Friday, December 11, 2009

PLN28

"This Would Be Really Weird" by David Warlick is very intersting in the fact that it might change a lot of things for a while. This article says that women are starting to equal men in work by representing almost 50% of America's workforce. This is happening mainly as a cause from the recession because the type of jobs that women are going for are not being affected as much from the economy. Another factor that David stated was that the majority of graduates to come out of college are women and that sets them up a lot better for future jobs. I think this will change society but only for a little because after the recession ends the number of men in the work force will go up close to where it was before.

PLN27

The "Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor...Tonsils by Karl Fisch is a perfect example of what most teachers should be doing. This article says that a teacher from Arapahoe High School Maura Moritz had to stay home because her daughter had her tonsils removed. But instead of getting a substitute teacher who doesn't really know what to do or is a push over, she used Skype to connect with the class live. I understand that if a teacher is out of class with an emergency, they can't use Skype. But with this example of taking care of one of their kids, they can find some time to use it. Another benefit of doing this is that when students walk into class and see a substitute teacher, they get a feeling like they can get away with anything and often times they do. Using Skype can cut back on the number of times teachers need substitutes, which will cause less kids getting in trouble.

PLN26

"Who Ya Gonna Call" by Karl Fisch is just another example on how technology is helping us in our daily lives. This article says that a business teacher from our own Arapahoe Highschool, Caroline Orf, used Facebook to find a man who she went to college with. This man has started a few companies and she wanted him to talk to her class about entrepreneurship and starting businesses. But this man is not going to be in the class, he is going to skype into the class through the computer which is just another way Mrs. Orf is using technology in this situation. I think many more teachers and students should be using technology in a productive way like this one.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

PLN25

"Parker Chihuahua Wins $1 million Cutest Dog Prize" by 9 news is a short article but something at the end of it caught my attention. The article says that a man and his dog won a cutest dog competition and their prize was 1 million dollars! In this economy, 1 million dollars is a huge life saver but instead of keeping the money, the owner of the dog gave all of the money away to charity. Now I will be honest if i won that money I wouldn't give any of it away but this man was kind enough to give it too people who are less fortunate. And in a world where nobody seems to care about anyone but themsleves, this man is changing that with one great act of kindness.

PLN24

"Denver Council Crafting Regs for Medical Pot Shops" by Christopher N. Osher is a very controversal article that I think should be left alone by civililians and let handled by the government. The topic is should there be a law that makes marijuana legal for medical purposes. I do not think there should be because there will be too many drug addicts getting away with smoking "medical" marijuana when really they are just trying to high. I think the law should stay the same and if you get caught with marijuana you should pay a fine or go to jail.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

PLN23

"Another Conversation With the Past" by David Warlick is an interesting article because it gets people to talk about history outside of school. The website "Tweeple in History" is a site that starts a discussion about a famous person sometime in history where anyone can voice their opinion and share facts about them. Although, history teachers can use this in their class to get students to participate on the topic in class. I think more teachers and students in their free time should use this to learn more about important figures in U.S history and even the history of the world.

PlN22

"The Heritage School of Kabala" by Karl Fisch is a article that makes you think about the good in things instead of the bad. The article says that Arapahoe's rival school Heritage has been doing an annual fundraiser for the past three years to raise money to build a school in Sierra Leone for less priveleged kids. This grabbed my attention because whenever somebody mentions something about one of our rival schools like Heritage, I never think anything good about them. But this is such a selfish deed that they have raised over 60,000 dollars and now I will think about the kids they have helped instead of something bad. The grand opening of the school is soon and I hope everyone hears more about it.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

PLN21

"Put Forth Our Best Writing Selves" by Douglas Hesse explains that all the social webpages like Facebook and Myspace will either help make people better writers or make them worse by making them write short messeges to friends.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

PLN20

"This Would Be Really Weird" by David Warlick is very intersting in the fact that it might change a lot of things for a while. This article says that women are starting to equal men in work by representing almost 50% of America's workforce. This is happening mainly as a cause from the recession because the type of jobs that women are going for are not being affected as much from the economy. Another factor that David stated was that the majority of graduates to come out of college are women and that sets them up a lot better for future jobs. I think this will change society but only for a little because after the recession ends the number of men in the work force will go up close to where it was before.

PLN19

"Who Ya Gonna Call" by Karl Fisch is just another example on how technology is helping us in our daily lives. This article says that a business teacher from our own Arapahoe Highschool, Caroline Orf, used Facebook to find a man who she went to college with. This man has started a few companies and she wanted him to talk to her class about entrepreneurship and starting businesses. But this man is not going to be in the class, he is going to skype into the class through the computer which is just another way Mrs. Orf is using technology in this situation. I think many more teachers and students should be using technology in a productive way like this one.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

PLN18

Karl Fisch's article "Anne Smith-One of Twenty to Watch" does not surprise me because Mrs. Smith is a phenomenal teacher and she teaches in a way that challenges us but is also easy to understand. The article says that Anne Smith was named one of twenty teachers to watch by the National School Board Association (NSBA). The NSBA said that Anne's use of technology and outstanding leadership are just some of the resons she was recognized. In her class we use laptops everyday that we do most of our work on. And unlike many of my classes in the past, when we read an excerpt from book, we find out what it really means and think about a deeper meaning it might hold. Now at home when I read a book I tend to find myself doing that which makes me understand the book better. I hope we continue to do things like that because it is making me a better reader and writer and I know what she teaches will help me in the future.

PLN17

The "Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor...Tonsils by Karl Fisch is a perfect example of what most teachers should be doing. This article says that a teacher from Arapahoe High School Maura Moritz had to stay home because her daughter had her tonsils removed. But instead of getting a substitute teacher who doesn't really know what to do or is a push over, she used Skype to connect with the class live. I understand that if a teacher is out of class with an emergency, they can't use Skype. But with this example of taking care of one of their kids, they can find some time to use it. Another benefit of doing this is that when students walk into class and see a substitute teacher, they get a feeling like they can get away with anything and often times they do. Using Skype can cut back on the number of times teachers need substitutes, which will cause less kids getting in trouble.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

PLN16

"Our Googley Advice to Students: Major in Learning" by Peter Drucker talks about how students need to challenge themselves more and not take the classes they think they can get an easy A in. If students do that then their success in college will grow and they will be more likely for jobs in the future. The article also says that learning doesn't end after you graduate and you should continue to try to learn throughout your whole life.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

PLN13

“Keyboard vs. Pen?” by C. Odonnel asks the question about which is better to use, keyboard or pen? The article says that using pen and paper is faster than keyboard and computer. I do believe that writing with a pen and paper is a faster way of writing but it is not more efficient than a keyboard and computer. For example if somebody makes a mistake with pen a paper, they either have to start over or leave a bad scribble mark. However, if you make a mistake with a computer, it either fixes it right away or it shows you that it is wrong and you can easily fix it. Also, kids won’t have the excuse of my dog ate my homework or showing up to class with a crumpled paper because they can print the paper off in class and hand it to the teacher with no problem.

Monday, October 5, 2009

PLN11

"2020 Vision" by Karl Fisch is another example he shows about hoe technology is affecting the future. In this video he says that technology is going to change us, education, and the world. I can compare this to most of his other videos like "Did You Know 4.0" because they bothe talk about how technology is affecting our future in a big way. This matters to me and the world because if technology is changing the world, then we need to think about things in a new way and to try to evolve the human race even more. We can do that by starting to use and understand technology when we are young so that we can build upon that when we are older.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

PLN10

"This Would Be Really Weird" by David Warlick is very intersting in the fact that it might change a lot of things for a while. This article says that women are starting to equal men in work by representing almost 50% of America's workforce. This is happening mainly as a cause from the recession because the type of jobs that women are going for are not being affected as much from the economy. Another factor that David stated was that the majority of graduates to come out of college are women and that sets them up a lot better for future jobs. I think this will change society but only for a little because after the recession ends the number of men in the work force will go up close to where it was before.

PLN9

"Who Ya Gonna Call" by Karl Fisch is just another example on how technology is helping us in our daily lives. This article says that a business teacher from our own Arapahoe Highschool, Caroline Orf, used Facebook to find a man who she went to college with. This man has started a few companies and she wanted him to talk to her class about entrepreneurship and starting businesses. But this man is not going to be in the class, he is going to skype into the class through the computer which is just another way Mrs. Orf is using technology in this situation. I think many more teachers and students should be using technology in a productive way like this one.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

PLN8

Michael Wesch's video, "A Vision Of Students Today" is both similar and different to Karl Fisch's "Did You Know 4.0". Both of the videos talk about how technology affects people and how we are using technolgy for better and worse. "A Vision Of Students Today" focuses more on how technology is affecting indivdual people. Such as college students who focus too much on their Facebook page, or their email, instead of their work. "Did You Know 4.0" really stresses upon the point that technology is making a huge impact on society and the world. This video states that people have access to lots of technology such as web pages, iphone apps, radio stations, and cable t.v networks. And I believe with more of these items we have access to, the more information we are recieving. In Wesch's video, students are using computers for doing assignments instead of the traditional pen and paper. That means that old uses of even going through school are changing and I think that doing that is a lot more effecient.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

my pick

"A Vision Of Students Today" by Michael Wesch talks about education and how technolgy both helps and hurts our ability to learn. The students at Michael Wesch's University gathered data and statistics at their school and they came up with very interesting facts. One student said that her average class size is 115 students and that only 18% of her teachers know her name. What that means to me is that there is not enough hands on interaction and that if a student doesn;t understand something then it will be harder to get one on one help. Another student said that she will read 8 books in a year. But she also said that she will read 2300 web pages and 1281 facebook profiles. If she traded the time she spent reading facebook profiles and web pages for reading books then she could have read a lot more. And I think that reading books is way more important. Some of the students agree that they only get seven hours asleep a night. I think one cause for that deprivation is because teachers are giving out assignments to do on computers which might take longer than doing an assignment out of a book. And with all the things that students have do to makes it neccessary to multi task which can make the work less quality. All of these things and more is what is happening to a lot of students in America I believe with technology it is going to get worse.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

PlN6

Karl Fisch's "Did You Know 4.0" is similar to his other vidoes in the way that he is talking about how technolgy is changing the world. In this video, he states that Americans have access to 1,000,000,000,000 web pages, 65,000 Iphone apps, 10,500 radio stations, 5,500 magazines, and 200 + cable tv networks. What this means to me is that people are being exposed to a lot more information than they were without these resources. The next thing the video said was that traditional advertising like bill boards, newspapers, and magazines has been going down and digital advertising such as phones and computers has gone up which means we are changing the way we get our ideas to people. And even our government leaders are using technology. for example the video said that In Feburary 2008, John McCain raised 11 million dollars for his U.S presidential bid. But Barack Obama didn't use fund raisers, he used online social networks to raise 55 million dollars in that same month. This all means that technology is here and we have to decide weather to use it or not.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

PLN5

"The New Literacy" by Clive Thompson talks all about how technology like computers, cell phones, and television are effecting our ability to be literate and to write long paragraphs. This article is similar in some ways to Mr.Fisch's and Dr. Wesch's videos in the way that they are all talking about how technology effects our lives. The video "Shift Happens" was mainly talking about how technolgy is changing the whole world rather to "The New Literacy" which talked about how technolgy is changing people on a more individual stand point. And the video "The Machines are us/ing us" was about how doing things through a computer is better than doing things by hand. That is in some ways similar to Clive Thompson's video because the are both talking about how technology is helping us individually rather than worldwide. That's why I think that Clive Thompson's video and Dr. Wesch's video are more alike than Mr. Fisch's.

Monday, September 7, 2009

PlN4

Michael Wesch's "The machine is us/ing us" is telling us that everyday we are getting more advanced and that a lot has changed in this last few years.His video says that digital text is a lot more effecient and able to be changed a lot more than text on paper.It also says that before we had all this technolgy we couldn't do a lot of things we can today because of technology. Such as looking up answers to a question or making a link on the internet to your website.And even computers are getting easier to use by not having so many codes to worry about and it is becoming that everyone is in control of the web by having their own website or going on to other websites.The main idea he was trying to get across is that we are the web.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Gender meeting

When the all boys class first met with the all girls class there were a few things that happened. When we first walked in, everyone didn’t move until one person started the task by asking the questions ont the paper. I noticed that the girls didn’t move and they waited for us to come to them. The stereotype that I saw was that girls are shy and guys are controlling and take charge. And near the end, the classes split up into groups based on their friends.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

PLN2

The article "Women raise the bar at colleges" by Tamar Lewin made me think a lot about how colleges are handling their enrollment percentages and their students grades. The article said that girls in most colleges are getting better grades boys and that the enrollment of girls is higher. I am not suprised by this fact because i think that a lot of colleges are getting guys who don't particularly have good grades but are good athletes so they are allowing them in into good colleges. And nobody is really against college sports so they slip by with below average grades. And I don't think this is fair for girls who actually had good grades and got into colleges by that. And with college sports getting more popular, players are partying more and not studying as much as they are suppose to which also brings their grades down.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

PLN3

Karl fisch's "Did You Know?" video is preparing kids for the future and for future jobs.

He talks about all the ways we communicate and interact with each other through sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, ect. He also stated that if Myspace were a country, it would be the fifth largest in the world. This could both good and bad. It's good because it allows us to talk and interact with new people or old friends. It could be bad because people could find out more about you then you want them to know.But what Karl Fisch is trying to get across is that the world is changing. Technology is getting much greater and jobs that arn't around today could exist in five to ten years. And that's why we are training kids with computers and technology so that they will be ready for some of those jobs. Some people predicted that by 2049 there will be a computer that exceeds the brain capacity of the wole human race. That could lead to major advances in technology. And we need to be ready for those changes.