TED talk by Alisa Miller

this presentation by alisa miller talks about the distorted views people, especially americans, have about world news. this presentation opened my eyes to how much the media picks and chooses what stories are being covered. i do not consider myself a person who follows the news, and after watching this video, i did not feel i am missing out on much.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html




This video is only about 5 minutes long but it delivers its message very clearly, what we watch as news is not news at all. the news simply makes us consumers of the lives of celebrities. is that news?

this map portrays the number of seconds of news coverage the US dedicates to a country. the month is was made their was major news stories taking place all around the world, yet the US put most news coverage on the death of a famous celebrity, anna nicole smith.

CELLPHONE USAGE

CLICK ON PICTURE TO VIEW THE SPREADSHEET AT A READABLE SIZE

I was curious to find out how popular cellphones really are. It became clear that I am not the only one that relies on their phone everyday!

I asked people for their opinions about the acceptable age of cellphone use. It seemed that everyone had strong opinions about this matter.

click on the image to view the results.

google for me!

I was pleasantly surprised when I explored the different applications on google for educations http://www.google.com/educators/tools.html. This page offers so many different possiblities in terms of using technology in the classroom.

I think it is great that some classrooms use blogging as part of an everyday school experience. That is one application that I would use in a classroom. It occured to me that if I teach my desired subject of Visual Art, then it would be a challenge to incorporate technology into everyday use in the classroom. Blogging would be an easy way to do this, as you can ask a student to blog about any subject area.

I do not completely understand the goole sketchup application, but i think it would be really interesting to use with higher level art students. I think that it is important for students to be able to connect art with other with other "subjects" in school. This application would allow students to be able to see the art value in architecture.

the application google sky looks incredibly interesting. This holds so many potential inspirations for art projects. There is such a visual component to this application and can be used in many ways in a lot of subject areas in all age levels.

the classroom activities application is amazing! It's like having a little handbook on how to use technology in a classrook. When I am in a classroom i will definetly use this!

i am a photographer?

Photo of the day for February first. I was in Saskatoon at Queen's House, which is a retreat house my Auntie runs. I wanted to get a picture of something that I wouldn't have the chance to photograph on a normal day.

Photo of the day for February second.

This one is just my eye and my split ends haha! I plan on naming each photo but havn't gotten there yet. So I am open to suggestions!

TED

For my computer education class i was asked to watch a video on the Technology, Entertainment and Design website. The video was Sir Ken Robinson's talk on Creativity and Education (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html). This video really struck me because he spoke of soooo many truths about the education system. I agree that education has way too little focus on the arts and is only focused on creating "university professor" type students. I think that it is extremely important that students use their body's for more than a transportation device for their heads! Students need to be exposed to the arts, not only exposed but know that the arts have as much potentional for a successful future as the rest of the "subjects" in school.

This video really reminded me why i want to be a teacher.