline.
3. Explore the following Digital Storytelling resources and figure out (write down) what the major elements that a digital story must have.
   • Room 403
   • SFETT
   • Digital Story Example

Core 4:

1. Continue work on your Goals:
   • Make sure that each need is provided for (stability, food, water, shelter, social interaction, diversion, entertainments, warmth, etc.).
   • Are there any wants that are important too?
   • Are everyone’s skills being used completely?

01.26.07

Core 1:

1. Continue to work on Bubblr Ideal Car, Vacation, Family, or meal digital stories.
2. Share the digital stories and talk about why these things are perfect?
3. Why should we be searching for perfection?

Core 2:

1. Discuss-On: How can world events in literature, war, economics, and politics influence thought?
2. Timeline the 19th century using ning.
3. Here are the other timelines for your to draw from:
   • American Literature
   • Film in the last decade of the 19th Century
   • Timeline of 19th Century America
   • Timeline of African American Pamphlets in the 19th Century
   • Inventions of the 19th Century

Core 3:

1. Write-On: What is a Writing Error?
2. What are the most common writing errors that you think you are making?
3. What are the errors that others are making?

Core 4:

1. Work on your Outline and Goals for our survival simulation on Google Documents. (Two different documents.)

01.25.07

Core 1:

1. Write-On: Why did you choose the words that you did?
2. How are you going to inject these new found words into the different discourses of your lives?
3. Along with choosing the right words and choosing the right situations for those words, I would like to propose the idea that we start choosing the right society for those situations. If we were going to think about society as a framework for all of our interactions, we would like that framework to be as perfect as possible. So, what we are going to start today is part of the Utopia/Dystopia unit. You are going to start thinking about perfection by revealing to one another what your idea of the perfect vacation, car, meal, or family is. The best part, however, is that you are going to reveal it to us in comic strip form. Using Bubblr.

Core 2:

1. Write-On: What are all of the -Isms that affect your life right now? Why do they exist?
2. What do these words mean to you (in words, drawings, ideas)?
   • Industrialism
   • Feminism
   • Abolitionism
   • Romanticism
   • Transcendentalism
3. Give an overview of the 5 -Isms of the 19th century.
   • What are the things that you know about this time period?

Core 3:

1. Check vocab homework.
2. Today you are going to have more time to work on your blog posts and del.icio.us, but I want you to take a look at one of your posts specifically. I want you to look for all of the things that you would consider errors. I would like you to bold them. I want you to be able to look at how you see yourself as a writer. How much of your writing do you think is “wrong?”

Core 4:

1. Start your brainstorming about characters and setting for your Survival Simulation using Google Docs.

01.24.07

Core 1:

1. Write-On: Why should you care which words you use in talking to your friends?
2. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
   • Wordie
   • Double-Tonged Dictionary
   • Pseudodictionary
   • Reverse Dictionary
3. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 2:

1. Write-On: What is there difference between an idea and a belief?
2. What happens when you string enough beliefs together?
3. What idiologies exist today?
   • How do you think they got started?

Core 3:

1. Write-On: Why did you pick the words that you did to get to know better?
2. Now that we have become word collectors, we need to put them to good use, and what better way than to become sentence collectors as well. We must be able to use these words as powerfully as we can, understanding just how they fit together. We must come to know sentences intimately so that we can wield them to their greatest effect. We will become Word Doctors, identifying areas of concern in our writing and prescribing solutions for what ails our words and sentences.
3. Brainstorm-On: Come up with all of the things that can go “wrong” in a sentence.
   • Why are they wrong?

Core 4:

1. Discuss-On: How does your personal dystopia compare and contrast with the world of Harrison Bergeron?
2. Why is it important to dream up, write out, and/or analyze a dystopian society?
3. Where is there room for rebellion in a dystopian society?
   • Where is there room for rebellion in our society?
   • Why is rebellion so important?
4. How should we measure the worth/value of a society?

01.23.07

Cores 1-4:

1. Check out our collective blogging identity.
   
2. Submit your Sem2_Week3 weekly authentic and Del.icio.us post. If you don’t know what to write about, consider building upon the question from the guest blogs.
3. Comment on del.icio.us posts.
4. Nominate for Authenticity Awards.
5. Work on Personal Curriculum.

01.22.07

Cores 1-4:

1. Look at the Authenticity Awards for Semester 2: Week 1.
2. Check out a few of the Guest Bloggers.

Core 1:

1. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
   • Wordie
   • Double-Tonged Dictionary
   • Urban Dictionary
   • Reverse Dictionary
2. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 2:

1. Discuss-on: How do you know when you have successfully constructed a new word? Which of your 5 words should be in the dictionary?
2. How can we get our words to be used in the greater lexicon?
3. Use Pseudodictionary and submit your best words. (As always, do not use your real name.)

Core 3:

1. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
   • Wordie
   • Double-Tonged Dictionary
   • Urban Dictionary
   • Reverse Dictionary
2. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 4:

1. Discuss-on: What does your own Personal Dystopia look like?
2. How does your personal dystopia compare to that of Harrison Bergeron?

01.18.07

Cores 1-4:

1. Decide new Guest Blogging Question:
   • Is technology a good or bad influence on our lives?
   • How much should parents “protect” their children?
   • How have you (and your personality) changed over time?
2. Don’t forget to post to Del.icio.us.

Cores 1+3:

1. Write-On: How do you actually add words to your own personal vocabulary?
2. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
   • Wordie
   • Double-Tonged Dictionary
   • Urban Dictionary
   • Reverse Dictionary
3. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 2:

1. Discuss-On: Does using a word in a humorous way demonstrate better knowledge of that word?
2. Create humorous captions using a Nerd Herd Big Word Book word.
3. Discuss the creation of new words and their definitions from available roots.
4. Create a new word and its definition.

Core 4:

1. Write-On: How can one person’s utopia be another person’s dystopia?
2. What are the different types of dystopias we encounter, or could encounter if we try to reach utopia?
3. What would be your own personal dystopia given modern circumstances.

01.17.06

Cores 1-4:

1. Reminder to Del.icio.us post.

Cores 1:

1. Dive back into vocab with vocabulary improv:
   • Write down the most interesting character you can think of on a small sheet of paper.
   • Write down the most interesting setting you can think of on a small sheet of paper.
   • Put them in the baskets and then we will draw them out and try to work our vocabulary words into each improvised situation.

Core 2:

1. Write-On: Explain why this is false.
   • All rocket scientists are human.
   • I am a human.
   • Therefore, I am a rocket scientist.
2. Dive back into the Nerd Herd Word Book:
   • Take a look at the most useful Idea from the idea page.
   • Tackle the translation together.

Core 3:

1. Dive back into the Vocab book with wrong way sentences, daffynitions, and contextual conundrums.

Core 4:

1. Explore the concept of Utopia through definition, brainstorms, and writing:
   1. Brainstorm ideas about utopias and write down ALL responses:
      • What words come to mind when you think about utopia?
      • What changes may have taken place as humans redefine the term utopia?
      • What things or places might be considered utopian?
   2. Categorize the ideas that were written down.
      • How could you categorize these ideas into groups?
      • What could you call each group? Why?
      • What are some commonalities of utopias?
   3. Brainstorm a list of things that man throughout the ages would consider utopian?
      • What can you say about these things?
      • What do you call each of these groups? Why?
      • Are the following characteristics of utopias: paradise, heaven, new worlds, perfection of some sort? Why or why not?
   4. Make generalizations about utopias and human’s changing ideas regarding them.
      • What can you say about utopias that is usally true? How are our examples alike?
   • Humans have been searching for or trying to create a utopian world in some way since time began.
   • Humans corrupt their utopia after finding it or creating it.
   • Each human strives to create his/her own personal and societal utopia.
   • Dreams memories, nature, emotions, and time help shape our ideas regarding utopia.
   • Individuality can be lost in our quest for utopia.