Change In The Classroom

Next year every student in my high school will have a laptop. I think this is a great idea and I think it will be very beneficial for both students and teachers. In my classes now everyone sits in rows but when we get laptops i think seating should be rearranged. Maybe the desks could be set up in a circle or maybe there can be groups of desks together to allow students to interact with others. A new seating arrangement can be beneficial for the techers because then it could possibly be easier for them to make sure students are not on any websites they should not be on.

My Montage 10/28/10 at OneTrueMedia.com

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Livebinders

Livebinders is a web 2.0 tool. It like an online binder. In this binder you can keep certain web pages or documents in. It is very helpful in terms of organization. I think this would be great for students and teachers to use. This binder could be helpful for learning, teaching, and studying. This could potentially help some students be better learners because I think that teens are more likely to study or do schoolwork on a computer because it is something they are very familiar with and it is less boring. The only bad thing about using this tool as a way of learning is that students get easily distracted and will end up on other websites.

RSA Animate Video

I really liked this video about the problem with education in schools. I think there definately needs to be changed in the way students are educated. I agree that students should not have to sit in rows and just listen to a teacher talk. I think that when students are in a class where a teacher just talks the whole time, they are less likely to pay attention and to learn. They are more likely to zone out and not absorb any of the information. This video talks about how students should not have to be in the same grade with the people their age. I disagree with that. I think that students the same age should be in the same grade, even though some are more advanced than others. In school students can be in different level classes and even take different types of classes which I think solves that problem. There definately needs to be change in schooling because as Ken said common knowledge in people deteriorates. This was proven with the paperclip experiment, asking how many different things it could be used for. The older they got, the less they could think of. In my opinion I think that schools need to do more hands on learning.

Google Docs

Using Google Docs can be very beneficial. Google Docs is like Microsoft Word. It allows you to create a document, slide show presentation, spreadsheets, forms, and drawings. You are able to email your work to someone else or you can share it with other gmail users. Google Docs is great to use for group projects because it allows everyone to be able to contribute to the same document. It is less of a hassle because you dont have to be with the al of the people in your group at the same time in order to work on the project, you can just do your portion at home.

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Edutopia Opens The Virtual Door On Our Classroom

http://bhsweb20.blogspot.com/2010/10/first-hand-evidence-of-what-connecting.html

So far web 2.0 has been very beneficial for me. Before I took this class I would always go on the internet to just go on Facebook, I never really thought the internet could be used for education. This class has introduced me to blogging and Twitter. I would have never made a blog or a Twitter account if I was not in this class. Not all schools offer web 2.0 or are even going to start to use social media for learning like we are, which is why we are lucky.

Principals Learning Through Social Media

http://www.convergemag.com/training/Principals-Learn-Through-Social-Media.html

I think it is great that schools are starting to use social media for learning. I think it’s very beneficial for the students because we can relate to all of the social media. Most all teens use technology now and know a lot about it. However, I think most students just use it for communication purposes and not educational purposes. Most parents probably dislike the idea of using social media for learning. I think they just need to give it a chance because in the long run, it could be very beneficial. For years students have been sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher talk and learn by what they are saying and writing on the board. With social media students can talk to others about what they’re learning in class and also connect with other students or even other teachers. I think that using social media will take a while to get used to, but once schools have had it for a while I think it will really work out and maybe parents will have a different perspective on it.

Bullying

Lately, I have been hearing about lots of suicides due to bullying, more than I ever have before. I think that this is terrible. Bullying has been going on for a while now and so many teens are committing suicide in result. Schools, parents, and police need to be more aware of bullying and find effective ways to fix it. I do not think bullying can be prevented completely because you can’t control what other children do or say, but I definitely think there should be harsh consequences. In the past month I have heard of five different teens committing suicide. Tyler Clementi, Billy Lucas, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, and Eric Mohah all committed suicide after being bullied due to being gay.  Eric Mohah was one of four teens who had commited suicide because of bullying in his school. I think it is terrible that four teens in the same school have all killed themselves.  After one suicide, the school should have been watching out for bullies and making sure it didn’t happen again. I think there should be laws against bullying or at least serious consequences because it is terrible that bullying can get so bad, to the point where someone takes their own life.