You read about three, assumed the identity of an interest group, presented your case, discussed with others, and either tried to or did come to a decision. All within 45 minutes. Wow. I was VERY impressed by everyone's efforts today. BUT...I need MORE! Before we tackle the Minneapolis Public Schools problem (money, closings, moves, boundaries, etc.), I need you to reflect on what happened today...
SO, in the COMMENTS, an email, or simply printed copy, please tell me how it went today. What did you learn? What worked? What did not work? 150-200 Words. Enjoy your weekend...Oh, "due" Monday, but I'll take it Wednesday.
Friday, May 8, 2009
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I learned stuff
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really really really fun. When Peter was kicked out of the group, it was much easier to make a decision. Although we argued about development of new housing structures, we all agreed that we needed more ways of transportation so we were able to fit all of our individual groups wants into the transportation issue. However, we had a bit of trouble deciding on the housing issue but after a few minutes of discussion and brain storming we easily found a solution. I really really really hope that was 150 words. I just checked and that was 95. I'll write more. My group was the Environmentalist, which I was not initially pleased with considering "going green" is overrated and irritating, but I did not complain (at least I think I didn't) and just did what we were supposed to. It got fun once we discussed the problems of our city and how we wanted to fix them. Yeah, my group was pretty awesome too. I had Elizabeth, Cynthia, Heather, Isaiah, Chris, and me, so it was bomb.
ReplyDeleteOkay, enough with that now. Go to my youtube page "MegaBeeyotch" and watch the video "Hot Mess" which is starring you. Yeah, I'm working on a series.
BAHAHAHAHAH LOOK WHAT LAUREN MADE ME!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090508232103284
WE JUST WATCHED DEAD SNOW AND IT WAS AMAZINGLY WONDERFULLY GOD AWFUL AND EPIC!!!
ReplyDeleteWE LOVED IT OH MY GOD I AM SO HAPPY.
okay i'm sorry i know this isn't about this but i have something to say.
ReplyDeletedead snow is quite possibly the singularly most magnificent movie i have ever witnessed.
i believe there are over 4 scenes with intestines being utilized, and one including the main character climbing a mountain using the zombie's intestines as a rope.
my mind has been blown.
I really thought this was a good activity. It helped me with my debating skills and made the time go fast. I was surprised! I got to see the view points of different positions and that was interesting. I liked how everyone took their position seriously and actually tried to make a solution based on it. It went really well for me. I am also glad i got to see how a solution was processed and solved. In our group, we decided to spread the Portland's city limits out to a certain degree so we could preserve the natural habitat. We raised taxes to pay for this and instead of only spreading outward, we built up. This caused a little bit of problems for the suburban housing people and the environmentalists, but it all worked out in the end.
ReplyDeleteps i really want to see dead snow now!
In the City Problems activity, there were many things that went very well in our group, but there were also things that could have been done better. In the Toronto group, I thought that we communicated our positions on the issues across strongly and we reached a settlement upon which most of the group agreed. The format of the activity seemed almost hectic at first, but then its rules allowed the groups to formulate working solutions for problems facing the cities quickly and with discussion. The problem in our group was that some people did not speak up enough, which may have been because they did not want to shout over other people. In my group, the Environmentalists’ views were not brought up very often, as the representatives did not speak up in our discussions. In Toronto, we decided to have a limit to growth in the suburbs to growth in the city in order to keep the populations proportionate to keep people living in the city. We also decided to beautify the city, to renovate many businesses into residential lots, and to lower taxes on starting businesses in order to boost commercial growth. This would all be done while retaining growth in the suburbs, which would not be what the Environmentalists would have wanted. If people had had more time (possibly two class days) to work on this, it might have run more smoothly and some people might have had a chance to share their opinions with the rest of the group. Overall, it was a very interesting and fun activity that showed me how city planners and city settlement meetings are run. I learned that people have deadlines that they must meet and that people need to do this amount of work by a certain date or else it could not be done; there could be no extensions. It was very fun to work together with a partner and debate views in which you yourself do not believe. If we had had more time, the activity would have been more fun and we would have been able to conduct our meetings more smoothly. Overall, I think it would be fun to do this activity again.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI found the overall idea of the City Problems idea to be cool and interesting. I did think however that the time constraints put on us made the decisions and opinions much less informed and thought out than they should have been for this activity. If it had been spread out over two class periods I think I would have gotten much more out of it than what my group members and I did.
ReplyDeleteI learned that there were even more sides to city problems than I had initially thought. As we were in our discussions, I could even recognize a few opinions that would represent even more groups of people than Mr. Romo assigned us. I also learned about the viewpoints of our group (Suburban Homes Developer).
I thought that the splitting of people into organizations, then into groups, and finally into cities, was a smart way to do things, and it worked out better than I had expected. Again, I think it would have run more smoothly if we had more time for everything. (It would also help if people would start yelling at people just because they don't agree with you-Omar).
P.S. INTESTINES AS ROPE!!!!!! I HAVE GOT TO SEE THAT!!!!!!
Okay. I saw Star Trek today, and it was amazing. Incredible. Molly kept saying there was going to be "inter galactic sex", but the commercial were misleading and their wasn't. But that was okay, because Chris Pine beauty was so mesmerizing I totally forgot about what Molly had said.
ReplyDeleteAtlanta hour 5 was the best group, we solved our problems in about 10 minutes.
ReplyDeleteThe solution was siple but brilliant. (IMO)
We were to build a giant biodome around the city cycling out all the bad emmisions from cars and other various badness.
Then we fly giant helicopters around the city and tie ropes to the sides of the dome. And hover the above the planet laughing at the people below.
We then charge people to enter the city and that is how we pay for the giant dome.
Also we make more public transportaion.
It's a flawless solution if you ask me.
Hour 4* ><
ReplyDeleteThe City Problems planning went pretty well on Friday but a number of things could have gone better. At first it was a little scary to just jump into it with every little preparation but after the first 10 minutes I, and most others that I observed, got the hang of it. It would have been really nice to have both a little bit more time and to have discussed procedure a little more beforehand. I mean this with absolutely no offense mister Romo but you were just a teensy bit on the ‘Angry and Vengeful God’ side. However once we got into our groups we managed to at least partially figure stuff out. Most of the people in our group, 6th hour Toronto, took it seriously but some, not naming names, suggested some really silly stuff that was amusing but also made us rush near the end. Altogether it was a fun experiment and pretty informative on why adults can never get anything done. I think it would be great to do it again.
ReplyDelete- With love
Elijah McGregor Fortson
McGregor? Nice.
ReplyDeleteI thought the city planning activity was cool and intresting to do. However, I think we all knew what the decision in our group was going to be before we got started. I was the suburban housing member of the Toronto group, and it was a given that nobody was going to agree with what I said. We decided in the end to use land in the city that wasn't being productivly used to put in housing, as opposed to building new houses outside the city. We also decided to put in more public transportation to reduce traffic and pollution. I think doing this activity again would be fun, especially if it was a decision that affected us, like the school issue.
And where can you see dead snow?
Oh yeah, before we got into the city groups, and were just in our origional groups (suburban housing commision), things went really smoothly and it was easy to come up with decisions for each city. Also, what was peter centner yelling about before he got kicked out?
ReplyDeletei learned a lot on friday. it reminded me of last year in english when we had to debate and argue for a side that we were assigned--not necesarrily in favor of. deciding what we wanted to do within our groups was easy but as soon as all the groups for the city combined the solutions that would satisfy everyone became nearly impossible and quite creative such as a giant glass dome covering the city of atlanta, or having helicopters just carry houses in the sky....
ReplyDeleteunfortunately peter was in my group and although he did have good ideas he got a little argumentative which lead to him getting kicked out for the day.
i really liked this activity and cant wait till we move onto the minneapolis public school board cuz... lets face it, they have issues.
oh, and peter got kicked out for wanting garden space and smaller land plots...
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a good activity overall. I felt the descriptions on the half sheet said enough to understand our position. During this activity, it made me understand that you have to compromise. Not everyone is able to get what they want. It was interesting seeing how well our group communicated once i saw the other groups...yea....
ReplyDeleteOur group took 10 minutes (tops) to come up with a pretty liget plan. Although, the suburban people had to compromise the most from big houses, dropping down to meduim houses. Our group, I thought, came to a pretty good all around plan. Everyone had at the very least something they agreed on in the plan somewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-OqKWXirsU&feature=related
ReplyDeleteIt was a pretty fun activity. Solving the problems was really easy in my opinion. Toronto didn’t really require much thinking, the problems were probably the easiest to solve of the three cities. As for the group solution, my team threw out our solution and most everyone agreed with us. Our solution was to renovate and repair old run down buildings into housing (apartments), businesses, schools, and what not. Also, to move failing business out of the city and create more shopping center type areas away from the city to reduce the congestion of traffic. Everything went smoothly for the most part we got done really quickly.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a fun activity. It was WAY better than model UN. I was in Portland, Oregon, and we found it pretty easy to come up with a solution. Sharing the different sides of the issue was interesting because it let you see things from other perspectives. I was an Environmentalist, and while we were saying to stop building suburbs and make parks, other people were saying we should build huge suburbs and freeways. The only thing that was bad at all was that it probably would have represented a real city better if we were passionate about our role. The suburban housing developers were really easy to ignore, because they didn't really want to build a lot of houses and make a lot of money. They actually had soft spots, unlike what it would probably be like in real life, so there wasn't a ton of arguing. They just agreed with us. It wasn't bad at all, but you asked for what didn't work.
ReplyDeleteThe city planning activity was very successful, fun, and insightful. Most class discussions and debates in school are all one sided with no real debate because everyone shares the same point of view. This is because most of us are of the same demographic. This discussion put us in positions of conflicting interests with each other. The suburban development and affordable housing groups always clashed with the environmentalists. This created many interesting debates and made coming up with a solution a difficult task. Each group came up with their solutions but when it came to the full city discussion solutions had to please all groups and compromise was unavoidable. Some parts of the debate were weak because we did not have a full understanding of our group’s position on certain issues. This caused people to speak their opinions instead of properly representing their group. If we would have had more time to research our parties the quality of discussion would have increased greatly. Overall I learned about how difficult it is for city planners to make decisions. The exercise was very effective and the only room for improvement would to have had more time for preparation.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a fun and interesting activity. What I liked the most about it was all the debating that was going around. I was in Atlanta in the Citizen for Affordable housing group. We however couldn’t find a solution to our city’s problem. Everyone just seemed to disagree on everything which was just fine at first. We then tried to do the model UN version of it and we decided to put Calvin in the middle of the circle trying to calm everybody down. If we had more time we would have better understood our group’s position on the issue and maybe we could have come up with a good and logical solution. However I was really surprised to see that everyone was taking it very seriously. Jordan’s group was all for urban sprawl trying to expand the city while my group and the Environmentalist group wanted to build up instead of expanding the city. If the city people are really that chaotic while they are making important decisions then we are kind of screwed.
ReplyDeleteOverall it was a really fun/enjoyable and interesting activity.
I think that this city planning activity was a good way to simulate what actual cities do on a daily basis. Just about anywhere you go in the world many different groups vie to affect what the city does for their own gain and the gain of those with similar values. When these groups compete and make compromises that work for all of them the public wins because anywhere they stand the compromise should at least be sort of agreeable to them. This doesn't actually work a lot of the time but in a perfect world this type of discussion would generate perfect solutions. I thought this simulation helped my group at least create a very good solution for problems facing Atlanta. If that could be achieved on other real-world issues it would really help out all sides to feel included in the solution. It lets all the sides of the argument be put forward and shown to all people who are debating the issue.
ReplyDelete- Jon Riddle
My group, i thought, did really well. (we were Atlanta) We worked well together, were organized, and came up with a solution that could actually be used in real life, and that everyone agreed with, (except peter, but he raised his hand when everyone voted on it..... so he doesn't count) which is something i thought would be impossible. Plus, i thought it was a somewhat fun assignment that got everybody thinking. I thought it was going to be hard since i don't really get the whole politics, planning, and government stuff completely, but i felt like i actually got something out of it and MAYBE had a few good ideas along the way.
ReplyDeleteyou probably already know who this is, but just incase... its Jane Thompson.
P.S dead snow was kick booty.
The activity that we got to do on Friday was a cool activity. The activity was cool because it very realistic the kids in my group that were trying to figure out solutions for Toronto got really into it, they felt like they were actually trying to solve Toronto's problems. One thing might need improvement was the way we got to talk because we were all trying to get a chance to talk but we couldn't. Other than that it was all good.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson in class on friday was very interesting and informing. I never really knew how board planning meetings were held and conducted. This really helped me understand the difficulties and obstacles people have to get over before concluding with a solution. We found it was very hard to come up with a solution that every party representative agreed with. This taught me that in order to come up with an answer to a problem, each person involved with the situation has to compromise and make sacrifices on their part. I’m sort of excited to try and solve the Minneapolis school district problem. I really want to see if a bunch of freshmen can come up with a better solution than some old bald guys. We faced some problems such as being excluded or way too much included. Some people shied away without representing their given “beliefs”. Otherwise the day was very informing and taught me a lot. - megan
ReplyDeleteWilliam Goodnow sure knows how to write. Seriously, my biggest pet peeve is when people write like this:
ReplyDeletehey whats up. your pretty. i like cats.
I want to just smack them.
IF YOU WANT TO JOIN MUH SORORITY ON FACEBOOK, JUST HIT ME UP WITH A MESSAGE OR A COMMENT...HOLLER!
I was a Citizen for Affordable Housing representative for Atlanta, GA. We believed that urban sprawl should continue in Atlanta, along with building homes withing the city. We also wanted better public transportation to help reduce the traffic issues. When the whole city planning was put together, we had to do a lot of discussing and negotiation, especially over urban sprawl. It took Peter getting kicked out, and much debating, but finally all of the city planning group came to a good solution. We all agreed on renovating/remodeling dead parts of the city and putting homes in their places and better public transportation. We also would like to keep people out, so we wanted to build a wall of homes or a bubble to keep people out. But we had to come to our senses and just stick with the homes and transportation. I got to touch up on my negotiating and planning skills. I think it was a progressive and worthwhile day.
ReplyDeleteI was in the Toronto group as a Smart Growth Advocate (6th Hour), and enjoyed debating about urban sprawl with my group. We came to a good decision that we all agreed upon (I think), which we thought would help improve Toronto. However, it kind of seemed like our debating was comprised almost entirely of people arguing about whether smart growth, or urban sprawl, was better for the city. While negotiations were somewhat difficult, the end result was satisfactory. We agreed on an environmentally friendly plan that combined smarter home building, more public transportation, and planting more trees. We put a strict limit on urban sprawl as well.
ReplyDeleteThis activity taught me the importance of a "chair" in a debate or meeting, to help regulate the discussion and keep debate more constructive than argumentative. I think that our group could have made more progress with a chair, to keep all parties involved in check and make sure argumentative debate was kept to a limit. I think that the activity was helpful and interesting.
Steffen B.-P.
I was Amanda’s partner, and we were suburban housing developers in Portland. I thought that the activity was worthwhile. Our solution was to expand the city’s limits. Unfortunately, the idea changed a lot in the group setting, so our city ended up getting nowhere. But it was still a good lesson. It was kind of like the model UN, except that I paid attention. We argued and came up with ideas that we wouldn’t necessarily personally agree with (I am a vegetarian and I told the environmentalists about 20 times that the animals didn’t matter and that we should just clear the forests). The only negative was that not enough time was allotted to the lesson. On the other hand, it’s something that might have become really mundane if we spent two or more class periods on it. In some ways, the lack of time created a sense of urgency that made some people contribute to the conversation who wouldn’t normally participate as willingly. As long as you stuck to your given viewpoint, you could make it fun. I think that it’ll be really interesting to see how our public schools solutions turn out.
ReplyDeleteThis is kelly not sam so don't give him the points haha
ReplyDeleteI was on the city commisioning group and was in the Atlanta group. We were probally made the most headway with our problem but it was difficult to do so. I learned a lot doing this activity because i understood why its so hard to make decisions because no matter what one group is going to not benefit from it. There are too many companies all focusing on money nowadays instead of just trying to help the city and the economy but i thought it was an interesting activity and enjoyed it very much. We should do another one
I thought it went well today. I think that we should have had more time in each of our groups though to think up solutions so that we could be more creative and also to come to a solution in our different groups. I liked the whole concept of having all the freedom and not having guidelines besides act the way your position would. My group was unable to come to a resolution, we had too many ideas and we kept breaking off into separate groups. Also it was unclear what each group wanted. Some groups would have no input of ideas. That made it difficult to compromise because I didn’t know what they were looking for. But overall, I liked this activity. I think that it improved my debate skills; it helped me better to compromise, and put myself in the city planner’s shoes. I wish that the model UN thing had gone this smoothly. So to improve for the future: more time and possibly slightly smaller groups. Otherwise great idea!
ReplyDelete-Grace Nordquist
In my group we never reached a clear decision and I felt like there were a couple dominating voices that never let the quieter people get a word in edgewise. I would have liked to see a more organized meeting with some rules about speaking or at least have the groups so that each one had someone who was a strong speaker. I also think it would be nice if we could have some say in the group we argue for because I felt that if i was in a different group, like the environmentalists, i could have been more of a help and better as an individual. Even though it wasn't one of my favorite activities that we have done, i liked the experience of seeing who was a strong arguer and who wasn't. I found the topic we were arguing to be kind of boring but maybe when we do this the last week of school it will be better because it is a more personal topic.
ReplyDeleteThe simulation of the city councils we did on Friday was really fun. It was cool that we got to use real problems from real cities today and try and fix them, when real city councils can’t. I liked how everyone got to form a proposition and then present it to their city council, and hear everyone else's point of view. It put things into perspective on how many dimensions there are to each problem, and how a solution that might seem great to some people might seem to others like the end of the world. It was like how Model UN should have been. All in all I thought it was really good.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised at how much we accomplished and how on-task we were; especially in such a short period of time. Everyone seemed to understand their position and came up with generally reasonable solutions. Each pair stayed true to what they wanted but were also somewhat open to compromise. Probably our group's biggest challenge was to please the environmentalists since their values were so different from the others'. We eventually began to please everyone, although it took a lot more compromising than we would have thought. It's now easier to see why problems for these cities are so difficult to accomplish. I think this will make it extra confusing to deal with issues that directly affect us. Although, it should make us act even MORE passionately toward the issues.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of class I thought the activity was going to boring, stupid and a big waste of time but as soon as we got into our groups the fun began. I also thought it was fun how we debated and how the environmentalist almost said no to everything we proposed. I believe it would have been better if we did it in two days instead of one so we could’ve had more time to debate and get the problems fixed. The descriptions of the Jobs on the sheet you gave us at the beginning of class really helped me understand what to do. My group had some great ideas. We also had some crazy ideas for example let’s kill all the babies. But overall I thought the activity was great and I can’t wait till the next we do this.
ReplyDeleteI thought that it was an interesting day. I liked it better when we were talking in the groups mixed with a lot of different view points. It was fun to come up with a conclusion... this felt like what the model Un thing should have been like. I want to learn more about making a conclusion and that stuff because I do not think that our group wrote it properly. I would also like to find out how the cities really solved their problems. I did not like my groups opinion though.. I mean they did not even care if the environment was destroyed in the process as long as the people were happy and the taxes stayed low, what kind of person actually talks like that! Yeah so... It was fun and I would like to do more stuff like it.
ReplyDeleteI liked it a lot. It ran smoothly and it was good to find out other groups viewpoints on the issues in each city. I went way better than the model UN and we had about a month to prepare for that compared with 2 or 3 days on this. The model UN should have been like this. But my group didn't reach a solution so it would have been good if we had about 5 to 10 minutes for the solution.
ReplyDeletethis is Sam, not Kelly.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the simulation we did was really effective. It really showed the difficulties there are just in making one decision. The many conflicting groups made the arguments and very interesting. It's kind of amazing to think what happens when you are given a little card telling you what to think. Although, I felt that coming to conclusions were really difficult and didn't really come about very fairly. In one group in my class, someone stood up and talked about their solution, but it turned out only one other individual group among the big group agreed with that solution with further investigation.
The experience was good. Better than the model UN we did. This was more in depth and you could understand who was opposing you and why they were opposing you. This lead to a better debate over a simple problem like over population of a city. In my opinon this was closer to real life and we might actually have to do something like this in the future. Like presenting something at a company meeting, unlike the model UN were we try to solve all the world's problems, thats not going to happen. This was overall beter even though we didn't come to a conclusion and our spokes person was "pulling" things out at the last moment. The whole thing was more realistic and we had a realistic goal, and we were given just about enough time to come up with a possible solution that didn't include mole people or china giving all the money to poor countries. This was a lot quicker and more enjoyable than the previous choas the school foced us to go through for six hours.
ReplyDeleteSean Burger 6th hour