SH’s Blog

Well, we are about to find out, I have asked kids from New Zealand, Australia, and Brazil and are currently awaiting their responses!

So, we have to write a blog post about high school. So I have decided to write everything I can think of about high school before I have to leave. High school, high school, high school. It can be a nightmare if you don’t go in there with the right attitude. You need to be able to balance your friends with your studies. It is very difficult, but you have your life ahead of you, and school is basically the base of it. There are a lot of ‘cliques’ that you have to deal with, and there are a lot of mean people. But, if you hang out with the right group of friends, I guarantee that you will indeed survive. Guarantee really does not look right. I hate that word, well the spelling anyway. I am also worried about call sign ups. I’m in mostly honors classes but I’m definitely worried about the homework. Electives are also very confusing. What are you guys signed up for? However, high school should be fun. A new experience is always a good thing. It prepares you for the real world. What do you guys think about high school?

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

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Martin Luther King Jr was an influential man. He had the courage to speak for black rights, and he was a true visionary. Unfortuantely, in the south, racism was thriving during the time of Martin Luther King. He was assasinated on April 4th, 1968 at the age of 39. It was after one of his famous speeches by a racist named James Earl Ray. We take a day off this monday on national Martin Luther King day to remeber the great life, and tragic death, of Martin Luther King. Although we take off on this day, I do not agree with it. Instead of taking the day off from school and doing whatever, I think that we should go to school and learn about Martin’s life and death. My favorite quote of Martin Luther King Jr, is probably the most famous one: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  It was said during his most famous speech titled “I Have a Dream” in August 1963.

   Outside of parents, who has influenced your life more than anyone else; who had an impact on your life and what was it about that person that meant something to you?

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 The person that has influenced me the most throughout the years would definitely have to be my grandpa. He was always there for me in ways that he rest of mi familia could not be. He would call me up and I would go over his house and while my nanny cleaned the house him and I would turn on the news and sit at the table in the corner of their great room and talk and talk and talk about anything and everything. We would talk about what was on the news, what was going on in my life, new technology, cars, sports, money, and our family. Mostly we would talk about the crazy things that my aunt Sue and uncle Dave were doing. They are a tad bit money crazy and they enjoy buying pointless things that collect dust in their basement afterwards. We had a game where we would go through the Sharper Image catalogs and find some wacky thing for them to buy, then show it to my Uncle Dave at his next visit. Within a week of us showing my uncle the wacky new contraption, he would buy it. It was pretty funny. My grandpa influenced me because he was a wealthy businessman and he always had a great idea. I wanted to be just like him. He always would say “Do Something With Your Life Sean” and I would. That is why I always do 100% and always try my best. I make a lot of sacrifices for my academics, and I believe it will pay off in the long run.

A discussion in class today provoked me to wonder this; What is a song that everybody knows? Not ”Happy Birthday” or a Christmas song, but an actual song that is heard on the radio. Is there one that everyone could sing at least a few lines of? Let’s find out.

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What do you think?

http://asa087.learnerblogs.org/2007/11/14/nick-names/

http://agr08.learnerblogs.org/2007/12/05/hmm/

http://vps08.learnerblogs.org/2007/10/17/what-is-fangtooth/

http://lvs08.learnerblogs.org/2007/10/07/audacityperforms-miracles

http://lss108.learnerblogs.org/2007/10/25/emailing-a-company/

http://ehs08.learnerblogs.org/2007/10/25/tom-brady-is-rewriting-the-nfl-record-book/

I wonder if i will ever be finished with my make-up work!   :(   

 

I also wonder what veneration means :D 

This week on Ben Wilkoff’s Discourse about Discourse blog he asks a very interesting question:  

If my students can do the majority of their work with writing and reading online…
If my students can receive all of their assignments online…
If my students can maintain constant contact with their friends, classmates, and teachers online…
If my students can create spaces to come together or work alone online…

What do should we do in the classroom?

One of the biggest takeaways that I have been formulating at the Virtual Schools Symposium is that the hybrid model is not fiction. When students have access outside of class hours (and this is not a given by any means), shouldn’t we be expecting that they be connecting and collaborating during this time?

The more that I work with my new 7th graders (the students who I have only known under the Academy of Discovery Model), the more I realize that productivity is something that comes from having the ability to work at your own pace and schedule. I keep seeing the majority of essays being written at home even though I feel the obligation to give them time in class. I keep seeing my students make more meaning out of the emails and instant messages outside the classroom.

My real question, I guess, is what activity is so well suited to face-to-face contact that it can’t be replicated online? Whatever the answer to that question is, is what I need to be doing in my classroom, every day.

Here are my thoughts on what can’t be replicated online, yet:

• Debate - In its truest form, debate is a refined series of verbal arguments that require many people talking in rapid succession. Although you can do debate in an elluminate session, the passing of the mic is awkward at best and the visual separation of the competing sides is not possible.
• Networking - It is why we still come to conferences. Finding great people that you want to work with and that will challenge you is something that is lacking in the online world. A social network does create a sense of community amongst many people, but it the bonds forged are not immediate. They take time and tending. In face-to-face communication, it is easy to see the worthwhile. It is easy to recognize excellence. That is what classroom time can be: the search and recognition for excellence (in writing, in math, in science, etc.)

What are the things that you think are so essential in the classroom that they can’t be outsourced to a virtual space? (Do they still exist? Will they always exist?) I really want to know.

Well here is the long awaited amazing answer:

    In my opinion there is not much that you cannot do on the computer. You can do homework and send it to your teacher, you can watch videos or listen to podcasts on education, you can talk with other students that live a mile or 50,000 miles away from you, you can even have a live video chat with your teacher or other students. That last thing makes your question hard to answer. Because you can have ‘face-to-face’ contact with your teacher without being ‘face-to-face’ persay. This means that a student can review and assignment with their teacher or recieve extra help without being with them. Also, if a student is sick, they won’t miss school. Students can learn from the comfort of their own home. ALso, students can learn on their own time, and they won’t have such demanding schedules and will be less stressed. Also, bullying would be eliminated because students would not be interacting with people who were mean to them and this would raise their self-esteem and give them higher confidence causing them to do better in school. I think that computers are definitely the answer for the classroom of the future.

Happy Turkey Day!!

On this day in history…November 1st, 1878 - Carlos Saavedra Lamas of Argentina was born. Carlos Saavedra Lamas was the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was born in Buenos Aires and was an outstanding student who received his doctorate in laws from the University of Buenos Aires, and then began a career as a teacher of law and sociology at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, eventually rising to the position of professor at Buenos Aires University. He played a very important role in Argentinian education. His political career began in 1906 and he began to take more important roles, including two terms in the Argentinian parliament beginning in 1908, where his interests were mainly in foreign affairs, sometimes the UN. In 1915, he became Minister for Justice and Education. The achievement for which he received the Nobel Prize was as Argentina’s foreign minister, which he was from 1932 to 1938 , he mediated a treaty that effectively ended the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia. In 1936 he was elected President of the Assembly of the League of Nations.