PLN 3

Dear Mr. Fisch I agree with the point you make in the end of your blog “The CSAP is dead, long live the CSAP (err TCAP)” just like the CSAP all these test can’t tell us everything we need to know about a student. CSAPs just tell us what we might know about a particular subject but not if the student is a good learner, or if they are willing to take on a challenging problem. I guess they do show if you are good at problem solving by the math portion because math is a problem solving subject. I think the true program is that it shows no value to a student who may not excel in English, Math, and Science. There many other ways that a student can be successful. I think the problem with that is how you test for that while not bringing down the scores of those that do excel at math and science. I really don’t think that any one particularly test can grade a student on everything.     

Dear Denver Post: No More Horoscopes

Dear Mr.Fisch

                I read your article “Dear Denver Post: No More Horoscopes” and I disagree, although I do not personally believe in Horoscopes I still feel that the Denver Post should not change it. I think they should keep it in the Denver Post for three reasons, first one fourth of the population is a decent portion of the population, more people probably read Horoscopes then just that one fourth, and the Denver Post is built to make money. One fourth is a minority but that doesn’t mean that is not a lot of people. America’s population is three hundred million give or take one fourth of that is 75,000,000 people, what I am trying to say is that one fourth is not a small portion when we talk about people. Another reason is that even though one fourth of people believe horoscopes don’t mean one fourth of people read horoscopes. So there might be a larger amount of people who enjoy the horoscopes. The Denver Post goal is to make money not to educate; we live in America that’s just the name of the game. And the fact is that horoscopes have been around for a long time so they must be popular and making money or newspapers would not include them. Maybe one day somebody will open up the news paper to read the horoscopes and something about a breakthrough in wind energy will catch their eye. That is just another aspect to consider.

                                                                Jon D

Oh and right after I read your article I read my first horoscope kinda ironic “ others make demands, and you need to make a statement about what you think….”           

PLN 23

I watched Ted Canner’s “How cognitive surplus will change the world” the author brings up a good point but I think that there are more examples already. I think that Google might be a civic one too because of how it gives access to information that is pooled together to everyone. Even Wikipedia does this by pooling all the people’s thoughts together and distributing them all threw out the world. But he is right when he says that more of it will change the world because not only will we benefit from the intended use humans might become closer because we know what we are thinking. Education will benefit because when thoughts are put together it is easier to learn. The world will be help and support by this because will not only pool knowledge we will become closer. I will be affected by this because this cognitive thinking will become more and more used so I will have to use it.  

PLN 22

I watched a video by CNN London’s “prime minster thinks goals in Afghanistan are achievable” this is good news because the goal is to get all troops out of Afghanistan by 2014.The Prime minster said that there has been a huge increase in security and more and more reliable afghan troops. He also said that the increase in troops has helped too. I think that it is very good news because we can accomplish the U.S goal of killing the Al-Qaida. This has to do with education because they now will have to teach about U.S involvement in Afghanistan. The world will benefit form the removal of Al-Qaida. This will affect me because my nation is at war so it should affect me.      

PLN 21

 I watched RSA’s “changing education paradigms” the author brings up a great point of how an old education system doesn’t work in a new era. I think the most interesting thing is that education was built in the industrial revolution. Did they think that nothing would change; today we are built around problem solving because markets are so unpredictable and we must compensate for that. The other thing that was interesting was how he showed that only a few people benefited from this style and the rest were hurt. So why continue this? He also said that the system was like a factory and the date madders more than the skill. I think that this grossly affects education because it must be reformed. This affects the world because the world’s education must be reformed. This affects me how I’m taught affects what I do.

PLN 20

I read “Obama awards Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta Medal of Honor; first living honoree since Vietnam War” what this man did was impressive but what I saw and bugged me the most was how the reporter stated it that he was the first survivor since Vietnam. He never stated that few Medal of Honor recipients ever do live. Without this background knowledge you could come to the conclusion that very few brave soldiers survive and that this is a bad war. The point is that the full story needs to be communicated with all relevant background so that they reader or listener has the facts to make a complete correct conclusion.  The History Channel showed me that after Vietnam the United States military investigated the news reports about the war and found the many were false, there was even a report on a made up battle that the U.S. lost. This was clearly the media’s attempt to influence people’s opinions about the war. I also read a book Lone Survivor and the military reported that the survivor was missing in action. Well the media thought they could get a better story if they said that he was dead, and believe it or not when he got home one news station tried to blame the military for the false report. I think this does impact education as we all hear the media and make conclusions that influence us- students, teachers and principals.  If we are making the wrong conclusions this could lead us to make additional incorrect conclusions as we draw upon our knowledge when reading an article. As George Bush can attest, getting the correct facts on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction may have lead us, as a nation, on a different course of action. 

PLN 19

In George Wills "Lost in Electronics"  I think the author is overreacting and what he believes is because his generation was told some of the things that we do hinder learning. Take music for example, when he probably grew up he was told that it was bad to listen to music while he worked but studies show that as long as it doesn’t distract you then music helps. This probably takes I-Pods out of play because music is obviously not a problem if it can improve learning. Now video games I feel are very underestimated and criticized when some are productive. Most video games I know in some shape or form make me think or solve problems. Not all video games are bad. There are strategy games and even the shoot um up games like the Call of Duty series have a story. For example Call of Duty Black Ops is quite a complicated story line and yes we listen to it instead of read it so it does not improve our reading skill but what else is lost? I honestly think that the difference between these story lines and a book is one you interact with and the other you read. So why does the book make you think more, what does it do? Now for phones it is a form of quick communication but in the end it does have negative affects. Every generation is different and I can’t see this as big as a problem as he suggests. I do agree with him that we should just try to make them better for the brain. Education needs to realize that we do get bored and work around it to try to wake us up. The world needs to be a little nicer to teenage boys because it is actually kind of prejudice of how we are treated as inferiors why does age make you so much better than me? So I need to realize that there is more to life then electronics.