Class, you have a three day weekend. Your job in those three days, is to blog three times. The requirement is that you need to blog about current news in politics. Within that requirement, you are free to write your posts about anything you want, weather it be some news about the Executive, maybe an upcoming Supreme Court case, or possibly an update on the Health Care issue. The only last requirement, is that you need to cite your source by providing at least one link.
By the way, I can ask people to check out a politics page on the WP like this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/politics/
Or, if I am a slicker, more experienced blogger, I will use that link icon right above where I am typing right now, and link you to the WP Politics section like this. Which seems cleaner?
Anyways good luck, enjoy your weekend otherwise.
-Sam
PS If you are missing assignments, this is a great weekend to catch up on a few of them!
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
All the President's Men Blog
Today you finished watching the fairly classic Hollywood film about the Watergate scandal. Well I was looking around the web, and I found a fantastic page put out by the Washingtonpost.com, first go ahead and read through that page here.
...
Now that you've read that page, you may have noticed that in two places they actually link they original Washington Post article, written by Bernstein and Woodward. I am sure you can find one of those links on that page there, the story is called "GOP Security Aide Among 5 Arrested in Bugging Affair." Go ahead and read through that original story, try to pay attention to what governmental positions seem to be affected by this story.
Your job for this post, is to write 150 words, reacting to how you think this scandal affected peoples view of American government. I want you to think about in what ways do we rely on check's and balance's to keep our government fair, and how would this event have made you feel about the Executive if it happened today.
Feel free to explore any of the other links you find on that site, some of them lead you to some pretty cool graphics and time lines.
...
Now that you've read that page, you may have noticed that in two places they actually link they original Washington Post article, written by Bernstein and Woodward. I am sure you can find one of those links on that page there, the story is called "GOP Security Aide Among 5 Arrested in Bugging Affair." Go ahead and read through that original story, try to pay attention to what governmental positions seem to be affected by this story.
Your job for this post, is to write 150 words, reacting to how you think this scandal affected peoples view of American government. I want you to think about in what ways do we rely on check's and balance's to keep our government fair, and how would this event have made you feel about the Executive if it happened today.
Feel free to explore any of the other links you find on that site, some of them lead you to some pretty cool graphics and time lines.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Blog about YOUR Congressperson
For this weekend, I want you to blog about either the Representative that represents you, where you live. You see, although the state we live in has many representatives, each one is assigned to represent a smaller portion of that state called a district. What you need to do first is find out who represents your district:
1) Go the the zip code lookup page over at USPS to find out your 9 digit zip code (like 20910-1123).
2) Once you have your zip code, head over to the Contact your Representative page at House.gov. Enter your state and zip there, and it will forward you to the House Representative that represents your district.
Now you know who your Rep is! Your job for the assignment is to blog about TWO ACTIONS your representative made in the last week. Did they vote some way on a particular bill this week? Did they attend a fundraiser event? Were they visiting a school making a speech? Feel free to look to see if they twitter or blog themselves, but every Rep most likely will have at least a News section on their own webpage. Good luck everyone.
-Sam
PS. And if you didn't finish in class on Friday, you should also finish up the Executive Department worksheet you received in the computer lab.
1) Go the the zip code lookup page over at USPS to find out your 9 digit zip code (like 20910-1123).
2) Once you have your zip code, head over to the Contact your Representative page at House.gov. Enter your state and zip there, and it will forward you to the House Representative that represents your district.
Now you know who your Rep is! Your job for the assignment is to blog about TWO ACTIONS your representative made in the last week. Did they vote some way on a particular bill this week? Did they attend a fundraiser event? Were they visiting a school making a speech? Feel free to look to see if they twitter or blog themselves, but every Rep most likely will have at least a News section on their own webpage. Good luck everyone.
-Sam
PS. And if you didn't finish in class on Friday, you should also finish up the Executive Department worksheet you received in the computer lab.
Friday, September 25, 2009
G-20 Blog, Friday
Your assignment for today in class, is to blog about what is happening TODAY at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh.
Requirements for this post:
-Must LINK at least TWO outside sources, as you mention them in your post
-Needs to be at least 100 of your own words, so that does not count words you use in quotations.
-You must discuss at least TWO different countries viewpoints.
I recommend you work on this in class, and make a partial post. Remember you can always go back to edit a post you worked on earlier.
As I said in class, I will give you due dates for individual assignments, we are dropping the Tues/Friday post requirement, instead having due times on each individual assignment.
This assignment is due by the end of the day today (11pm)
Requirements for this post:
-Must LINK at least TWO outside sources, as you mention them in your post
-Needs to be at least 100 of your own words, so that does not count words you use in quotations.
-You must discuss at least TWO different countries viewpoints.
I recommend you work on this in class, and make a partial post. Remember you can always go back to edit a post you worked on earlier.
As I said in class, I will give you due dates for individual assignments, we are dropping the Tues/Friday post requirement, instead having due times on each individual assignment.
This assignment is due by the end of the day today (11pm)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Thursday Class Assignment
I want to direct your attention again over to the politics ranking section over on Wikio.com. Today, I want you to scan headlines and briefly read blogs of TWO different sites. Your job is to discuss how "liberal" or how "conservative" you think those websites are. A lot of the time you can tell an authors opinion just by reading the first few lines from their blogs.
Here is an example of what you might want to write:
"I happened upon Greg Mitchells article over at the Huffington Post, and it seems as though he is taking a pretty harsh stance on Time Magazine devoting a cover to Glenn Beck, a popular conservative author. He had some harsh words to say, opening his piece with
"I have no quarrel with TIME ... so long as the accompanying story sticks to hard facts and harsh truths."
So I took a look at some of the other Blogs on HuffPost, and found..."
[Notice how I used the link feature so a reader can follow my source]
Your job is to take a look at TWO seperate online recourse, and discuss what you read there, and how liberal or conservative that site seems to be.
The only other requirement is that you need to pick your two sites to review from the top 20 political blogs on Wikio.com (the link above).
Good Luck
Here is an example of what you might want to write:
"I happened upon Greg Mitchells article over at the Huffington Post, and it seems as though he is taking a pretty harsh stance on Time Magazine devoting a cover to Glenn Beck, a popular conservative author. He had some harsh words to say, opening his piece with
"I have no quarrel with TIME ... so long as the accompanying story sticks to hard facts and harsh truths."
So I took a look at some of the other Blogs on HuffPost, and found..."
[Notice how I used the link feature so a reader can follow my source]
Your job is to take a look at TWO seperate online recourse, and discuss what you read there, and how liberal or conservative that site seems to be.
The only other requirement is that you need to pick your two sites to review from the top 20 political blogs on Wikio.com (the link above).
Good Luck
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Your First Post
You should post today in class at least once on your blog. And I am going to ask that you include a few specifics in that first post.
First, you should all go check out the website Wikio.com, where they have found a clever way to rank blogs around the internet. Particularly, check out their politics section of the site, to start getting a good idea of what kind of information we are looking for. By the way, in the blog world, you ALWAYS mention where you found the information, so in this case I should tell you I found that link through abcNew's The Note. (noticed the LINKED text, please do this!)
Take a while to look at some of these blogs, paying attention to both the information they pass on, as well as the formatting and what is appropriate typing
In your first post, I want you to introduce your blog. Tell the world its name, its purpose, and most importantly, what/who will you be following to get your information. You should mention the twitterers you found the other night for homework, and include them in your post. For example, you might want to follow John McCain's twitter and are going to keep an eye on the Huffingtonpost.com. I will be interested to know who you like to check back on, so feel free to mention as many as you can for now, at least as your starting ideas.
Good luck and welcome to blogging.
First, you should all go check out the website Wikio.com, where they have found a clever way to rank blogs around the internet. Particularly, check out their politics section of the site, to start getting a good idea of what kind of information we are looking for. By the way, in the blog world, you ALWAYS mention where you found the information, so in this case I should tell you I found that link through abcNew's The Note. (noticed the LINKED text, please do this!)
Take a while to look at some of these blogs, paying attention to both the information they pass on, as well as the formatting and what is appropriate typing
In your first post, I want you to introduce your blog. Tell the world its name, its purpose, and most importantly, what/who will you be following to get your information. You should mention the twitterers you found the other night for homework, and include them in your post. For example, you might want to follow John McCain's twitter and are going to keep an eye on the Huffingtonpost.com. I will be interested to know who you like to check back on, so feel free to mention as many as you can for now, at least as your starting ideas.
Good luck and welcome to blogging.
The Assignment...
Welcome to the Parkmont School US Government *Official* Blog
You will begin a project where you will be responsible for 2 (count 'em "two") blog posts per week. It will be your job to go out in to the Blogosphere (which yes, includes Twitter) and find out the hottest news in government today. You will use a variety of other online blogs, twitter posts, and news sources, with the goal of publishing your own blog, to keep the world updated on our government AS YOU SEE IT.
The requirement for this course will be that you post two blogs per week, one by Friday, and one by Tuesday. (The due time on this post is 11pm on those nights [get to bed!]). You are not limited to 2 posts in a week, but that is the minimum requirement.
I will use this blog to update you periodically with new information, and updates to this assignment.
Steps to Getting Started:
1) we are using blogger.com for this project, so everyone will need to create a blog there. To do this, you will need to have a Gmail email address, so if you don't have one already, head on over to www.gmail.com and register a new account. I have no particular preference about your user name, just keep it appropriate.
2) Register here, at Blogger.com, and set up your own blog. You can choose any name you want, but it should probably be something that makes sense for this class, so maybe not something like "Kittens R cute" or "Extreme Action Blog," Maybe instead "Sam's Gov Blog" or "This week in the US."
3) Once you have your blog set up, and your ready to begin, you need to tell me your new blog's name so I can monitor your progress. To do that, just make a post here in the comments, with your: name and your new blog name.
Check back here regularly to see if there are any new assignments, requirements, or maybe some tips on what and what not to write.
You will begin a project where you will be responsible for 2 (count 'em "two") blog posts per week. It will be your job to go out in to the Blogosphere (which yes, includes Twitter) and find out the hottest news in government today. You will use a variety of other online blogs, twitter posts, and news sources, with the goal of publishing your own blog, to keep the world updated on our government AS YOU SEE IT.
The requirement for this course will be that you post two blogs per week, one by Friday, and one by Tuesday. (The due time on this post is 11pm on those nights [get to bed!]). You are not limited to 2 posts in a week, but that is the minimum requirement.
I will use this blog to update you periodically with new information, and updates to this assignment.
Steps to Getting Started:
1) we are using blogger.com for this project, so everyone will need to create a blog there. To do this, you will need to have a Gmail email address, so if you don't have one already, head on over to www.gmail.com and register a new account. I have no particular preference about your user name, just keep it appropriate.
2) Register here, at Blogger.com, and set up your own blog. You can choose any name you want, but it should probably be something that makes sense for this class, so maybe not something like "Kittens R cute" or "Extreme Action Blog," Maybe instead "Sam's Gov Blog" or "This week in the US."
3) Once you have your blog set up, and your ready to begin, you need to tell me your new blog's name so I can monitor your progress. To do that, just make a post here in the comments, with your: name and your new blog name.
Check back here regularly to see if there are any new assignments, requirements, or maybe some tips on what and what not to write.
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