Socratic Seminar on freedom or safety

     Should we give freedoms and privacy during national crisis? This was mention in the debate we had yesterday about either freedom or safety. I want to discuss about it because wanting to say something and not being able to say about the intense debate they were having about freedom or safety issue was hard for me. For me just being able to have conversation with people I don't know that well is uncomfortable, so saying that I am a very shy person. So therfore I chose freedom over safety because of the debate it made me realize that safety now these days are becoming less and less and that with safety freedom is being taken away.
    Safety is a scary thing because it can lead you to the wrong direction or path way. Safety is scary because as for technology all the apps we have on our precious smartphones have all these safety precautions that are eventually used the wrong way and then it causes chaos like hacking information about your personal information and life. With that people try to fix it, but when that happens threats happen which can even lead to tyranny. We don't want to live on that world because we are a free country that we make our own decision. Safety for me is a no no because it leads to privacy life being watched and that is very uncomfortable, even though we shouldn't be scared of it.
   Therefore I chose freedom over safety because gives you a mind of peace over fear of being watched.

Socratic Seminar Kicked My Butt

     So, I was not expecting Socratic Seminar to go as it did. I definitely enjoyed the conversation and being able to discuss the book. I went into the class room thinking I was going to have all of this stuff to say and then once the conversation began, I felt very small. A large group of people is definitely different than a small group, like the ones we are in at our tables. I think the one thing that really challenged me was having to take the initiative to chime in. It was a little difficult with all the big personalities in the room, and when someone would really get pumped up and into what they were saying I would begin to question the thing I was about to say. One of the topics that I intended to chime in on was the topic of how much freedom one is willing to give up in order to feel safe.

     I think that no one should be willing to give up any of their freedoms just to feel safe. I mean, once you start handing over your freedoms to the government then what stops them from just snowballing and collecting more and more of our freedoms. Our freedoms are what give the people power and what limits the government's power over the people. If safety is what people are looking for then the reality of it is that you will never be completely safe. You can give up as much as you want but then the power of your government is what will threaten your safety. Our freedoms is the foundation of what originally was supposed to separate us from the country our forefathers came from. The more we give up the more we are just backtracking into the type of society we originally rebelled our way into freedom from. If we begin to allow our government to establish more surveillance and more invasive technology then we will really be evolving into the society of 1984 and in that society, we won't have to fear the forces of other countries rather we will have to fear the forces of our own government.

    

AF: Your First Semester Grade and the 3P System

For directions for the 3P First Semester Self-Evaluation Letter click HERE.

Next, read this: 

The 3P Grading System supports and rewards those habits of mind that create success in college and in professional life: a spirit of collaboration and independence, personal responsibility, diligence, consistency and the production of strong work. The 3 P’s stand for Participation, Progress and Performance.

Participation is 50% of your grade 
The idea behind the Participation grade and the reason why it counts so heavily is because when we take care of the little daily things, the big things seem to take care of themselves. This includes not only things like class conduct, which is observational, but also daily work like writing in the notebook (freewrites, writing to prompts), collaboration at the tables (pairs, groups of 4, groups of 6, etc.), collaboration in a larger group (whole class discussion), homework, class work, annotation of text, reading silently when that is what the class is doing, reflecting on your learning through exit passes and one-pagers, blogging -- in other words, the dozens of small things that we do in class that are designed to build literacy and understanding. There is no activity or practice that we utilize in class that has not been identified by research and practice as effective in strengthening and supporting your developing literacy skills.

So, everything matters. Everything counts.
 
How this works on a practical level: Sitting with people with whom you work well can operate in your favor and support your learning and understanding; on the other hand, if you do not have the maturity or self-control to regulate your side conversations, it will work against you. We expect cooperation from seniors. We expect seniors to be able to control themselves and to work with us. You’ve been in the classroom for a long time. By now, you know what works and what doesn’t in a large group setting. At this time next year, you will be starting over in a completely new environment, and the expectations are real. If you are still acting like a middle school student and we have to wait for you to notice that it’s time to get started, to stop talking, to begin writing, to stay on task -- these behaviors stand out, and come into play when we evaluate you as a student.

Those of you who are working or are involved in athletics know how this works already. Your boss or your coach does not evaluate every single thing you do, every single day. Your boss or your coach lays out the expectations, and then watches for trends and daily habits to form an overall impression of you. Are you bright? Talented? Are you disciplined? Responsible? Do you contribute positively to the goals of the group? Do your actions embody the values that are shared by the community?

So, when it is time to write, write; when it’s time to read, read. These practices do not flourish in a disruptive environment. It is harder and harder to find quiet places in which to read, think, and write -- our work spaces outside of the classroom are noisy with family life, beeping digital devices, social networks that demand our attention. The classroom may be among the last bastions of peace and quiet. We can find quiet moments if we actively seek them out, and of course, we encourage you to do that, but Monday through Friday, when we’re in the middle of the whirlwind of the work week, the classroom may be the only quiet space we can find. Respect that.

Finally, do your work, and offer no excuses. If you don’t do the work, recognize -- as we do -- that this was a decision that you made and accept the consequences of that decision with maturity and aplomb. Shake it off, resolve to do better, and begin again. By working in this way, we replicate the way life works outside of the high school classroom.

Progress is 20% of your grade

"If you don't want to learn, nobody can help you.

But if you do want to learn, nobody can stop you."

We have worked hard to create an environment in which students can develop and grow. We can measure progress in several ways:

• How well will you achieve the literacy goals that you establish for yourself?
• How many words can you get on paper in a ten minute period?
• How are your essays developing over time?
• How seriously do you take revision? Do you actually revise? Or do you “tweak”?
• Do you follow the advice we give you?
• How many errors can you eliminate from your writing?
• Can you stay with a text without being tossed off by distraction? Does your tenacity and focus improve?
• How many books will you independently read in a 10-week period?
• How well can you explain what you are reading?
• How well do you utilize academic register in speaking and writing?
• How well are you able to incorporate digital tools into your literacy practice?
• How effectively can you search online for what you need to know?
• And of course, we measure your skills through formal and informal assessments, and look for progress.

 Where you begin is where you begin. What counts in this category is the progress you make from that point. You need to honestly evaluate yourself, set some meaningful and measurable goals, and work toward surpassing those goals.

Performance is 30% of your grade
Your performance scores are the usual evaluations that we are most accustomed to using to measure learning: quizzes, tests, on-demand essays, and portfolio reflections. They are designed to see how well you have achieved a specific learning goal, and are tied to a standard (or two, three, or even more!), and to learning objectives that have been articulated in class. They are in place to ensure that you continue to build strong content knowledge and skill in reading, writing, speaking and listening. Remember, it never hurts to be smart. What you learn and the skills you master can never be taken away from you. 

You should have a sense of how you are doing by reflecting on your work habits and whether or not you are improving: getting more words down on paper in the 10 minutes given to write (or better words, if your fluency is already good), reading for longer stretches of time without distraction, offering more thoughtful contributions during class discussion, and gaining a better sense of what you are doing as you annotate or fill out your exit-passes.
 
3P Grading is Preparation for College and Career
The 3P Grading System encourages you to be a more independent, reflective learner, and less dependent on a teacher to judge your work.
 
When we look at some college syllabi a little later in the first quarter, you will see how just a few things count toward the final grade. This system will help you transition to your college lives and your professional work life by requiring you to start thinking about yourself as a participant in a learning community (how am I doing? Am I doing what I need to do to succeed), by measuring your success and noticing where you still need to step up (am I making progress toward my learning goals?), and by noting your performance scores on a variety of assessments.
 
A simple search on Google will point you to more resources on 3P Grading. It does live up to its reputation as being fast, fair and flexible, and once you get used to it, you will see that it works in your favor if you are willing to work towards a goal. It does not privilege the slacker who is a good test taker. It rewards work, effort and cooperation -- just like “real life”!

Government has gone to far

Today I was reading an article called “We’re living ‘1984’ today” by Lewis Beale. It was very interesting to me because Beale relates the telescreen, endless war and Newspeak to our lives today. He explains how our telescreen is social media like Facebook, knowing our likes and dislikes. Endless War relates to our “so-called war on terror, with no end in sight.” Newspeak in 1984 is to limit free thought yet we use words like OMG, RU serious, and ttyl that shows are limited vocabulary. Beale’s analogy was “We are all Winston Smith and Big brother is the modern surveillance state.” I agree with what Beale is saying about how we are all like Winston Smith because we are allowing the government to take control of our cellular devices, emails, social media, gps, and much more. We are allowing the government to hack into our personal information and lives, when will we say enough is enough?

Are We The Beginning?

     So, I just commented on a post and as I was commenting I started getting this flow of thoughts that I figured I would make my own post about.

     We live in this world of technology that we all contribute to. We are consumed by social media. What can I say though, that's just our generation. We are vain, self-centered, inconsiderate and all we care about is our technology. The one thing I can't shake from my mind though is that there was never a time when I was younger where I didn't interact at some point with some form of modern technology. So, I am lead to believe that maybe I was tricked into the labels of my generation. In 1984, the people are so oblivious to the world around them and to the truths of the world that they live in. Is that not one of the things that trails behind our generation, that we are oblivious to the world around us and have no real care for politics or the economy because we are too busy with posting on facebook and getting to 100 likes on instagram. Can we help it though? We were born into this...since the first grade we have been taught how to use computers and type 200 words per second because that's what future employers would be looking for. We have been trained to adapt quickly to the latest technological advances. This poses the question that maybe we are the beginning of mindless generations that only care about the new technology and don't pay any mind to the world around us and what the government is really doing...

Why are we crazy about Social Media?

Privacy is fleeting in our fast world of technology and it will probably be a thing of the past in a few years. I started wondering why do I and so many people want to take part in social media such as twitter, facebook, instagram etc. and of course the obvious answer most will say is to stay connected to family and friends. I feel like there is a deeper reason for why we crave social media and love it. We are human and we love to think that we are significant in this world filled with billions of people. Social media is something that makes us feel like we are important. Somebody cares about my post and somebody is listening to me. These people follow me or they're friends with me online and therefor I must be important. Social Media feeds into the idea that what we say matters and means something to someone out there. And quite possibly it might, but for the most part it doesn't. Nobody cares if we ate chipotle or got starbucks. I feel like social media makes us more self centered and narcissistic. We write about how awful or great our life is. We feel important. We feel like we are doing something groundbreaking and that is the reason (one of them at least) that the general public loves Social Media. I'm not at all trying to say that social media is all bad and terrible I think it's great because of how we can talk and get news at an instant, but I just wanted to touch on the subject of society's almost addiction to the social media craze.

Tracker Surveillance

After reading the article on changing the name of cell phones to trackers I understand the argument being proposed, however I don't think the name will change. Trackers has such a negative connotation to it which would probably turn a lot of people off to the name. This article addressed a lot of issues under how technology has power because of how they track us. Phone companies sell our private information to other businesses for money. This gives businesses and other parties a lot of control over us. With our GPS and search history they can determine where we are probably going to be and what we would probably like. The thing that gets me the most on this is that they're getting payed for our information and making money off of it. The economic advantage that companies now have with our information is unlimmitted and its quite crazy. I feel like we should get a percentage of the money they earn for our personal information. We are the reason why social media is thriving and making so much money anyways.