Success!

Excellent job everyone!

I have read through your blogs and they are fantastic. I will grade them by rubric later this week and have grades to you shortly. Thanks for your hard work!

Brave New Blog Assignment

Brave New Blog


For this assignment, you will create and maintain a blog about the concepts in Brave New World. Answer each question or activity in a separate blog entry. You will be graded by a rubric.

Directions:
1) Register for a blog on http://www.blogger.com/ and name your blog

2) Tell Ms. Burgess the name and address of your blog. You will need to link to our class home page, which is http://www.bravenewblog2008.blogspot.com/

3) Create a new blog entry for each question you answer or activity that you complete

4) Comment on your classmate’s blogs

5) Your blog (all questions and assignments) must be completed by the time of the test for Brave New World. Your blog will be evaluated by a rubric which will be passed out in class.

You will also be responsible for commenting and responding to your peer’s blog entries. You must comment or respond to at least five of your classmate’s blog entries.

Possible comments could be:
*Comment on what you liked
*Comment on anything that confused you
*Comment on anything that you did not like
*Offer any suggestions for improvement
*Offer a different perspective on their answer

Extra links (More Information)

Blogger's FAQ - Student Blogging
http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-students.php
This legal guideline from the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s is an essential read for teachers and students.

[Questions and Activities]

1) Imagine you were creating a Utopia. If you could create any rule, what rules would you have? Provide an explanation for each rule (300 word minimum)

2) Write a persuasive letter to your friends trying to convince them to live in your created Utopia. (200 word minimum)

3) The two greatest obscenities in the society of Brave New World are birth and mother. Why? (200 word minimum)

4) Compare life as Huxley described it in the World State with life in the United States today. Include at least three of these aspects of life in your essay: Human life/death, love and marriage, art (literature, film, architecture, etc.), consumption of goods and services, use of drugs (including alcohol and tobacco), pleasure/self-indulgence, and religion. Were Huxley’s predictions accurate? (300 word minimum)

5) Many aspects of the Utopia of Brave New World feel uncomfortably like our world. Talk about the book as a prophetic vision of the future. Which aspects of the book did you find most disturbing? Which could affect your family? Which seem the most far-fetched or incredible? (200 word minimum)

6) Talk about the morality of the book. Is it Christian morality? Socialist? Anarchist? Or is it something else? You may have to do some outside research. (200 word minimum)

7) When John first starts reading Shakespeare, he discovers that the words make his emotions "more real" - they even make other people more real. Talk about the power of language in the book, the power of the word to influence thought and behavior. Why did Huxley choose Shakespeare as the medium of John's intellectual awakening? You may need to do some outside research on Shakespeare and his use of the English language. (300 word minimum)

8) Propaganda is a set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. What is the importance of propaganda in Brave New World? What type of propaganda do they use? Why do you think the propaganda in BNW is so successful? (200 word minimum)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#Techniques
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Propaganda_techniques