Help Conserve Water!

        It might be hard the get the concept but the world is actually running out of water. Of course we have wide vast oceans but it is extremely expensive to convert salt water to pure, fresh water. There are so many countries in the world that don’t have enough water. In the U.S we are so lucky to have a working shower and kitchen sink and we take it for granted. There are so many things we can do to help preserve water. The first and probably most important is to stop taking super long showers. I am a victim of taking long showers and I have to say that it is hard to quit but it is really important that you do because all of that water just gets washed down the drain. Another thing is not to leave the faucet running for too long. Just remember that there are little things you can do to preserve water because we are so lucky to have more than enough, where as in parts of the world people have to walk miles to get water for them and their family. We are so lucky.

For more information about the water movement: click here!

Google Docs.

     One tool that I think is really important in the classroom is Google Documents. It is a web tool to create documents (like word documents) but you can have multiple people work on it at the same time from different computers. It is great for group projects or for teachers to make changes to it or comment on it. It is also great for taking notes in class because multiple people can have access to it. It is a great tool to use in the classroom and it makes group projects go so much smoother if everyone can’t meet in one place to type up something. You can upload photos and type just like on a word document. It is really helpful in class and I think it is a tool that defiantly should be used in classrooms.

It Can Be Too Much

School  can be very overwhelming sometimes. Especially in high school. There is so much going on that teachers forget that their students have 6 other classes to deal with. For example if a teacher gives homework tonight (let’s say it's Monday), a 1 page essay due in a week, and a quiz on Friday. Then another teacher assigns homework tonight, a quiz Wednesday and then a test next Monday. And let’s say 3 or 4 other teachers do the same thing but instead of an essay due next week, it’s a project. Or instead of a test next week, it's a presentation. It becomes a huge overload of work. All of these assignments are a big part of your grade so you can't slack off on any of them. It gets crazy to think when you get home Monday afternoon you have to think about all the homework due tomorrow, then  the essay, the test, the projects due next week, and the quizzes  this week. Students can get really stressed and most students do extra activities after school which makes it all even harder to maintain. I think teachers need to spread out the work they are giving or give less of it because 7 classes a day is bad enough and then they have to give so much work to do at home on top of the work the students do in school. Somethimes it can be too much.   

Being Good/Not Good at School

After reading this small article about being good at school  it got me thinking about the students that are good at school and the students that aren't. I really like how he siad that school is like playing frisbee. You can be good at it but if it has nothing to do with what you want to persue then it's almost pointless. I definatly think all classes should be about things the kids are intrested in. If you play frisbee and you don't like it, you are not going to try or do you best in it. It becomes boring to you. This is the same in school. I definatly think students should try different subjects to see if you like it but it only takes about 1 game of frisbee to decide if you lwould like to play again. It doesnt take a whole year for a student to find out if they like a certian school subject.

iPads in the Classroom

The question had always been Mac or PC, but since the iPad came out it is almost like another kind of computer. I think it is a great idea for students to have iPads in class. They cost so much less that laptops and most of the millions of apps they have are free. If schools were to get iPads instead of laptops they would be saving about 50% of what they would be paying for students to have laptops. I feel that there are two downfalls to having students have iPads. iPad's are much more delicate than laptops and high school students aren't really graceful people. The iPads will definitely break if dropped on the floor with no case. Also I feel like the iPad has the capability to becoming very distracting. Of course students will be distracted with laptops anyway but most have worked on laptops before or know how to use them because they are just like any other computer only portable. iPad's are new, and many students haven't even played on the iPad for more than 10 minutes. It will defiantly take a while for students to get used to it and not getting distracted by all the apps they can get. I don’t think iPads are hard to learn how to use, I just think they have so many capabilities that it’s hard not to get distracted.  Even though these downfalls are very important I think that the iPad still should be the choice for a high school learning technology because when the kids graduate and have careers, who know what technology will be out then.     

Intresting Things of the Future

I went on Time Magazine's website and there was a list of the top 50 inventions of 2010 and some inventions caught my eye:

- The first one that I thought was incredible was a bus that drives on the highway that is raised above the cars and drives on a rail track on the highway. It goes slower than the normal highway speed but it allows cars to pass underneath it. Also, if something goes wrong with it, and it stops, cars can still pass underneath it and it won’t cause traffic. It is in China right now and they are waiting for permission for test runs.  It the picture below it is at a rest stop on the highway but it doesn’t block traffic. Genius.

- Another invention that caught my eye was "the car from the future" it was invented in Hungary and it is called the Antro Solo. It can fit up to 3 people (including the driver). One thing that is really interesting is that the driver is in the middle of the car and the passengers are on either side of them. The passengers have peddles and they peddle for electricity for the car. The car’s main's source comes from an electric motor that gets its power from solar panels.

- Lastly, People are trying to figure out ways to get natural energy source but they keep thinking wind is the best choice (wind turbines) but instead of wind, why don’t they use ocean currents? A Swedish company called Minesto created and underwater kite that gets energy from the ocean's currents. They say it generates 800 times more energy than sky sources. Even in calm waters it can generate 500 kilowatts of power!

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.