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  2020-05-01

  The KNPR State of Nevada Paper

  The KNPR State of Nevada Paper One of the most common assignments given in PSC 100 (Nevada Constitution) and PSC 101 (Introduction to American Politics) is a paper summarizing a segment of the Nevada National Public Radio’s program The State of Nevada. All students who graduate from a Nevada public university are required to take a course covering the Nevada Constitution. UNLV alone offers over thirty 60-student PSC 100 courses, ten 45-student PSC 101 courses, and three 250-student PSC 101 courses. UNR offers these same courses. Therefore, many students write KNPR papers. This entry serves as a reference point for these papers in the archive. The KNPR State of Nevada website: https://knpr.org/programs/knprs-state-nevada The template for the KNPR assignment is below. Note that this is only a template, and specific instructors have modified this assignment to suit their needs. Details will vary. KNPR “State of Nevada” Paper: Program Instructions and Grading Criteria You are required to complete a brief writing assignment valued at 15%. You must complete your summary on a broadcast of a KNPR (88.9 FM Radio) “State of Nevada” program, which is broadcast from 9-10am and 7-8pm Monday through Friday. From time to time, an alternative program airs in its place: Be certain you are listening to the “State of Nevada.” Previous days’ programs are available on streaming audio online. To access podcasts online: • Go to KNPR "State of Nevada" Program Website The segment you write on must: • Be related to Nevada government or a current public issue such as education, gun control, or politics. It may not, for example, be sports or entertainment-related. • Be at least 15 minutes long. Write at least a 700-word summary of what you heard. Be sure to address the following: • What was the topic being discussed? Provide background. • Who were the participants? Be sure to name all. • What were the specific issues or controversies discussed? • What were the positions or points made by the participants? Were there opposing opinions? This assignment is due by 11:00PM Friday of the 3rd week. You must submit your paper on the class Canvas site. Instructions on how to submit to Canvas are provided below. Papers will not be accepted via any alternative methods, even if received before the due date. Papers turned after the due date will not be graded. The only exceptions are for student illness or a death in the immediate family: Documentation must be provided. You must notify me within 2 days of the missed work and it must be completed within 7 days. Do not ask for any other exceptions. Grading of the writing assignment will be based on the following: • Your paper must be a minimum of 700 words (excluding your name, date, course, and the title). Shorter papers will have points deducted. • Your assignments will be graded on content as well as style. You should answer the questions thoroughly and thoughtfully and your assignment should be grammatically correct with no misspelled words. The MLA formatting guidelines should be followed and a Works Cited page included. • Points will be deducted from your paper as follows: 1) Discussion of topic: Content & style: 0-50 points off 2) Wrong topic: 100 points off 3) Program other than KNPR’s “State of Nevada:” 100 points off 4) Plagiarized: 100 points off and additional administrative penalties 5) Poor grammar, spelling: Between 5 and 50 points off 6) Failure to comply with MLA guidelines: 5-10 points off 7) Less than 700 words: a. 650-699 words: 10 points off b. 600-649 words: 20 points off c. 550-599 words: 30 points off d. 450-549 words: 40 points off e. 350-450 words: 60 points off f. 250-349 words: 70 points off g. 150-249 words: 80 points off h. <150 words: 100 points off
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  2020-04-15

  NYT Story on the COVID 19 Archive

  Sherri Denney was in the fourth day of quarantine in her home in Springboro, Ohio, when she thought about the toll the coronavirus was taking. She sat in her recliner chair and cried as the state’s governor checked off the number of dead and sickened, knowing there would be more the next day. Overwhelmed, Ms. Denney, 55, tried to put her feelings into words. “Wow,” she began writing on an old sketch pad, quickly realizing the precise words would not come easy. “That’s all I can say. My emotions are ranging from sadness to fear to anger.” The week before, a woman in Nevada turned to her own version of journaling. Mimi J. Premo recorded a video on her cellphone, giving voice to a kind of stunned weariness so many Americans are feeling. And in Indianapolis, in an interview recorded by two university research assistants, a man who is diabetic and H.I.V. positive talked about how the speed and unclear ways of transmission “freaks me out.” The three accounts, snapshots of intimate moments during the pandemic, are a response to a call from historians and archivists across the country to document this extraordinary moment in history. Universities, archives and historical societies, ranging from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to a tiny college radio station in Pennsylvania, are rushing to collect and curate the personal accounts of how people are experiencing this sprawling public health crisis as told in letters and journals, audio and video oral histories, and on social media. They are inviting people such as Ms. Denney and Ms. Premo to share stories and material from the 2020 coronavirus and its aftermath in real time. The idea is to bridge communal history and offer a fully realized look at the outbreak that can help the public, researchers and policymakers better understand how the pandemic permeated our lives. ImageA journal entry by Sherri Denney. It was one of the first submissions to the coronavirus public memory project set up by Wright State University. A journal entry by Sherri Denney. It was one of the first submissions to the coronavirus public memory project set up by Wright State University.Credit...Wright State University Whether a somber handwritten journal or an endearing Instagram post, the contributions will offer a look at a nation attacked by a virus coast to coast. The stories document sickness and death. The profound disruption of American rhythms and rituals, evidenced by empty shelves and streets. The gnawing restlessness of sheltering in place. The ways people showed resilience and managed to still find joy. “What we as contributors record is what the future generations will remember,” said Mark Tebeau, one of the project directors of a virtual archive founded at Arizona State University. The team of historians and artists started A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid-19 on March 13, two days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. The name was inspired by Daniel Defoe’s novel “A Journal of the Plague Year,” which chronicles the bubonic plague in 1665 London through the lens of one man. Latest Updates: Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S. The California State University system will not hold classes on campuses this fall. Top health experts testify that the U.S. is not ‘out of the woods’ and warn against reopening too fast. Testing becomes a flash point in the Senate hearing. See more updates Updated 9m ago More live coverage: Global Markets New York With the help of graduate students and scholars from about 20 universities, the archive has amassed more than 1,400 entries from 500 contributors across the world, including Australia, Peru and China. Mr. Tebeau, a public and digital historian who heads the university’s public history program, said they are also reaching out to marginalized communities to ensure the project is inclusive. One of the first entries came from Ms. Premo, 36, a customer service representative who lives near Las Vegas. She had not left her home for nearly a week in mid-March when she submitted the video. In the clip, just over two minutes, she wonders who might be stricken with Covid-19 next. A neighbor? A friend? A family member? “No matter how many Skype meetings I have, no matter how much I am on Facebook, no matter how much I write in my journal and try to laugh through the tears, it feels so different,” Ms. Premo said. “Living with this uncertainty is,” she added, pausing in the video, “it’s unsettling but I feel that no matter what happens, I guess it’s hope that keeps my spirits up.” Video Mimi J. Premo shared her thoughts in a video diary to Arizona State University. Last week, the Library of Congress received its first Covid-19 collection: street scenes from New York, New Jersey and California by the photographer Camilo Jose Vergara. In addition to documenting stay-at-home life, mask styles, health care workers, the economic impact and how people are helping one another. The Library of Congress is also collecting web content, data and maps. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History deployed a Rapid Response Collecting Task Force to chronicle the pandemic. “Museum staff is working to formulate a plan that achieves a balance between the urgency to document the ephemeral aspects of the historic turning points as they happen,” the museum said in a statement, “and the need to provide a long-term historical perspective.” In response to the pandemic shutdown, StoryCorps, the story-sharing nonprofit, moved its platform online for the first time. Interviews that used to be recorded in a physical studio can now be done using video conference technology. The audio and a photo from each interview will be preserved in the StoryCorps Archive and with the Library of Congress. And students at Neumann University in Pennsylvania set up a series called the Coronavirus Diaries on the school’s radio station, WNUW-FM. Listeners record themselves sharing pandemic stories using a voice memo app or by leaving a phone message at the station. The diaries air hourly. Local archives are also calling for oral histories and materials. The Atlanta History Center, for example, is asking the city’s residents for digital files and physical artifacts (the latter would be collected once the center reopens). The project, called Corona Collective, lays out how seemingly mundane items — a no-frills furlough notice, a handmade banner thanking emergency medical workers — help tell the story of how daily life in Atlanta changed. Image “Goodbye,” a drawing submitted to “A Journal of the Plague Year,” an archive of the coronavirus pandemic created by Arizona State University. “Goodbye,” a drawing submitted to “A Journal of the Plague Year,” an archive of the coronavirus pandemic created by Arizona State University.Credit...Jeffrey M. Davis Similar efforts are cropping up in big cities and small towns. Sometime during spring break in March, Jason Kelly, a professor at the Indianapolis campus of Indiana University, realized the coronavirus was likely to be the defining event for generations. For a professor who teaches digital public history, it meant something else, too: How people experienced the outbreak needed to be captured and organized in a searchable database. That was the seed of what is now the Covid-19 Oral History Project, based at the Arts and Humanities Institute on the Indianapolis campus. Mr. Kelly turned to the 19 graduate students in his digital public history class and asked if they would put other coursework on hold to focus on the project, which uses “rapid response collecting” for Covid-19 lived experiences. Eventually the project will merge with the larger Plague archive Such efforts to collect memories in real time was also used by groups after the Sept. 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Pulse nightclub massacre. The page from Ms. Denney’s diary became one of the first submissions to the coronavirus public memory project set up by Wright State University. “All of a sudden the pandemic was right here and personal,” said Dawne Dewey, head of special collections and archives at the university. “We put the call out because we need stories to help future generations understand this moment in history.” The archive, partly housed on the fourth floor of the school library, includes the journals of survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic. One was written by Donald McKinney Wallace, a farmer who served in the Army. Mr. McKinney was sickened with the flu in the fall of 1918. He was quarantined in barracks, separated from others by blankets hung from a wire. He wrote about the daily meal of soft boiled eggs and cold toast, feeling weak, a stubborn fever, isolation and the deaths of fellow soldiers — an account that could have been written today. “A century ago, people told their stories in written journals,” said Ms. Dewey. “Now, we are capturing people’s thoughts and experiences through social media posts, email, audio and photographs.”
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  2020-05-12

  UNLV News Story: As COVID-19 Disrupts High School Graduates, Colleges are Ready to Meet Them

  Article discussing the struggles of current high school seniors as they plan to enter college.