Friday, November 13. 2015

Today's schedule is B-AG-A-D-C

A Block Social Studies 10 - Today we will take a look at first contact between European and Aboriginal Peoples on the prairies in Canada. We'll review the concept of worldview and then spend time examining the relationship that developed between the Aboriginal Peoples and both the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company on the Canadian Prairies.

Remember the Conquistadors and Aztec civilization? Montezuma, the Aztec leader, believed that Cortez was the return of Quetzalcoatl, the exiled deity who vowed one day to return and claim his kingdom. Aztec mythology tells of a fair-skinned god, Quetzalcoatl, who sailed east to join the sun god, warning that he would return.

"Many came also to gape at the strange men, now so famous, and at their attire, arms and horses, and they said 'These men are gods!'" – Francisco Lopez de Gomara, from The History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1552

Why would Montezuma believe in this? Technology mixed with a sense of foreboding doom that existed in Mexico. Today we will watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Who Watches the Watchers?" From the official Star Trek website:

A team of Federation anthropologists, working in a camouflaged outpost on Mintaka III, have been observing the Mintakans — a race of Vulcan-like humanoids whose development is at the equivalent of earth's Bronze Age. But when an explosion rips through the post, the expedition's leader, Barron, and his assistant, an elderly woman named Warren, are seriously injured. A third team member, a young man named Palmer, is dazed in the blast and wanders away from the site. Beaming down to assist the Federation officials, the Away Team is spotted by two Mintakans, Liko and his daughter Oji. Stunned by the sight of Warren being beamed up to the U.S.S. Enterprise, Liko accidentally slips and is critically injured in a fall. To save his life, Dr. Crusher beams Liko up to the ship, although it violates the Federation's Prime Directive, which states that members are not to interfere with other cultures. Regaining consciousness in Sickbay, Liko overhears Picard promising Barron that he will find Palmer. Despite the fact that Crusher performs a procedure to remove his short term memory, it doesn't work and Liko returns to the planet describing "the Picard" to other Mintakans as a god, capable of healing wounds and reversing death.

I'd like you to think about what happens in the Star Trek episode and then Monday we'll discuss the connections between what we see today and the relationship that developed between the Aboriginal Peoples and the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company.

D Block Geography 12 - Today we'll look at the composition and vertical structure of the atmosphere focusing on the bottom two layers (Troposphere and Stratosphere) through this we'll complete the Atmosphere in the Vertical activity along with a few questions on the atmosphere. I'm so excited to be starting weather! Hail, lightning, tornadoes, and hurricanes are four on "the list" get ready, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

C Block Crime, Media and Society 12 - Yesterday we watched an episode of Scooby Doo. I'd like to have a conversation about the following:

1. What assumptions or beliefs do Scooby Doo’s creators have that are reflected in the content?
2. How does this make you feel, based on how similar or different you are from the people portrayed in the media product?
3. How does the commercial purpose of Scooby Doo cartoons influence the content and how it's communicated?
4. Who and what is shown in a positive light? In a negative light? Why might these people and things be shown this way?
5. Who and what is not shown at all? What conclusions might audiences draw based on these facts?

Huffington Post article on Daphne's Curse of going from size 2 to size 8
Huffington Post article on Beauty Stereotypes in Scooby Doo

After our discussion I'd like you to answer the following:

 "How does Scooby Doo explain crime and gender roles to young people"?

Next, we'll watch Batman: The Animated Series Two Face (part 1) and if time Two Face (Part II). These episodes provide an alternate origin story to Harvey Dent / Two Face than the movie The Dark Knight. The animated series was a sort of watershed for crime serial animation in that it was styled after a "film noir" format (a gritty and dark Hollywood genre of crime dramas from the 1940's and 1950's). This episode is over 20 years old (yep from 1992) and is a brilliant example of a cartoon series taking its audience seriously. It provided gripping, intelligent, and compelling episodes that did not shy away from important issues and was adept at examining crime from a criminological perspective.

from TV.com...Harvey Dent, campaigning for a re-election, vows to rid Gotham of Rupert Thorne's crime and corruption. The tables turn when Thorne gets a hold of Dent's psychological records and discovers his alternate personality the violent Big Bad Harv. Thorne attempts to blackmail the DA with this, and the following fight in Thorne's chemical plant hideout results in an explosion that scars the left side of Dent's body, despite Batman's attempts to save him.

So when we finish the episode we'll try to make sense of what messages the episode tries to pass on to its audience (remember it's children)and also what the episode says of crime.