Classroom Ideas

Next year everyone will have laptops but how will everyone be seated. I think it should change everyday. I like how our web 2.0 class does it. We have the freedom to take a laptop and sit anywhere we want in the library. We have also sayt in the lobby and done work. I just think we should be able to do work wherever we want because we can all stay connected through the laptops.

-Akash Patel

Long Period Today

We were supposed to spend class today working on any little project we wanted to so I spent time on my web site. I ended up adding a wiki to the page to make it easier for everyone to get their thoughts up. The only thing is that you have to sign up to use the wiki. It's all free but it can be a hassle. The website is basically for a group of friends and it's how we stay connected and up to date with our plans. Here is the link to the website: http://www.theadrenalinearmy.webs.com/ If anyone has any other tips or ideas please let me know!

-Akash Patel

"Same Thing?" Response

I think having laptops and hand-helds would make learning a lot easier. When someone has trouble with a subject, they can look up tips and tutorials online. This makes learning so much easier. I know that when i don't get something in class, I go home and look up how to do it online because it just makes everything easier. Every teacher wonders why their students don't get a topic that they find easy. It's because learning it isn't always fun. If there are fun ways to learn online, why don't we use them? Having laptops in class would be a great idea.

-Akash Patel

Live Binder

There have been many times where I've had a bunch of documents that were all over the place. This website is basically an online binder that helps you organize different documents. It's a lot better than just organizing everything into separate folders because everything is right in front of you. All you have to do is organize everything into tabs and then everything is a click away. This was something new that I thought would help some of the students who might need help with organization.

Link: http://livebinders.com/

-Akash Patel

Divergent Thinking

I think divergent thinking is extremely important. Everyone learns differently. I said this in a post earlier. Why are we all taught the same way? This video brought up something new too. it said that people in the same age group don't necessarily learn the same way. Some people learn more easily than others even if they are of the same age group. People shouldn't be forced to follow a schedule or service. They should be able to learn at a pace that suits them. I took a VHS course. I was given due dates and deadlines but they weren't fixed. I was able to pass in the work when it was completed. This made it easier for me to learn because I could take my time and learn at a steady pace. There were other students in the class that were both ahead of me or behind me. it didn't matter because by the end of the year, we all learned the same thing. It was just spaced out differently. The best part about this was that even with the differences in learning time, we were all able to learn what w needed to for the AP exam. I just think we should be able to learn at a pace thats suits us rather than a pace that everyone else learns at.

-Akash Patel

EasyBib

Many high school students need to use a citation maker to make a bibliography for their papers and projects. However, different teachers require different styles of citing. This site was very useful for every class I could think of. I needed all of these different styles in the past and I really wish I had this tool earlier. This is definitely the most useful tool out of the list of we 2.0 tools.

-Akash Patel

"Joel Burns Tells Gay Teens It Gets Better" Response

This school lost many students to bullying and harassment. We are lucky here at Burlington because we haven't lost any students at all to bullying or harassment. This video was extremely sad. Dozens of kids were just killing themselves because they couldn't take the pain everyone was giving them. Those lives could have been saved if people would realize how much words can hurt. Just because you can brush away harsh words doesn't mean everyone else can. Some people can only take so little. Everyone needs to know how much words hurt because even one harsh word can cause a death. We can save the lives of many students if we just think before we speak.

-Akash Patel