Audio Blog 1

If you're having trouble hearing the audio, here's the link to it online:
Milestone 7

Stories Posted

So, after sitting here posting my stories for the last two and a half hours, I'm going to say that I'm slightly a little relieved/frustrated. I found voicethread to be almost unbearable, as I cannot for the life of me get my mic to pick anything up. Along with that, the voicethread seems to be progressing too quickly through my pictures, so even if it were picking up sound, it would not be on the picture long enough for everything said to get through. However, I was reasonably impressed with the animoto application. I really enjoyed that, and it was practically painless. You find pictures on flickr or your computer and upload them, that's all. I see little point in performing anything on Scrapblog as that just seems like a glorified, online PowerPoint. It would be less effort to create a PowerPoint and just post it online, so that's what I think I'm going to do from now on instead of using the Scrapblog application. I do have to say that I am extremely glad that I'm done with these things though. My animoto didn't last a full minute, but I'm hoping that no one is going to complain too much about that.

CI 335 Voicethread Story # 3

CI 335 Scrapbook Story #2

CI 335 Animoto Story 1

Blog Group A Reply

These are the blogs I responded to this week:

http://paulsciblog.blogspot.com/
http://sacsquatch.blogspot.com/ &
http://jimbosblog-jimmy.blogspot.com/

Selling your Soul: Education Style

So, this is the new way for students and teachers to interact...money. Well, it had to come down to this didn't it? Isn't money always the breaking point for every educational issue that we, the United States of America, face. If we just throw money at the problem, it will go away. I have news for these people, what happens when the students spend their little stipend and have nothing left to fall back on because they don't want to retain the knowledge, they just want the cold, hard cash...nothing. That's what happens, they fall victim to the same poor schooling and social status that they were in prior to this "Harvard" study. Of course Harvard wants to throw money at kids...they have plenty of it. The fact of the matter is that students learn and retain knowledge only when they see the need for long-term use of it. Can I remember my Constitution test, no. Why? Because I really didn't feel it relevant for daily use...I learned it up to a certain point (the test) and then I forgot it because that was the easy thing to do. What this bribery is doing is taking stipends to a whole different level. It's causing some students to perform that type of garbage regurgitation for their whole high school career. Are we doing any of the students a favor, no. Will the "good" students get good grades regardless of the money, yes. Will the "at-risk" students remember and process anything they learned from the previous year, not if they're only in it for the money. I was looking for a good closing to my rant when I stumbled across a quote. Now, normally I only reserve quotes for research papers and things that really irritate me. This happens to be neither, but, because of the importance of this experimental education and the slippery slope I feel that it is leading us down, I thought I would try to find a quote that summarized my thoughts. My teacher always told me that someone far smarter always had said something far more eloquent than what I would say on important subjects. While she was quite a downer, I believe that is mostly true. Anyways, I digress, but the quote I found fits well, and is by a classic American that pulled himself up out of poverty by his own bootstraps, Henry Ford. He said, "If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability." This quote basically summarizes my position; whether teacher, parent, or taxpayer, money does not make for a long-term answer, the thirst for knowledge is the only thing that can really make a lasting impact on a student's educational experience.

Other links on this topic include:

Sun-Times Commentary
Daily Illini Opinions
Dana Goldstein's Blog (no idea who she is)
USA Today's Opinions