Online+Community+Journal

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My brave souls is going to attempt to join Second Life for my online community. I have only heard great things about it and it seems to be interesting. I choose Second Life because it was feature on a morning show I was watching. I thought it could be cool of I could create a figurative new life. So any who, I don't want to become nostalgic or anything. I created my person his name is Madden Balzibo. I think it is interesting that you create a first and last name, they are not kidding when they say second life. I thought you would just create a username and be done. I'm excited for this new journey.=====

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Today is the first day I actually try out my avatar and what second life has to offer. Yesterday I just set up my account and played email tag with Second life. So I thought Secondl life would be easy, but the site is definitely having its Twitter moments. The site is not allowing me to log into my account. I try back later today!......Ok so I am on here and I must admitt that the interface, for me, is not user friendly. It took awhile for me to get started. I was expecting this site to be easier to use. In fact, I discovered that I must install a program on my computer, this online community is too much of a hassle. I need a site where I can just join and play, or a site that is minimal hassle. I think I will explore ning.com. I thought second life would be fun, but I just cant install another program on my computer, its old.=====

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Okay, so my second life ended short due to technological issues, basically, my computer sucks and I can not download another program to my hard drive. Therefore, I am going to try ning.com. I think its cool how you can create your on social network. I am in the process of creating one for my fraternity members in the state. This site is easier to use than second life, (thank goodness). I played around with the color schemes for a while. Its hard finding a scheme to match. Its fun though. I like the way you can personalize everything. I think that this site has a lot of potential. Its just hard for me to be satisfied with the color scheme I like. So far so good!=====

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Today I explored other ning networks to join. They have so many, one that sparked my interest was The Future of Education. This network sparked my interest because it has several podcast on how can education be improved. One big topic they were talking about are cyber schools. Meaning that students actually go to school online. This idea is popular on the west coast. One idea of the cyber school is that students can create their own class topics. I am not sure if I like that idea, it reminds of the movie "Accepted". I agree that students that should be able have their own topics, but I am afraid that students will affect the students success in higher education. Interesting! I am still waiting for my membership to be improved.=====

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Today I continued to explore The Future of Education network. Today I listened to a podcast on the future of education. The podcast raised many very interesting points. One comment that was made on the podcast was that teachers have to teach students to succeed in the digital era. I think that this is a very good point. I think it is imperative that students are able to succeed on the digital era. I spoke before about the 21st Century skills and the necessity that students should learn them. I enjoy the opportunity to listen to these podcast. I think that its cool that I can listen to these discussions online. There are a lot of interesting topics that are being discussed. Though I am not a k-12 teacher, I am learning other viewpoints from other k-12 educators by listening to the online discussions.=====

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I continued to listen to the online discussion posted on the Future of Education Network. Today I listen to a discussion that talked about the future of schools and technology. An interesting statement was made and it asked, what schools should be and how technology supports that. Since we've been discussing left brain and right brain thinking, this discussion definitely raises questions about it. It was noted in the discussion that the purpose of schools are to distribute information. However, in the last ten years students can obtain more information outside of the school than inside the school. My point is that the ideology of homework should be re-thought. Schools are moving towards have students work and learn together, which is a right brain characteristics; however, teachers still give students homework where they work alone at home, which is typical of left brain characteristics. Therefore, since information is readily available, there should be ways for homework to be done in groups as well......just a thought I had today.=====

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I really enjoy listening to these online discussion, they are very interesting. Today I continued to explore the The Future of Education's web page. This site has a plethora of information that can be utilized by educators. On the website is a section on good books to read, I will be definitely visiting that section again. Today I also listened to another online discussion on learning communities. I found this discussion to be intriguing. The discussion lead to the topic of entertainment and education. I am not an educator, so I never really thought about this, but sometime teachers are not eager to incorporate entertainment and education because of the backlash from other teachers. Its no doubt that if something is entertaining the information is retained better, so why are teachers afraid to go down this route. The point of education should be to teach students. As along as the student is learning and retaining the information, who cares if the information has an entertainment twist to it? A teacher should not be labeled as easy if they decide to do as such. This leads me to the purpose of education, is it to maintain a facade that teaching has to be mundane? or is the purpose of education is to prepares students to become positive and constructive citizens?=====