Punishments in High School

There are many forms of punishment in high school and none of them are very effective at deterring bad behavior. The first punishment is the detention. Being held after class for a couple hours is actually pretty bad but, it only lasts as long as you're held. As soon as you are released there is no lasting effect on behavior. The next punishment is the suspension (which in my opinion is a total joke). Telling a kid to sleep in and play video games all day sounds more like vacation than punishment. I've actually seen kids get suspended on purpose so they can stay home for a few days and not have to deal with school. I feel like the only possible way to stop bad behavior is to create a punishment that lasts multiple days. For instance if you vandalize something you should have to fix it and then have longer detentions for more than one day.

30 goal challenge

One of the goals was to change your profile so I decided to update my education information on facebook.

Osama

Yesterday we all heard news that Osama was dead. He was killed by a team of Navy Seals and CIA at his hideout in Pakistan. His body was buried at sea within twenty-four hours to comply with Muslim tradition. They used DNA evidence to identify him as well as facial recognition methods. I feel as though his death lifted a lot of weight off of my mind. I understand that there are many more terrorists out there and there could be some sort of retaliation but we should not be afraid.

Flipboard

Yesterday I downloaded an app called Flipboard. It is a neat little app that changes up websites like facebook and twitter. The app itself has no way to produce anything new. It is merely wrapping other websites in new packaging. If you are bored with the current facebook layout or tired of the bland twitter screen just download this free app for a fresh experience.

Ipad

A lot of people are talking about ipad and how they are or aren't useful in school. I saw one app that seemed really useful. It is called Evernote and it is free. With Evernote you will never lose your notes because its on your ipad instead of that collection of paper thrown about your room. Hopefully you won't lose your ipad or else your out a lot of money as well as all your notes.

School Schedules

My high school is working on revising the class schedule. The current schedule is very rigid. The only thing that changes is the each day a different class get an extra thirty minutes. This slight change is more of a punishment than a pleasant change of pace. Most people I have talked to despise the schedule because it makes the day so monotonous. I think the schedule needs a total overhaul.
I recommend that we use a rotating schedule. So for the first day the schedule would look like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and then the next day would be 7,1,2,3,4,5,6. This rotation would continue over a seven day period then it would repeat. There should be no long period because that class is simply the class to skip for most students.

Twitter

I like twitter and I think it can be a great tool to use for learning. Recently however, I tweeted asking a question about an issue I am having with my car. I was surprised to see that after 24 hours nobody had responded. Maybe no one knew the answer to my question. Or maybe it is because I only have seven or so followers. I did post it with the cars hashtag though so I believe many people should have seen it. All in all this was pretty discouraging. I still think twitter is a usefull tool but, not for every question.