Swine Flu And The Power of Skype

After reading Karl Fisch's H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point, I would agree that Skyping a class while students are at home sick was a great idea by teacher Anne Smith. This is probably a good idea to keep other kids from getting sick and have a lot of missing homework for missing so much school. I really think that all try their best to have a Skype classroom. I feel that H1N1 is now a common sickness around the United States. We need a smart solution like this and others to keep schools from shutting down and limiting a child's education. I don't like the thought of my school shutting down and not being ready for the future. School is a place for me and other students to open our eyes to limitless possibilities and allow us to open our minds. What does the future hold for our schools and H1N1 (swine flu)?

Missing Yale Student Found In a Wall

Missing Yale student, Annie Le, 24, was found dead in the wall of a laboratory wall on what was to be her wedding day. This made me think about all the good someone does and is hurt somehow. A candlelight vigil was held for Le on the night of September 14, 2009. The thought of a human being dead for reasons unknown is just a petrifying thought and is a reminder that even the best of people are at the highest of risk like everyone else. I am not able to relate to this horrific news, but many people can. People have faced deaths in their families. Many of these family members were high-spirited people and always put a smile on their faces. A well known friend could also be used in this situation. The challenge is not to allow this to upset a person, but to move on.

What I Think of Our New Literacy

While watching the video, The Machine Is Us/ing Us, I noticed that the video said that we are teaching the machine, I then realized that this is true. We teach a computer new words when it believes that we have misspelled it, and we also teach a telephone, or cellphone, a new number. The video also says that text is all around hyper, which is also agreeable. text seems to be faster then writing out a word because all that needs to be done is to push buttons on a keypad.

In Clive Thompson's The New Literacy, he mentions that an English professor in London text, video and PowerPoint are, "bleak, bald, sad shorthand," but I believe that these items and more could help students, teachers, presidents, and other people get a better grasp of literacy. The story also mentions that before the Internet, people would only write if it was a school assignment or a job qualification. Now that we have this technology, we will write, or type, more than one paragraph even if we are just talking about our day on Facebook or Twitter.