Hello and welcome to CCS O99 this 2020
summer semester. My name is Tracy Dotson,
and I will be your instructor this
semester. You can call me Tracy or Ms.
Dotson. That's miss with an Ms. not
Mrs. I am not married yet. I wanted to
take the time to make this short video
to go over a few introductory things for
the course before week one starts I see on my roster that some of you I've had
actually before in class from my CCS O98 from the spring and fall semester. So
hello to all of you! I hope you're doing
well during all this trying time, and
your coursework is doing well. For those
of you who I have never met before, hello! I
look forward to getting to know you this
semester, as much as you can in an online
class. So just a brief summary of what
this course is about. It's about your
comprehension skills and understanding
what you're reading in order to help you
with your writing. And there's three
areas that we are going to be working at...
working with and so the first is we're
gonna work on annotations. And
annotations are gonna be a little bit
different this summer semester because
it's all online. Usually, you have paper
copies, and you turn those into me. But
annotations are simply the notes that
you take on a text that you read, and a
lot of times those are notes that you
take on the actual page of the book or
the page of the article. And so we'll
talk about how to do those to do this
effectively, so that you can pull out all
the important points that the author is
making in that text. So from those
annotations from your notes, you're then
going to move on to our second thing
that we're gonna work on this semester
and that's writing summaries. Writing
summaries is very important, and mostly
all of your classes in college and
beyond into your careers that you want
to go into, it means that you understand
what that person is saying and you can
do that and write that into your own
words. For us, summaries are going to be
about half a page to a page typed. Okay?
And so it's simply kind of like giving a
movie review. What were the important
points in that movie that you
need to talk about. So once you figure
out what that person is saying, then you
can talk about whether you agree with
them or not. So that last thing that
we're gonna work on is critical
responses, and those you agree with, you
talk about if you agree with them, you
disagree with them, and you back that up
with experiences. So things you've
experienced, things you've watched on TV
and the movies, read about in the news,
anything. Okay?
So those are the areas things that we're
gonna work on and so this semester what
we're gonna do is we're going to be
talking about wrongful convictions. They
happen more often than you might think.
In the past when I've talked about
wrongful convictions in courses most of
the students knew what they were but
maybe not to the severity and maybe not
all the reasons why they happen. And one
of the reasons why I talk about wrongful
convictions is over five years ago I
started listening to true crime podcasts
and reading a lot of true crime books
myself and learning more about wrongful
convictions. And it is part of what's
going on in our society right now with
the peaceful protests with black lives
matter movements and so this is just
another part of understanding what's
going. One day we are all going to be
on a jury for a trial, and if you are not
part of the criminal justice system, if
you're not a lawyer, how do you make that
determination on someone's guilt or
innocence? And so by understanding the
process a little bit better hopefully in
that situation you'll be able to be a
better more informed juror. And so this
semester what we're gonna do is the
first couple of weeks we are going to
read short articles about wrongful
convictions. We're going to learn about
why they happen and hopefully during
week two we'll be watching a documentary
online, if it's still free by then, I
think it should be, that talks about the
history of racism, how it's connected to
slavery, Jim Crow laws, the war on crime,
the war on drugs, and how it's led to the
point where we are at right now with so
many wrongful convictions.
And so then we're gonna get we're gonna
deep dive into an actual wrongful
conviction with our book called Picking
Cotton. Hopefully you've gotten this. We
won't need it until the third or fourth
week of class. Okay? if you look at the
bottom here, these are the three authors
of this book. And so remember this is
nonfiction. This is real. Okay? There are
three parts to this book. The first part
is written by Jennifer Thompson Cannino.
She is the victim in this case. She was
raped and sexually assaulted by a man. So the first 70 pages are her story of what
happened and then going and helping to
identify and convict the man that she
believed committed that crime against
her. This will be your first trigger
warning for this class. We are gonna talk
about rape. We are going to talk about
the me too movement, and we are going to talk about why there are over 200,000
rape kits in police custody to custody
today that have yet to be tested and
that's pretty horrendous when you think
about it. And so why are those kind of
things happening? her story isn't as
graphic as you might think. I've read a
lot more graphic writings by survivors.
However, if talking about rape, reading
about it, writing about it, discussing it,
if that's something that triggers a lot
of emotion, a lot of depression, anxiety,
and stress for you and you think, "You
know what? I don't think I can do that."
Then I commend you for making that
choice, but please know in this course I
will not be giving out an alternative
assignment to this. So if this is
something you choose not to work with,
then I would suggest at this time
withdrawing from this course and
registering for another course. Okay? The
other name underneath Jennifer's is
Ronald Cotton. He was a man who was
wrongfully convicted of this crime, and
so the second part of the book is his
story. And as you might have already
guessed race
will be talked about in this course,
especially with wrongful convictions. It
does play a huge part. So this is your
second trigger warning. So if race is
something that you cannot read about,
cannot talk about, discuss about because
it does trigger certain things for you, I
commend you for taking that choice and
saying, "Okay, I can't do this." But again
please know I will not be giving in an
alternative assignment this semester. So
if this is truly something you cannot
work with,
then I suggest withdrawing from class
and registering for a different section.
If you look at the book, the last person
there listed is an actual writer who
helped these two write this book. This is
a very unique story about a wrongful
conviction. In this case the victim is
alive and the person who was wrongfully
convicted was eventually released. And
then what happened after that is they
formed a very unique friendship, not
romantic, just a friendship in which they
have gone on to help other wrongfully
convicted people. And so you don't always
see that very often, so that's why
their story is so unique. And so that's
what we're going to be reading the
semester in talking about, so again
decide about your trigger warning and
make your decision on that yourself. If
you have any questions about the
material or anything to help you make
that decision, please let me know.
Finally with Monday, June 15th coming up
on our first week of class what you need
to do is go on to Cobra, into our class,
you'll click up at the top left on the
Content tab, and then down on the left
there will be a folder called Week One.
You'll click on that, and then you will
see directions, due dates, a short video
explaining all the assignments and
material that you will need to go
through for Week One. I want you to play
special attention here. There are three
folders in Week One. The first folder is
Assignment #1, and this needs to be
completed and submitted to the Dropbox
on Cobra by noon on Friday, June 19th. For this class, as it's a developmental course,
and so what that means is if we were in
a regular classroom setting, if you
missed the first two class periods, you
would get dropped from class for not
attending. Okay? So to show that your
"attending" in an online class what you
need to do is submit that assignment
before noon on Friday. Okay? Let's say you
forgot to do that but you submitted one
of the other assignments by noon on
Friday. I would still accept that because
it shows that you're doing something. But
I've chosen Assignment #1 just
because it's easy. You don't have to go
through any material in order to answer
it. It's actually questions about you
yourself so I can get to know you. Okay?
So when Monday comes around, June 15th, go
on to Cobra, under the content tab, click
on Week One and start looking at what you
have to do. There are three folders, three
assignment folders, and so please
understand that under each assignment
you might have multiple things to do.
Okay? So make sure that you look through
everything you have to do, and you plan
out your week. That is the best way that
you're going to get through this online
course is to make sure that you don't
leave everything to the very last minute
to do you every other day or so or every
day do a little bit more on this. Okay?
And I know that being in this pandemic
and with the protests going on there's a
lot going on in our world. And some of
you may have lost your jobs, you may have
had to have find new ones,
maybe your living situations have
changed, kids are now home, there's a lot
going on and so make sure that you find
that time to get your work completed and
always if you need help, please email me.
Okay? I am here stuck in my house just
like you guys so at any time feel free
to email me, and I will help you out as
much as possible. So make sure that you
check out Cobra, and you get that
assignment done by noon on Friday, June
19th. That's very important.
So I look forward to getting to know you
guys the semester, getting to read your
ideas about what you think about
wrongful convictions. As you can see with
my headset I do have some kitty ears. I
am a cat person. they even light up and
the ears are speakers - they're very fun!
my fiancee got them for me on Amazon but
this is actually the best audio quality
that I could get for these videos so
I'll try to make as many videos to
explain everything as possible. This is
normally a course where we depend on a
lot of class discussion, so I will try to
make as many videos to help explain
things for you instead of in the written
form. But please let me know if you have
anything that needs to be improved with
the videos or anything like that and I
will do my best to do that. There should
be closed captioning as well for these
videos. Well I look forward to getting to
know you. Don't forget! Monday morning get
on Cobra, take a look at what you need to
do for Week One and let's get started!
I'll talk to you guys later. Enjoy the
nice weather that we're having. Bye!
