ISP

Hey Shelby and Amanda here...our presentation is going to be AWESOME!!!!! we plan on talking a bunch, show of our spectacually, amazing, fantasical scrapbook (FYI it is 2:30 in the morning). We will also supply you with wonderfully yummy food and some good videos!! YAY!!!! It will be an adventure like no other!! Come to class tomorrow and experience our Mini Japan!!!! I'm excited aren't you?

Japan!!

Okay, so.. Shelby and I are working on our ISP together and it is going to be awesome! We haven't really gotten much of it started yet but we have lists and plans and schedules.. probably none of which we will follow but it makes us feel better to say we have them. Our presentation is going to have alot of fun stuff for the class to do.. We will talk, then we will make you eat sushi, then we will talk again.. and make you do more fun stuff.. I think that was all we had to blog about so we are going to go actually start our project now :)

xo Amanda and Shelby.

technology and homeschooling

Okay.. I know we're not supposed to do a blog on our own presentation but we talked a little bit about homeschooling and why it would be bad if everyone started being home schooled over the Internet, and I want to talk a bit more about that. First off, if everyone, or almost everyone, were enrolled in a 'virtual school' there would be jobs lost for teachers, secretaries, principals, custodians, cafeteria staff, and the list goes on. Also, there would be students who live in the country or on the outskirts of town, or who aren't active with sports or activities in the community who would not meet other children and learn the life lessons needed from that. To make a friend a child must learn how to socialize with other people, learn to read people's emotions, share, work together, talk, listen, be there for the person. If we had a virtual school system, many students wouldn't learn these lessons that are essential for life. Also, they wouldn't learn about interacting with teachers and adults in charge other than their parents. They wouldn't learn how to deal with people they don't like or how to suck-up to people they do.
Even with all these problems I think the biggest is the parents. School is a good place for children to go where they can be taught by an unbiased adult. If everyone were taught at home, many would be left unsupervised when their parents went to work. Others would be babied by their parents or bullied by their siblings. And then there are the parents who don't care. If a childs education is virtual and the parent doesn't care about the child doing their work, the child wont do their work. It would be educational suicide to many children to have a virtual-based school system.

presentations, pt.1 {perfect school}

ok so.. I unfortunately ( I think) arrived too late to class to hear the first presentation, though I'm told by Erica that it wasn't all just Jeremy talking and that it was actually pretty good.. so I'm going to believe Erica and say that the presentation was awesome! So good job to Erica, Kelsey and Jeremy. The next presentation was.. interesting.. Rob did a very good job with the creepy "perfectly calm" voice.. and Darcy and Lee were good with the 'dancing'. I definately agree that our lives would be much easier if we got to have an extra hour of sleep but I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon. And even if it did we would gradually change our concept of 'late enough to go to bed'.. For me, If I look at the clock and it says 12:00 I know I have to go to bed, but if we got our extra hour of sleep in the morning, My concept of bedtime would eventually shift to be whenever the clock says 1:00. Then I'm not really getting anything extra out of it except for loosing an hour of sunlight in my day. Maybe they should set grade-school back an hour and make them wake up earlier so that by the time they reach high school they'll be used to it??
And the breakfast period is also a good idea if we could think of a way to make sure kids came to it instead of sleeping in the extra half hour or so..
I also like the idea of smaller class sizes.. I enjoy knowing everyone in my Gifted class.. especially when I go from Gifted and Spanish (which technically has 6 students) into my 32 person calculus class and realize I don't know most of the people in my class. If you asked my to name off all 32 students I could tell you.. maybe 20 of their names.. I know.. thats sad.. I'm really bad with names and its not really a social class but still..
Anyways.. this is getting long so I'm going to wrap it up.. Good work on the interpretive dance Rob, Lee, Darcy and Connor. I'll post tomorrow on the technology thing.. probably homeschooling.. maybe.. :)

Take A Sad Song And Make It Blasphemous??

OK, so.. First day wasn't so bad.. we had popcorn which made everything worthwhile. Second day I didn't have to watch! (Thank you U.N.!!) Last day was ok.. the end of the movie is not as bad as the rest of it.. So I survived the horror of watching it. I have to say that my biggest problem with that movie was that I am ashamed for Tom Hanks. He is normally such a good actor and yet when playing Robert Langdon he shows no emotion! Now, maybe this is the way the producers wanted it, so maybe it isn't his fault.. but still.. I would think that at some point through the movie he would show emotion.. You know, somewhere between being chased through the streets of London by a crazy servant with a gun and having his trusted friend hold a gun to the pretty girls head he should probably show some pretty strong emotion. Other than that, its mostly the changes they made from the book that bothered me. I mostly enjoyed the book because we got to see all of Langdons thought process and how his mind worked. In the movie, we don't get to see a man who thinks everything through, we see someone who can magically create pictures in the air using his mind.. It should take more than 2 seconds to realize that "O Draconian Devils, O Lame Saints" Is an anagram, and more than 4 second to figure out what it translates to. Also, they gave Sophie no credit for solving any of the puzzles in this one. In the book at least, she was the one to figure out they needed a mirror to read the 'sub rosa' carving, but in the movie that role was taken by Langdon..

As for blasphemy.. I personally like the idea of Jesus being a father.. I don't see how that would affect him being the son of God. I think that some people (me not included) would find it offensive. If anything, I would find the fact that they made the bishop out to be evil and murderous to be blasphemous. At least in the book it was obvious that he was tricked and truly thought he was doing good, but in the movie they had him lie to Fache, break his vows to the church and have an innocent man hunted down for no apparent reason.

Fair??

Okay, so.. lets say that you are given an assignment to do in class. You work really hard on it and get really excited about the fact that its going to be published because your teacher told you that it would all be published. THen you get other people involved too.. using some of their work (art or something) and putting their names on the piece to be published, and spending alot of time working on it outside of class too. So you have this final product, a good final work, something you have put time and energy and other peoples names into. How would you feel if the teacher told you that half of your project was being thrown away so someone else could use the space for their project?? And you wouldn't get any say in which half was being thrown out?? Am I the only one who thinks that that is completely and totally unfair?? I dunno.. some opinions please?? Thanks.

Earth Day

Okay.. I dunno really what to say for this.. I kind of agree with Kelsey and Rob that things look bad.. really really bad.. and probably, being stubborn human beings, we wont do enough to stop it until it is too late. By the time that we do something that will make a significant difference the world will be damaged beyond repair.. We'll have Grolar bears running through cities eating people and mutant people with five arms and two heads walking around. For now, human beings aren't really being affected. Its the 'lower' animals like the polar bears, seals, and insects that are being affected, but sooner or later we will be affected by the extinction of an animal or plant and then we'll be screwed.
As for what to do to make things better? Hmm.. I really don't know.. I say tax everything that can be taxed.. give people free recycling, raise prices on garbage bags and tags, charge people for grocery bags, raise the refunds on returning cans and bottles. Anything like that. That would help.. charge less for recyled paper, etc, etc..