Budget cuts?!

                                                Major Budget cuts in education

As you may know, there has been massive cuts in public education. A budget of  $27.15 billion dollars was passed by the Pennsylvania State legislature and was sighned into a law. These budget cuts are mainly focusing on education. The Pennsylvania State Educational Association estimates that 3,000 teachers statewide are being laid off and another 2,000 positions are not being filled. These cuts are targeting early childhood education as well. The state has cut funding for full-day kindergarten from $260 million to $100 million. Many school districts are being forced to close pre-school centers and cut kindergarten down for a half a day. This is becoming a huge worry to me since I am going to school to become a teacher. Because of these statewide cuts, this will mean larger size classes, fewer teacher's aides, and cuts in specific programs.  In many school districts, students will have to pay for an extracurricular activity such as sports. School districts are also cutting back on classes you can take to learn a foreign language,art, or music. This is a huge deal to many school districts because you can't just go to school and learn about certain subjects. There are some students who enjoy art class or music and the Education Department is taking all of that away from them. Parents should also be worried as they are getting laid off of there jobs. If this continues to take place, many school districts will have to merge with another school since they won't be able to keep up with the payments.

The govenor is cutting certain school programs that give money to certain schools. A way of thinking about how this works is if an employer increases a worker's salary, but takes away health care benifits, then the woker is getting less compensation. These health care benifits end up costing the worker more to replace than the raise he recieved. This seems to be a big issue today.  With this said,  to view a few websites that I found about this topic,click here!      

 This video talks about the budget cuts going on in Texas and how it is affecting education. They give specific statistics about how much money they will be losing and what people feel about it.

Tweeting on Twitter!!

My first impression of twitter was "How can you use this network in a classroom?" There are specific networks that you would be able to use in a classroom and I feel as if Twitter would not be one of them. I never would of thought that using Twitter in a classroom setting would be an option. The most I thought that teachers would use as far as technology goes, would be powerpoints. I feel as if Twitter is just another social networking distraction to students. Facebook, which is also a social networking site, would be considered a huge distraction to students too. Twitter and Facebook are a great way to stay connected with people, but on the flip side, it is a distraction to so many people. Ever since I made a Facebook  and Twitter account, I am glued to the internet on my phone 24/7. I feel I could get so much more work accomplished in a day if Facebook and Twitter were never an option. Now with that said, follow me on Twitter : https://twitter.com/#!/KatieDuBrowa

Powerpoint Presentation!

For this project, we had to choose a specific lesson that you would be teaching and put it into a powerpoint. At first, I really didn't know where to begin. I ended up having to change the grade level and my lesson becuase it would of been difficult to make it into a powerpoint. Depending on what subject you were teaching and the grade level, I feel like a powerpoint would be difficult to use for a specific lesson. I definitley feel like I gained alot of knowledge just by doing this project. There are many different things that I can do on the powerpoint that I never knew how to do. Some of the knowledge that I have gained from this project is how to post a youtube video or a hyperlink on a powerpoint. My goal in the near future is to use the knowledge that I have gained from doing this project and use it in my future classroom someday.

Chapter One!

In the book "Personal Learning Networks" we come to find out that their are many facts and opinions in this novel. Since I have only got through the Introduction and Chapter One, I still have a pretty open mind about certain aspects of the book. One specific part in Chapter One that stuck out to me was the section Learing Networks.

In the section Learning Networks of Chapter One, their were many things that stuck out to me. One of them being the question: What do we mean when we say "learning networks"? According to Will Richardson and Rob Mancabelli, they mean the set of connections each of us can make to people in both our online and offline worlds who can help us with our learning. That sentence is so true to me because in today's world, we can turn to so many other people anywhere in the world to help us with whatever we need. We also have a social network when we need to turn to someone. Myspace, Facebook, and others are just some ways of connecting with people all around the world. With these types of networks, we connect to people who we already know.  Not only do we use them to keep in touch, but throughout the experience, we are learning at the same time.

Overall, technology is extremely important in todays society. The more social networks we have, the more we are able to connect with people across the world and the more we are able to learn from them. It's crazy how technology has changed throughout the years and now, that is all people rely on.