Monday, January 8. 2018

Welcome Back...Happy New Year! Today's schedule is A-B-C-D

B Block Physical Geography 12 - Today in Geography we will begin looking at biomes and biogeographic realms. Biomes are the major regional groupings of plants and animals discernible at a global scale. The distribution of these biomes is connected to climate, soil, and the physical topography of the earth. Biogeography is the study of the distribution and patterns of plants and animals throughout the biosphere.

Using chapter 20 of your Geosystems textbook, I would like you to describe the adaptations and structure for flora and fauna (plant and animal) in each of the following terrestrial biomes (land based not aquatic): Equatorial & Tropical Rain forest (ETR); Tropical Seasonal Forest and Scrub (TrSF); Tropical Savanna (TrS); Mid latitude Broad leaf & Mixed Forest (MBME); Needle leaf & Montane Forest (NF/MF); Temperate Rain forest (TeR); Mediterranean Shrub land (MSh); Mid latitude Grasslands (MGr); Deserts (DBW & DBC); and Arctic & Alpine Tundra (AAT). At the end of this there are questions 8, 12, 13, & 15 from page 693 to complete as well. Tomorrow we'll watch the Planet Earth episode Pole to Pole to help.

C Block Human Geography 11 - This week we begin our last topic for Human Geography - urbanization. Our focus this week will be on the services we find in rural and urban communities. Services account for more than two-thirds of GDP in most developed countries, compared to less than one-half in most developing countries. Services cluster in developed countries because more people who can buy services live there. The service sector of the economy is subdivided into three types: consumer services, business services, and public services and each of these sectors is divided into several major sub sectors. So our key issue for the day is "Where Are Services Distributed"? You'll have a few questions to answer for me:

1. Define consumer services
2. What are the four main types of consumer services, and provide an example of each
3. Define business services
4. What are the three types of business services, and provide an example of each
5. Explain how the service sector contributed to the 2008 Recession. and...
6. In most communities, the largest employers other than the local government are consumer services. What are the largest consumer services in the Comox Valley? (You can Google “largest employers Courtenay or Comox Valley” to find out.)

D Block Criminology 12 - Back to the blog today. On your blog please consider The Media (and Social Media) vs. Casey Anthony...Was Justice done? The Vancouver Observer had a great article written by Jenny Uechi titled "Judged in the Court of Facebook". The article predominantly deals with the social media attention given to Vancouver's Stanley Cup rioters. Peter Chow-White (a SFU Communications professor) was quoted in the article:

"Over the last 10 years, I've been thinking Orwell got it wrong," said Peter Chow-White, an SFU communications professor specializing in social media. "There's not going to be this oppressive Big Brother eye watching us. We give out the minutiae of our lives for free on Twitter and Facebook."

While photographs and video footage posted by the public (and often by the perpretators themselves) have been instrumental in bringing them to justice, Chow-White said that tools like Facebook risk putting ordinary people on the same playing field as powerful politicians and celebrities whose lives are built around public exposure.

"We're used to politicians, celebrities, professional athletes living in public --that's just part of the extraordinary wages they garner," he said. "But everyday people are not used to living in public. That's not part of the deal."

So during the Casey Anthony trial some of the most reliable news came not from Nancy Grace on HLN but from the Twitter account NinthCircutFL (a feed managed by the 9th Circut Judicial Court) or from OSCaseyAnthony (the feed of the Orlando Sentinel newspaper). Most national media outlets regularly used these feeds for information on the trial. Facebook and Twitter are revolutionary in their ability to provide instant forums for social discussion (and for revolutions to organize like the Arab Spring)...However they can also be arenas for vitriol and hate hidden behind the guise of free speech. Twitter and Facebook can be used for community building and citizen journalism - or as in the case of Casey Anthony (or Jodi Arias or George Zimmerman) citizen surveillance and vigilantism. Timothy Kelley wrote

"There was a time not long ago that if you repeatedly and routinely used 140 characters to express your most profound ideas you would be referred to as illiterate. Now that provincial form of communication can make you a social Mayor".

So was justice served? Think back to the coverage of the Casey Anthony trial I showed you pre-break and h ere's my question...Is Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Instagram, Snapchat) good or bad for criminal trials and the news/media coverage of them? Consider the following when you answer the question on your blog

• Think about who reports information and how that information is used.
• Think about your privacy and how you manage your on-line presence.
• Think about how social media can be introduced as evidence at trials (see the article here).
• Think about how social media can be used during trials (see the article here).
• Do viewer/user comments about media coverage of a trial provide valuable feedback for discussion or not? Why?