Discuss why you agree or disagree with the blogging assessment system used in this course. Your opinion will not affect your grade. You will be assessed on how you formulate your argument.

I agree with the blogging assessment system in your class. The blog posts give students extra grades to fall back on, provide extra review and study time, and are a good addition to your teaching methods.
     First of all, the blogs posts are the only work you provide in this class, so there is no complaints on it adding too much to your workload. Also, the blogs posts allow for "Night-before-test-studying-". Why is this helpful? Because many students have trouble on studying, or finding what they need to study, and these blogs posts are review tools are can do at home, and look over at any time because we don't need to hand them in. They also have no due date during the week, so someone can wait till the night before the test to get some extra review before a test the next day. The weekly article also brings student applications to your work. The blog posts ask for small excerpts on topics we reviewed, and the weekly article allows the student to apply their own opinion over the topic. The weekly article also gives students something to research, because generally they cover one of the more important topics of our lesson, giving a key indicator for us to search for. However, i do believe the weekly article is too long, because six hundred words may be a standard amount, some topics have less than six hundred word answers and are generally just filled in with useless information so students can get good grades. So i believe each weekly article should have a set number of words depending on the amount able to write on from a general perspective.
     The blogs posts are also your only workload besides tests and quizzes, so if some very good student bombs one test before quarters end, what would he or she have to fall back on? We need the blog posts for extra grades in case we screw up one morning or missed an important lecture before a quiz. The weekly article also brings student applications to your work. The weekly article is a good grade because it requires some research, or some strong opinionated thinking on a subject. It's also worth the weight of ten blog posts, which adds a little more weight to our homework grade encouraging students to do their work for the grade. The weight of the article i feel is correct, as it falls under a one to ten scaling. Any more weight added to the weekly article and i feel it'd make the blog posts something nobody would do because they weren't worth the points in comparison, and any less, i would feel obligated to write less, and would make it harder for me to grade my own work before posting it.
     The blog posts also go together well with your teaching style. You teach in interesting prezi lectures and fun eventful debates and/or activities. While this way of teaching is the best and gets students to be outgoing, written work is needed for some students to remember things and or study, so the blog posts add a work flow to optimize your teaching. Your teaching is also based much around listening and interact, but little involving notes in comparison, so the blogs and article are good for giving students something to write down, giving them study materials and helping in the singling out of the most important parts of a topic.
    Those are the reasons i feel the blogging assessment system is a good system for your class.
    

Was your learning different when blogging, as compared to writing just pen and paper? Explain

Yes, the biggest learning difference is i can read what i wrote, blogging also gives me easy internet access to search up a topic to get a little extra information before analyzing a question. The blogs also make it easier to do because i am always on my computer anyway, and i'm a fast typer compared to a very slow, writer with wrist cramping syndrome.

Which blogging topic was your favorite from first quarter?

My favorite blog topic from the first quarter was on Thoreau's quote "That government is best which governs least" because it pertains a lot to society today and countries around the world today, and has so much meaning and things to discuss for such a small quote.

Factory workers often created music that servd as a form of protest and a way to get them through the long hours of the workday. After reading the lyrics from the "Song of the Shirt", describe what life must have been like for these textile factory workers

The work in the factories is dead end, repetitive, dangerous work. The workers seemed suicidal, the lyrics portrays the workers as starving men and women who pray to god simply for bread that is "So dear" as if it was a much wanted car or house, not a necessity to human life.

Explore the primary doc photographs from the Ellis Island website. (You may have to register.) After exploring the photographs, discuss what feelings and experiences immigrants coming to the United States at the turn of the century must have been feeling.

I believe immigrants coming to the United States felt many mixed feelings during the different portions of the journey and lifestyle in the "New world". Before leaving from the countries they came from, (mainly those in poverty) felt very exited to come to what sounded to be paradise, and a fresh start if you will. However, the boat ride was trying for the ones that lived throughout the entire trip. But to the survivors of the journey that arrived at Ellis Island, at the time of arrival it would feel like a paradise, not only to be off a horrible smelly boat and onto land, but to see the statue of liberty and beautiful area around it. But just as they sigh the greatest of sighs of relief, they are either denied passage, and would be forced to go back home, or are accepted, and see their "paradise" of New York city at the time. So i believe the immigrants had up and downs on feelings of the US when moving to the United States.

Listen to the Beatles track titled, "Rocky Raccoon" off of their White Album. Dicuss how the Beatles portray the wild west through song? Is their piece accurate

The Beatles portray the wild west as something a bit less of what you would see in a general movie. While the words they use would seem a bit too stereotypical and feel like a movie, the story gives a much more realistic setting of the wild west. I believe the song is more accurate than not to the wild west, because of the way it expresses the conflict and how Rocky attempts to resolve it. He goes through such basic, barbaric, and "wild" if you will steps in which to solve his problem. Problem occurs. Find problem. Kill problem with a gun. If in doubt use religion as something to fall back on. The simplistic ways of getting needs and solving problems were what gave the wild west its name, and what made it so dangerous. The way the characters are portrayed is also fairly realistic for the time. Such as the doctor, smelling of gin, simply lies Rocky down and wraps the bullet wound.

Create a "Six Word Story" for the tale of a family making the journey West.

White at dawn. Red by dusk.

Why was Abraham Lincoln's concern more focused on preserving the Union, rather than slavery?

Abraham Lincoln's concern did not focus on slavery because he knew if he had made any opinion on slavery he'd either lose many of his followers, or be unable to convince the South to revoke their succession.
If say Lincoln stood up and mentioned his hatred for slavery, the South would have more reason to succeed because they were already succeeding on the grounds of their rights being taken away, why come back when the man with whom is running the North government is planning to revoke more of your rights?
Now the other side, if Lincoln had come to a podium and mentioned his love for slavery, he may have gained some relations with the South, he may lose many of his own Northern followers as well as the chance he may be impeached for this belief.
That is why Lincoln concerned the preservation of the Union rather than the conflict of slavery.

"That government is best which governs least"

I believe Thoreau means the less control the government has, or the more power to the people, generally, the better the overall country and government will work. I believe he is right to an extent, that communist and dictated countries have serious problems because the government controls too much, and the country doesn't show the face of its people, but the face of its leader. However, i believe too little control is a problem as well, some countries such as many in Africa have no government at all, which raises problems of the other extreme. Such as no law enforcement or regulations that protect people enough to allow them to have their power in their country.

Does history matter?

Does history matter? A question that is asked by many, claiming "Why do we need to know what has already happened when we can plan for the future?" This question has a simple answer, because to the future, we need to know history, if we don't know a mistake that happened in the future, we won't know not to make it in the present. Take for instance, Adolf Hitler and his betrayal attack on Russia. If he had known the outcome of Napoleon's attack on Russia and interpreted the outcome of his attack, he would be in an entirely different situation. So yes, history is important, it is a set of knowledge needed for any society to move forward as a group and embrace changes rather than live in the past and repeat the same problems over and over again.