PLN 15

I read a blog by Karl Fisch called The Need for Textbooks and here's what I said:

That is very funny to me because it seems like lately textbook are becoming more and more out dated. I think that textbooks are good but they are such a chore to bring home from school everyday. You can see how much that technology is replacing textbooks in the schools. In my English class all that we pretty much use is our laptops. Even my French and my math books are on the computer and probably a lot of my other classes to. I think that this is cool but the schools should still keep the textbooks anyway because not everyone has working internet or a computer. So it is definitely a convenience to have them on line, but it is good to have them at the schools to, especially during a tornado. I have nothing against textbooks, besides the fact that they are extremely heavy, but it is so much easier to have them on the computer so I don't have to bring much home after school.

PLN Presentation Reaction

On my second presentation I felt like I did a little better be cause everyone said I made great eye contact and spoke loudly and looked like I knew what I was talking about. This time I did not use notes so that helped with the eye contact and speaking better and not just reading from my paper. I did pause a couple of times because I lost my train of thought but I felt like I saved it pretty well and other people said so also. Even though my posts were not related I think I transitioned well and talked about important things in the world and in our class. It felt like an overall good presentation.

PLN 14

I read a blog by Jeff Utecht called Screen Free Week and this is how I responded.

This is very interesting to me. It seems lately there have been things going on where we don't use electricity like when everyone shut everything off for an hour. This is very cool that you participate in this screen week. Personally I don't think that I could do it, and it is kinda sad that the world is becoming that dependent on technology. Especially kids these days with our cellphones and my space. The screen week thing is a great idea because it probably helps a lot. Even though it doesn't show that much electricity that is not being used really helps the earth. I know a lot of people who are way too dependent on there technology and I'm not that much but I don't think I could go without TV that long. Hopefully in the future I will be able to be a part of these things because I think it is very important. I am also going to try to participate in Earth Day too because the pollution is overwhelming lately. I am glad that I read this post because it has inspired me to do these things also. Hopefully more people will realize how important it is to keep our world healthy because if we don't soon then who knows what will happen.

PLN 13

I read a post on Ferrill's blog called Blogger Sense for my 13th PLN. This is an interesting blog because when I started doing blogs in Ms. Smiths class I thought it was pointless but it became interesting to talk about things. I think that if your not into it then there really isn't any point because it is only interesting if you want to talk about it or tell people about. I like posting blogs but I have to find a blog I really want to talk about or I can't really think of anything to say because it's not interesting to me. I am glad you posted this because blogs are pretty much pointless if there is no meaning to them.

PLN Presentation Reaction

I thought that I did ok on my presentation. I felt like I didn't know my material as well as I should of. Most people said I did a good job and talked about importatn topics but I needed to make more eye contact with my audience. Next time I will aim to be mare prepared and review my notes more so I can look at the audience more rather than my notes.

PLN 12

I read a blog on the tips for life blog called 7 Simple Ways To Burst Out of Bed Each Morning and what matters is in the morning are you rested because it could effect your day. The article talked about 7 helpful ways to get out of bed in the morning. The tips were:

1. Appointment with walking
2. The King an the Pauper way of eating
3. Living with purpose
4. Plan your day
5. The water hack
6. Work that body
7. Have "me" time

To learn what they mean by these tips check out the post. The tips are pretty much just about what to do to make yourself more rested in the morning and this can be very important, especially for students. Being a student I know that I can stay a lot more focused and learn more when I am not tired and am more rested. This relates to me because I have a lot of trouble getting up in the mornings for school. What I usually do is take a shower in the morning to wake me up when I finally get out of bed. It helps some but by the time I get to school I am just as tired as I was before. You should definitely check out these tips because they seem loke they would really help I think I might give them a shot myself. SO remember that getting a good noghts sleep can really help you out the next day because you are rested and feel up to doing more stuff.

PLN 11

I read a post called Gas prices strain school budgets on the Denver Post and what matters is how much gas is costing lately. The article talks about how schools are paying a lot for gas for their buses and stuff and it is coming to the point were they can not afford it. The article said:

Oil at more than $100 a barrel means the state of Colorado, local governments and area school districts are pouring more money into the fuel tanks of their bulldozers, buses, trucks and snowplows.

Benke budgeted $2.4 million, or an average of $200,000 a month. For the first three months of 2008, the county spent about $670,000 for fuel, averaging $3.37 a gallon for diesel and $2.66 a gallon for unleaded gasoline, Benke said.

Buck Benke is the director of fleet services for Jefferson County, so he manages all the county vehicles like the school buses and the trucks and others. This is an outrageous amount of money for just ONE county. Imagine how much all the countys in Colorado would cost all together, and that's only 3 MONTHS! Soon nobody is going to be able to afford gas with these prices. What we need to do, and I also mentioned this in another post of mine, is find an alternative and fast. An Ideal alternative would be something that is not a fossil fuel that way it would be cheaper because we would not run out of it. There are probably a lot of alternatives but we just need to research and try harder and maybe we can find at least something. I was driving with my sister the other day and we went to go get gas and I noticed how much it cost and then I looked at the price per gallon and it was almost $4 a gallon. It is probably harder then we might think to find an alternative to gas but if we don't try soon it won't be just schools that can not afford it. And also gas is a big pollutant so it would also help our planet to stop using gas.

PLN 10

This weekend I read a blog by Will Richardson titled Making Kids "Googlable" and what matters is that kids are giving themselves good job opportunitys and a good reputation on-line and on their record. In the blog he talked about how he has been asking principles if when they were looking to hire someone like a new teacher, have they ever "Googled" them. Most of them said that they have and some said they even searched them on Myspace. I don't think that that is such a bad thing to do because they were just looking for positives and negatives about the person. He also said in the article:

But then I ask them something along these lines: So if you are Googling people who you might want to teach at your school, what are you doing to insure the kids in your classrooms are “Googled well” when they go for their own interviews? And I don’t just mean telling them NOT to post certain things online. I mean what are you doing to help students shape their online portfolios so that when their future employers or future mates run the search, what they find is not just a lack of negatives but a potential plethora of positives? Not surprisingly, the answer is basically “not much.”

I think that it would be very helpful for someone to have pluses for them when they are searched on the internet. A lot of people who are looking to hire you will probably search you to see what good and bad things might come up. If you have bad things that come up when someone searches you then most people won't want to hire you any more. So it is important to have a strong reputation and positive things that show up when you are searched.

PLN 9

I read a blog today in the denver post called Teens get $505,000 in Harassment Settlement and what matters is the fact that stuff like sexual harassment happens still. The article talked about how an owner of a McDonalds is getting charged for sexually harassing 4 young girls. the articles states:

The girls' then 24-year-old manager allegedly bit the girls' breasts, grabbed their buttocks and made numerous sexual comments beginning in December 2003.

It is sad that this has happened to those poor girls and I am glad that they are getting payed a lot for it. You may think that $505,000 in a lot but for the disturbing things that those girls had to go through he should pay at least that and hopefully his job is taken away because who knows if that would ever happen again. There are a lot of cases of sexual harassment out there and it is very wrong. In the report that I did on animal abuse it said that most people that do things like that have had a past of animal abuse. So maybe we should take baby steps to eliminate this stuff and try to get rid of animal abuse and see what that does. Animal abuse is a major problem alone. I do not care what abusers have to say for them selves, what they do is wrong and they need to be stopped.

PLN 8

I read a blog from the Fischbowl called Another Shift? and what matters from this blog is how we are using up all of our fossil fuels and need to find an alternative. In the post he talked about how how the world is becoming ore and more dependent on gas and about how many other different energy sources that we have created like solar energy and wind energy. I think that if we do not find an efficiant energy source soon we will run out of oil and gas and we won't know what to do. I think that stored solar energy is a good idea because it collects energy and stores the energy we do not use for a day when the sun's not out. I can relate this to me because in elementary school I always did my projects on solar energy. It was always so interesting to me for some reason. My neighbor has solar panels on the top of their house and even though it was probably very expensive it probably ends up being a lot cheaper in the long run. Getting back to the subject, our fossil fuels are not going to last us forever so we need to find an alternative that will and we need to find it soon. Judging by the gas prices these days we do not have that much time to do it.

PLN 7

Today I read an article called Red Light Cameras Debated on the denver post, I'm sure you can guess what it was about by the title, but what matters is that drivers are obeying the laws and driving well. Every year a number of people die in accidents because they or someone else was driving badly or carelessly.The debate was:

Denver drivers will soon have firsthand information
concerning a national debate: Do cameras at red lights work? And are they worth
it?

I see drivers run red lights all the time and it scares me because if someone would have had te green tey would of easily gotten hit. The article stated:

Collisions involving drivers who ran red lights killed 900 people nationally in
2006 and injured 144,000, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety.

I know people who have lost good friends of theirs in car accidents because of stupid drivers on the road and it's sad because they don't deserve that just because other people are being stupid. If anything I think that they should make driving laws even more strict that way there would be less chance of an accident.