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Thursday 14 March 2013

Response to No Red Pill No Blue Pill


Hello, I am a student from Ms Lees’ Hum 8 class and this is my response to your “No Red Pill No Blue Pill” post.
First of all, I liked your post because it was written creatively, like for the introduction, you wrote it kind of like a poem, that had an attention grabber. If it didn’t have an attention grabber, I probably would have got bored and not pay attention to your post.
I totally agree with your thought on how students should have learning motiviations. If they don’t have any learning motiviation on a certain subject, they don’t even pay attention to their teachers as they teach them. What I mean by that, is, if the students think that they are being forced to participate in a class of a certain course that they don’t like, they choose not to listen to the lesson, but instead, they start doing other things, such as playing on their electronic devices or sleeping. If those students choose not to take their course seriously and just play around during the class, the teacher doesn’t feel like teaching those students, too. The students need to learn to be more responsible as they grow order because if they don’t actually want to learn or study, they can’t go to university and there are no more teachers to help them. The actions the students choose to take will either end them up in getting a great job and being rich, or living on the streets without a job.
On the other hand, maybe the students are just interested in something else. Maybe they really hate math and want to quit the subject, but are interested in skateboarding tricks. Whatever thing the students are interested in, if they really want to learn about something that ineterests them, that learning motivation in the students will grow and they will become professionals at those things because they actually learned alot of those things. However smart the students are, if they don’t want to learn about a certain subject, they don’t care about those things and end up failing them. But when not-so-smart students are actually interested in something and they actually want to learn about it, that makes them learn more and more about it and without them realising it, they are suddenly really good at those things.
I think this post was a message for all the students that it’s time for them to become more responsible and and choose to learn certain things. If they don’t have the learning motivation in them, they just can’t be good at that subject no matter how smart they are. The teacners can’t help the students if they don’t participate in class and slack off. They feel that the students just don’t want to learn so the teachers end up not really taking care of students as well as they should be. Now, I’m not trying to be offensive to the teachers, but if there are those certain students that drive the teachers crazy and the teachers yell at them to stop goofing around like milliong of times, but they still don’t stop, the teachers ignore the students because the students are clearly being very disrespectful for the teachers and it is very hard for them to teach the students if they are going to be fooling around.
This post clearly reminded of Ms Lees’ hum 8 class. There were these times when certain students chose not to complete their homework all the time. The same students also played on their electronical devices as Ms Lees taught. If they don’t participate in class, what’s the point of teaching them? I also dozed off in class a couple of times because I was very tired. I tried hard not to, but sometimes your brain doesn’t work with your body. This probably happens to most of the students. They turn on their computer to do homework but a video game catches their eyes. They know they have to finish their homework but their bodies are already walking towards the remote control.
The way the author wrote this post is very creative. There are some pictures as reference to her paragraph which explains more clearly of what she is trying to say to the audience. Also. she added an attention grabber in the beginning of the post so the readers don’t get bored. The author used lots of forms of writing, she wrote sort of a poem in the introduction, and some questions that we could answer in our heads. She highlited some of the words with light blue color and linked them so that the readers could click on it and understand better of the post. Overall, this post was very well done and my only advice would be is to organize the paragraphs a bit better by making the pictures a little bit smaller.

Tuesday 12 March 2013


Upon reading this post, i was thinking to myself ways that i could relate to what’s written, and try to understand all the metaphors.
I loved how you wrote this kind of like a poem, and stuck with it from start to finish. It really brings a new light to the writing, and to me, it alters how people picture what you’re actually talking about (in a sense). But, the pictures, (which may or may not have some relevance to your writing) i found a little distracting while reading, as if it changed the scenes i’d imagine from reading your entry, into something totally different. On the other hand, some were helpful. I liked how you included the charts and info-graphics, and then talked about each. I also found the highlighted words to be very useful, because this is a difficult post to understand fully, and I thought that the highlighted words moved everything along much smoother and more efficiently!
The title is attention-getting all on it’s own but the thing i truly admire is how you subtly included references from the title into your post, such as the quote where you got the motivation for the title. Asking yourself questions, and being repetetive throughout your entry were other admirable attributes of your story, but what really got me was the title and the first couple of pure poetic sentences (as i mentioned earlier) before you gradually got to your point (which i also liked, because you didn’t rush to your point). It kind of left me confused, but in a good way, and it edged me on.
First off, what I understood was that in learning, there is no easy way out. No red pill, no blue pill. The student cannot succeed at learning if they have no motivation. And no matter how hard the teacher tries to push, they will make no progress. I can strongly relate to this because I have witnessed these sort of situations countless times.
But what has made the children lose their motivation? What is the missing piece of the puzzle?
Learning? When the student steps into the real world, and they realize it’s too much to handle, what do they do? They blame it on the teacher. It’s too hard to handle, and it hurts. But is there anything the teacher can do to help them? They are wading into a deep pool wearing no life jacket, and they don’t know what else to do but flail their arms and start to sink. How can they regain their motivation? How can they become independent learners from this point? They need to be able to trust in themselves and take their own route, that’s the only way.
In conclusion, I totally agree with this article. I advise all students to rid themselves of their fear, and travel down the road of independance to discover capabilities beyond anything they’d ever dream of having.
But the question I have for you is; What is the motivation of this article? Does it have a meaning to it? Is it directed to someone personally?
Thank you,
Emily

Monday 11 March 2013

No Red Pill, No Blue Pill Reponse


 I really liked how she grabbed our attention by using these amazing adjectives and phrases. From this article, I comprehend that the author had traveled lots of routes of success in learning that didn't suit her but she did travel one or two routes that suited her. She prefers a route that is sturdy, permanent, and secure.  Also, she rapped it up great by again  using vivid descriptive words. She concluded her article by going back to the beginning and ending with a sentence that said "Connections do happen". I enjoyed her quote to summarize the beginning by writing Until then, I linger in frost, waiting for the blooms of Spring.

The author did a great job of writing her body paragraphs. I knew what she was going to write about next. For example, for the 8 or 9th paragraph, she started her third paragraph by writing accountability is a strong word so I knew she would describe accountability. She introduced accountability by she writing a discussion given by a webinar named Shareski about the differences about being responsible and accountable. In other words, she had awesome topic sentences.

She did have a great introductory paragraph. Maybe in the future, she could of being more straightforward because I had a hard time finding the hidden meaning of her introduction. For the pictures, she did have amazing images. To be better, she could of posted photos more related to the topic. I thought she was going to inform us about horror films or motion pictures because there was a picture of a terrifying lady that looked she was a demon or ghost.

No Red Pill No Blue Pill Response

     Wow, i can relate a lot to this post, No Red Pill No Blue Pill.  I'm sure many students can also relate to this as well.  There are lots of times in a classroom that I get bored and start to not want to pay attention in class, I'm sure this has happened at least once in every single one of my classes. That is why I like doing genius hour because we get to learn about things that we desire and not things we are forced to learn about.

I really liked the way she wrote this because for all of the confusing words they had links of the definitions on them which really helped.  Also the intro really hooked me and brought me into reading the article I thought that was well done.  The only problem I thought were the big pictures at the end of each thought because it really brought my attention away from the whole article and focused me more on the pictures.  I think that this article was targeted towards students and teachers because students need motivation to learn and teachers need motivation to teach the students, just think if the teachers didn't have motivation to teach students, we wouldn't learn much.


All in all do whatever it takes motivate yourself to do well in school.  If that means looking up to people or looking up to something you want to do.  If you are motivated inspired in a classroom work gets more fun and even easier... So do what it takes to get yourself inspired or motivated.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Reminder to post response on this person's blog.

For our homework we can either choose to post a respose to the No Red Pill, No Blue Pill post or we can comment on it directly on the author's blog.

Sunday 3 March 2013

Response to build your own school video

After watching the build your own school video and thinking about it for a few days I decided that I really don't like the idea of having every day for a whole semester to do what you would like to work on. Maybe its just the fact that I really don't understand how it would work and have many questions. For example, where would you learn the math, science, english, social studies and all the other academics you need to continue to university, collage or even to get a decent job? Is it possible to cover all these necessary tools? If so what grades should it be available for and how would everyone that wanted to join get the opportunity? I think that if my many questions were answered I would have a better idea of what to respond to. With the information I do have I would not personally like to join this class, as I find I do better with some structure and teaching in my classrooms. Of course there are things that I like about this idea. For example, I love how you get to choose your projects because you have more interest in what you do if you are passionate about what you are doing. Also I find it very interesting that it is run by your peers instead of a teacher. In conclusion there are many good ideas however I don't think that this program would personally suit me

"If Students Designed Their Own School" Response

Last week in class, we watched a video that Ms. Lees posted on her blog. It was about some seniors in a high school who instead of classes, got to work on, learn about, and posess a skill on whatever their heart desired.
I was quite intrigued by this video. I've always thought about what school would be like if there were no teachers, and how things would work, but i never expected there to be an actual program as unique as this.
In a way, I thought the kids were the students because they are learning and expanding their horizons (as normal students would), but they are also the teachers, because there are no rules or guidelines, only ones they make for themselves (the group). I was really inspired by the fact that they all stuck by their own rules, because if someone didn't do their homework, they're not just letting themselves down, but everybody else as well.
There were good sides, as well as bad sides to this whole idea:
I really liked the fact that this whole situation is a way for the students to express themselves. Nobody has to tell them what curriculum they have to learn. This system does put a lot more pressure on the students though, because they have to present in front of their classmates, and demonstrate all the new things they've learned. One person cannot slow the rest down.
There are also a few points that i think could be tweaked slightly...
I know the whole purpose of the independent project is for students to learn freely, but is that such a good idea?
If this were to spread around to other schools, how would the staff ensure that all the kids are doing their part and learning efficiently? Maybe once in a while they could also present what they have learned about so far to the school staff. But, I don't really think that most seniors would slack off like that on the independant project because they aim to do a good job for their college applications.
So all in all, I believe this to be quite an effective system!

RESPONSE TO WHAT IF PEOPLE DESIGNED THEIR OWN SCHOOLS

In class we watched a video about a school that has a class where the students have the freedom to work on projects that they are passionate about. In this class, there would be no homework, quizzes, and tests. I thought this was a bad idea because you would have too much freedom and wouldn't learn about the curriculum that you could use in the future. Also, you dont have any pressure to work hard on because you won't have any quizzes, homework, and tests. You wouldn't have any practice for french or anything. If this actually happenned,there would be no purpose of going to school because you mostly wasting your time because you are mostly not learning anything !!!!!

If Students Designed Their Own School Response

       In class we watched a video about students making their own class, where they get to do whatever they desire to do.  This class lasts a whole semester and they have no tests or quizzes they just simply teach themselves.  I think this is actually a very good idea because some people want to learn about things that aren't taught in classes and in this class they get to choose whatever they would like.  This is a lot like genius hour where we can design our own projects.  There are a few disadvantages with this class because these students could be missing out on learning in the other classes too.  Also lots of people that would take this class but wouldn't actually do any work since the have so much freedom which would make the class completely pointless and ineffective.  I am very surprised that the principal actually let the students follow through with this class because as I said before if you get the wrong kids in that class they wouldn't get any work done. Also the students would work harder to research about their topic because they actually want to learn about it. Altogether I would agree with this class because students can learn things that they desire and not something that they are forced to learn about.