Friday, November 20. 2015

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

D Block Geography 12 - Today we'll continue our look at weather; working on an activity called “Sunlight and the Seasons” (week 12 package "Solar energy and the reason for seasons"). After you have finished this activity you need to complete questions 17, 19, and 20 from page 62 in your Geosystems textbook. If there's time we'll see what Bill Nye has to say about seasons. Below you'll find a decent if somewhat slow video on seasons...
and what does the rotation of the Earth on its axis -giving us seasons-look like and mean for us?
Don't forget, we'll start the class by looking at the synoptic chart for North America and begin to understand weather station plots. Take some time on the following sites to learn more and to practice your weather operational analysis capabilities:
WW2010 - University of Illinois Weather site
National Weather Service "Jet Stream" online weather school
American Meteorological Society "Data Streme"
British Broadcasting Corporation Reading Weather Maps
USA Today Reading Weather Maps

Practise at: Weather Office (Environment Canada) Operational Analysis Charts or at the Data Streme site above




C Block Crime, Media and Society 12 -  Today we'll finish the 48 Hours Mystery documentary we started yesterday on the Highway of Tears. We'll try to understand how media reports crime and try to take a theoretical perspective on the show and why it was made the way that it was presented to the audience. I have three questions to work on (and I'll give you time to work on them today):

1. What main story do you think Investigative Reporters Bob Friel and Peter Van Zant wanted to tell?
2. Why did the show focus on Madison Scott first, Loren Leslie next and then the victims along the Highway of Tears afterwards?
3. Why do you think the producers and editors framed the story the way that they did?

Consider the following post on the CBS News 48 Hours website about the showing of the Highway of Tears:

by RememberStolenSisters November 18, 2012 7:37 PM EST

I am stunned that there wasn't even a mention of the fact that the majority of victims along the Highway of Tears have been young Native women, and saddened that the was no connection made to the over 580 missing and murdered Native women in Canada, referred to here as the Stolen Sisters. I understand that wasn't the focus of this program, but to not even mention it feels incredibly wrong. You have not given the American public an accurate picture of what's going on up here, where young Aboriginal women are 5 times more likely to die a violent death than other women of the same age and more than twice as likely to be killed by a stranger than women of other races. There's a story you should cover.

A Block Social Studies 10 - Today we'll take a look at the Metis, Louis Riel, William McDougall, Thomas Scott, the Metis Bill of Rights and the Red River Resistance of 1869-1870. I'll show you three Canada: A People's History episodes on the Resistance; "If We are Rebels"; "War is Upon Us"; and "A Single Act of Severity"...from the CBC site:

Confederation is barely accomplished when the new dominion must face an enormous challenge: extending its reach into the vast prairies and beyond, to the Pacific Ocean. But Canada blunders catastrophically in seeking to take over the west without the consent of its inhabitants, especially the Métis of Red River and their leader, the charismatic, troubled Louis Riel. The resistance of 1869-70 lays the groundwork for Manitoba to join Canada, but it also sets the stage for decades of conflict over the rights of French and English, Catholic and Protestant in the new territories.

I have five questions you need to answer:

1. Who were the National Committee of the Metis and what were their goals?
2. Who was William McDougall and what conflict did he get involved in at the Red River?
3. What is a "provisional government" and why did Riel establish one?
4. What was the Metis Bill of Rights (list out the 5 points the text addresses). Was this Bill reasonable? Why or why not?
5. What was the Thomas Scott affair? How did it affect both the Metis and the the settlers in the Red River? How did the Canadian government respond?