Camear08’s Blog

I feel really guilty for not writing about my family. I love my family, don’t get me wrong, but something I couldn’t live without, and couldn’t imagine my life without is friends, plus I wanted to be original. I’m so fortunate to have a great loving family but, I think my life would be difficult without good friends. Therefore, I’m so fortunate to have good, loving friends that are great influences on me. Not having many friends, or good friends, can make life difficult. Raise your hand if you want to be the social outcast at school! Let’s face it, nobody would raise their hand. Over the years I’ve weeded out the bad friends, until finally I’ve gotten down to the ones that I know I can count on to be there for me. Living across town, or being on different teams and talking to each other twice a week, hasn’t ruined our friendships. I genuinely like my friends, and I know that they genuinely like me. They never betray me, backstab me, or do anything untrustworthy. I can sit down at the computer or on the phone and talk to them for hours, the whole time laughing. I know everybody says they love their friends but sometimes I wonder how truthful they are being. There is a difference between a bestfriend and an aqquaintence, and I think sometimes people get that confused. People sometimes go their whole lives without bestfriends, and just have aqquaintences. I’m so fortunate to have not only one, but a handful of people I can consider true friends. Sure, my friends might not be the coolest, in fact some of them act kind of dorky sometimes, but that’s why I love them.

In the last month I’ve corresponded with several children in New Zealand. In the last month I’ve received comments on my work from a student in Thailand. In the last month, I’ve watched students from Kansas challenge children in my class to a debate. How else would this all be possible without the technology that the computer has provided my class and I? Easy, it would be impossible. Through my blog and wiki I have learned about other countries and what it is like there. The world seems like such a big and vast place but somehow the computer makes this big and vast place seems slightly smaller. Corresponding with people from around the world has made my schoolwork actually interesting for once, which is a shocker. Suddenly, there is some form of surprise in my day. Who knows if I will sign onto my blog and have a comment from somebody in England, Australia or Asia? There are no words to describe that besides plain old exciting.

The real question is why shouldn’t we use technology in school? The whole world is moving over to computers but yet kids are still sitting in desks writing with pencils and pens in school. When my peers and I go and get jobs what will we be working with? The answer is technology. If school is supposed to prepare us for the future then why are we not using technology in the classroom if technology is the future? School administrators all over the world are too stuck on their old ways. They are unwilling to move over to this new way of thinking because the internet is “scary”. The internet is anything but scary. It is a roadway for new and exciting opportunities if used the correct way.  Administrator’s unwillingness to change will lead to failure in America when children show up for their jobs the first day and don’t know how to click a mouse (okay, maybe not that far but still I hope my point gets across.)

Some days I sit at my computer and think, what is the point of writing a blogs since nobody is reading it anyway? I think that the expectations for writing blogs are too high. Everybody expects a thousand people from around the world to read their blog. I think the more important part of blogging is for your peers and teachers to read your blog. I have read the blogs of kids in my class that I hardly talk to. I have learned things about my peers that I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read their blog. It seems like students are more willing to open up on their blog and wiki. You can open up and share hard things that you probably wouldn’t be comfortable saying in person. I’ve learned so many interesting things about the people who surround me everyday in the classroom. I’ve learned more about them on a blog then I have in 8 years in a classroom.

     I’m really nervous about high school which is the natural feeling for most 8th graders that are going to be going into high school next year. I am so ready for the whole preparing for high school process to just be finished with. I have had to deal with this since the summer thanks to my lovely sister. You see, she decided that she wanted to apply for a ton of private schools ranging from Choate, to Sacred Heart and Westover Academy. She was being very ambitious when she started getting the booklets for all these schools and we didn’t end up applying to most of them. None the less, I got taken along for the ride and I decided to apply for Sacred Heart Academy just for the heck of it. I went and took the test for 3 hours which was … fun. I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I always just assumed that I would be going to Sheehan.

     Then, about two or three weeks ago we got acceptance letters to Sacred Heart and that’s when I found out I got a scholarship for scoring in the top 10 of the entrance exam and I qualified for high level courses. I didn’t know what to do. I knew this school was an excellent school with a great reputation, and I felt that if I was to pass up this experience I would be missing out on a great opportunity. I didn’t want to regret this decision my whole life thinking “what if I had gone”, and I didn’t want my parents and grandparents to be disappointed in me.  I also felt like not going there would mess up my future plans because I want to go to Yale and I know that a lot of people from Sacred Heart have been accepted there.

     In the end, I just decided to go with my instincts which was to go to the public high school. Sure, going to Choate or Sacred Heart might be an interesting experience, but I finally realized something. It doesn’t really matter where I go to high school. I could do amazing at the public school… or at Sacred Heart. There will be mean girls across the street and at Sacred Heart. No matter where I go, a high school is a high school. Also, high school should be a place where a teenager gets to have fun and I don’t think going through a rigorous four years at Choate or Sacred Heart would be very fun. I’m ready for next year. I’m not really scared, but I’m hoping to get with at least a few more of my friends than this year considering I got split up from most of them. I also hope that I will be able to keep up with the work considering the … interesting course load that I am taking.

 Comments That I Left: International, Airhead101, TonksPenguin

The Essay: I think the video “The Essay” was defenitley about how everything is made so difficult these days. Everybody is always trying to make things complex when in reality it’s really easy. For example, the man in the video needed to get a detailed explanation on how to open a book. Of course, in the real world people might not go as extreme as making opening a book complex but it is a dramatisized version of things we DO do in real-life. If something is really easy people always try to find a way to make it hard. People just can’t believe that something can be non-difficult so therefore they try to find ways to make it harder for themselves. Also, people are always second guessing themselves.

Blogger, Ben Wilkoff, posted about a very interesting topic. Do we really need to go to classrooms to learn if we can just do everything on the computer? I have mixed feelings about this issue. While I think that being able to talk to people, face to face, is an important skill to learn I also think that the classroom is a waste of time. I get none of my work done in the classroom setting. Anyway, this was the comment that I left on Ben Wilkoff’s blog. This took a lot of thought, and I still am not completely positive about my feelings on this issue.

I think that it is defenitley really important to go to school. The only reason why I feel this way, is because school is vital for a child to get social skills and build confidence. Sure, you can have a conversation on the computer, but the computer will never replace a face to face interaction. No matter what you do, it is inevitable that you will have to communicate with at least one person throughout the day, face to face. The computer does not help kids build the social skills to have an in person conversation. School has also personally helped me build confidence. It actually takes a lot of guts to be able to raise your hand in a classroom full of thirty noisy, rowdy kids and answer a question. Does our society really want people who are unable to hold a conversation in person or who have no self confidence? I don’t think so. Despite all of this, there is definetly something to being able to just sit at your computer and do your work without any distractions. I can’t name a single assignment that I have done well that was done in a classroom setting. A classroom is just a really uncomfortable place to get your work done. Where does that leave me? I have no idea. I defenitley have mixed feelings on the subject. This is a very interesting question to think about. Until then, I guess all children are going to have to sit at little desks in our classrooms and attempt to learn.