MORNING CLASS:

Seminar Prep:
Your seminar prep is due today.  Print and turn in, or share/email with Lori.

Starter 4:

1. How important is privacy to you?  Particularly with regards to the information you put about yourself online?
2. How comfortable are you with the idea that internet marketers are using your personal information to develop marketing plans?  Where is the balance between  privacy and convenience for you?

Frontline:  Generation Like
We're going to watch the documentary linked above.  Then we're going to talk about it.

After we're done watching, write down 2-3 discussion questions sparked by the film.

In your small groups:

1. What was the most interesting thing you learned from this video?
2. What questions do you have based on this?  Share your questions, discuss them.
3. Respond as a group:  We’re actually living in an attention economy, and in order to be powerful in an attention economy, you have to realize that your attention matters, where you give your attention has consequences.  So if you give your attention to marketing, that has consequences. If you give your attention to fear, that has consequences. If you give your attention to celebrity, that has consequences. Be aware of where you give your attention in an attention economy  In an attention economy, how is one attention monetized? So if the kids are watching a salacious YouTube video versus one that recognizes human dignity, who is that harming? How is that making more?
4. Agree or Disagree:  Murray Milner Jr. wrote about how the one thing that young people have control over is status. They don’t have control over where they go to school, what classes they take, where they sleep at night, but they have control over who gets popularity and who gets attention within their peer group. And it becomes the thing that they become obsessed with because it’s the one thing that they have control over.
   To the degree that we minimize the opportunity for young people to have agency, to have control over their lives, we see it playing out over things like status, over things like attention, over things like likes. If we’re concerned about the kinds of likes and attention and validation that we’re playing into, we need to actually start giving young people more control over their lives.
5. Which side do you support more?  Why?  Digital marketers say that all of this data collection and analysis is designed to improve the experience for the consumer by offering more of what they want, or at least what companies think they want.  Privacy advocates worry that consumers aren’t getting fair deal for their data, and that the data is not secured.  
6. What does this mean?  Do you agree?  Disagree?  What are some examples?  Culture has always been a tangled web of authenticity and exploitation.   When we think about how social media affects our lives, we have to recognize how it reproduces what already existed in the world.
7. To what extent is the following statement true?  What are the implications of this (positive and negative)?  I think cool used to be identified with scarcity, the jazz singer who turns his back to the audience. Now cool has become omnipresent. So there’s been a real shift in what cool is.  Now cool is about giving yourself, opening yourself up constantly, rather than holding yourself aloof and apart.

HOMEWORK:
Be ready for seminar tomorrow!

AFTERNOON CLASS:
Starter 4:

1. How important is privacy to you?  Particularly with regards to the information you put about yourself online?
2. How comfortable are you with the idea that internet marketers are using your personal information to develop marketing plans?  Where is the balance between  privacy and convenience for you?

Seminar Prep (all texts are linked on the DOCS page of my DP!)
For EACH of the three articles, please type the following in a document.  Email or share it with Lori before class on Friday.

1. Read and annotate the article (make sure to look up any vocab...ironically, you can use your phone for this).  Make sure to go deeper than just an initial emotional response.  Make connections, analyze, question!
2. Find three sentences that stand out to you, and write them down in a list.  They could be sentences that move you, that ring with truth, that make you angry, that you totally disagree with.
3. Write a paragraph response to ONE of the sentences.  Pick it apart, react to it, respond…OR Draw a picture in response to each of the sentences…OR do some combination of the above.  If you do the visual option, you can give Lori the hard copy before class on Friday.  
4. In addition, what is the thesis here?  What’s the main argument being made?

So, you should end up with THREE paragraphs/pictures (one for each document), a thesis statement for each document, and 2-3 seminar questions.
 
Finally, after you’ve read and prepped all the articles, write 2-3 seminar questions.  These could be about a specific article, or they could be questions that span the breadth of all the articles.  They could be questions you don’t know the answer to, or questions that you think would spark a healthy discussion.

HOMEWORK:
Finish seminar prep before class on Tuesday.  Email or share it with Lori.

Starter 3

1. Put your social media response on your desk.
2. Gallery walk!  Go look at or read 3-5 responses.
3. Write a paragraph in response to one you looked at.  You could include...
   • What was it?
   • What's your reaction?
   • What does it make you think?
   • How does it connect to other texts/ideas/discussions?

Seminar Prep (all texts are linked on the DOCS page of my DP!)
For EACH of the three articles, please type the following in a document.  Email or share it with Lori before class on Friday.

1. Read and annotate the article (make sure to look up any vocab...ironically, you can use your phone for this).  Make sure to go deeper than just an initial emotional response.  Make connections, analyze, question!
2. Find three sentences that stand out to you, and write them down in a list.  They could be sentences that move you, that ring with truth, that make you angry, that you totally disagree with.
3. Write a paragraph response to ONE of the sentences.  Pick it apart, react to it, respond…OR Draw a picture in response to each of the sentences…OR do some combination of the above.  If you do the visual option, you can give Lori the hard copy before class on Friday.
4. In addition, what is the thesis here?  What’s the main argument being made?

 
Finally, after you’ve read and prepped all the articles, write 2-3 seminar questions.  These could be about a specific article, or they could be questions that span the breadth of all the articles.  They could be questions you don’t know the answer to, or questions that you think would spark a healthy discussion.

HOMEWORK:
Finish seminar prep before class on Friday.

Semester 2 Syllabus Update
See the linked document above for important information about Semester 2 and how it will be assessed!

Starter 2:  Social Media Survey
Take a few minutes, and take the survey that is linked above.  Once everyone has taken the survey, we're going to take a few minutes to look at the results.  For your starter, as we go through the results, I'd like you to answer the following questions:

1. What trends or patterns do you see here?  Describe one or two things.
2. What stood out to you most, or surprised you about the data you see here?  Explain why.
3. Based on this data, what conclusions would you draw?  Talk about at least two things you might infer based on this information.

Social Media Smorgasbord!
See the document linked above and on my docs page for the activities.  Read the directions carefully!  If you finish two, and you have more time, start on a third.  If you complete three, I will give you credit for all three (essentially, extra credit), but only if all three are high quality.  I'd rather have you do two that are really good than three crappy ones!

HOMEWORK
Finish two Social Media Smorgasbord activities.  DUE:  Submit to Lori in digital or hard copy form before the start of class on Wednesday.

Welcome Back!  Hey everyone!  Welcome back from break.  I'm super excited to see you guys again- Ashley and I have a really great month planned for you in January, and then in February, we launch full on into Senior Project research mode.  Here we go!  One semester left!

Business/Announcements:

1. Binder cleanout/re-organization
2. January 19 and 20:  Senior project check-ins will be January 19 and 20.  The vast majority of you have goals you need to accomplish by then.  Be ready to talk about your progress with Lori and your peers by this date!
3. .January 7 (yes, this Thursday!) is a day for seniors and juniors to get ready for next steps.  Alumni panel, surviving college workshops, etc.  If you have not already signed up for sessions (you received a few emails about this) please do so TODAY.
4. Senior project hits hard on February 1.  Be ready to research!
5. Honors:  If you’re interested in honors, I’ll have more details for you towards the end of this month.

Course of Study Introduction:
Through STS, we will be exploring the effects technology in general, and social media in particular, has on our societal well-being as well as the role it plays in our individual lives. We will explore the relationship between being alone and being lonely.  We will examine the ways in which solitude and nature can effect our well-being and the merits and limitations of individualism and nonconformity. 

We will start by studying various contemporary responses to the role of technology in our lives before going back in time to Transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson and trace their impact on Chris McCandless,  a young man from a well-to-do family who, in  April 1992, hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley.  

We will end by experiencing solitude for ourselves through walking meditations, journaling in nature and responding, in some sort of creative fashion, to various artists, poets and guest speakers who may have some wisdom to offer us on this idea of solitude.

1. Week 1:  Technology, social media, and connection
2. Week 2:  Solitude
3. Weeks 3 and 4:  Experience and Creativity

 
Starter 1

1.Summarize:  What is this cartoon trying to say about social media?

2.To what extent does this message ring true to you?  Explain your reasoning!
 
 











Four Corners:
Take 10 minutes to jot down your initial position on each of these questions.  Be ready to discuss in 4 corners format!

1. Using social media/technology makes me happier than I would be without it.
2. The use of technology and social media ultimately makes us less connected to other people.
3. I would have a hard time going an entire day without using some type of social media, checking email, etc.
4. I use technology and social media to define myself.
5. Social networking makes us more connected to the world around us.
6. I share, therefore, I am.

-BREAK-
 
Turkle TED Talk:  Connected But Alone TED Talk (20 min) 

1. Watch TED Talk (20 minutes)
2. During talk, students write down one idea/phrase/word,/concept that stands out to them
3. After talk, students write down one question they would like to ask this researcher, or that this talk sparked for them.

 
Round Robin Discussions

1. Share your idea/phrase/word/concept, and talk about them.  Notice similarities and differences.
2. What was the thesis of this talk?  What, ultimately, is she trying to say about our use of technology?
3. Share your questions.  Choose two of the questions, and discuss them in your group.
4. “…our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don’t only change what we do, they change who we are.”  What does she mean?  Do you agree or disagree?  Why?  Dig deep!
5. She talks in this TED Talk about the following question:  “What’s wrong with having a conversation?”  How would you answer this question?  Why do you think that people are more comfortable with other modes of conversation?  Do you see this in your own life?
6. “We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy.”  True?  Untrue?  In what ways?
7. Turkle lists three fantasies she believes are perpetuated by technology.  Which of these does your group think you, as a group, have bought into the most?  Why is this fantasy attractive?  What are the dangers of believing these things?  (That we can put our attention wherever we want it to be, That we will always be heard, and That we will never have to be alone)
8. If your identity is created through connections via social media and technology, what happens to your identity if those connections are taken away?  Is there a problem in having an identity so shaped by these forces, or is this just a new way of being, no better or worse than other ways, just different?

HOMEWORK:
None!