unit 4 powerpoint

Tim Cohen

Unit 4

College Writing 112

Unit 4 Presentation

Abortion Englwrit

As the world and the country continues to advance and innovate, technology and its integration into our classrooms is beginning to become the norm. However this does not mean that everyone is receiving the new tools and experiencing its effects.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2015/rural-schools-broadband/they-rake-us-over-coals-affordable-internet.html

https://www.newamerica.org/oti/the-cost-of-connectivity-2014/

Take the school district in rural New Mexico, Quemado. The two schools in this district split about 22 megabits per second of internet speed for as much as $4300 per month. With such a high cost in comparison to other schools it is extremely difficult for the school to provide Internet for its students, often having just a few computers for the entire school.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2015/rural-schools-broadband/they-rake-us-over-coals-affordable-internet.html

The issue is how rural places like Quemado actually are. The school district has just 109 students and students can have a daily commute to school as long as 40 miles. For large Internet provider companies this is too rural a place to provide service to in order to make money, so they don’t. Instead small companies step-in and since they have no competition and the schools need them, they can charge astronomical prices for their services.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2015/rural-schools-broadband/they-rake-us-over-coals-affordable-internet.html

Take the story of Carolyn Nelson (two above), she is the only teacher at Glenwood Elementary school with seven students in the Reserve school district in rural New Mexico. Everyday she makes the possibly miles long trip to her school where she must teach without power point presentations, information from the Internet, or any other resources which we most likely now do not even consider in our daily learning lives. Meanwhile her school receives just 2 megabits/sec of Internet service which they pay $697 per month for. A more populated area school could pay the same amount and receive ten times faster service.

http://media.baycitizen.org/uploaded/images/2011/3/illegal-dumping-richmond/original/alley_mattress-copy.jpeg

Meanwhile in other parts of America the issue is not the sparse population, but the lack of expendable funds both private and public. In Richmond, California the school district is working to provide tablets to all of its students but the proposition comes with an issue. About 20 percent of households in Richmond do not have Internet connection at home, and in the Iron Triangle neighborhood that percentage jumps to 40 percent. So if the schools succeed in obtaining the tablets for all of their students, they could be useless outside of school since as high as 40 percent of the kids will not be able to connect to the Internet. Luckily for Richmond the government is planning to install open source Internet in parts of the city so that Internet connection will be available to all in the area. This will allow for some students to be able to connect at all times but certainly not all.

The above are videos supporting and opposing the use of  technology in education. The point either way is that if we are to supply some of our publicly funded schools with Internet and technology it seems only right to provide equal opportunity in terms of supplies for schools that cannot afford it otherwise. The world is advancing and it will be increasingly difficult to say that we provide an equal opportunity education if schools are supplied differently. Especially if those supplies could change the methods in which we teach and learn.

Sources:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2015/rural-schools-broadband/they-rake-us-over-coals-affordable-internet.html

https://www.newamerica.org/oti/the-cost-of-connectivity-2014/

http://www.educationdive.com/news/rural-new-mexico-school-connectivity-problems-bigger-than-solutions/409648/

http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_29176980/richmond-city-school-district-racing-clock-set-up

www.youtube,com

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2015/nov/19/report-states-should-fund-early-childhood-edu/336426/

“America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChildPovertyNow.html

https://sponsor.savethechildren.org/?pid=251

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenilization_of_poverty

The child poverty rate in the United States has increased by about 28% between 2000 and 2009.

Half of all children will be on food stamps by the age of 18.

The United States government does not seem to have a model where the children are a priority.

44% of single mothers in America are on food stamps, yet struggle to provide food for their families.

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChildPovertyNow.html#

Impacts of Poverty on Children

• Impede children’s ability to learn
• Contribute to social, emotional, and behavioral problems
• Contribute to poor physical and mental health
• Risks are greatest for children who experience poverty when they are young and/or experience deep and persistent poverty

Audio Podcast: http://www.npr.org/2014/11/18/364062673/new-york-city-teen-balances-school-and-life-in-poverty

Jairo Gomez, 17, knows the importance of school, but his home life leaves him struggling to stay focused. “If I don’t get an education, I’ll be stuck like my parents.” 

Marcell Jenkins, 12. CAMDEN, NJ

He is struggling to provide himself a better future in a city blighted by high crime, unemployment and school dropout rates.

Organizations here to Help:

Major federal food assistance programs:

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP-formerly Food Stamp Program)

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP)

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

Feeding America provides food assistance to an estimated 12 million

UNCRC: Every child has the right to life, to survive, and to live an adequate standard of living

Ratification of the UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) would reverse child poverty in this country. The government needs to take action to solve this worldly problem and save millions of children around our nation from the misery of living in poverty.

Works Cited

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChildPovertyNow.html

http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/29/child-poverty-in-the-u-s-is-among-the-worst-in-the-developed-world/

http://www.alternet.org/economy/numbers-are-staggering-us-world-leader-child-poverty

https://prezi.com/kymjytbrwsdm/edit/#11_173129502
Rebecca Walsh
College Writing 112

The research process for me began with a search for articles that painted the black lives matter movement in a negative light.  The only articles that interested me were ones that showed the black lives matter movement was doing more harm than good.  This was an extremely poor way to begin, because my bias lead me to be close-minded.  I was not open to the many different opinions regarding the movement, my research paper would be flawed as a result of this.  Nevertheless, the preliminary sources helped me to narrow my research even more.  The New York Times quoted Governor Nikki Haley saying: “Black lives do matter, and they have been disgracefully jeopardized by the movement that has laid waste to Ferguson and Baltimore.” It became very clear that I could hone in on the rioting and activism, and question them without bias.  I was asking questions such as, “what caused the event?  What did they hope to accomplish? Was the event, be it a riot or activism, successful? Etc.”

Breitbart.com is a reliable website that provided me with my first clue, a timeline of the black lives matter movement.  From here I was able to pinpoint two specific moments of activism and try to decipher whether or not they were helpful, and good.  One day when I was travelling to school, black lives matter activists blocked off the highway.  They handcuffed everyone together through tubs of concrete so the police couldn’t remove them.   I never ended up making it to school.  This whole experience made my feelings toward the movement negative, and created the bias that hindered my research early on.  This was the first moment of activism that I researched, and I put aside any prior beliefs about the incident.  An article written by John Sexton once again on breitbart.com, talks about how the protest in Boston was unpopular.  The goal of the protest was to get publicity, and attention for their cause.  They achieved their goal of getting the publics attention, however the article claims the movement lost more friends than it gained through this protest.

The second moment of activism took place in Minnesota.  This protest was in response to the shooting of Jamar Clark.  Police responded to a domestic violence call. They were accompanied by an ambulance to treat the victim, Jamar’s wife.  The police tried to arrest Jamar but he resisted.  When Jamar saw the EMT’s trying to help his girlfriend he tried to stop them.  The police officer shot him.  According to rtenglish.com Clark had prior arrests for violent crimes such as armed robbery.  I would consider this protest a failure for a couple of reasons.  The protest drew public attention towards the shooting of Jamar Clark.  Then it was discovered that however tragic the shooting was, given the circumstances it was necessary.  The public generally agreed the police officer should not be punished.  Another reason this protest was a failure is because it resulted in 51 black lives matter activists getting arrested.    51 people getting arrested only to find out that they’re protest was almost useless.

Sherriff David Clark brutally attacks the movement for the rioting.  The black lives matter riots destroyed the entire town of Ferguson.  Clark has a very angry quote talking about the riots that occurred on the one-year anniversary of the Michael brown shootings.

“[This is] nothing more than a return to the scene of the big lie–the hands up, don’t shoot–this whole Black Lives Matter movement. This false narrative that came out Ferguson.

They destroyed the town. Look, a bunch of thugs, a bunch of creeps, criminals, race-hustlers…converged in this area and ripped the town up.

I would like to think that this phony movement would have come back to Ferguson one year later to apologize…”

David Clark being in law enforcement feels personally threatened by the movement.  This causes him to aggressively speak out against the movements actions.  However, the Sherriff does make a few good points about how the riots had laid waste to the town of Ferguson.

These sources brought up questions about the movement that had never before dawned on me.  Questions like: “Is the black lives matter movement a scam by politicians to unite the black vote?”  This question seems extremely farfetched, but stranger things have happened in the world, and I am not going to rule that out as a possibility.  After doing my research I found myself questioning over and over again, what had started this movement?  It kept coming back to Michael Brown.  I would think the black lives matter movement would have a firmer foundation to base its claims on.  My research took me to many different places, gave me many different points of views, but in the end it was the negative opinions of the movement that won me over.  There should not be a movement called black lives matter, if anything it should have been called all lives matter.

The process of going through the research procedure, changing topics, making the topics more specific, finding new sources to the specific new topic, and repeating this process several times was a lot of work. Going through this allowed me to learn a lot of new information on not only my main topic but on several different topics related as well. I began my research on the question: why do college students binge drink?Realizing this topic is not only self explanatory but also broad, I narrowed my research question down a little bit. I changed my research question to, “why does college binge drinking cause such a problem to students and the university?” I then realized that my new question was also pretty self explanatory and broad. I went through this process of narrowing down several times until I found my final research question, “What are universities doing to help drinking problems?” This question was specific enough to focus on hard facts about the topic and minimized the obviousness of my previous questions.

After creating my new research question, I began to find new sources. My six original sources to my first question were now useless so I found four new sources that were more relevant to my new topic. The original sources were more factual and statistical about the amount of alcohol consumed, amount of college students who drink, and information about drinking in general. Most of that information you could’ve guessed, for example most college students drink on the weekends. When I started the process of finding new sources related to my topic, I knew I had to be more conscious about being focused. I found articles and sources that spoke about specific policies and ways universities took action against drinking and how some colleges neglected to address the situation at hand.

Now that I have learned so much about college drinking in general I can see why it is such a problem. I learned about issues that happened at colleges like what happened at Washington college where hundreds of students had a party and the cops went to break it up and riots started. Bottles were thrown, people where arrested, a riot tank was called. A second one I learned about was at Keene state. Pumpkin fest is a huge party at Keene and it got out of hand. Riots, arrests, destruction and violence where huge factors. 170 people were disciplined by the school and there were many more that should’ve been but weren’t. Another incident was when a student at BC was found dead in the reservoir near campus. He was missing for a while and turned out to have drowned due to alcohol. These very real incidents happen more often than one would think, this opened my eyes to how much of a problem drinking is for universities.

I do not think universities do enough to prevent problems that arise with college drinking. Of course colleges cannot stop all drinking and contain every problem but they can do a much better job than they are now. A lot of colleges are notorious for being ‘party schools’, even Umass is known for being ‘Zoomass’. Colleges could take a lot more action to prevent issues that arise with drinking. After much research, I found there are a lot more serious issues than I thought, some include, “assault: More than 690,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking. Sexual Abuse: More than 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. Death: 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from unintentional alcohol-related injuries.” (ncadd) Some schools recognize these issues and some have been trying to prevent them. Some schools do not allow people under 21 to ride busses past 10 pm on the weekends because they are known to be ways to get around campus and bars while drinking. Some schools are trying to ban grain alcohol in their town so they can drink safer. Some schools have got university policies allowing them to go off campus so they can monitor off campus housing as well as on campus. Although a lot of schools are starting to take baby steps to control the issue of alcohol drinking on college campuses, many are not.

A lot of schools turn a blind eye to college drinking, so do parents and adults. A lot of parents and colleges say “its college, we did that once too” but the issue has always been there and never been solved. Some universities just have officers break up parties and send people on their way, then leave. Since the only thing that happens is the party gets shut down, people continue to go to parties, and continue to have parties. People do not even get a slap on the wrist for the most part. Campus police and securities mostly are not trained in how to deal properly with issues that arise with alcohol, which are most of the issues they see on a college campus.

After all this research on several different topics involving drinking on college  campus’s and how the universities handle college drinking, I do not think enough is being done at all. There are a lot of issues every weekend on every campus that involve drinking and most will go without proper help and support and will be dealt with incorrectly. Instead of getting help most the time it is a slap on the wrist and that’s it. There is a lot that could be done to address the issue of college drinking, and although some universities are attempting to remedy the situation, many are struggling to make a difference.

Research Synthesis 

To begin this research project I first thought about a topic that would be interesting to research. I want to research a topic that I am actually interested in therefore I can engage in the process and actually learn something from it. I began by thinking of a topic of interest and I came up with feminism. In order to narrow down this broad topic I thought about things that are happening recently in the world that would be relevant and have recent information on. I came to the topic of sexism in sports. This is a world wide issue that takes place throughout many sports, if not all of them, and is currently effecting people all over the world. After narrowing down my topic I started the actual research portion. I simply typed into Google “sexism in sports” and came up with a multitude of articles and websites with information on this. One of the things I came across was a Blog called Women in Sport which talked more deeply on this topic and used specific examples such as Lucy Bronze. This source along with the other sources I began with gave me the preliminary information I needed to know in order to continue researching this. Such as examples of specific teams this has effected, how the media plays a huge role in this, the differences in money between men and women, other peoples views on this and whether or not they believe there is sexism in sports, etc. These sources provided me with the foundation for my further research assuring me that there are many more stories to find about sexism in pro sports. After going to class and e-mailing you I learned that I had to narrow down my research significantly. This got me thinking about what exactly I should focus on. One of the sources I used previously spoke about a women’s soccer team which made me remember the fact that US Women’s Soccer Team just won the Women’s FIFA World Cup this year in 2015. I figured this would be perfect topic to research since it is recent and it is a women’s team. Since I had narrowed down the exact sport and team I would like to research I had to think of a question about the topic of sexism that had to do with this team. This was the easy part. These women won the FIFA World Cup and I don’t remember seeing much about it in the media anywhere. Social media, magazines, news on TV, newspapers, news articles online, nothing! That’s when I knew the perfect research question. It is clear that these women did not get the attention they deserved along with other things they didn’t get despite how much they earned it. The question “How did sexism effect the Women’s USA Soccer Team after winning the FIFA World Cup in 2015?” is the question I used to guide my research from here on out. In order to research this I once again used Google and simply typed in “sexism US soccer team.” This gave me many articles and websites that were very insightful. After reading through these articles I found that it is not only me who sees this issue among sports especially within this sport and team. The first article I found was rather positive on the issue stating that the media was very involved in this team much to the surprise of the head coach Jill Ellis. This article focused more on the past and how horrible the media coverage was on the women’s leagues and how now it seems to be getting better one step at a time. The next article I read gave specific numbers as to how much money the male and female members have made in the past and more recently like last year. These numbers provide with hard evidence towards the fact that women do make significantly less money than men in the pro athlete world. This article provided with just another piece of evidence that there if in fact sexism in sports. The next article gave me two important facts from this years Women’s FIFA World Cup. First of all the women were presented with medals by other women and not just any women, models. This in itself is degrading and sexist. Also the fact that they play on turf and not real grass which in turn is very harmful to the players physically and performance wise. The last website I looked at was the most positive of them all. It was filled with tweets and pictures supporting the girls team after their victory including tweets from the President and Vice President of the United States. There were many supportive and congratulatory tweets and picture that I’m sure the women of the US soccer team appreciated very much. Overall, after doing this research I found many more specific effects of sexism on these women than I had originally thought. No matter how much support and congrats these women get, there is still an issue of sexism within sports that has greatly effected these women in many more ways than just their paychecks. This leads me to question why this is still an on-going issue considering it is so widely known. In relation to my research question I now know much more information on just how sexism is prevalent and has effected women of all sports, especially those of the US soccer team. I can now create a working thesis from all the information I have. I believe that the sexism in sports has effected the team members of the US Women’s National Soccer Team before, during, and after their win of the Women’s FIFA World Cup 2015.  I do believe in this statement however I still have some questions around this topic. One question I still have is just how badly it effected them. Is the amount of money they are making really effecting them so much that it is effecting their way of living? How much money are they really making and is it not enough to sustain a good life? While I do have these questions there is not doubt that sexism exists in sports and no matter how much money the women make if it is not the same or close to the amount of the men, it just simply isn’t fair.

Max Kanig
Unit 3
Research Synthesis

Guns are like cars. Cars are very regulated, you need to get a license to drive a car, you must register your car, you have to have insurance. All of these regulations are in place to keep you and the rest of society safe. Guns are the same. You must apply for a gun permit. You have to register your gun. So why is there a difference? Why is it that in the past nine months there has been 294 mass shootings. There seems to be a serious issue with the misuse of guns.
When tasked with finding a research topic, I paused and thought back on the past couple years and what stood out to me. I realized that the number of shootings I heard about was on the rise. I started very broad I wanted to focus on gun control that all I knew. A few events rally sparked this for me. The shooting at the Sandy hook elementary school that killed 27 and the shooting at the church in Charleston South Carolina that killed 9. Two gunmen with two very different motives caused many family and friends to lose their loved ones. I wasn’t sure where to go from there I had a topic but I did not know what my views on gun control were or how I should explain them. I turned to google, I quickly learned that there is a huge debate out there about whether or not the rules and regulations on guns should be tighter.
On one side there is the people that believe that the process that are currently in place now to obtain a gun are good and do a good job. There main point being is that the majority of people who are involved in mass shootings do not get their guns legally. They obtain them on the black market, and if they have a motive to kill someone they will do it regardless if they can get there hands on a firearm. They also argue that they have a right to own guns. And if the government tries to increase laws around owning a gun and start to take them away then the people are powerless. For the number oriented people out there wrap your head around this. According to the CDC from 1999-2013 americans were 21.5% more likely to die from heart disease than from a firearm, and that includes not only homicides but accidents and suicides.
Once I had a handle on one side I turned to the other. In the United States there are 88.8 guns for every 100 people which equates to about 270,000,000 guns total. This is the highest total and per capita in the world. Think about it there are plenty of people you know that don’t own/have a gun. That means many people have more than one. With so many guns out there it is impossible to keep track of them all and many fall into the wrong hands. According to the Center of American Progress 83% of legal gun owners support the idea that there should be increased background checks for gun permits.
After seeing both sides my opinion started to form. I realized that I agree with boths sides in some aspects. I truly think that the problem is not that guns are causing all of the mass shootings, but in fact that the people are out and have a motive to kill they will be able to get there hands on a gun or another weapon regardless if they get it legally. That being said increased background checks can’t hurt. As I dug deeper into the research I seemed to form a thesis. I looked more into the guns themselves. A Lot of the mass shootings happened with automatic guns with large magazines. A Mother Jones investigation found that over 50% of mass shootings from 1982 to 2102 were done with automatic high magazine gun. Guns are out there, there is not simple and peaceful way to make them go away. So we as a country need to find a way to keep out people safe. Instead of regulating the people who try and buy the guns but instead we must regulate the system. Increase the background checks and sell less guns.