MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

We will stay in the same OHitS/AMA as Monday.  I am building a checklist for your final version, due on Friday at 11:45 PM for a grade.  I am pretty liberal with the deadlines for me and stricter with the process deadlines within Eli Review, where you need to post on time, so you can give and receive feedback to each other.  Having said this, five people have not submitted a revision plan in Eli Review.  Please do that before you turn in your final version for a grade.

Come to the Google doc, linked above, and ask your questions so you turn in a find memo on Friday.  I would like to see evidence that you are taking to hear the idea of counting out.  

Next week?  New memo, with a policy recommendation.  Jane wants to know which disposal coffee cup is better for the environment: Styrofoam?  Paper?  We will need authoritative, low-bias technical and scientific evidence for the claim.  Poke around on the internet to gain a sense of the problem and proposed solutions.  Also, keep in mind what Jane is asking:  she wants a recommendation. That means that all your critical analysis will occupy th five stases.  Keep a running list on key terms that need definition"

• environmental persistence
• energy efficiency
• Styrofoam
• paper cup (including the plastic coating)
• limits of recycling
  • is Styrofoam recyclable?  Is this widely available?
  • what happens to paper that is not recyclable (plastic coating?)
  • what is land filled, even if we think the material is recycled
• HINT: think a bit about climate change and energy efficiency
• HINT: what do we know about the fate of ocean plastic (patches, gyres, etc.)

On Friday, I will direct you to some authoritative sources you can rely on. In the meantime, read this fine analysis of the three-part strategy about our waste streams (and energy is in this, because everthing we make, transport, market, select, use, and dispose of).  The source is from NRDC -- the Natural Resources Defense Council; this environmental policy group uses science for policy decision.

FRIDAY!

Good morning!  Do not forget your 11:45 final draft of your rain garden submission.  Try to be on time, but you can submit through the weekend.  I try to my deadlines a bit fluid (covid, politial worry, stress, etc.) as I do ask you to meet the deadlines you have for each other, so that peer editing is possible.

TODAY in OHitS/AMA, we chat about your last questions on rain garden submission and we talk about the knowledge we need to write the next assignment.

This next memo is a short recommendation report.  We will answer our boss's questions AS SHE POSES IT, concerning which cup is best for the environment.  We will use stasis theory and afew cognitive wedges to move throught this recommendation genre quickly and efficiently.  I suggest diving into some background guidance on using the web well to find trustworthy and authoratative information. You can select your own path through, however, I suggest that you start with the Wikipedia and Google guides.  Bonus: this work will help you in your other classes as you approach papers.  And, critical media literacy is important as a life skill for now and in the future.

• How to Use Wikipedia Wisely (Stanford History Education Group): Wikipedia can be a useful research tool, if used effectively. Learn how in this video.
• Google Search Tricks for Research (by Common Sense Education): This hands-on tutorial shows a few key "search operators" you can use to get better, more refined results on Google.

Choose a few that strike you as useful, after your browth the sets:

• How to Pop Our Filter Bubbles (by TED): A collection of TED-produced videos focuses on diversifying sources and stepping outside algorithmically and culturally enforced echo chambers.
• Navigating Digital Information (by Crash Course): This 11-video playlist -- developed with experts and researchers -- is an awesome primer on how to find and evaluate sources on the web and social media.

My favorite place for technical information that is open access, well sourced, and well written is Science Daily. Here are a few short reads from this science journalism new source that will help you with the coffee cup recommendation report:

• Read this 2020 research (Nanking University) summary for a good working definition of the cradle-to-grave concept, one definition you will use in your memo as an analytical frame. Note:  the paper v. plastic example here is bags.  We often read adjacent information in our research and apply some of these ideas to our particular case.
• 2020 Princeton research analysis of how plastic pollution circulates; helpful for understanding the fate of ocean plastic problem.
• Part of the emerging analysis about the fate of aquatic plastic concerns microplastics.  For you, how will you learn about microplastics and specifically Styrofoam plastic? This 2016 analysis from a Norwegian research consortium looks a microplastics in soil-to-watershed context we looked at in our rain garden memo.

About all this reading: you DO earn grades for thinking, reading, responding to the work of others.  I hope this helps you knowing that I acknowledge what activities go into learning.  And, that I trust you as you work, even if the work is somewhat invisible to me.