Assignment #24: Canadian Political Parties

Hello R8A,

  All Canadians over the age of 18 have a big responsiblity on Monday, May 2nd. We are heading out to the polls to select our next government. You aren't old enough to head to the polls yet, but it is still important for you to learn what is going on and do some critical thinking.

  Your newest task is to either:
A: create a campaign poster for one of the candidates in next week's election
or
B: decide who you would be voting for if you were 18 or older and either present three compelling reasons orally or in writing

  Read this article. When you have read the text, click on some of the hyperlinks to learn more about the political parties and candidates.

  Then make a choice of which task (A or B listed above) you would like to complete.


  More information and marking criteria:

Select either task A or B

Task A:
Learn about the political parties of Canada and make a poster for one of the candidates who is running for Prime Minister. Make sure to include at least two important statements that will tell Canadians why they should vote for your candidate (these must be based on facts and in your own words).


Bonus: The five political parties discussed in today’s article use colours in their advertisements to help Canadians identify their messages. Use the chart below to make sure you are using the correct colour for your candidate!
Conservatives – Stephen Harper (Blue)
Liberals – Michael Ignatieff (Red)
NDP – Jack Layton (Orange)
Bloc Quebecois – Gilles Duceppe (Purple)
Green Party – Elizabeth May (Green)

Marking criteria for Task A
-accuracy of information
-at least two statements to support your candidate

-use of your own words

-use of political party's colour

-creativity

-poster is attention grabbing

Task B: Prepare a short piece that you can either post on your blog or share aloud with the class answering the following questions: If you could vote in the May 2nd election, which party and candidate would you vote for? Why do you think they would do the best job? Use at least three pieces of factual information to support your opinion.

Marking criteria for Task B

-accuracy of information

-ability to support decision with three valid points

-creativity

-clarity of writing/oral presentation

-argument is compelling (convincing to others)

Check out your "Stats"

Hello grade 8 bloggers,

   Recently, google and blogger have announced that there will be changes made to blogger to make it even easier and more interactive for users (both writers and readers of blogs). Last week we checked out the new views available on blogger. All you have to do is type /view at the end of your blog url, and you have the opportunity to view your blog in five new ways. It's pretty fun to play with. As I played with this, I realized that I want to include more pictures with my blog posts, as some of the views depend on those. This is one of the reasons I love things like this, they show me what I need to continue to work on.

   Also, when I log in to blogger, I have an older user interface than you do. This is because I started my blogger account before recent changes were made. Zak had this issue as well. If you want to be able to use blogger's newest interface, you simply need to change one of your settings. Go to the settings tab, then select "basics", three quarters of the way down the page, you'll have the option to select your post editor, select the most recent one. Tah-dah!

   Finally, I encourage you to check out something I discovered on blogger this weekend. When you are in your editing area of your blog, you will notice tabs like "posting", "comments", "settings" and "design", all of which you are familiar with. There are two other tabs, ignore "monetise" because it adds annoying ads and pop-ups to your blog, but check out "stats". In "Stats", there are several options of how to look at the visitors to your blog. You can see how many people visited each page, based on day, month or all time. You can see where in the world blog visitors have come from. You can see how people found your blog. It's really, really neat.

  Take some time to check these things out once you're all caught up on your assignments.