Take a look at the link above and let me know what you think. For one thing, this is really ruining the experience of watching a good movie for me, but I guess this is the reality that we will continue to have to deal with…sigh….post comments please!
One of my questions about this is why does it always seem like a good idea when it comes to technology? I think its especially true when it comes to Apple products. They like to market themselves much like coke, as an itegral part of ones happiness and all good times. The commericals for the current ipad make it seem like you if you don’t use apple products then you don’t love your family or that with an iphone you have unlimted power to control the universe. Neither of which are true. One is a big phone that doesn’t make calls, the other is small phone. But let me get off that soapbox and get to this:
Apple hopes its foray into digital textbooks for the iPad will impress educators and corner a huge, lucrative K-12 book market. But the high costs of the plan and the challenges of mobile technology could ensure that hardback books remain a classroom mainstay.
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/03/11/2431762/a-move-toward-an-all-ipad-classroom.html#storylink=mirelated#storylink=cpy
My issue with this is that the underlying costs are actually greater. They don’t actually let kids take home books right now, but books are great because they are durable, long lasting with normal usage and they don’t require electricity and it hard to break a book. Ipads require mainaintence, a delicate touch and electricity. The discounted rate for an iPad is hardly a discount, and a school could get two computers for the price of one iPad (which makes perfect sense because no school in their right minds would allow a rented or purchased iPad to go home with the a child).
In summary I am against iPads in the classroom mostly because its financially irresponsible when the information that you need to teach is readily available in a more durable and cost efficient form. The encouragement of needless electronic proliferation because educators want to cater to students is an act of appeasement, and that never works.
http://www.sabbathmanifesto.org/unplug
Ok, there seems to be a lot of people out there that cannot seem to disconnect and cannot be themselves. From the Huffington Post:
At our recent panel at SXSW Interactive on women’s online “performance anxiety,” we talked about the pressure women feel to present their ideal selves online, but the conversation ultimately turned to the enormous amount of time the Internet occupies. While author Susan Orlean said she feels like she can be herself on Twitter, she admitted that social media “occupies mental space. It’s on your ongoing mental to-do-list.” The other panelists echoed this sentiment.
So there is a call to disconnect for at least 24 hours just to reclaim your mental space. Reclaim your mental space! That means no twitter, facebook, kill the texting, the tv and off the computer! In this time where everything is on all the time and connected… do you have the courage? do you have the resolve!? Take the pledge and prove it!
http://thewall.com/topics/23547-would-you-wear-abercrombie–fitch-nigger-brown
Nigger Brown
At this point in 2012, should anyone really be surprised by this kind of thing? Would it be possible to admit that racism is deep part of American culture and to ignore it is to let it fester and leads to this kind of thing to blossom?
Millenials are having a rough go of it. They are the first generation that don’t have the promise of doing better than their parents. They are graduating college without the promise of work and mountains of student debt. The outlook is bleak, but I wonder if its because their expectations are too high because they are also the generation that grew up getting a trophy just for participation. They are also the generation that seems to have a sense of entitlement only surpassed by the Baby Boomers, but these are my own personal opinions.
Could it be true that the odds really are stacked against them or are they just unwilling to roll up their sleeves and do some of the dirty work that it takes to get from college graduate to working adult?
Bruce Bartlett on Where the Right Went Wrong from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
Former Reagan economist Bruce Bartlett has some sharp thoughts on why the American economic and social situation is in the state its in. The things he has to say you might find surprising.
I was just watching The Last Word with Laurence O’Donnell on MSNBC Wednesday night (March 21, 2012). Mr. Bonaparte is the City Manager of Sanford, FL, the location where Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager, was shot down in cold blood by an Hispanic male, George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch person. Mr. Bonaparte has it in his power to fire the chief of police of Sanford, but he will not. Mr. O’Donnell and Reverend Al Sharpton provided many reasons and raised many concerns that would make a reasonable, competent individual fire the chief of police, at least suspend him until an investigation is complete. Instead, Mr. Bonaparte will do nothing. Mr. Bonaparte is a disgrace and an embarrassment to African Americans. Yes, Mr. Bonaparte, the City Manager of Sanford, FL is an African American. He was a complete idiot on television tonight and a profound fool. I was in shock just like Mr. O’Donnell and Reverend Al Sharpton. They were speechless as was I. Therefore, I took to the “Big Black Scholar.”
– The Lippy Liberal
“To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become. America — this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of ‘no’ into the ‘yes’ — needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and re-make it.” – Cornell West
In a day and time in which we have the opportunity to be so privileged a society with technology and advances in a multitude of other areas…how sad it is that we have so many avenues and venues to utilize in order to express our thoughts and opinions, and when it comes to politics we are still so limited…so simple. In a democratic nation where the freedom to choose, vote, and elect “by the people, for the people” is said to be the very basis of our continued fortitude, why is it that we still cannot simply debate our platforms and issues in a meaningful way not to disillusion or hoodwink those that have the power to elect, but to enlighten them. We continue to reduce ourselves to the lowest forms of integrity by mudslinging and using passive aggressive undertones to represent what we stand for. And in all honesty, what would that be? A house divided? A nation in civil unrest? Hate? Continued inequality? Though democracy is often and should often be celebrated, my fear is that this 2012 election will take away from our ability to be civil and to truly make decisions for the future of our nation that will empower and uplift us instead of dividing and conquering. My advice for all of you would be to remain informed. Do not take anyone else’s information for and trust if for your own. Investigate both sides of the coin and stay tuned…..
TO BE CONTINUED……
http://www.alternet.org/culture/154495/race-baiting%3A_the_attack_on_black_intellectuals
I have said that there is nothing that scares white racists and biggots more than Black people that read books…
…we must absolutely reject any suggestion that black intellectuals are dangerous because they are black intellectuals. Attacking the ability of black people to govern through specious claims that we are a danger to white people is nothing short of disgraceful. – maya wiley
This post was done almost a year ago, but its news to us. We are aware that there is a proliferation of social network usage in education because it is a way that teachers can communicate with students, administrators and so on. It brings up the subject of is it better to stick to what has always worked, or is it better to go to where the students are? It is my thinking that there has to be a balance, it can’t be all school or all student.
But the point of this post is privacy and the right to control your own information. Basically, you once you sign up and agree to one of the major social networks, ie Facebook, Twitter, etc, you lose oh, about 90% of the control of your own information. You might be having a great time interacting with all your other friends, but your network is mining, filtering and eavesdropping on everything you do so they can sell your information to companies. At the moment that might not seem so sinister, but what happens when you realize that everything that you share on your social network becomes property of the network itself? That you no longer own the photos of your family and that you can only say what they allow you to say?
What about when they start to use your social networking information to determine if you deserve the job that job that you want so badly. What you thought was just a goof between friends, is now stopping you from eating, thanks facetwit.
Social networking is here to stay. Virtually everyone reading this has an account with one of these sites, if not more than one. And who are we to criticize? We have “share” buttons on every page of this website. Social networking sites are how humans interact now, and it will continue until the day the zombies eat through our network cables.
That’s what makes increasingly annoying and/or invasive social networking practices so much harder to swallow. We want all of the below to stop and, barring that, at least not get any worse. But if they don’t, what are we going to do? Ditch our computers and go live in the woods? – via Cracked
Some of the things they are doing:
Privacy and Copyrights are going to be the major battles coming in the future, and social networking sites are part of the proving grounds. It will be the precedents that they set with their voluntary memebership that will plot the course of what is publicly acceptable in the future as the developed world moves even faster towards a more virtual world. Make sure you read the article, its eye opening