Edu Blog 2

Shift Happens....
I first saw a "Shift Happens" video last year as a part of my literature class. What I was able to read fast enough astonished me. Now, watching another, 'I'm equally surprised. The first thing that read across the screen was the number of babbys that would be born in the time it took to watch the video. More kids were born in China and India then America. This didn't so much surprise me as much as it made me wander how their lives would differ from the lives of the children born in the US. Then I was informed that in the not to distant future, the number one English speaking country in the world will be, not America, not Britain...China. My jaw dropped. I had a hard time believing this at first, then I really thought about it. Every other country is being taught English as a second language. What are we learning here? Spanish.Because the population of China is much larger then America's- and constantly growing- it would make sense that all these children would be speaking English. While this is taking place in China, children here are being taught Spanish.
The next bit of information I received disgusted me. The average 21 year old has spent 20,000 hours watching TV, 10,000 hours playing video games, and 10,000 hours emailing or IMing. That's a combined amount of 40,000 hours. One year has only 8,766 hours. Put simply, the average 21 year old has waisted more then 4 and a half years of their life watching TV, playing video games, and emailing/IMing. So does this mean that the average 21 year old is actually only 17? So someone old enough to legally drink is actually barely old enough to drive? Excuse me, but thats messed up...
Another thing that surprised me was the number of text messages sent per day. The first text was sent in 1995; now the number of texts sent per day is more then the population of the world. I am proud to say that I am not contributing to this statistic, seeing as my phone doesn't have text messaging on it.
Its hard to find someone now who doesn't have a myspace. This is understandable, because if myspace was a country, it would be the eighth largest in the world. I'm not sure how current this information is, but on average, 230,000 people join myspace per day. This number could be increasing drastically, or diminishing, but it seems like the number of people joining would be falling. It seems like everyone readily available to the Internet already has one. Ill admit that I have TWO, but I forgot the password to my first so it shouldn't count.........
Something that pleasantly surprised me was that 3,000 books are published per day. As a published author, this makes me feel kind of special. It made me wander how man of the books I am published in have been read. I wander how many times my poem was read, and what people thought of it.
The truth is, shift happens, whether we like it or not. The only thing we can do about it is get used to the changes going on in the world.

News Blog 2

When I hear the word "anniversary", I think of good things. A wedding anniversary, the anniversary of an organization. Not today... Today is the one year anniversary of the Platte Canyon High School shooting, where 16 year old Emily Keyes was killed. A gunman walked into the school and took 7 girls hostage. He shot Emily, then shot himself.
I remember last year when news first came out. My Current Events class started, and the teacher broke the news. Everyone was completely blown away. I kept thinking about Columbine; I kept thinking about how these things seemed to only happen in Colorado. I kept thinking about how this girl didn't deserve this. I kept thinking about how life wasn't fair. Then I thought of "Emily".
From the description of Emily Keyes, she sounded like a model student and a great family member. She had a twin brother(who is now a Senior) and caring parents until September 27, 2006 when she was killed. This reminded me of the song lyric "There's no one in the world like Emily."
I wanted to get into the mind of the killed. I wandered how anyone could do such a thing. He just walked into this high school and took 7 hostages. He killed Emily, then himself. I wanted to know what his motifs were, if he had any. Then I thought about the victims. I wanted to know what was going threw their minds while this was going on. I wanted to know what it was like to know you might not make it through the day, that any minute you might be dead. I wanted to know what Emily was thinking when she was shot, and what she was thinking when the ambulance came to late. Then again, I was completely thankful that I DIDN'T have to know what everyone was thinking. I was thankful that I DIDN'T have to go threw that terror of knowing I may not ever see me friends or family again.

News PLN 9-17-07

And news is coming in on yet ANOTHER accident involving a car and a pedestrian. This is what, the hundredth hit-and-run in a mounth? Im not even kidding. The first one I heard aboot was the toddeler running across the street to his dad. He ended up dying at the scene(I think....). Then a ten year old got hit and dragged aboot 50 feet. He suffered massive brain injerys and ended up dying shortly afterwards. Early Saturday mourning, a 5 year old was hit by a 99 Ford Ranger and thrown 30 feet. The driver shifted into revers and attempted to drive backward to flee the scene. He failed miserable and drove into a utlilty pole and some bushes. The front passenger ran from the car back to the scene and tryed to help out, the driver however......

As someone going through Drivers Ed, this is becoming increasingly frightening. Im always picturing cardbored cut outs of children being thrown at me when im driving, or blow up beach balls being rolled infront of the car wheels. All of the accidents were, well, ACCIDENTS, but still... Either Drivers Education should be repeated when some one renews his license, or the "Look both ways before crossing the street" rule should be be its own class in schools.

Education PLN 9-17-07

I was assigned a PLN on something that Mr. Fisch wrote on his blog. After reading a rant aboot technoligy and another on staff devlopment, I realized this wasn't exactly sinking in. I scrolled down untill I saw one on "What Matters". Ah, yes, I've done this! I read through it and clicked on some of the links. In his blog, Mr Fisch said "Many of [the students blogs] seemed similar to mine...". Well yea, isn't that kind of expected? When the students ask for a more specific topic. The answer they got was "I dont kno, What matters?" Not much of an answer, is it... Because they were put out on a cliff hanger like that, most(or all) of the students did what was easiest- what matters te them.
"I am just having a difficult time trying to find the line between feeling like I am leading them to the answer I am looking for (i.e. my what matters example) and having them struggle to find their own understanding- what I feel like they should be looking for." After reflecting for a few moments, I began to fully understand what Mr. Fisch means by this. The reason behind not giving a straight forward answer when asked "What do you mean by what matters?" was that he wants his students to do it on their own. Fisch wasnt looking for them to answer the question his way. He wanted them to answer the question how they think it should be answered, be it what matters to them, what matters to the world or what metters to their second cousin twice removed. What ever the case may be, the whole point of that activity was to get a look into the heads of each of the kids.