Watch… and learn.
The time has come – I’m giving up on wordpress.com.
I am on the other side now, where it’s greener. I am finally overcoming my fears, and, although it’s not completely as I wanted it, I am moving to r.ompo.us. Please visit, and to all bloggers who do not already have one – GET A DOMAIN!
You’ll feel oh so much better.
Tip III coming soon, if late, at r.ompo.us.
Now, I haven’t the faintest what’s going on here – but I do know that as an educatee (if that’s a word) I have having a lot of fun speaking to educators all over the world waiting for the keynote of K12 online to load. Some people in the live chat are already posting comments and quotes from David Warlick’s speech. Excuse this for being a very short post, but I’m going to go chat with educators all over the world, from Bangkok to Starbucks in New York – about how they can make my school career better for me and my teachers – before I watch this video (download already!).
And P.S. – Remember when I mentioned that Arthus had given me r.ompo.us? I’ll be switching over there very soon – no matter what it looks like. Just don’t go there now, it’s got posts that are starting to reek they’re so old (they still taste good though!).
Ever had a situation where you’re dying for a poll on something and you need your results fast? After asking the parentals and maybe your siblings you have nowhere else to go!
Fear no more! Doxory is here!
Doxory (despite the humble origins of the name, “Do… x? or y?,” Doxory is pronounced DOC-sor-ee) is a new web 2.0 app developed by the creators of Hiveminder, Best Practical. If you have used Hiveminder, you’ll know that Best Practical is an awesome company, catering to the needs of the online public.
Doxory is Twitter for choices. You basically tell people what you’re doing, then let them decide what you should do. If you don’t understand that, let me walk you through it. After signing up for an account, all you need to do is enter a question. My latest question was on “Using doxory”. Afterwards, you enter two choices, the x and the y of the question. My choices were “Use it and be done with it?” or “Get professional help as to why I’m asking the public about problems in my private life?” (the query has been up for a while, grabbing a few votes for both sides, but is still up in the air) As the site itself says, “The best kinds of questions to ask are existential dilemmas. What should I do with the next five years of my life? Go to grad school or Join the circus?” Doxory is also useful for trivial matter you have in your everyday life. Need help deciding what to have for dinner?
ask Doxory!
If you’d like to let your friends run your life, sign up!
In preparing students for the twenty-first century we need to educate them in certain ways. Skills in certain areas will be necessary because of recent advances in technology, for example, the human race will need to accept that computers and robots may do our jobs better than we do. In other words we must learn humility. Other skills will become the norm as well, for example it will be necessary in day-to-day life to have basic programming skills in all the major languages, we will also need to be able to service the hardware side of things too.
I believe this video is the newest version, correct me if I’m wrong. It was originally made by Karl Fisch (see his blog at The Fischbowl) for a presentation on how his high school should be teaching kids. It has been remade so many times it’s not even worth mentioning who else helped.
I’ve always loved this kind of video – words that shock you along with some quiet music. This goes along with someone talking made into animations, such as Alan Watt’s videos. This was actually assigned to be watched, which is progress in our school system, however it was also assigned that we fill out a sheet and analyze the video, which totally ruined all the progress. The writing in the top paragraph is actually one answer of what I’m handing in! Even this is a connection to the video. If the right steps are made soon all classes will be on computers, and, even further along, blogs, which is why I like including my homework into something I consider fun.
This video makes me think. If a laptop available in 2049 will surpass the combined technological power of the human race put together, than what are we left to do? As much as anybody I wouldn’t like an “I, Robot” situation however this may be for the better. I choose to see these advances as an opportunity; with all the “menial” (think open heart surgery) jobs out of the way our kind will have all the time we need to express ourselves in ways we can’t program computers to; such as the arts. Think about it.
Tip II coming soon.
Alright, I was a bit tired when I wrote my last post, so I failed to reveal that I was to include tips about school life. And thus, tired again, I will do my best to write the first.
Tip I:
Don’t be too prepared.
Having recently spent a day at Walmart (among other places, thank god), I should know that preparing is hard. It can be a bit fun, fighting the crowds, sifting through the piles of stuff, squeezing into tight places to let that obnoxious person past to the checkout lane… But enough is too much. Get in, get out, and try to do it early. Later they may give you back to school prices, but they will wear you and your patience out very quickly.
After the ride home look at your items. Consider how much stuff you have. You’re not going to want more than one binder per class, so if you have too many discard or save them. Notebooks are essential for some classes but not others, find out from your teacher or maybe a friend. Pencils and maybe pens are obviously a must, but erasers are usually not necessary, the pencil ones will suffice. Your teacher may have recommended a calculator, even if this is not a requirement it is a very good idea for math classes. I suggest the TI-84, be it plus, silver, plus silver edition, or something else I have not yet heard of, it works very well for anything up to and even past college and the investment might as well be made now. Other than that accessories such as post-its and pencil sharpeners are surplus and not recommended by me, because they become clutter.
These are my main recommendations for materials for the beginning of the school year. I will take no responsibility if anyone gets in trouble their first day because of these, I am not forcing you to use these guidelines, merely suggesting. It’s rather ironic that as I type I am in my first day of high school, right before lunch, but this underlines my point that I do have experience and so am not a total dimwit when it comes to school preparation. It’s debateable as to whether this applies to blogging, but anyway… Try to enjoy or at least get through without mishap your first day at school.
After a very relaxing vacation, in which I went to many beaches and gamed a lot, I have come back with this post. Please get extremely irate at my sister who DELETED ALL THE PICTURES. What an idiot. Ah well, on to the meat of the post.
“Oh noes!” as some of my friends met online would cry. As the school year draws closer and closer we as kids have become more and more agitated, and I and my friends have even more reason to be so because we are incoming freshmen at Champlain Valley High School. I find it ironic that as soon as I begin to write this sentence the opening notes of the song “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper start to play. Despite my growing dread, I find the concept of high school fascinating. Though my freshman year will be packed; I have been taking and will take Band and Spanish; I cannot help but see the possibilities in taking classes such as “Design Tech” and other languages, maybe even Latin. Anyway, to act as a diary (so I can see how stupid, immature, and naïve I was), and also just to give any middle school readers a chill (not that there are any (*sigh*), but feel free to prove me wrong! 
) , I will be writing a weekly series on how life in high school is. This will be loosely regimented and not at all posted every week exactly; for example I may post next Tuesday (the first day) then post on Monday the next week, or perhaps Friday. Hopefully this will not be too boring.
By the way, thanks to Arthus for the idea.
Reminiscent of Raven
A glittering black
reminiscent of raven
as if a flash of wings
fluttering by, blacker than night
blacker than blackest, it takes away your fear
your hunger
your desire
curiosity wells: in the tranquil gardens of your mind
a sprinkling of dew wets the green green grass
inexplicably falling to unmapped distances
Potion
Deathly cauldron
simmering whilst the witch chants
over her potion
it will not cure warts
nor a broken heart
and it doesn’t particularly seem to do anything
so the witch is disappointed
but she trudges on
through the fields of knowledge
picking a flower, once in a while
for the love of life she tries and tries again
until her ingredients, and soul, are spent.
Raindrop
The illusion of mist
a shimmering blue
walking along
staying true
to the laws of nature
that govern all
yet impossibly
the rain does not fall
touch a drop
it will implode
it’s life spent
death to you owed
Still gathering words and phrases…
Please comment with some of your favorite ones.
A short snippet I noticed:
The Estonian man who was caught driving a car even though he is blind has been at it again, police said on Monday, and this time he faces jail.
Remember? Oddly Enough?
Have you ever looked at random words and put them together in a sentence? Have you ever rearranged those sets of fridge magnets to make funny sentences? Well, recently at CVU Summer Camp, I saw the last bit of a poetry class happening and was very interested. Each of the students in the class, Arthus included, had written at least 5 random poetic phrases and drawn them on the white board.
Now, this reminded me of how I write. I am an okay writer but this is only because I memorize phrases I find interesting; for example, in the book I was reading recently, Spare Change, I found a phrase I liked: “…so recently out of law school they smelled like diploma ink.” This phrase is one of many I find interesting, along with many words, such as quagmire (from Eragon), blunderbuss, and Nebakanezer.
The whole point of this: I will be doing some poetry created from random words and phrases I see wherever I go. How this will turn out, I don’t know, but hopefully it will go well.
If you feel like it, comment with some of your favorite words and or phrases.
To be continued…
