Are We Good Enough?

            For this week’s PLN I read an article called “Rigor Redefined” by Tony Wagner. This was about relooking at how hard we as Americans work. Tony Wagner went to tons of excellent school across America and had interviews with several hundred businesses. Using his research Tony Wagner came up with three points that the kids of America need to master in order to succeed in the future: critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and leadership, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination. Tony Wagner is trying to tell the kids that if we master these skills we will succeed in the future and get good jobs.

            This article makes a great point. If America keeps up what it is doing in its education system there will be no jobs left in the United States. All of the jab will be “off-shored”. If the kids in America master these skills that Mr. Wagner talked about, we can keep the jobs in America. But we have to ask ourselves, are we good enough? A lot of countries are passing us up in education. Schools need to stop preparing us for the present; we need to be ready for the future. Schools aren’t teaching us anything new. We need to learn for the future. As JFK said, “Change is the law of life; and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”. We need to get ready for the future. We are learning in the past and we need to change that. We need to get ready for the future.   

The Machine

            This week we were assigned to watch “Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us” by Michael Wesch. This was mostly about how the web is evolving. It talks about how we are the machine, and we need to rethink a lot of things for Web 2.0. A couple years ago we needed to go through a huge process to make a website. Now we can just create a blog and it’s done. It said in the video that a blog is created every half second. The web is evolving and it is us that are helping it evolve.

            This video amazed me in several ways. Its amazing how regular pencil and paper text has changed, and how the old way of making a website has changed. As we evolve the machine evolves. What does Michael Wesch mean when he says we need to rethink several things? Does he mean that the web is so accessible and easy to get on that we can’t be putting everything out there? He does make a lot of valid points. When he is hyper linking everywhere on the page and talking about that the web can be connected anywhere and everywhere is a really good point, because you can access a lot of different things from one webpage. The fact that a blog is created every half second blows my mind. This is a hard fact to rap my mind around. If that is true then there is 63,072,000 blogs made in one year from people around the world. It is amazing how as we change the machine changes. We teach the machine and give it new ideas.       

It's Okay

            This week I was look at The Fischbowl when I saw this blog called “It Gets Better”. This blog had a hyperlink to a video on YouTube. The video was about a city council man (Joel Burns) telling gay teens that it is ok to be gay. He was also gay. He touched on a lot of the teen suicides that have been happening lately. A lot of them had to do with teens being bullied for being gay. He said it was hard to be in school and for people to know about it. He told his own story to everyone. He really wanted to get the message across that the bullying needs to stop, because it is ok to be gay.

            It is a terrible thing for people to be bullied for being gay. I know a few people at my school who are questioning their sexuality. That is there choice and they shouldn’t be put down by anyone for their choices. A lot of gay people at my school are not bullied, but I know of one kid who is talked about behind his back. This is wrong. People should just stop talking bad about him. Also the people who are not sure about their sexuality shouldn’t be ashamed. It is ok to be gay. We should all follow Joel Burns and stop the bullying. No one deserves to be bullied. If you don’t want to be bullied for what you believe in or what you believe you are, then why should others be bullied. Gay people are just like everyone else. They don’t deserve it.     

Bullying. It's Serious.

            This week I was looking through BBC and I found this article called “Police investigate sudden death of Maesteg schoolgirl” by BBC. It is about the sudden death of Holly Stuckey in south Wales. Her father said that she complained of chest pains and not being able to breathe before she collapsed and died. He later found letters accusing teenagers of bullying her at Maesteg Comprehensive School and said he has given 13 names to police. The school said that they found no connection between Holly’s death and being bullied. Or was there a connection?

            Even though there was no connection between Holly’s death and her being bullied, this brought up a great point of people can be hurt by being bullied. People are bullied every day. I never see it at my school, but I hear of it at other schools. Take Columbine for example; those kids were bullied and made fun of. It hurt them so much that we couldn’t even imagine. It pushed them to the extent. Her father spoke, “Mr. Stuckey said: ‘She died in my arms. It was the worst thing any parents could go through. But it wasn't until afterwards that we discovered the torment she'd been going through. Bullies had been putting her through hell. In the weeks before Holly died she wouldn't go anywhere on her own, she wanted me to take her everywhere.’” She was in pain and she hated it. She didn’t know what to do. Her father found letters in her room that said, “I hate you for what you have done to me. I feel like no one.” She was also struggling with depression. Where does all the bullying start? Most people say it comes from kids that have family issues. I think kids bully because they think it’s okay. The media influences them. They see TV programs that show people think they are better than others. So they take that in and become it. So how did Holly die? Was it from natural causes, or a result of being bullied too much? We will never know.

The World Wide Web

               This weekend we got an article called “Footprints in the Digital Age” by Will Richardson. This article is mostly about the World Wide Web, and how it can have positive and negative effects. It talks how most of the stuff on the web is out of our control and some of it can be bad. It also says how the web can be a positive thing for learning.  The web has a large audience so kids need to watch what they post on the web; there are limits. The article gives a story of how a girl named Laura used the web to help.

            The internet is a very big and a controversial thing. When kids are on it they can do so much. Kids need to have limits on the internet because there are things out there that can scare them and get them in trouble. If anyone puts something on the internet; it will never come off. Even though you can “delete” stuff it never actually leaves. So kids (and adults) need to watch what they put on the internet. One websites such as Facebook or MySpace make people feel safe when they are on their, but they are not safe at all. There are bad people out there in the web that can do really bad things. There was a study that showed 70 percent of kids that are online talk about educational-related topics. Somehow I doubt that. I’m a teenager, and when I’m online I rarely talk about school or education. “Younger students need to see their teachers engaging experts in synchronous or asynchronous online conversations about content, and they need to begin to practice intelligently and appropriately sharing work with global audiences.” This quote reminds me of the PLN’s we do in classes. We are learning how to share our knowledge with the world. This also reminds me how teachers are trying to get younger kids ready for the future and all the jobs that don’t exist. The internet is a very complex thing, and needs to be used right and resourcefully.   

R.I.P. Kenny McKinley

            This week I was browsing through The Denver Post when I found a story on Kenny McKinley’s death. It was called “Police: Broncos' McKinley depressed about injury before death” by Mike Klis. It was about Broncos receiver Kenny McKinley suffering from depression after his knee surgery four weeks ago. He killed himself Monday afternoon by shooting himself in the head. McKinley didn't know what he would do if he couldn't play football because football was all he knew. Investigators with the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office said no suicide note was left by McKinley. He was only 23 years old.

            I feel really bad for him. But in a way this was a very selfish act. He didn’t think about how everyone would feel if he did it. Now his whole family, the whole Bronco team, and all of Denver are going to suffer from this. This teaches me that sports can’t carry you your whole life. You need to value your education and learn as much as you can. Most of these NFL players cruise through college using football. They don’t know what to do besides football. Not all of us are going to get great opportunities like professional athletes. We all need to find a real profession that we can always fall back on. If sports are all you know how to do you are going to be in trouble once you quit or retire, and you’re in the real world. I don’t mean to harp on anyone’s dreams, but we all need to be realistic. McKinley didn’t know what to do. So he didn’t have anything to live for. So my question to you is what do you want to do when you grow up? All of you who cost through school and life better shape up and get your act together. These four years of high school are going to go by quick, and we still need to have fun but work hard at our futures.    

Google: Good or Bad?

            For this week’s PLN I got an article called “Is Google Making Us Stupid”  by Nicholas Carr. It talks about how Google and the internet have made everything easily accessible to everyone and how it is making us stupid. Google and other websites have short little articles that are easy for us to read but when we get long articles and books we get distracted and we go off topics. Facebook and texting has also done this to us. This has happened to a lot of people. Our mental habits have been cut and it’s getting worse. Bruce Friedman from the University of Michigan Medical School said, “I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” This has an effect on the best of us.

            I also feel this way a lot of the time when I’m reading a book or an article. I tend to “power browse” as said in the article. I think Google and the internet has done this to me. I have gotten so use to reading short little stuff like blogs and text messages. The internet has made everything easier, we no longer have to go to the library for hours to find information we can just “Google” it. The article said, “When we read online, she says, we tend to become ‘mere decoders of information.’ Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.” We can’t get the same experience as we do when we are in deep reading with traditional text. Even though we have gotten easily distracted over time, the internet and Google has been a positive in everyday life. It has made research fast accessible and it has expanded our mind and in a way making us smarter.

            Nicholas Carr is making valid points in his article but I do not agree with everything he says. He has too much of a negative view on the internet and Google. He needs to look at the positive side and see how Google benefits us.