Thursday 11-29: part one of the new topic of Political Geography

Dobro utro, Kamerads!

Today, as promised, we will be starting a new topic in this course: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

Per our usual start, we will begin with some terms, which you will find below and will type up in an email and send my way. Following this, there will be a small assignment which involves applying some of what you have just read to answer some open ended questions which I will be asking you. 

It is my hope that your answers to these questions will serve as the basis for a future debate in this class. My favorite sport after all is and always will be politics  :-)

Cheers,

Mr. L

Tuesday 11-27 : getting it all wrapped up

And a hearty yip yip, yip yip, yahooooooo to you all!

Today, we will focus on the following:

A) Getting to me all the facets of your research for your chosen topic in your culture. By the time you read this, emails will have been sent out about what each of you owes

B) Getting your "first person culture" stories in to me. Again, an email will have been sent out to those of you who haven't sent it my way just yet 

My goal is that by week's end, we will begin a new topic for this class. Therefore, the above needs to be done during today and Thursday.

cheers,
Mr. L

Monday 11-26: Tell Me a Story

Greetings, and welcome back!!!

Today, I want you to make use of what you have collected so far while researching your chosen culture. You will use this material to tell me a story. That story will be about a member or object which is part of the culture you have chosen for your topic. Here are the ground rules

A) The story must be told from a "first person" point of view. This means, for the purpose of your story, that you ARE that person, or you ARE that cultural artifact

B) You must make use of the following facts which you have collected, researched or told me about thus far

C) That's at least a total of 23  keywords from "Speakin' the Lingo"

D) Plus a mention of each one of the eight icons you profiled for  "Icons" assignment

E) plus at least six of the patterns you discerned during the "lather rinse repeat" assignment

F) And of course, a mention of at least least 11 aspects of your culture from sets of facts gathered during "Topic guidelines". By the way, if you didn't finish the assignments previous to this, it'll make it much harder to do this properly, so you'd better get those other assignments done first

G) You must also include at least four images that have to do with your culture... anything as long as they are school appropriate

H) You may use any format -- A Word document, PowerPoint, even a webpage if you know how to create such a thing

I) Make it exciting..gripping... NOT BORING. This is YOUR culture you are talking about..... if you make that boring, or get cheap on me in any way, it means you WANT to fail. And I'm not having that.

J) If it makes it easier, you can arrange a conflict between yourselves and one of those "inferior cultures" you profiled during the "diversity vs superiority" assignment

J) Each person involved in a project must send me their own copy, either by email or through Box.com.  No excuses

Good Luck, and have a great week off. See you on the other side

Cheers,
Mr. L

Thursday 11-14: speakin' the lingo

Greetings, fellow Earth dwellers!

Today, as part of your ongoing drive to explore your chosen culture -- and share it with the rest of us -- you will need to tell me how a person would "speak" your culture's language. Every culture has its own set of what I like to refer as "keywords", terms important enough that they help define the culture itself. 

For example, in nerd culture, "n00bs" are people clueless about technology, "treeware" means stuff that's written on paper, while "TLDR" means too long, didn't read (usually applied to useless piles of treeware) and so on

Alternatively, in survivalist culture, "TEOTWAWKI" means the final collapse of society or "the end of the world as we know it", while "preps" means stuff that's bought or steps taken to be prep-ared  for TEOTWAWKI

So, what are your culture's Keywords ? Let's have a bunch, complete with the definitions.... I think 23 will do.  Why 23? Well, for those of us who see hidden significance in numbers, 23 is the first prime past the number of fingers and toes on the human body.

Just sayin'.

In any event, send these 23 to me by email...remember to put your name(s) and the words "speaking the lingo" in the subject line


cheers,
Mr. L

PS Any remaining assignments which you still owe... well, what on earth are you waiting for? Get 'em to me, tutto pronto!

Tuesday 11-13: icons

Hello, hello!

If you're reading this, then it can only mean you have completed the "patterns" assignment; to which I say, "Yip Yip, Yip Yip, Yahoo!"

Now what I'd like you to do is to to begin listing some "icons" of your chosen culture. These are people who represent and embody your culture. In some cases, they even helped found that culture.

Every culture has its icons. For example, early punk culture had Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Wendy O Williams, Jello Biafra, Debbie Harry and the Ramones brothers, etc etc

Nerd culture has Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Kevin Mitnick, Richard Stallman, Steve Jobs, Sergei Brin, Grace Hopper etc etc

Here is what you will need to do:

A) set up an email (or a computer file) named after yourself, plus the word "icon"  (Again, each one of you must send me either an email or a file, even if you are working in partners)

B) In the main body of the email, list at least eight icons of your culture

C) Beneath each name, list at least four aspects of your culture that these icons represent. 

D) For each aspect, write one complete sentence explaining what makes these people "representative" of your culture

Send it my way!

cheers,
Mr. L

Monday 11-12 : lather rinse repeat

Hello everyone; howdy, howdy, howdy!!!

Culture is determined by patterns. Patterns are based on repetitions; acts that are done over and over again. As we've seen, with individuals, those patterns are called habits, while with groups of people they are called customs. Customs are grouped together to become what is called "culture"

Habits can be observed in any number of ways. For example, we've just come through a big Presidential election. Every four years, there are speeches, primaries, conventions, debates and voting

For another example: Christians generally attend church on Sundays; Jews on Saturday. Muslims are called to prayer five times a day. Those are all patterns

Here's a third example, one of my own: in America, we have entered the "eating drinking and spending a lot" time of year. It starts with Halloween,  goes through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Super Bowl Sunday Valentines and St. Patrick's Day

So here's what I want you to do:

A) Pick out at least 11 patterns that can be observed in your culture

B) For each one of these, use at least one complete sentence to describe what it is that's happening and when it happens

C) Also for each one of these, use at least one complete sentence to describe how often it happens


D) Also for each one of these, use at least one complete sentence to describe where it came from. How did it begin?


Each of you is responsible for sending me this information by email with your name and the word "patterns" in the subject line. Your answers must be listed as specified in the main body of the email

cheers,
Mr. L

Thursday 11-8 : diversity versus superiority

In modern times -- at least in America -- there is much talk about cultural diversity, tolerance towards other cultures, "can;t we all just get along?", etc etc

Well, since I am the kind of instructor that I am, and this IS a class based upon on open ended inquiry, I say tough nertz to all that happy talk. Today, I want you to prove to me that your chosen culture is superior to all others. Here is what you must do

A) either create a file or start an email

B) the file name must be your name(s) plus the name of your culture plus the phrase "we're better than you and we know it!"

C) If it's an email, you just simply put what would be the file name in the subject line

D) Using at least 13 aspects of your culture out of the 17 you sent my way the other day, you must make your case for superiority. Explain -- using at least two complete sentences per aspect -- just why this aspect proves that you're better

E) after finishing this part of the assignment, you must fan out across the room and look at other cultures. You must find at least three aspects from each of those cultures that you feel proves your point even more that your culture is the best. 

F) For each of those three aspects, write at least one sentence explaining how this aspect proves your cultuyre's superiority over theirs

G) For every culture which you "discover" that doesn't even have its 17 aspects ready yet, list the name of that person or persons, the name of their culture (if any) and then type up at least two complete sentences proving to me how their literal "lack of culture" proves your superiority over them

When you are finished, make sure that you either upload the file or send that email my way

cheers,
Mr. L

Monday 11-5 : the diffusion of culture

Greetings, fellow primate type creatures!

In our previous assignment, we had 

A) defined some terms about culture

B) applied these in the process of listing seventeen aspects of a culture that you like, or at least know something about

C) divided these up into various categories -- economic, spiritual, musical, etc etc

Now its time to take this even further. Here is what you will need to do:

1) Pick any one of these. And fer cryin' out loud, don't take all day -- just pick one. DO IT!!!!

2) For example, if I was talking about culture, I might settle on "nerd culture". One aspect of that culture is the importance of energy drinks and other similar products. One example of such is a product called Jolt cola. so, for the sake of example, I'll pick Jolt 

3) In the next step, you will need to break that example of culture into its parts. For example, Jolt cola -- when it was first produced -- was an energy drink with  "all the sugar and  twice the caffeine" and it came in a glass bottle with a colorful painted label -- with a prominent lightning bolt as its logo --that was affixed with some sort of adhesive. So, (some) of the parts for that could be listed something like:

• sugar
• caffeine
• carbonation
• bottles
• glass
• paper
• adhesive
• logo

4) For each one of those parts. start to trace back where and when and how they began. For example, I could trace the roots of the company to the founding of Wet Planet Beverages by a man named CJ Rapp in 1985. I could look up the origin of the first caffeinated beverages -- including coffee and tea -- as well as the origins of carbonation and carbonated beverages. I could look up the invention of bottling, the invention of glass, where each of them began, and so on and so forth

5) As always, list each website resource for the information with its exact webpage address, along with at least two complete sentences that explain when and where each component came from. 

6) Where stuff comes from is a crucial part of the diffusion of culture... its tells us where the things we take for granted actually came from

7) For each example of culture, break it down in to at least seven parts...more if possible

8) repeat this process with at least one example of culture from each of the categories you set up in the previous lesson

Send all this information to me either by email or as computer file uploaded to Box.com.   The subject line (or filename) should be your name plus "diffusion of culture"

cheers,
Mr. L

Thursday 11-01: you gotta get some culture

(Before we begin  let me remind each of you that starting this assignment in no way means that you do not have to complete and hand in the assignments which came before it. If you haven't done or uploaded an assignment  as the Nike ads say "JUST DO IT"

OK,now for the next step in this process, you will need to apply some of your new found knowledge. Here is what I want you to do:

A) Pick out a culture with which you are familiar -- most likely, the one in which you have grown up

B)  Begin listing some of the more important aspects of that culture... begin with at least seventeen of them  (yeah, I know, another prime number)

C) Write at least two sentences for each aspect; the first sentence is for an explanation of what this thing is, and the second is for how it is significant for this culture of which you speak

D) Divide up these aspects according to different cultural categories: 
economic/occupations
sports
art
politics
music
food
religion/faith
fashion
fads/gadgets
etc etc

E) Either set up this as a file named after yourself plus the phrase "culture 17" and upload it to Box.com,

OR

F)  send it to me by email with name and the phrase "culture 17" in the subject line, with the information in the main body of the email

Cheers,
Mr. L