Amazing coincidence: I am just now grading my students’ assignment - instructions below. I literally had one monitor with their submissions, and the other with this Dope thread. (No more serious posts, I promise. It was just too coincidental to let this pass without comment!).
Canvas discussion on nuclear weapons (Nov 18 through 22), worth 6% of your grade!
Before preparing your initial post, be sure to read/experience all six assigned parts of the New York Times collection “At the Brink.”
In class, every student opined that there was a greater risk of nuclear war during the Cold War (1945-1991), and less of a risk today. After doing the reading assignment, surely you now understand that the risk is at least as high now, if not higher.
Your discussion post (and reply posts) will be about ideas for how to convey this important fact to other young people in the US (let’s say “13-to-30-year-olds”). You are, by nature and experience, already an expert on technologies, techniques, and trends in how 21st-century people create and consume information and opinions.
INITIAL POST: Before 11:59 PM on Wednesday, November 20, offer a some rather detailed ideas about how we might go about this. You might focus on how social media influencers operate – YouTubers, Instagrammers… Or, you might consider more established commercial platforms: talk radio, cable networks, newspapers and magazines, even perhaps music. What should be the content and form? What points should be emphasized? (You MUST refer specifically and substantially to content in at least TWO of the six New York Times items.) How might these efforts connect with the everyday lives, concerns, and interests of young Americans? Feel free to name specific people or platforms as examples, say, if that helps to flesh out your ideas. Offer some detail about what the content would include. Mention something about the intended audience, and how the content provider would “hook” them into being interested. The post should be about equivalent to a little more than a page of double-spaced text – in other words, about three or four complete paragraphs. Cite the required reading by titles (e.g., “In the segment ‘How China’s Nuclear Ambitions Have Changed the World,’ the authors wrote…”).