College Students not Reading at Level

College Students not Reading at Level

Ganim, Sara. "Some college athletes play like adults, read like fifth graders" CNN. CNN. 8 Jan, 2014. Web. 27 Jan, 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html?hpt=hp_t1>

This post was about a large group of people in college not really being ready for the work of a college class. The students partaking in this were part of the sports teams and were allowed to be given tutoring and have to sometimes at most turn in one paper for classes at most. 60% of these students between the years of 2004 and 2012 were reading on an eighth to fourth grade reading level. About 8-10% were reading on a level third grade or below.

What is truly shocking about this post by Sara Ganim is that some of the classes were said to be fake classes. Classes just to make the students look as if they were doing well. They were even given fake Grade Point Averages, this is really sad. I think that this should end very soon because if they aren’t learning what they should now in college they won't have anything to show for what they had as child while they could still play sports, but now that they are old and cannot play they can only say that they can read as well as an eighth grader and write a paper half as good as one. I wouldn’t want that to be the only thing I could say I had to show for myself after I went to college for four years at the very least.

The impact the quotes and the percentages had on the article were that it showed how large of a problem the reading and writing was. It really catches the eye when you and symbols like the percent sign and the numbers.

Affluenza Defense

Grey, Madison. "Affluenza Defense: Judge Rules Rick Kid's Rich Kid-ness Makes Him Not Liable for Deadly Drunk Driving Accident". NewsFeed.Time. Time News 12 Dec 2013. Web. 6 Jan 2013. <http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/12/the-affluenza-defense-judge-rules-rich-kids-rich-kid-ness-makes-him-not-liable-for-deadly-drunk-driving-accident/>

genericitis. "affluenza." Photograph."  Flicker.  Yahoo, 3-28-10. Media. 1-12-14.  <http://www.flickr.com/photos/genericitis/4469485260/>

Ethan Couch was convicted of vehicular manslaughter due to drunk driving in Keller, Texas. This wealthy child is thought to have a rare condition that is believe to have him have a poor understanding of what consequences he could face after committing a terrible act. This illness he suffers from is know as “affluenza” according to Couch’s lawyers. This term means that because of their wealthy status, his family could afford to keep him out of trouble and he would have suffer for nothing and do as he pleased. This is the defense that kept Ethan out of a twenty year sentence. He was given probation instead.

This relates to us and what we are thought because we learn from a very young age that if you do something wrong you get punished. What happened to this sixteen year old boy was the opposite. Just because this boy’s family is rich and mine’s not means he can kill four people? It goes against what we learn everyday.

This event struck me as odd, I dont think that he should not have to suffer the pain that everyone that lose their loved ones does. He should have to serve the jail time just as I would have, his money should not make him invulnerable because of his “affluenza”.  I think this affects me because its changing everything that I was thought when I was little.

What was the author's point of view and how does it impact the overall effect of the text?

The author had the same opinion as me, the child should have been forced to pay the time. She shows this by showing a quote from after the sentencing. Saying his money is what helped him out of ht bind he was in, "if [he] had been any other youth, I fell like the circumstances would have been different (Grey Madison).

A Gun Printed from a Machine

Engineers Build The World’s First Real 3D-Printed Gun

Biggs, John. “AOL Inc.” 11/72013. Web. 11/10/13. <http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/3d-printed-gun/.>

A company named Solid Concepts has created the world's first usable gun that was printed by a machine that uses a laser to turn powder into metal. This gun is just like a normal handgun and can be fired. It has shot fifty rounds so far since its creation. The CEO has said that it will allow workers get the harder to get parts they need to finish a job, making their jobs easier in the long run.

My reaction to this is shock. I never thought I’d live in a world in which people would be printing things other than words on paper. I think this is a great idea though. As the CEO said, making parts that are usually hard to get or make will become much easier for them to acquire. This affects me because it may become a big part of my future, many things may be printed one day out of a machine.

This impacts the world because things will be easier for people to get. Maybe a lesser country than United States needs weapons to fight or in the long term, a larger item that can be printed out of a machine. This will make it where we can give those thing to them faster. I think this will make it easier to get goods around too.

Facebook Video Ban

Facebook playing with fire by policing beheading videos

Pepitone,Julianne. “Facebook playing with fire by policing beheading videos” Cable News Network. 23 Oct 2013. Web. 25 Oct 2013. <http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/23/technology/social/facebook-beheading-videos/index.html>

The topic of my article was about the showings of a beheading in a Facebook video. Facebook took down this video and stopped users from posting it and viewing it on their site. They took the bann off last May and hoped that the video did not resurface, sure enough it did. They realize the website is for telling people about things and keeping up to date on everything, they just wish that they would warn the viewers before they viewed the graphic content.

So what this is saying is they want it to either be taking down or before the content is viewed, warn the younger audience. This is trying to cut down the amount of graphic things that these children are seeing while they spend time on the Internet. THis is a good idea for the younger persons that spend a lot of time on it.

I think that this is a good idea, but they should not just ban it all together. It should be made to only allow the age they want to view it. This would make it were the younger people are not seeing it and the adults that need to know can see what they need to see.This will affect me, as a younger person, but is more likely a good idea because I may not need to see the things that some people put on the internet.

This impacts the world because some people are not going to be seeing something they may need to be seeing. And some things getting around as fast as they should and some things that do not need to be getting around, like pointless videos. The things that need to be see around the world may not be getting there as fast as they should and it needs to be made to where they can.

This week

Hello and welcome back to my Blog. These past few weeks we learned about many new things, mostly talked about Online Safety. We went over the rules on how to stay safe online and what it went to be safe online. Some of the things we talked about while going over this topic were,

1. Online Predator-  A commonly used term for someone who uses the Internet to develop inappropriate relationships with kids or teens.

2. Risky- Potentially harmful to one’s emotional or physical well-being

3. Manipulate- Trying to influence someone to do something they might otherwise do, for one’s own benefit.

4. Stereotype-  A popular belief about a group of people, based on assumptions that are often false.

These helped us determine what was safe to put online and what wasn’t. We’ve also used a program called Animoto. It allowed us to show how much we had learned from our teacher. These video like shows, well they are like small thirty seconds long music videos. It was very easy to use and understand. We used this to make two videos to describe what it meant to be safe on the Internet and while talking to people on it.This is one of mine.

 
This will help me throughout life, because our lives now run around the Internet in most places around the world.

And in conclusion I think that my week has been very worth it because of all the things we learned that would keep me safe.

T-Mobile Says BlackBerrys Will No Longer Be Sold At Retail Locations

T-Mobile Says BlackBerrys Will No Longer Be Sold At Retail Locations

Carew,Sinead.  "The Huffington Post". 09/25/2013. Web. 09/27/13. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/blackberry-t-mobile_n_3991466.html?utm_hp_ref=technology>


Summary:
The topic for today is the Blackberry Company. It has chosen to stop selling its phones in stores. They once said "keeping stock in the retail distribution system was inefficient" They have made this choice because normal everyday people that are walking into the store are not the ones buying the phone, its the large businesses that are and they hardly ever step foot in the stores. They order these phones online. Therefore the company is going to stop selling them in store and only online.

Reaction:
I think that this is a great idea from the company. They are not making the money they need in store, so they’re selling them only online. This is going to save them money and make it easier to make the phones because they will only be making a small amount at a time to send them to the customer, instead of sending hundreds to the stores. Although this does not affect me because I dont really use a phone, it will affect many people that would rather walk into their local store and buy one. Because now they have to order one online and have it sent to their house or business.

World Impact:
I dont think this will affect the world. I mean in the long run some people might be upset about losing the ability to drive to the store to get one. But many large businesses might like this idea of sending them all to the place of business, saving time and probably money. BlackBerry will be the most important part of this though, they are the ones trying to earn their money back by doing this and they are probably going to make the most of this. But overall most of the population will probably go unaffected.

 

 

 

Bi-Weekly Blog Post #2

Hello and welcome back to my Blog. These past few weeks we learned about many new things, mostly about how to be a Good Digital Citizen. And it has been very exhausting because of all the projects we’ve had to do. But they are helping us all fully understand what we are going over in all our classes. So school these weeks have not been the best, all because of those project. This is one of them..



This project was made on a website called prezi.com It is used to make slide show like this one. We used these to show what you needed to be a good digital citizen.