Why do teens commit suicide?

An article reviewed by Matthew K. Knock called "Suicide" explains the reasons behind suicide. Many people believe that suicide is something that has been running through that person who commits suicides, head all their life and that they planned it for that particular night. This is a possibility , but most cases that's not how it's going to turn out. The kids who are most likely to commit suicide, are those who you would never expect to do so. None of them really want to die, they only want to escape from terrible situations at home,school or anywhere. The reason why most people are able to deal with everything is because the majority of suicidal teens have depression. What does depression do to people? The answer is it forces teens to focus on the negative side of everything and not think about ways to reverse the negative side. Suicide isn't anything to make fun of or forget about, there is a reason for it and its not just to get attention. It is to get a message across that you need help. If it gets to the point of death, then no one was there to help.

Knowing VS. Thinking for Yourself

In Tony Wagner's article "Rigor Redefined" ,the point he is trying to get across, is that students need to start thinking for themselves. This gets me into a question for you, the reader,
have you ever sat in a classroom and thought, I know this information, because the teacher taught it to me, but, if she hadn't, would i still be able to figure it out? It will never help students if they are always "spoon fed" the answers. Jobs now don't require you to know, they require you to think and to question. Although,the problem is, we would have to, pretty much recreate the curriculum in schools, to have this plan work out. It would have a lot of benefits, such as, better careers, better lives, and less stress. Also it would force us as students to figure out the problems were given, and not be shown how to solve it by a teacher. Now, since there is a lot more information out in the world, were beginning to know less and less about past and present information. If we knew how to question and solve problems then we would be able to catch up faster with information that's out in the world. I agree with Wagner's beliefs, strongly, because knowing doesn't help anyone but analyzing problems for yourself does. All in all it would make a huge, positive impact on students today, if schools taught classrooms in this way.

Are Dogs Smarter Than We Think They Are?

This week i watched a video called "Meet a Dog who can read" with Lisa Howells which made me wonder how smart dogs will be in the future. Most dogs are thought of as stupid and lazy, but really if there trained the right way they can be smart maybe even as smart as you. This dog could read commands and then actually act them out showing just how smart dogs are. It also reminded me of a video that i watched of dogs talking through there bark.
Yes it may be funny but just think about if dogs were taught to actually talk, and walk and read. Also i think its interesting how certain breeds of dogs are smarter than other breeds, is behavior really important to intelligence? And is it the same for humans.
I think its very interesting that dogs can learn up to 165 words, aware of differences of to five and can calculate that, this is the same for a 2 to 2.5 year old.
In conclusion dogs are not as dumb as you may think they are.

Is More School Better?

President Obama wants students in America to compete better with kids across the world. According to him our test scores are a lot lower than kids in other states he expressed this in the article "Obama would curtail summer vacation" by the Associated Press. How does he want to address this issue? He wants to cut down summer and make school days longer.

First of all, many kids would probably hate going to school longer and I don't believe it would help that much. Just the other day I was listening to the Dom and Jane show and they were talking about how smart kids in Japan are. They said that the reason kids in Japan are way out beating America in test scores is because they only let their best students advance in their education. The other kids have to go to a trade school. If president Obama does decide to do this he will probably be doing more bad then good.

In the article it said that kids need summer. Without it they wouldn't actually retain as much as with it. But as summer wouldn't be too bad to loose, extra time in school like 3 hours would be very bad. All students don't use that time to hang out with their friend some students are doing homework all night. If we had less time then kids would be exhausted from working on homework and not do as well. Some kids even said that if they made school longer they would just walk out.
One question i had while reading was:
What difference would it make to send kids to school longer?
My perspective on this is that making school longer would hurt kids grades more then helping them. Also it would be a lot more expensive and many poor kids would have to drop out of school.

Doing Work;Better than Learning it?

It's a little strange writing about a PLN in my PLN, but I found " Its Who You Know" by Karl Fisch to be very interesting. It showed me that what I'm writing is for a reason and not just for a grade. I noticed while reading the article that he is correct because just from learning something you're not applying it to anything to actually learn it. Fisch wasn't referring to "who" as a person, he was relating it to the PLN which I thought was really interesting. Yes he didn't get out all his thoughts and it was confusing since he wasn't done but I got it. I think this relates a lot to what we're doing in class because it has to do with what we work on every week, our Personal Learning Networks. I agree with him in the context that PLN's are helping students a lot more than school would without them. I just wonder by how much they are helping students in and out of the classroom. With these types of writing I think people are putting more thought and actually using what they learn in their voices and in their everyday live's. Without it, the world wouldn't, I don't think, advance as much as it has. Does elaborating on text help as much as all of the teachers say it does? Or is there something better that we haven't discovered yet. Could students be so smart eventually that their minds would be too smart for our technology? These are questions that this article brought up while I was reading. It makes me wonder if it really is the same as who you know is who you are? It really seems to relate to it but how? It changed my perspective of PLN's to a great extent because it showed me that it was taking that extra step from just learning and getting the grade.

Response to the Killing at Yale University

How often do you hear that someone dies on their wedding day? The day everyone looks forward to since their in elementary school. Its really sad that so many people die each and every day weather its murder, accident or suicide . What was the killers motivation? It could have been from jealousy or anything for that matter. And its really weird that they shoved her body in a wall. I have never heard of any killer doing that kind of thing. Also its strange that she wrote an article about crime just a week before her death. Its just so ironic that she died very shortly after the article was written. No one had any suspicions about anyone around them. Normally in these type of crimes
someones at least a tiny bit suspicious.
While i was reading i noticed some clues...
1. It was her wedding day so it could have been someone who was mad she was marrying the guy she was marrying or jealous of her.
2. She was hid in a wall so obviously they tried to hide it and she didn't commit suicide.

All in all this article really shocked me and is very interesting to me but very very sad.

Response to A Low Fedelity Education

People are replacing good and perfect education with OK mediocre education. There basically not caring about it anymore and not trying to make it as perfect as it can be. But now OK is seeming better than perfect education. Now there finding out that "perfect" really isn't that good. I think its crazy that the OK not polished just mediocre education is better than perfect and polished. They work a lot harder on the perfect education and its not better than OK education? I'm not sure if i really agree with that but who knows maybe it is better. They might try to make it so perfect that its no longer perfect at all. I personally think that having information right there in front of us doesn't help us as much as taking time to look for it. The worlds not as easy as school sets us up for its a lot harder and theirs so many more difficulties. I do not think that the world will be face to face much longer and by that time the world will be a lot less social. I don't think it will be good for this world at all and eventually the world won't be the same as it is now.

Mesching The New Literacy with Weschs Video

Michael Wesches video and the article, The New Literacy both agree on the fact that the Internet is changing the way people think as learners and improving writing skills. Clive Thompson's article directly relates to the video. This article is a part of a magazine and the video is a part of the website YouTube.



What matters in the article is that something so simple is improving writing skills. Not by just a little bit but by a lot. Literally improving by grade letters. Before the Internet no one ever did as well as they do now. Now studies can prove that people who use the Internet now do better than those who don't. From video posts, blogs, and social networking you're learning more then you would ever think. From a personal perspective i know that every time I'm on the Internet I'm learning better comprehension, word choice and punctuation. Most of the time before the Internet and social networking after school was done no one used all they knew. But if you give the writing a purpose then teens will use what they know in blogs and Internet posts.

In class were posting blogs and mostly doing our work on the Internet which i think is going to accommodate everyone. This will teach even horrible writers in our class at least to get better. I personally don't believe that writing on paper really helps that much other then maybe improving your handwriting. Also while you could be done with a piece of writing online you would still be working on, on paper. It would be the same work but in half the time.



With the Internet people all over the world can share information with people who don't know the info. even if they don't know that their doing it. Jobs today even include the Internet and its more effective and faster than hand writing. If people didn't have the technology to share things with other people then we wouldn't be the same and neither would our writing. Sharing just words on the Internet makes up a huge part of us. It proves that the Internet has a very big purpose in writing.

If people are so advanced in thought and writing now how much more will they advance in the future? It makes me think about how far we've come and how the world would be without it. Its amazing how people can just be online having fun chatting with their friends and actually be learning something. It has changed my perspective on writing a lot because i never knew that what i was typing on the Internet was actually improving my comprehension. I can't wait to see how the world is going to advance in the future...