Becoming a Good Thinker
The goal of this assignment is to progress as a questioner and, therefore, as a thinker. For this assignment, select an important problem faced by society today (e.g., income inequality, gun violence, online privacy), and construct three questions that will result in critical thinking using the assignment template.
In the template, under the first column, provide your own original questions related to your chosen important problem. In the second column, identify the domain of thinking.In the third column, list the intellectual standards and element of thought that relates to your question. Briefly explain why the question is important in this context (i.e., the elements of thought or reasoning that led you to this thinking). There are eight elements of thought.
The intellectual standards are on page 58 of your textbook and are defined on page 103.
In the fourth column, label your question as fact, preference, or judgment.
Constitution
answer certain questions and put them into essay format..
Explore the Federalist and anti-Federalist sentiments that were at the heart of the conflict between individual statehood and/or a strong federal government. This is an argument that is still being discussed today.
How did individual state constitutions contribute to the U.S. Constitution?
How did the Articles of Confederation provide the United States with an effective government in areas of political structure, military and economics?
Did the Declaration of Independence contribute to the process in any way? If so, how?
What are the Bill of Rights?
What are the 3 most important compromises in the development of the final US Constitution? Were compromises necessary? Why or why not?
Why did citizens feel written documents were important? As an example, in your Divine text, the authors discuss as a foundation of government, the necessity of a written contract that “explicitly define the rights of the people as well as the power of their rulers” (pg 136). Why was that important? Were written documents a practice of European governments like Britain?
What are the fundamental freedoms discussed in all of these documents?
In your opinion, did the design of the federal constitution and the government it created solve the problems it set out to solve as discussed in the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation?
Readings and references in your paper should include your Divine text, the articles, State and Born Rights Preview the documentby Donald Lutz, The Declaration of Independence in World ContextPreview the document, by David Armitage, and the weblinks provided below.
Identify the central argument
“We Do Abortions Here” by Sallie Tisdale
“Indian Education” By Sherman Alexis
“Bad Feminist” By Roxane Gray
Choose of of these existing essays, and then write a “cover version” of it as if you were a musician doing a cover of an original song. How can you make one of these essays relevant to a new situation, with your own argument. Your task is to identify the central argument and theme of the essay, and then re-image the author’s argument with your own perspective,experience, and voice. Use evidence and make connections.
Rogerian assignment
Please read carefully:
The Rogerian assignment directions are as follows:
This essay should be between 900 and 1000 words. First, you will choose a topic of interest that has two opposing sides. Then, you need to research that topic in order to specify the topic’s scope, so it can be easily discussed in a shorter, 1000 word essay.
The following overused topics may not be used in your essay: gun control, abortion, capital punishment, gay marriage, gays in the military, mandatory drug testing, euthanasia, childhood obesity, women in the military, diets (including the Palio diet), workout regiments (including CrossFit), underage drinking, and the legalization of marijuana.
This essay must include a minimum of five sources. Three should peer-reviewed sources preferably from the APUS databases. You may use eBooks; however, as discussed earlier this semester, books generally are not as current as peer-reviewed articles. You may also use primary sources (interviews, statistics, etc); however, these primary sources should be obtained from experts within that field. If you cannot find strong sources for your chosen topic, then change your topic. If you have a question about the validity of a source, please email me, or post your question to the open forum.
Make sure to include the following sections in your essay: introduction and claim, background, body, and conclusion. Within the body of your Rogerian essay, make sure to include the following in any order: the background for your chosen topic, the opposition, the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents claim, scholarly research, your claim, discuss the warrants for your claim and the opposition in order to find the common ground, and show the common ground between your opponents claim and your claim.
After you have written your essay, please make sure to revise the content of your essay. Lastly, be sure to edit your essay by checking grammar, format, and smaller technical details. Please make sure your essay is written in third person.
Topic: Voting Age for the National Elections Should be Lowered to Sixteen
Reflective Response
Times New Roman font, size 12. Double-spaced with one-inch margins. 1000-1200 words. The Work Cited page is not included in the word count. Use MLA style formatting, including headings and citation.
Reflective Response
In this next assignment, a Reflective Response, you will interact on a more personal level, reflecting on how a text affects you personally, connects with your own experiences, or challenges your own values or beliefs. Reflective strong responses are more open-form, and may engage storytelling, chronological transitions, and more visual, illustrative language (low on the “ladder of abstraction”).
You will need to choose a different article than the one you analyzed in the Rhetorical Critique. All seven Articles for Analysis and Synthesis fit a common theme, wrestling with questions of what makes good writing. By writing reflectively on this topic, you will be able to develop awareness of your own relationship with writing, what your strengths are, and how your perception of writing compares with other professional writers and other students. As you reflect, consider both negative and positive memories; many of the most interesting and most rewarding stories are born out of conflict and trouble. But don’t let the events speak for themselves. Reflect on them and connect them to the text you’re responding to.
Objectives
Getting in touch with your own experiences with composing, drafting, and revising is an important step for developing your skills as a writer, in any setting. This includes the remaining required papers for this class, writing throughout your college career, and writing that will be required of you later on in your professional life. The Reflective Response essay should give you the opportunity to explore a new side of your personal relationship with writing. The remaining papers for this semester will continue to build on the skills you develop in writing this paper.
Requirements:
Appropriate blend of open- and closed-form prose that demonstrates a logical progression and organization of thoughts
Use of specific language (descriptive, figurative, with attention paid to word choice)
A clear presentation of the original article by summarizing the major arguments and presenting the writer’s position in a fair and reasonable manner
Reflect on the theme of writing: demonstrating awareness of your own relationship with writing, connecting the article with your own personal experiences, beliefs, or values
Respond to the article showing meaningful engagement and interaction with the text
Purposefully incorporated textual examples into your own writing, cited appropriately according to MLA guidelines
Smooth transitions between ideas/paragraphs and clear style
Use of appropriate college-level spelling, grammar and mechanics
Appropriately formatted Works Cited page
Online learning and disruptive students
How Online learning setting serves the disruptive k-12 students?
Write about the below questions:
The concept of the distance education.
The different type of student’s distance education serves.
Types of disruptive behavior
Etiology of disruptive behaviors
Why students may be disruptive in school?
Could this misbehavior be a result of inappropriate curriculum or teaching strategies?
Could this misbehavior be an underlying result of the student’s disability?
Could this misbehavior be a result of other factors?
How do I use reinforcement strategies to reduce disruptive behavior?
What are the possible solutions for the education k-12 system?
What are the possible solutions for teachers?
What practices are used at distance education environment to decrease the number of disruptive k-12 students?
UFO Cult, Heaven’s Gate
Do an internet study of the following UFO cults: Heaven’s Gate. In your paper you can use secondary material from the New Religious Movements web-site, but you must also show that you have thoroughly perused material published by the cults themselves, either on their own web-sites or in book form.
Most of this material is easily, and plentifully available on-line. Essays should focus not on the history of the cult, but its particular ‘theology’ and how the mythology of ‘extraterrestrial intelligence’ is blended with it.
minimum 2000 words
6-9 Scholarly references
Female written
A- Grade Required
response paper
a.) provide a summary of the analytical stance taken by the authors of the readings,
b.) consider the extent to which a given reading intersects with or corresponds to previous readings,
c.) consider the extent a week’s readings relate to their own academic and intellectual interests,
d.) consider questions for in-class group discussions.
1. What exactly does Judt mean he writes that “Holocaust recognition” is the “contemporary European entry ticket”? What, according to Judt, are the consequences (within the European Union) of a nation either denying that the Holocaust happened or denying that their nation took part in the Holocaust?
2. I like Judt’s article; I find it well researched and well written. However, I am skeptical about ‘patting Europe on the back’ simply for acknowledging the realities of the Holocaust. After everything we have thought about this semester—colonialism, racism, genocide, nationalism, etc.—why should we be wary of the claim that Europe’s
‘humanity’ has been ‘restored’ in the wake of the Holocaust? (HINT: There is no ‘right’ answer here. I simply cannot help but contrast Judt’s essay with the anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping Europe and America as we speak.)
3. Did the Holocaust end (immediately) with the end of World War II? What forms of injustice did Jews face as they returned to their home countries after being imprisoned in Nazi labor and death camps?
4. What is Judt telling us about the Holocaust as a Europe-wide phenomenon? In other words, were the Germans alone responsible for the Shoah (Holocaust)?
5. What forms of resistance did Primo Levi face as he attempted to find a publisher for his masterwork, Survival in Auschwitz?
6. If one examines the text on pp. 808, it becomes clear that Europeans had (at least) two (if not more) reasons for sheltering themselves behind a veil of ‘collective amnesia’ after the Holocaust. What were these reasons?
7. According to Judt, Germans largely avoided admitting their role in the Holocaust between 1945 and the late-1950s. How and why did this change near the end of the 1950s?
8. For nearly forty years after World War II, Judt writes, the Swiss “basked in their clear conscience and the envious admiration of the world” for not having taken part in the Holocaust. What finally led the Swiss to acknowledge their role in the Holocaust?
9. Why, according to Judt, were the French unable to argue that the murder of French Jews was simply the result of top-down orders issued by the Nazis during the German occupation of France (1940-1944)?
10. Judt warns us that we should be careful to not gratuitously celebrate European acknowledgement of the Holocaust. What, counterintuitively, are the risks associated with nearly every European nation admitting complicity in the Holocaust?
11. Judt makes an admirable effort to trace Holocaust memory (or lack thereof) in the post-1945 Soviet bloc. How did nations throughout Communist Europe (like East Germany and Poland) process the horrors of 1939-1945? How exactly might we define Judt’s term ‘comparative victimhood’?
12. How and in what ways was “Russian memory divided” on the subject of the Holocaust?
13. What role in Western Europe have plaques, memorials, and museums played in forcing Europeans to come to terms with the Holocaust?
14. Read the last full paragraph on page 829 very closely. Why is memory “a poor guide to the past”? In other words, why do we absolutely need history as counterbalance to memory? (These questions links us once again to the very first readings we completed for this class and to numerous discussions we have had throughout the semester.)
15. What exactly does Judt mean when he writes that at least some level of “forgetting is the necessary condition for civic health”? Is he advocating for collective amnesia? If not, what is he arguing?
Exploratory Essay and Research Proposal
What is the future of computing and artificial intelligence?
Instructions for the assignment:
Overview
For Module 5 you will write an argument essay on a topic that interests you. That essay is many steps away, though. In Module 4 you will begin with exploration, preliminary research, and brainstorming.
Consider this assignment an anti-essay. For this essay, you aren’t supposed to have a thesis, you won’t write an introduction or a conclusion, and your body paragraphs won’t be focused on supporting a main argument or claim.
Wait. What?
You heard me right. This paper is not about reporting on an idea or arguing a position. This paper is about you satisfying a genuine curiosity using the research process.
Your goal is to explore. Choose a topic you are genuinely interested in learning more about. Think of questions you want answered. Be curious. For this essay, you start by researching the answer to one question, and that question/answer should lead you to other questions. Follow them and see where they take you. Research is recursive. The knowledge of the answer to one question leads you to the next question.
In this essay you will narrate your research process, and explain what you learn and how it helps answer your research question.
You should spend approximately 6 hours on this assignment.
Instructions
Pre-Write: Start with the research questions you developed for Discussion 1: Research Brainstorming. That is it. This anti-essay does not require pre-writing. The essay is about exploring the idea.
Write:
List your initial research question(s).
Write out your process – exactly, and step-by-step. (Yes, you’ll say: “The first thing I did to find information was to…)
Explain what you learned from each source you consulted and how the information connects to your research question.
Your initial research should lead you to more questions. Start following those and duplicate the process: ask the question, do more research, write about it. Ask good questions and pursue them until you run out of questions.
Rather than writing a conclusion, end the essay with an argumentative thesis developed from the information you found on your exploratory journey. This thesis will become your working thesis for your Module 5 researched argument.
Tips for Success:
Don’t try to look for a thesis as you research. Simply ask and answer questions. Don’t try to figure out where the research is taking you. Let your questions lead the way.
You must cite 7-8 sources in your text. Create a correctly formatted (MLA Style) Works Cited page that lists your cited sources.
At least three of your sources should be academic journal articles. You should use at least three different types of sources. Think back to your scavenger hunt activity. Your research should rely heavily on academic journal articles, but also consider magazines, news articles, podcasts, documentaries, government sources, and internet sites. Pay attention to the credibility of the sources you consult.
This essay should be approximately 1,300-1,500 words.
The pace of disruptive healthcare
The pace of disruptive healthcare deals today – and the dollar value they represent – will they fundamentally change how healthcare will look in the future.