Well, now that we have all survived the snow/ice craziness we have our work cut out for us. I thought it might be helpful to put the videos and questions for the week here so you could reference them all easily. Sorry I didn’t get all of this done and up while you were still experiencing cabin fever, but it took a bit. Plus, some of you didn’t have power or the ability to get to power. So let’s get started.

DISCUSSION GRADING

I made some changes to the grading process for your blog/discussion posts. Instead of making the comments the same weight as the post, I made the post 10 points and the comment 5. It’s still a total of 15 points, but I think the posts are the more important element. But you all also need to get better at challenges in your comments. When you see the grade in D2L it will be the combination of both. Everyone got the full 5 points if you made any comment at all, since you all were guilty of just adding your opinion and not challenging. We will talk about this on Thursday.

BLOG LESSONS

Take a look at the video on your blogs! Many of you are using pages for your discussions when you should be using posts. It’s great practice, as you will know how to use pages when you set up your legislative brief. But don’t use pages for your discussion posts – USE POSTS. I go over how to do that in the blog video. I also talk about widgets and some other things you can do to get your blog set up so you will be ready to add your legislative brief. I went in and made the changes in the blogs themselves for some of you, as you had gone so far astray it was easier. Just take a few minutes and look at the video. It’s not long.

When you are watching the video here are a couple of tips. If you see this image in the bottom right corner you might want to use either of the two menu option. The three lines opens the menu on the left side so you can go to a particular part of the video you might want to see. The square that looks like a tv opens a full screen view of the video.

NEW SYLLABUS

Here is the new syllabus. It will also be on D2L. I have made some changes in topics and there are now only 2 more online sessions. I would like you to consider the scheduling of the Legislative Fact Sheet Presentation. It is presently scheduled for the second to last class. My thinking was that you would have some input before your full Legislative Brief was due. However, if we moved that to the last class we would get in more material on either Stone and/or Child Welfare before the last session. Right now the last session is set up for review and getting to material we may have missed. Take a look and let’s talk about it on Thursday.

CLASS VIDEOS

Here are the things you need to review for class on Thursday. We will be discussing them all – some in more detail than others. At the end of this post is the link for the updated syllabus (also on D2L), and several questions we will need to decide on Thursday.

Stone’s Chapter on Liberty

Stone’s Chapter on Symbols

Stones Chapter on Numbers