Women raise bar at colleges thesis

In the article “Women raise bar at Colleges” by Tamar Lewin, it says how women enrollment rates are higher compared to men going to college and what the colleges are doing to change that.

Fish Eyes thesis

In the story “Fish Eyes” by David Brennan, he explains the wars, good times, and rivalries of his siblings in his childhood and how they have affected him today.

Utterly perfect murder thesis

In the story “An Utterly Perfect Murder” by Ray Bradbury, the main character is crazy and ready to kill because of what has happened to him in his past with his old enemy.

Gender meeting 1

What I thought about our first meeting with the girls was; at first know one wanted to talk to anyone, only a few people stepped up and started asking around. Then after a while people started to go around and stopped being shy. Once a couple of the people started asking the rest of the class did. Then when we were done we were still talking to them but it was just about other things. We started having other conversations. Also during the class the girls didn’t stand up they waited for us to go around and talk to them. That is how the meeting went.

PLN 1

The “Did You Know” video was powerful because it shows how powerful technology will become in the twenty-first century. Initially I was surprised to discover that the number of text messages sent everyday is the same as the world’s population. Although this statistic means people can communicate with each other faster, this activity might interfere with other important activities. For example, you could be exercising instead of texting or reading a book. Another surprising fact I learned from this video is that three thousand books are published each day. One other thing that I found interesting was that there are more honor students in China then there are kids in America. This is very interesting, to me it says that the population of China is not only higher but maybe kids in America are slacking. Also I think that the idea that a thousand dollar computer will be smarter than all human beings is very interesting to think about. What will the computer be capable of or will we be able to control it? I thought the “Did You Know” video was very interesting and it made me think a lot.

Over the summer I read two books, one was The Loch, and the other was Meg: Hell’s Aquarium, both of which were by Steve Alten. The Loch was about a man named Zach who had just been through college and become a marine biologist. On one of his first major journeys they go down in a submarine trying to find a prehistoric squid sixty feet long, while they are down there thought they are attacked by other creatures and Zach is put in the hospital for a few months. Then he finds out his father is on trial for murder back in Ireland, he travels to Ireland to find out that his dad is convinced that the man was not killed by him but by the Lochness monster. To prove his father innocence, Zach decides to search for the legendary monster. At the same time some other people are disappearing. Eventually he finds it and also finds out why it has been attacking humans. One of my reactions to this book was that it combined a lot of historical information into a fictional story. It included different sightings that people have had and added to it from there. It was very good.
The second book I read was Meg: Hell’s Aquarium, also by Steve Alten. This book was part four in a series about a sixty foot prehistoric shark called the Megaladon. In the book the main character Jonas Taylor owns a large tank meant for whales that eventually turned into the home of the mother Megaladon, Angel, and her four babies who are now forty feet long each. They are getting more out of control and attacking more and more people. At the same time Jonas’s son David is invited to help an Arab aquarium that is being built. They want him to go to the Mariana Trench and capture other prehistoric animals. One of the creatures is one hundred and twenty feet long. They capture a few and at the end Angel and the largest one have a fight. I enjoyed this book a lot. I had a good reaction to the very well written climax. I could not put the book down. Both books were equally good for my summer reading assignment.

Class expectations

Good class expectations are very important for a class to be successful because you could not improve without, good teacher expectations, good student expectations, and good general class expectations. For a teacher, they need to be able to keep the classes attention and not keep a lesson strictly a lecture. They need to do some hands on things so that the student is focused and not thinking about other things. In my opinion teachers need to keep note taking from lectures to a minimum but also the student needs understand that notes are important. Although note taking and lectures are not the greatest thing or most fun thing a student expectation is to pay very close attention and get all of the important information out that they will need to succeed. The students need to know when it is a time for class and when it is a time for talking with friends. A very important expectation for students is to respect a teacher and give the teacher a break from having to deal with interruptions. Now for class expectations, the most important one is to get into a teacher to student relationship so that when the class starts you get into a good flow and everything goes smoothly. That is when work gets done and needs to get done every class. Although lectures in classes get boring sometimes, the class should still be able to pay attention and not be messing around. Student, teacher, and overall class expectations are very important for success.

PLN 4

In the video “The Machines are Using Us,” by Michael Wesch, I had some interesting reactions, like how quickly the internet is improving and in just a few years also, how the internet has taken over a big part in our lives. In my opinion it seems like the internet is improving a lot every year. There seems to be some sort of update or improvement every single year with websites or programs like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. In that sense it also seems to get more complicated every year then we find a way to make it faster or easier or both. Although we still read text books and novels in school one of my reactions to this video and in life is that the internet has become a part of class and in our lives in general. Our ways of communication have changed a lot. Websites like Facebook and MySpace have changed that. Not only on the internet but also with Cell phones we communicate way faster now. During the video I also saw the significance in the title; it basically says that the machines as in the computers and Cell phones etc. are now a big part of our lives and practically taking over our lives. I had a lot of reactions to Michael Wesch’s video, “The Machines are Using Us.”

PLN 2

In the article "Women raise bar at colleges" by Tamar Lewin about more women attending colleges, it told me a few things that I reacted to. For instance, it said that some colleges are letting men in without being as strict about grades just so that there are more guys. This is interesting because that means that women would have to work harder which I think isn’t fair to them. They are supposed to keep it fair. Although, it isn’t because they like men more, it is because of enrollment of men in college is down. Another thought I had was, maybe men aren’t attending colleges as much because they aren’t as interested in going through that for a job. I don’t think that is a good idea. They should go through college and get a good job. Finally, men need to attend college way more and get it done so that the attendance for men doesn’t go down even more.