PLN 2

Today I read a post by Jeff Utecht on The Thinking Stick titled "Student Informatio Online", I think that the title is pretty explanitory of what the post was about, which was what kind of information students should and should not put on the internet. Also about how this problem is kind of an unwritten policy of what is right and wrong to put online. What I thought mattered from this post is that there is no rule or policy saying what is right or wrong to put out there. Of course you don't put your address, any of your phone numbers, SS#, your date of birth etc..., but what about last names and pictures? I know that in my 9th grade english class when we post things online we never ever put our last names only the first inital of our last names, but sometimes the things that we do post are required by our teach to post pictures of ourselves, family and friends. Is that safe? I think that this question of what is safe and what should be rule or not is in need of disscussion with all our modern technology and all the information out on the internet because you never know what is our there.

PLN 1 Semester two

Today I read a post from the Nata Village blog by Natavillage called Nikki sares her Nata Experiances. This post was about how Nikki a fundraiserer from Hong Kong talked about her experiance visiting the Nata village and seeing what kinds of things the money she is raising is doing to benifit these people in need. What I thought mattered from this post was the fact that she is there seeing what good she is doing, how big of an effect she is making and actually educating herself about why she is actually raising money for these people. Some people don't really know what they are raising money for I am not saying that it is a bad thing, but sometimes you have to really get a fill for what you are doing to be more passionate about it. That is what Nikki is doing and I think that it is really important because when you go and actually see what is going on then you know where you need to improve and what kind of help you are doing to help motivate you to do more. This related to me becasue I think this is a really good quality to have and I think that these kinds of things is what makes the world go round because if we did not help each other out we meaning the world then a lot of us would not have made it through these many centuries. I know and hope that one day I could be as inspired and dedicated as Nikki is because I am a person who would go through a lot to help at least one person out.

Goals for Semester 2

For the second semester of my 9th grade year I would all in all just do better in everything I do than last semester. For example last semester when I did my assignments I felt like I was just being lazy in doing them to get it over with and not gave them a lot of thought and time, so for this semester I am going to try to not be so lazy and give it my all. I would also like a much better grade than I did last semester and shoot for an A. In able for me to achieve that I think I would have to do better on my PLN’s because last semester that is what really hurt my grade I did them just to get it over with and a lot of times didn't do them, so this semester you will be seeing more PLN's from me. Another thing that affected my grade that I would like to improve on was the fact that I did not really proofread all my writing and this semester, even thought I really don’t like to proofread, I am going to try very hard to get in the habit of proofreading so my work can not just be a rough draft, but a final product. Those are my goals for this semester.

What Matters Final Presentation

Self evaluation

I think I did better for my first PLN presentation because this time I was not quite as well prepared. When I was presenting I felt like I kept repeating my self and getting stuck on what to say next, like the last time I presented I talked a little to quickly. I don't know why, but this time I was a little more nervous about presenting and felt like my voice was a little to shaky sometimes. Other than that I think I did pretty well.

PLN 25

This week I read a blog by Vicki A. Davis titled "Some practical recommendations on teens and social networking: based on some good primary research" and it was about how at school and how teachers kind of put off social sited that teens use today and kind of don't use it to their advantage and think that it is bad when it can be use to help teen with their educations.

What I thought mattered from this blog was that teachers are not using tools and sites like face book and myspace to help their students. Even to the world this is very useful you hear about this one girl or guy making plans to meet with someone from another country and instead of thinking of it as danger we could use it to communicate with people from other countries and get their opinions and make it as an educational resource.It was just a list of recommendations about ways to use social networks as an advantage and I think it is a very good ideas, here is what she recommended.....

Teens are not as savvy as they and we might think. They are not able to fully
assess risk, and even when they do assess risk they don’t necessarily behave
accordingly. Therefore schools should do more than scaremongering or reading the
riot act. They should:
Provide teenagers with practical strategies to help them avoid giving away private information.
Encourage the use of social networking sites in school in order to train students in their proper use.
Ensure that students fully understand that it is not easy to delete all traces of oneself from a community, because of comments left on other people’s blogs or profiles.
Encourage teachers to join online communities for the purpose of CPD. The school could even have its own Ning community, or similar, for the exchanging of ideas and resources, and for virtual staff meetings.
Taking part in an online community would help teachers to understand their
students’ experience.
Teenagers use social networking sites and similar Social networking sites in order to do school-related work. Therefore it may be a good idea to encourage popular social networking sites to provide easily accessible resources that students could make use of.
Encourage social networking sites to make deletion of personal data a one-click operation, or as near to that as possible"

PLN 24

This week I read an blog titled "How much does this really matter" by Dave and in this blog it talks about how the people around us believe and understand little science and how many people believe in more pseudoscience. Here are the stats.

Scientific:

66% do not understand DNA, “margin of error,” the scientific process, and do not
believe in evolution.
50% do not know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun, and a quarter does not even know that the earth goes around the sun.
50% think humans coexisted with dinosaurs and believe antibiotics kill viruses.

Pseudoscience:

88% believe in alternative medicine.
50% believe in extrasensory perception and faith healing.
40% believe in haunted houses and demonic possession.
33% believes in lucky numbers, ghosts, telepathy,
clairvoyance, astrology, and that UFOs are aliens from space.
25% believes in witches and that we can communicate with the dead.

Then at the end of the blog Dave asks if we should be concerned about the fact that more people around us think and believe more in communication with the dead than knowing how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun. What I thought mattered from this is that in the end he kind of mentions that people when they are raised do what they are told and kind of grow up to believe what they are told, but then again when they grow up they kind of don't really think about how they were raised and why they and their family believe in what they believe in. When I read that last part it kind of made me think about why my family believes in what they believe in and how I was raised and thought the was I was. Then I realized that I was not really thought to believe in a certain way and not really thought that I had to do this because previous generations did it. I was just kind of raised and thought to make my own opinions on things and to kind of not think one way and to be open minded. Of course to be honest and how to be polite, but not really how to think of things.

This relates to the world because when others are thought to think of things in a particular way they are kind of judged by it and it causes other problems like a chain reaction.