I’m a big fan of the Kardashians, so of course I saw Twitter as being a great opportunity to find out what is going on in their lives. Just by looking at Khloe Kardashian’s Twitter, the people she follows, and the people who follow her, I can figure out a lot about her. I’m going to do it as if I had no idea who she was. Most of the people she follows are famous, and most of the others seem to live in the Los Angeles or New York City area. From this it seems like she most likely lives in the Los Angeles area and has friends in many major cities. This is saying something about her status, where she lives, and who she is friends with. From this alone, one may guess that she is famous. She has 684,713 followers, compared to the 58 that she follows. The background of her Twitter page is a professional picture of her, her statuses say things involving MTV, other celebrities, and certain charities that she is involved in. One of her Tweets was to celebrity Kendra Wilkinson: “I tweeted that yesterday!! LOL. So cute! RT @KendraWilkinson: how cute are these babies dressed up for halloween? http://tinyurl.com/yg9mbho.” From her Twitter page, someone can tell that she is famous, well-liked, and because of the charities she is involved in, she is a good person. It is so amazing that you can tell so much about a person just by looking at their Twitter page.
We Feel Fine for Adolescents
In class the beginning of this week we were introduced to an interactive Web 2.0 site www.WeFeelFine.org. When entering the website you are plunged into a seperate black screen holding cluters and clusters of rainbow dots moving in chaos all over the screen. The site at this stage looked facinating and colorful. Once you hover the mouse over a dot, you see the user’s state and country and the emotion of the user. One example from the site was California/ Isolated – I feel so old and nostolgic. There are also uplifting feelings too; every array of emotion from one end of the scope to another. You also have the option to organize them in catagories, in case you want to focus on one specific type of feeling you are able to.
In my opinion, I felt like this was a good theraputic website where a person who has a bundle of emotions can vent, good or bad. It is another way to get your feelings out there and communicate with the world. This site however does not let people strike up conversations but communicates the messages to complete strangers so they ccan unanymously relate to you and visa versa. Personally, I don’t think I would get much use out of this site because I find other ways of conveying my feelings to people, in person and in technology. I feel like this would be beneficial to adolescence more than my life stage because I know younger, middle school tweens and teens often struggle to be heard because they are not yet adults but not children either. I feel like this site can release emotions from this age group without having them be judged. When I was a young teen, I struggled a lot with dealing with stress and emotions and often bottled myself up when I was upset. I know myself as well as my peers at this stage cared a great deal about what other people thought. I think at this stage, a lot of adolescents are trying to find themselves and place as people and being judged is the last thing they want to worry about. www.WeFeelFine.org helps people release emotion and let them be themselves without worrying what other people will think of them, just real, true feelings.
Do we feel fine?
The website known as “We Feel Fine” is very interesting. It looks like a thousand of colored dots floating around the screen; but click one of the dots and you get to know how a stranger feels. The feelings are pulled from blogs all around the world from bloggers who mention the statements “I feel” and “I am feeling.” I think that this site is useful for giving demographical information. It is interesting to see the similarities and differences in people from all over the world and all different ages. However, the title of the website, “We Feel Fine,” confuses me because I read many posts that were about how badly people felt. I have come to the conclusion that the site is not just about how “fine” people feel. I think that one of the site’s goals is to allow people to see that other people may be struggling or having problems in life. This type of reassurance can allow people to feel human and not outcasted.
There is More to Twitter than Most May Think
I have to admit that at first I was a little hesitant about the whole Twitter thing. I didn’t see it’s purpose. Who wants to sit there and read about what I’m doing? And why would go on Twitter to find out what everyone else is doing? (Despite the fact that I am pretty interested in reading about the glamorous lives of the celebrities). But as time has gone on, I’ve seen a little bit more of it’s purpose. After reading all of the articles on Twitter, especially “100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter,” I’ve realized that there is much more to it than sharing with others what you do throughout the day. In this particular article it shows how Twitter is not only a resource for communication as most may think, but it can serve as an educational resource as well. Information can be found about business, marketing, finance, technology, communications, and many more! But most importantly to my circumstances, information can be found on education. For example, Doug Covey is a “nonprofit education provider and adjunct professor believes all kids are capable of success.” On his Twitter, there are links to various web sites and other Twitter pages that may be of value. Who knew Twitter could be such a good resource for research! I have to admit that now my feelings on Twitter have changed. It seems to be much more effective than I thought it to be at first. Not only is it a good way to keep in touch with others, but it is a great place to find certain information and resources.
Learning Communities- A Fun/Safe Environment for Everyone!
Once I began my TLC I class, I realized how important it was to establish classrooms into learning communities. Of course classrooms are meant for learning, but they should also serve as a fun, safe, comforting environment for students. The class started off with us not knowing much about each other, and by the end we all became very close. For the first time in my college experience, I was sad to leave a class for the summer. At the beginning of the semester we shared our “Me Boxes” with each other. In these boxes we put stuff that represents us. Some people brought in serious things and became emotional, while others brought in funny items and made the whole class laugh. This was a great icebreaker, and the perfect start to developing our class into a learning community. I believe that the most important thing to do at the beginning of every school year is to learn about each other and find what you have in common with other people. If this occurs, the school year is already off to a great start. Learning communities are meant to be educational yet fun at the same time. They are also meant to be safe, which means that no one should ever feel left out, and they should be comfortable in their own classroom. Students should work in groups often as well, because it gives them a good chance to interact socially with different people. Now I’m in TLC II and I enjoy it very much as well and I also learn a lot. I believe that these two classes are very effective and because of them, I know exactly what I want my classroom to be like when I become a teacher.
To Visit or to Call?
Last week in my Human Exceptionalities class, my professor told us about when he used to visit his students’ homes. He told us about many horror stories from those experiences. But he also told us that by visiting his students’ homes he was able to understand where his students were coming from and what they were dealing with at home. This allowed him to help students out and to understand that many of them were dealing with difficult situations at home. I do not hear about teachers visiting homes very often anymore. I hear about teachers calling home at the beginning of the year and periodically throughout the year to keep in touch with parents. However, I do feel that by visiting students’ homes, I would be a better teacher because I would be able to know about the students’ home lives. There are many obstacles that teachers deal with on a daily basis. There are also many obstacles that children deal with on a daily basis. If I have a student that has a horrible upbringing and a bad home life, I would like to be able to sympathize with that child and to make his school experience the best it possibly could be. I think it is a matter of how comfortable I feel as a teacher when I get to that point in my life.
Would closing a failed school system be right?
In my Characteristics of Knowledge Acquisition class we watched two case studies of two Elementary School principals. Both principals attended to schools whose poverty percentage was above 90%. One was in Springfield, Indiana and the other in an inner city school in California. They struggled with the children having poor attendance, violent behavior and passing standardized tests. In both cases the schools were on the verge of closing if test scores didn’t improve within the school year. The question was posed that do you think that closing a failing school system is the right thing to do?
In my opinion I think that closing a failing school system where kids did not meet standardized test qualifications would be showing failure. It would prove to faculty, the school system, the community, and students that they weren’t able to succeed and a solution would go unsolved. I think that with each problem a solution can be derived with the right guidance and resources. What the Springfield Elementary School did was create classes that stressed the success of meeting state criteria of standardized test scores and set goals for teachers to help the kids achieve. Under no circumstance I believe that a school system needs to be shut down. I think the right thing to do would be to provide more funding for tutors and workshops to help the test scores rise.
“We Feel Fine”
The website “We feel fine” is wonderful. I have always loved quotes and there are some pretty funny ones from every day people on there. I found it very unique how in depth the website actually goes with sorting through feelings. It is a self orgranized website and each feeling from every individual is broken down from color, size, shape and opacity, to truely express the feeling. It is very different from most blogs, it only gives you a sentence from the author and you don’t follow that one person every day, rather you click randomly to learn about others and whay they feel and need to say. It is an artform, just as blogging, that helps people understand more about others and hopefully brightens moods, or at least makes someone somewhere “feel fine”. I don’t know if i’ll ever post on this website, I’d rather enjoy everyone elses thoughts and continue keeping mine between myself, family and friends.
The YouTube Craze
“An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube” was such an interesting video to watch! The 55 minutes definitely flew by. I find it unbelievable that YouTube can go as far as making people famous. It makes me wonder if I can post one of the videos I’ve created with my friends, get as many views as some of these people, and even end up on television shows because of it! Who knew even posting a home video of your one of your kids biting another’s finger could become so famous? YouTube allows people to show who they really are and share some of their talents, interests, and humor with others. Its crazy how a video that costs nothing to make became the most viewed, even in front of the Super Bowl Sunday commercials. I was surprised to see that there are even classes taught solely on YouTube. I never thought of it as in-depth as it is described in this video. As the video says, while you’re filming yourself, you’re technically speaking to an inanimate object, the webcam. It is cool to think that you have no idea who is going to watch your video, how many people are going to watch it, or how popular it will become. I also find it interesting that once you put yourself out there through YouTube, it is pretty much always going to be there. Whether people like your video or not, they are always going to share their opinions with you, not matter what they may think. Not only does YouTube serve as entertainment for people, but it connects people as well. However, I believe some of the drama, such as questions of authenticity, could be done without because it is unnecessary for the purpose of YouTube.
Homework for Parents
One issue with teaching that has been and is beginning to become more of a problem is the quality of the homework/projects that children receive. Many times a student will come home with homework from a lesson that they learned earlier that day. Because they aren’t too familiar with a subject yet, they tend to have difficulty with their homework. Two boys that I babysit are extremely intelligent. However, they still need help with their homework at times and sometimes I feel as though I’m doing more of it than they are doing themselves. This could be due to one of two problems: either the teacher needs to not assign homework until the students have a better understanding of the subject at hand, or they need to change the quality of the work that will make the students be able to do it on their own, or with little help. I’ll never forget a project that I had to do for third grade. We had to pick a type of home that a Native American would have lived it such as, Tepees, Longhouses, Wigwams, and Adobes. The project we had to do was to make a model of the home we were assigned. In seventh grade I had to make a head of one of the Greek gods out of paper mache. Guess who did all of the work for both of these? My parents! I’ve had many more just like them too. I don’t understand the point of projects such as these. The students get nothing out of it because the projects really have no educational value, and it is nearly impossible to construct them without the aid of parents. Parents have been through school already, and there is no reason why they should have to go through it again. Today, especially since the economy is so bad, many parents don’t have time for any of this because they are working so much. Teachers should give students homework that they know they can complete on their own because homework is meant for students, not parents.
