No More Snow Days???

     I saw on the news a couple of days ago that a school in Columbus, Ohio is making it so on snow days, students can go online at home and either go on video chat or work online with other students. I think this is a little much for the students. Snow days are someing kids hope for in the winter; just to have a surprize to wake up in the morning and realized you dont have to go to school and get to sleep in.  I think there will be many problems with this because since there is bad weather, the power could go out or the students will just not do it and act like it's a regular snow day. The kids are stressed enough from school and they should get a sudden break from it once and a while. Snow days are rare and I think they are something that should have absolutly nothing to do with school except for the fact that there is none.

This is one article that I found on it that quickly summarizes what this school is doing.

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms Respose

The Video

 I defiantly agree to what he was saying. I really like the part when he was talking about ADHD and how kids keep getting distracted and how it is not a health issue, it’s the way they are being taught. I think that the paperclip test that he was talking about was also very interesting and it was very important to understand that they first tested kindergarteners. This showed that it is because they are taught a certain way and their thinking is decreasing in these schools and the way they can solve problems is becoming worse. This is a very good video and the animation and speech really helps to understand this growing education problem.   

Google Timeline

     One easy way to view the news today, instread of looking at different news websites, is Google Timeline. It writes out all of the news like a timeline and has the dates at the top so it is all cronologicly organized. There is also a search at the top if you are looking for something inparticular. You can look up everything in the news from sports, to quotes, to music and movies. It is really haelpful if you just want to look up current events quickly.

Get a Voki now!

Creative Learning=Creative Thinking

There is so much information and talk about students, no matter what grade they are in, and about the way they are learning in school and how kids aren’t learning the right way and how they aren’t as focused because they don’t see the point in it. The key to making a solution for this is to teach and learn creatively. My sister is dyslexic and has gone to two private schools in Massachusetts and the way they teach is completely different compared to many public schools. It might seem that they teach in a imaginative way because they are teaching dyslexics and that is absolutely true but why can’t students in public schools be taught the same way? There is nothing wrong with this way and it will defiantly improve the students’ attitude towards school.  The teachers at these schools get their students involved in the class more and think of creative ways to make the students understand and absorb everything. My sister is 2 grades below me and all of her subjects in school have all gone past what I learned this year at least a year ago. The students don’t feel like they are pounded with work because of the creative way they were taught and they get through the material faster because they are not going directly by textbook. Even though they have to teach the curriculum, they do it in a way that the students understand and remember and this helps them get prepared for college and jobs. Companies are looking for the most creative people, not the people who know everything. They stress communication in the schools she has been through and they want to make the students feel that they are the most important people in the building, not the teachers and staff. Creativity is defiantly an important feature in education and should be stressed in schools today.   

Ways To Get More People To Look at Your Blog

     Adding gagets to your blog is very helpful. It gives a visual to the reader looking on your blog. Another way to get more people to look at your blog it to make it organized, instead of just writing random facts, write what you think and maybe the reader feels the same way. Blogging is very different from just wring facts on a website, it is all an opinion and there are many people with the same opinion as you. I think that one of the most impirnat things about intresting blogs is how they look. When someone goes on a blog they usuall look around and then read. If it looks apealing to the eye, then people will find it more intresting. I try to use all of these techniques and they are becomming very helpful to me.

Zotero (the research tool)

Zotero is a research tool that works with firefox and helps keep track of your research, such as links and notes. It is all neatly organized on the bottom rigth corner of your browser so you always have it when you are online. I have used this many times and it is so helpful. I really like how if I need to do a citation on a link and don't remember what website i used, I can go down to Zotero and find it easily. I also really like how you can write little notes with each link and write about each website. So when I am looking for a certian website in Zotero I don't have to look at each one, i can just read my little notes and figure out which one I want to look at. Zotero is really helpful for school research projects or anything that requires looking at alot of links for information.