Mr. Higgins’ Blog

I attempted my first ever week at using blogs in my Web Development classes. I currently have two of these classes and have a total of 44 students in the course. Using Cool Cat Teacher as a model…I used the same story that was prompted for her students. Here is how I presented the blogging topic.

In recent news, a 3 year old boy purchased a car on eBay. First, read the article. Then in paragraph form using proper english skills and grammar respond to the article using the following prompts…

• General Comments about the story.
• What are computer security / safety tips you would have for the parent of the young boy?
• Do you think that a world of technology, when a 3 year old even has the opportunity to buy a car, is a negative or positive step?
• As students in web development, you are given the opportunity to work on the computer everyday. What do you think about schools that have all of their books and materials on laptop computers? Is that a positive step in education or a bad attempt to use technology while taking away paper materials?

Please respond to the article and prompts in two or more paragraphs while including one or more links that provides information about your discussion.

My students are 9th through 12th and have different levels of technology, writing, and argumentation. This is why I went through each of my students blogs and commented on each of them. Here are a few thing I noticed about there comments and the way they answered the question.

1. Being the first time that we blogged on a topic as a class, some of the students were not aware of how serious I was about putting thought into their responses. Some where very shortsided and would say that they thought the parents were to blame and should monitor there child but never gave any solutions.
2. The thoughtfulness or lack there of from certain students who I know show a lot of HTML / Javascript creativity was not necessarily reflective in their wrirting. I noticed several of the technologically sound students were among the poorer bloggers. A few of the slow typers or those that lack HTML skills were going a great job at responding to the question.
3. The best responses from the entire course student body were from those students that quietly sit and do their work during class and act almost as outsiders. Through this wriring activity, they would supply sold arguments and facts as well as creative ways of presenting it.
4. My favorite blog from the first week started like this…“Personally i think that was a kind of pointless story. I didn’t find it that funny nor did i really find it the least bit amusing. People need to understand that these kind of things will happen. This isn’t the first time anything like this has happened. It is pretty much the same as when an underage kid, whether old enough to understand what they’re doing or not, calls a number that is prohibited. The point is…”This students went on to talk more about how this is not news worthy and opinions about technology in school. There great part about this response is that it is not the work of a traditional “Yes Man” or “Yes Woman.” The students goes directly to the fact that this article does not render any amusing thoughts.
5. There are still a few logistic things I need to figure out considering as a first year teacher I am running the blogs off of my own Drupal installation on my own webspace. That is a scary thought

Here are a few more excerpts from students blogs…

” In response to the above article I believe this is a funny situation. A three year old whiz on the computer? I mean come on can we get serious over here? The obvious safety tips all apply here; its relatively like leaving your three year old in a running car when he/she can reach the shifter, right? Do not leave your vehicle unattended; do not leave your three year old by your unattended ebay account, etc., etc.

This technology is both negative and positive really. It’s all in the perception. I view it as being a rather helpful and somewhat humorus thing. I really am unsure of how I feel about schools that use labtops for all their studies. I think I personally would enjoy it (and it would minimize the ache in my back from all the strenuous heaving of books to and from classrooms) but I also feel that this could significantly reduce students abilities in certain ways. I feel that to give a real anwser to that question I would have to have some expierence dealing among such a thing.”

“I think that it’s both a negative and positive step that a three year old has the oppertunity to buy a car. It’s a very positive step because it means that that technology is very easy to use. I often hear about how senior citizens don’t know how to use a computer because it’s too hard, and i’m pretty sure that if a three year old knows how to use ebay, a senior citizen could figure it out also. But the down side to it is if a three year old accidently pushes the purchase button and buys a car, then how do we know that it wouldn’t be easy for frauds to do it also. Identify theft is getting to be a huge problem now. It just shows how easy it would be to buy something and have someone else pay for it. I think that sites like ebay should have more restrictions.

I would absoutely love to go to a school that was all computerized! Firstly you wouldn’t have to buy school supplies besides a labtop, which you may already have one. I think that would be so much less of a hassle. You also don’t have to carry around a text book all day. It’s also very frustrating when you’re about to do homework or study for a test when you just realize that you forgot your textbook. If we had a computerized school, you would always have information right in front of you. We also wouldn’t waste paper. We have all this technology, so why should we not use it to our full extent??”

“If you dont want random pink cars showing up at your house then dont let your three year old son use the computer. This story is ironic, but stupid. So what if a three year old kid bought a car. The media needs to pay more attention to more important subject. When i read this i felt like i wasted two minutes of my life, and i cant get it back.

If the mother is dumb enough to leave her kid unattended by the computer then he should of bought 100 cars. Who honestly cares about this story. It is funny, and im not going to lie, i did chuckle. But what i didnt chuckle about is that kids saftey. He could have really got hurt. “