Looking for Angels

In Rise Against’s song “The Good Left Undone” there is a lot of meaning in their lyrics but most people cant differ what it all means because to them it is just another song. What I mean by this is that most people listen to music just to find something they think sounds good, or something with a good beat. When I listen to music I really like to pay attention to lyrics and try to understand why they are what they are because most of the time you can find really good meaning in them. This is one of the reasons why I do so many PLN responses on lyrics and such. Anyway there is one part of the lyrics in this song that has a lot of meaning to it. The lyrics go “All because of you, I believe in angels. Not the kind with wings, No, not the kind with halos. The kind that bring you home, when home becomes a strange place. Ill follow your voice, all you have to do is shout it out!” When you hear these lyrics at first you don’t get much of an impression but when you look at them it really is explaining something. It is saying what people see angels as, spirits with wings and halos. The thing is though; this isn’t what angels are, it’s just what people believe they are. Like it says, angels are people that bring you home when home becomes a strange place. This is saying that anybody can be an angel but we just don’t realize it. Anyone that is willing to help you when you are feeling down or you’re hurt or anything. Those people are angels. I’m not saying that I don’t believe in angels and heaven and all that. I know that all of that is real but this song is talking about the angels that you see everyday but don’t realize it. All your friends and family, those are the real angels. You can always depend on them and they will let you down every once in a while but that is a part of life! We all get hurt and wish stuff didn’t happen but it is all a part of living! What I’m trying to get at here is that everyone has angels looking over them and keeping them safe whether they realize it or not; whether spiritual or living. So next time someone starts to think that there is nobody looking down on him or her, they just doesn’t realize who the angels are.

Survival Skills for Life

In the article “Educational Leadership” by Tony Wagner the topic of how students are learning and preparing for the 21st century is brought up and threw all of the research done, it seems like Tony Wagner is for this preparation. The biggest reason that makes me believe this are the paragraphs on the 7 survival skills. “Critical Thinking and Problem solving”, “Collaboration and Leadership”, “Agility and Adaptability”, “Initiative and Entrepreneurialism”, “Effective Oral and Written Communication”, “Accessing and Analyzing Information”, and “Curiosity and Imagination”. The author expands on all of these topics and is able to explain how they will help us in the world. To me though the biggest of the survival skills is Curiosity and Imagination because no matter what your job is or where you go to school, Curiosity and Imagination will help you. Curiosity helps you answer questions; while Imagination just helps with everything and makes you be more creative.
Also in this article the author expands on the idea of before students are taught these skills, first we need to redefine excellent instruction. I think what he means by this is that we can’t always just go to class sit down, take notes and get ready for a test. It’s ok to do that every once in a while but what really needs to happen is students need to get more involved with their learning. We need more energy in assignments as in move around a little, maybe make the learning interactive instead of taking notes all day. Also if we could work in teams that way if we get stuck, we can get help from a partner. These are some thoughts about Tony Wagner’s article “Educational Leadership”.

Inspiration in Many Forms

Earlier this week I saw a video. It is called the “Don’t Quit Poem” and it was a video that completely changed my outlook on my decisions. So I decided to do my PLN response on it and share how it changed my life. The author of this poem is actually unknown. But anyway when I saw this video it really just made me think about all the times in my life that I started something and then just left it and never took it back up. A lot of times I have given up in Parkour but that is a different story. But anyway not only did this make me think about the times I’ve given up but also everything I haven’t given up in, everything I have and for how thankful I am to have all of it. This video inspired me to not give up anymore until absolutely necessary which won’t happen much. If I can stick by this then life will be harder at times but the overall outcome will be amazing. I may have given up on many things but I have made it threw more. Now that I have talked about how this made me think, the question is; how would this affect kids and students if you were to show this video in schools? This question really makes me think because I know it would affect some people but there are also a lot of kids who think that they are to cool, don’t need to try any harder and even some kids who have already given up in lots of things and even life. These are the kids that I think need to see this video.
Also as long as I am on the subject, there is another video I have seen and I’m going to go into religious stuff here but the video is a skit about Jesus helping you threw everything no matter how hard it gets. I saw the skit in person and I was speechless after it. It made me think more than I ever had before. The skit involves the song “Everything” by Lifehouse. I personally think that everyone needs to see this video especially those kids that say they have given up in life and that kind of thing. It helped me and I know that it will help them weather it makes them think a little or a lot. . Both the videos I have talked about so far might not make people think the way I did but it will make them think and start discussions. The video about Jesus wouldn’t be allowed in school though so kids would have to see it somewhere else. The point I have been trying to get throughout this response is that little things can inspire us everyday weather a little video or skit or something like meeting your hero. We all have choices in life and some choose to give up on them and others keep going till there is nothing left or till they have accomplished whatever necessary.

Don't Live Life Behind Closed Doors

For my PLN response this week I decided to do it over the song “Behind Closed Doors” by Rise Against. The lyrics to this song really made me think. It just keeps talking about not staying behind closed doors but there is a bigger meaning to it. What it is really talking about is making change. We can’t all just sit around and hope something will happen. If you want something to happen then you need to get up and do something about it; for instance activism. It is a duty, not a choice. Only through activism can we this country by the people, and for the people. So really what that means is that at times we just need to cast away our apathy which is mainly what I was saying before. Really what this means is that we need emotion and enthusiasm in order to make a difference. I personally think that this statement is completely true. Think about it. A real world example would be Presidents. Whenever they are giving a speech or trying to make a difference they have emotion in there voice. They try to emphasize things in there speech to attract people’s attention and make us think about what they just said.

Also if you pay attention to the lyrics of the song its saying that we aren’t obligated to stay alive and be here but, we still are here because every single one of us serves a purpose on this earth. Some of us serve bigger purposes than others but we are all still equal. This song talks about how even though we get knocked down in life, we can all still get back up and make things right. We don’t just after one failure say that we’re done. No. We get back up and keep trying till we get it or till our life’s are back in order. This is what I think that this song is about. Casting aside our apathy and mistakes so that, we don’t live our lives Behind Closed Doors.

Skype, The Savior of the Tipping Point?

For my PLN Response I did a response to Mr. Fisch's article "H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point" What this article talks about is how some students are you Skype to stay up to date with there assignments and class work while they are home sick. When I read this article it made me think mainly about myself because when I was sick I went to check what I missed on that day. But then I read the article again and started thinking deeper. When I was sick I just went onto the school website and checked the little bit of work I missed and that was the end of it. These kids have been out for days or possibly even a week or so with stuff like swine flu or different flu’s like it. These kids had tons of work to make up so instead of checking the school website they go to Skype to try to talk to there teachers about the work they missed. When I thought about it, this seemed like a lot more affective method of getting to your teacher than going on the website. Think about it; what if your teacher hasn’t updated there page yet or doesn’t have all of the work they did in class on it. Then what? With Skype you can easily just send a message or even IM your teacher to find the work. So this might just save you from a zero or something.

Later in the article, Mr. Fisch talks about how if H1N1 gets any worse and if the outbreak could cause a lot more absences in schools, if people will start posting instructions on the Internet on what to do and how to stay healthy. This kind of goes back to Skype. When you think about it Skype and other social networks would be great places to post these instructions. Almost every teenager these days either has a Myspace or a Facebook, so what better way to get people to know what to do? This could be something that could save us from the tipping point of this epidemic. And I’m sure that people would read it because nobody wants to get sick. Posting something like a way to avoid getting H1N1 or any sickness on a social network would get the attention of kids a lot faster than Yahoo or on the News. These are my thoughts on Mr. Fisch's article "H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point."

Think, Find, Move On

For my education PLN response I read “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader” posted by Mr. Fisch. This article is about 5th graders from East Elementary who had to watch Obama's speech, blog about it, then have a discussion on it. This really made me think because when I was in Elementary School we never had to do anything like this. We almost never even used the computers. This is just showing me how far technology has come and how much it is affecting schools. Also it seems like these kids are pretty smart because if 5th graders have to blog about Obama’s speech then have a discussion on it then the kids must be gifted or just worked really hard because when you think about it we didn’t even have to do anything like this in High School. I personally didn’t even see the speech. Really these teachers are just trying to get there kids ready for Middle School though. Look at it this way. I will use an example from the show “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader”. You always see some adults go up on that show and they miss some very easy questions. So this is showing that either these people didn’t do well in school or they didn’t even make it threw school which is very possible because according World Socialist Web Site more than 1.2 million High School students drop out every year. That’s a lot. One of the points that I’m trying to get at though is that anyone can make it threw school; it’s the people that help themselves though that actually do make it though. Teachers are only at school to help people help themselves. That's all teachers do. Everything we ever need to know is in a book somewhere or we can easily find what we want to know on the Internet. I mean don’t get me wrong teachers are great people and they constantly help us and point us in the right direction but with the technology these days we wouldn’t need them. But along with that I personally think that no one would ever do work if they didn’t have teachers to tell them what to do. I wouldn’t. This is what Mr. Fisch's article "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader" made me think about.

Crime or Culture?

For my PLN response, I responded to an article posted by CNN about a 12 year old Yemeni girl who died in a painful childbirth. In Yemen and a lot of other Middle Eastern Countries girls are forced to marry very young and at the same time girls are always thought of less than guys and not appreciated, it has been like this for thousands of years but giving up your only child and forcing her to marry a 24 year old man. I mean there should be a limit at some point. And some girls are even younger, for instance, there is another story in this article about a 10 year old girl named Nujood Ali who was taken out of school and forced to marry a man who beat and raped her within weeks of their ceremony. These stories really made me think why people would allow this to happen or why parents would do this to their kids. But what we need to understand is that this is part of the Yemen culture and it has been ever since it was created. We can't just go in and tell them to stop. That's like the Yemen people coming over to the United States and telling us to stop being Christian or saying that we need to stop giving girls rights. Also when we look at them we think they are horrible people with no respect towards women, cruel and unusual methods, and bad living conditions. But what do they think when they look at the United States? When the Yemeni's look over here they probably think that our culture is all about crime, drug use, pre-marital sex, unfair laws, ect. We all know that it isn't completely like that. I mean we have problems but everyone does! One of our problem's is that whenever we hear about this kind of stuff, we just jump right to conclusion and "know" that is isn't right at all. Whenever a story like this gets on the news, we always make it sound bad but that is because they never explain the story behind it or about this other Countries culture. America is always quick to judge and we always will be. But that is just the way Americans have learned to act through thousands of years of fighting with other Countries and seeing there problems. We don't intentionally act like this it's just a natural response. Even with these problems though I say that we don't try to get involved because the only way we will be able to change anything is threw force and violence which there is already to much of in the world. I mean sure I think that it is wrong that people would do this but we have enough to worry about already just in the U.S. One last thing that we need to realize is that Europe and even western America used to do the exact same thing with forcing girls to marry at a very young age. So next time anyone see's something like this on the News or Internet or anywhere just stop and think, is it crime? Or is it culture?

Benefits of Technology

These days a lot people think that technology is a bad thing when really it is constantly helping people around the world. One of the main concerns of technology is computers and typing. People don't like this for reasons like it isn't real writing and abbreviations such as "lol" and "ttyl". I personally have never seen someone write any abbreviations like these on a paper or anything and i have never either. This is just one of my points about Technology being under estimated. One reason that technology is very helpful is threw the use of the Internet. Lets say that u miss an assignment at school or you lose a paper and it's do the next day. You can either email your teacher or print the assignment off. This helps a lot. It's like Micheal Wesch explains in his video, using the Internet is much easier and faster than writing something out. Plus there are features like spell check and grammer check so you don't have to worry as much about these kind of errors. An interesting fact from "The New Literacy" by Clive Thompson is that before he Internet was released most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a a school assignment. Unless you got a job that required producing text such as a job in the Law, Advertising, or Media. This actaully shows that the Internet helped get people involved in writting. These are a few of the reasons why i think that the Internet in a privilege and a tool, not something that hurts kids educatons and writing skills.