Re-visiting Twitter

After having a few days to look at twitter it still doesn’t impress me too much.  I am not someone that likes social networks.  I rather talk to someone on phone or in person.  Although I do like how the messages have to be short.  This means less whining people do online.  I learned that a lot of people use it and that it does help you find information rather quickly considering that it is the second largest search engine out there.  I also found out that there are a lot of think tanks because of Twitter.  This means more ideas spread around therefore increasing collectivism on subjects.  The speed of this communication is hard to keep up with, but it will save lots of time and maybe in some weird circumstances save lives!  That would really interesting.   Either way I do give Twitter a little more credit because it does have a purpose the problem like everything people abuse it to say what they are doing on a day to day basis which is a waste of time.  https://twitter.com/  Follow me

Dress Codes and I.D. badages in High Schools

Who likes being told what they can where to a place they do not even want to go to?  I am guessing nobody.  However some public school districts around the United States are instituting dress codes for no real reasons.  These reasons include keeping gang paraphernalia out of schools, to keep sexuality out of schools, and to prepare kids for the outside world.  The problem i have with this is I myself was forced to dress by a code at my old high school in Harbor Creek Pennsylvania for a couple of years.  In addition I like many students in these circumstances was forced to wear I.D. tags.  This site is a normal code with no harsh crackdown.  Typical code  this one has list of things they can restrict crackdown     in this scenario parents are on the student’s side fighting back

 Whys is this a major concern in education today you might ask?  Well, it is a giant distraction to the whole education process.  Teachers will be more worried about saving their own skins and reporting out of dress behavior than teaching.  I have experienced this myself, and i have seen good kids getting suspension for not being in code and/or not wearing their I.D. tag.  The point is that it is already difficult to get kids to focus in school as it is.  With these added measures school becomes a prisons or as my friends and i would say a "concentration camp."  We would even call our I.D. tags Stars of David, or serial numbers.  This is cruel mind you, but they would really piss you off! 

        Watch this Salinas

Watch this too sorry videos links are not cooperating  Question on uniforms


The reasons for doing these things are "on the surface" valid arguments in some extreme cases.  For example gang idea is for the city schools, and a silly dress code will not do much to slow that down.  Stopping sexuality in schools and preparing for the outside world go hand in hand.  Essentially the outside world doesn’t care what you wear.  My school stressed the point to dress like you would in college.  College doesn’t care what you wear or for that matter show up.  They just want money. 

Additional problems are created by instituting a dress code.  Parents need to buy clothing for their kids.  How can they do this if they have no money in their budget?  What happens if you lose I.D. in school?  You pay 5 bucks for a new one.  The whole thing is a waste of money.  My school would not let us wear sweatpants, or athletic shorts.  They even went as far as to make an assembly to call us hoodlums and gangbangers when we go to a county school.  We also see a breakdown of authority, and a reason to disobey the rules.  

I do understand this is kind of a rant from a couple of year ago, but hearing about it from what i saw will help you see the problems that are created by such a silly and dumb thing.  The stakeholders for these things are the administration, and i feel that administrations are out of touch today in schools.  If they had any sense they would not do these dumb things.

On the other hand you have to decide for yourself what should be done this website shows that there can be progress made with dress codes.  For it  This also shows that they are on the rise since 2000. On the Rise

I also realize that the uniforms are not always this fancy, but they can eventually lead to this. 

Either way i feel that these are unesscary to schools and will only serve as further distractions to the educational process.

If this problem is not fixed then school will lose sight in the point of schools.  Not to enforce things, but to teach kids, and teach more than following the rules.  Although it can teach kids the imporatnce of voting and democracy.  But back to the point if this is not changed learning, respect for autthority, and casual dress will cease to exist.  At the very least letting kids choose their close aids in their decision making.

Twitter

Twitter is a really interesting social tool.  I still believe that it is kinda dumb.  However, it can be useful to help encourage more communication between students and teachers, and more useful communication between students.  It is also very hard to look up someone.  All in all i do see some pointinal with Twitter, however it is limited

Reflection on PPT

Oh boy what a time.   The power point assignment was very helpful in showing me how to make a power point more appealing, and useful.  The hardest part by far was relinquishing the power of presenting material to the students.  This was the objective of the assignment, and i would also say my greatest risk.  I like to be in control of what is being presented, but i must say it is very nice not having to do it all the time.  This assignment takes a lot of work, but when it is done you can be even more effective to students by answering their questions.  I had my doubts about this assignment, but i do see its use. I thought the Narrative was a waste of time though.  I do realize we need to write down what we do, but it should not be that complicated.  In all thank you Mr. Smith for helping me see the value of the hands off "interactive learning".

I started by deciding on a topic I could make interactive.  I decided to do a battle, that way you could look at both sides of sides of the fighting.  I decided Gettysburg because of the importance and size of the battle.  I greatly utilized the potential with hiding slides and creating hyperlinks in them.  I accidently made my hyperlinks to the web go to the slide I was on.  I fixed that fairly quickly, and ran into the problem of finding videos that suited my purpose to describe what the battle and American Civil War battles were like.  I used videos form the movie Gettysburg to help illustrate my point.  My point being this was a big, bloody, awful battle that lasted three days and turned the tide of the American Civil War.

I still feel this concept should be used in limited exercises like an introduction exercise.  That way the student can find the information and determine for themselves what information is important or not.  Then the next day I would come in and give an accurate description to reinforce the material they looked at and make connections for them. 

My plan for the class would have been to take a week to cover the battle.  Day 1&2 to look at PowerPoint to choose one side on day 1 and on day 2 choose other side.  Day 3 I would go over the battle with notes.  Day 4&5 the class would watch the movie Gettysburg.  This would ensure that the class would retain the information. 

Criticism of Chapter 1

In regards to the Networking effects discussed in Chapter one I see many essential flaws to the overall concept and more importantly the important bulleted advantages on page 27.  I will explain points that I have a problem with.

  For starters “Classrooms will be more engaging."  I fail to see how they will be more engaging, because with all of the things that are availible on the web and other computer distractions I see no explanation for how they will be more engaging.  An example is if I were to ask a question by sending it on a blog, the students might not see the question, and they would be doing their own thing on the internet.  Being a student I have witnessed this myself many times.  The only benefit is the students no longer have to know anything.  They can simply look up the questions on the internet rather than taking notes in class.

 Next, "Students are responsible for their own learning."  I tend to laugh at this obscured statement, because students are naturally lazy, and usually am not that motivated to do things on their own, and I would think most students would say that would be a joke.  Moreover, the students will not do any work until a few days before the work is due.  Again, I can attest to this because being a student a have seen and done just that.  In this case I see an increase in failure due to the fact that students that do not understand the material will take less interest in the subject and ultimately not care what the final grade will be, and therefore will learn little to nothing.  It almost seems like laziness on the side of administrators and teachers to have students do it themselves considering these are not adults in college this is one thing but high school or higher will prove to be even harder than it already is. 

Another interesting comment "Students are safer" doesn’t make much sense.  What doses having a network make things safer for the kids?  I understand the idea that if they are home they are safer, but you have as much danger at home as you do at school. 
Finally "Schools save time and money."  This does not make sense because the schools will have to constantly have to pay money to update the software and maintain their network.  This means more money spent to hire technicians.  As for the saving time, if the network goes down then the whole school is down, and the school loses a day, or two, or more all because of some simple technical difficulty.

These points describe what I took from Chapter 1 to be problematic as classrooms evolve.  The conversion from paper to online is a very complicated process with much good potential, but I believe that some of these potentials will be abused by everyone that uses them.  They can breed lazy and incompetent individuals all in an attempt to make teaching easier and more efficient.  I feel that these ideas should be slowly integrated into the Classroom. 

I would like to know how they believe that these ideas will be helpful.  Why do they think these ideas will work, and what supports that?  Just how effective is this idea compared to traditional teaching? 

Ultimately you have to either side with me or disagree, and help me understand how some of these ideas make sense.      This might help you see their point of view.      Help