Are the Expectations of Blog Assignments Easier, Harder or Different than Writing an Essay?

I think that writing a blog was a new experience in writing and a new way of learning how to communicate our writings with the rest of the world. Anyone can open and read our blog and give us feedback from all different perspectives. I learned a lot on how the blogs should be written and keeping my personal information private. We should not provide our addresses and phone numbers and other personal information in order to protect ourselves from identity theft and other criminal activity that happens on the web. In the beginning, I wanted to drop this class and transfer another class to meet my school program requirements. Instead, I was unable too. I was forced to learn to blog and I am grateful for this new learning experience.

Is a Picture worth a Thousand Words?

In some cases yes and other cases no. The history of the phrase “One look is worth a thousand words” Dec. 8, 1921 was later changed to “One picture is worth a thousand words” on March 10, 1927 in Printers Ink (now known as Marketing/Communications) by its original author Fred R. Barnard. And called it “a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it more seriously”. It was immediately credited to Confucius. (www2.cs.uregina.ca/~hepting/research/web/words/history.html)

For an adult, a picture might be worth a thousand words, but to an infant or young child, it may not always be the case.

A new study had found that young children preferred and paid more attention to sounds than visual information, this is the first to show that this auditory preference extends to pre-schoolers with an average age of 4 years.

“Adults generally prefer visual information if they have the choice. But if you want to get the attention of young children, sounds are generally more effective than pictures if the sounds and picture have equal interest,” said Vladimir Sloutsky, professor in the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University.

Slousky said young children probably are more attuned to sounds than visuals because this auditory preference helps them acquire language.

Researchers conducted several related studies with children and adults. In one study, 15 preschool children and 20 adults viewed a photo image and heard a sound simultaneously on a computer. During the test, the participants saw the correct picture and the correct sound with a new picture.

In children, the majority consistently chose the correct sound as the right choice over multiple tests(53% chose the correct sound, 15% chose the correct visual, and 23% gave mixed responses). However, for the adults, 100% chose the correct visual as the correct choice.

Sloutsky said the adults made the strategic choice that the right visual was most important. The children in the study gave no indication that the choice of the correct sound over the correct visual was difficult for them.

The first experiment raised several interesting questions, he said. For one, maybe young children are unable to process visual stimuli such as the pictures in the first experiment. So they repeated the experiment but with no sounds at all. The children simply had to choose the correct image. In this experiment, the children had no problem choosing the correct picture.

“This suggests processing visual information is not difficult for children, but they prefer auditory stimuli”, he said. (http//reseachnews.osu.edu/archive/auditory.htm)

In the adult world the answer is yes. We prefer pictures over sound or text. In my own experience, we communicate with pictures and symbols. We see symbols and pictures on traffic signs, such as deer figures to let us know of deer crossings. We also see symbols on instrument panels of cars, heavy equipment, aircraft cockpits, etc., to communicate to us what the switches, knobs, or buttons control. Our minds process pictures and symbols faster than text messages and are the reason we prefer pictures over any other sort of communication.

Should Reasoning Skills be Taught in Primary School?

Reasoning skills should be taught in primary schools. Children should be taught reasoning skills for the sake of solving problems and being able to read between the lines of communication. This would help them to communicate more effectively and also become better listeners. It would help the children bring a sense of fun and accomplishment to math and science class problem solving. It would help them in all areas of their lives and professions they may choose.

It would help them engage in conversation with people they barely know, hold their own at parties and dinner conversations, and how to respond graciously to idiots, drunks and other problem personalities. It is a critical life skill, and one that few people have mastered. They would understand advertisements and understand the true meaning of the advertisers purpose to sell them.

By learning these reasoning skills, they become more creative and stronger personally and are nicer to be around. They develop the ability to reach sound conclusions based on observation and information. Students would develop the ability to assess the authenticity, accuracy and worth of knowledge claims, beliefs, or arguments. It helps students to apply everything they already know and feel, to evaluate their own thinking, and change their own behavior. They need to have this type of skill for their future.

Reasoning skills has nothing to do with intelligence. It is a skill that may be improved in everyone. It is not something that develops with maturity, therefore, should be taught to all ages. When they develop good reasoning skills at a young age, they have a good chance with these skills and have a better opportunity to perform well in job interviews when they graduate from high school. Employers wouldn’t say that they haven’t learned reasoning skills because they were taught at a younger age and employers would be able to see that.
(http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-929/critical.htm)

Keep America Clean

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Should students be able to site “Wikis” in their school work?

First let me define wiki - quick

“Wiki [Hawaiian, wikiwiki = fast], a website designed to permit the development of information resources by creating hyperlinked web pages using software that accessed through a web browser. First devised and named by Ward Cunningham in 1995 when he created the WikiWikiWeb to record and share programming techniques, wikis generally use relatively simply markup (encoding for formatting) to enable the easy creation of content, and as a result typically produce relatively straight forward webpage layouts. Wikis are usually collaborative, unlike most blogs, and may be found in a wide range of settings. They may, for example, be on the Internet and permit content creation and revision by any person, or may be on a company's internal network (intranet) and be accessible only to specific employees. The best known wiki is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia”. (www.answers.com/topic/wiki)

I believe that students can use wikis as a resource tool for fast results on the subject at hand. This allows the student to access information quickly to get them on track with their assignments. And in doing so, they will find legitimate references to their subject matter at a wiki website and use these references to cite in their assignments.

When students do site the wiki website, they should make sure the information they site is true and investigate it with other sources to be safe from siting erroneous information. The best thing for students to do when using wikis is to find better resources available to them through Wikis. Wikis information can be edited by anyone that visits their website which makes it hard to be a good source to site in a paper. However, they can edit the wiki by using other references to make the wiki a sound true source to site in their assignments.

So yes, I believe that students can use wikis to site in their assignments as long as they verify that the information they site is correct or make it correct by editting the information they get from a wiki website.

Is it Patriotic to Shop?

I believe that it is our patriotic duty to our country and to the world to shop. Only to the extent of what our budgets would allow us to do and be able to save money for our future as well. We have to be careful on how much we spend to try to kick start the economy. What I mean is we have to be smarter on how we shop. We have to account for every dime we spend and save as much as we can by being good coupon spenders and discount buyers. We can’t allow ourselves to over extend our budget as many of the world’s governments have exceeded their budgets, now can we?

In today’s economy, it is going to take every responsible American to spend what we can in order to turn it around, especially the wealthy. Also, all the other countries’ citizens need to be patriotic to their countries as well and to do their part. We are not the only one responsible for turning the economy around.

My reasons are simple, if we don’t do our patriotic duty, and other countries don’t do their patriotic duty, to spend what everyone can afford, the economy gets worse. It’s about supply and demand. If the supply is there with no demand, the economy crumbles. If the demand is high and the supply is low, the economy flourishes. My other reasons, it is the responsible and the right thing to do.

Look at the housing market. That market took a huge hit. Millions of people are now jobless and homeless. And now the commercial property market is looking horrible as well. According to a congressional oversight panel, a total of 1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will require refinancing in the next four years; half these properties’ value has dropped like a rock. (CNNMoney.com)

I wish there was more the world could do about the economy, it makes me sad the way millions have lost their homes to foreclosure.