Googlization!

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How can we make JSU into a better 21^st century learning environment?

One problem I have with campus is the online program we use to check grades, submit assignments, view class updates, etc. BlackBoard is what we at JSU use to do the previously mentioned tasks. Only 1 out of 8 of my classes used blackboard this semester.  I personally found BlackBoard to be confusing and not very efficient on the go.

One thing I found that may be cheaper for our campus to use is Google Apps for Education. Google has many apps that come free from just having a Google account. I created a    Prezi    to present most of this information. The below notes are footnotes for the presentation after the video.

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Gmail:

•  Comes right out the box with 25GB of storage space, no need to add on.
• Syncs easily with smart phones. )Apple, Android  ect.)
• Not just email, chat with contacts in real time will online (IM, video chat,etc)
• Schools can get emails in the form of "you@yourschool.edu" so they can keep the .edu suffix.  

photo credit: Brian Sawyer via photopin cc Gmail:

Calender:

• Create and overlay multiple calenders from different friends to see how schedules match up
• Already integrated in Gmail.
• Syncs to your phones calender when signed into a Gmail app.
• Educators can create class schedules and send then to all their students easily.

Docs:

• A live document that can be edited in real time.
• Can be both private and public.
• Easily allows classes to share ideas in one place.
• Has administration controls.

Drive:

• Works just like DropBox.
• Instantly yours from having a Google account. (Free)
• Accessible from different devices (Pc, Mac, Smartphone)
•  Can share documents with other Google account (Can be used to turn in assignments much faster)

Sites

• Can create your own web page (mainly for teachers)
• Easy to setup 
• Personalize however you choose and add whatever you want.

And there are many other apps that all start off free form having a Google account.

Google Apps for Education is completely secure for colleges and other schools to use when setup right and has many benefits. Making the switch to Google can save our school money and frustation, can add more interaction between students, teachers, and administrators, and can make classrooms flow more smoothly.

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LET'S MAKE THE SWITCH TODAY!

Reflect: To Cast Back Light

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To think quietly and calmly,

To look back or ponder upon,

When I went back and read over my blogs I felt that my best work so far is “No seriously..... is this the right choice???”. I really took that topic and hit the ground running, sharing a good majority of my opinion and other articles that I found with the same thoughts. In my English class, I learned that you have to keep your audience interested in your work. Spitting out the same boring information will cause them to lose interest, so with that in mind I stated facts quickly and tried to keep adding new information in it.

The only other blog I feel was really good was a summary from the book “Share or Die” where I summed up a story from the book and shared my views. I feel like that blog was heavily opinion based for me because I am a very open minded person that loves to give all the sides to a story. So I felt like this blog was written with a different mindset than most of my others. But even though it was a different, I felt that I really did a good job on these blogs. 

“Why College” would have to be the most attention grabbing blog I’ve had, sense I made my on meme from a picture I had. Quite funny and it did its job well capturing the attention of readers.

I somewhat enjoyed blogging over this semester because I do like expressing my own opinion, but it is time consuming like many other things and I’m not a very patient person to be honest. Maybe in the future I’ll slow down and start back up another blog that I update daily!

No seriously..... is this the right choice???

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 I look at college as if it were an investment taken to try to build a foundation of learning that will be used in the “world of work”. When you look at it this way, you may tend to think twice and ask yourself “why is this the right choice for me?” There are people out there with all types of degrees and prefixes to their names and still find it hard to find a job. Whilst you have others that go straight from high school and find a well-paying job because of someone they know. Is this fair?

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Louis Menand states that,  "College is, essentially, a four-year intelligence test. Students have to demonstrate intellectual ability over time and across a range of subjects. If they’re sloppy or inflexible or obnoxious—no matter how smart they might be in the I.Q. sense—those negatives will get picked up in their grades.”

Of course from that, I'm sure we can come to an agreement that college is here to help build the skills and aptitudes of students that would be hard to obtain without it. While in college you are not just developing your academics, but you are learning how to socialize with others, which is a big part of being a citizen anywhere.

Likewise, I personally think that being able to communicate efficiently and clearly is definitely needed in our time. With so many expansions in technology, if you lack these skills you may find it very difficult to interact with others and express what you want.

What is college good for then?

When we look into this, you will find there are many good reasons to attend a college or university. In these years, students will meet many people and develop not only as a person, but as a citizen. Bobby Fong states in one of his articles that, 

"The goal of a classical liberal arts education was to prepare students to live in a community as a suitably prepared responsible citizen. In our time, you will need to be citizens not only of a local community, state, or nation, but also citizens of the world.”

If you agree with this statement, then we can conclude that college does not only focus on academic success. It is focusing on the overall success of being a good citizen. While in college, it’s not just about what you are learning in the classroom anymore, you get to interact with peers at social events, especially if you are living on campus. There are multiple meets and activities around campus and if the student chooses to get involved, they will grow socially.

In addition, there are many other reasons why college can be a good investment. An advantage one could have over another is the fact that you will be offered more opportunities in college if you look for them. No matter the size of the campus there are many faculty and staff that can help students along the way. If a student was seeking leads for a job, they could utilize a faculty member for the information and even get recommendations from them. There are also career colleges that one can attend to further these opportunities by placing themselves in a school already focusing on their career track. 

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Nevertheless, to every good there is a bad when it comes to looking into a college degree. It is really expensive to pay for college, and many think it is just a complete waste of time to attend .Debt is a big problem in our country and a big portion of it is caused by loans to attend these institutions.

The NPR Staff’s article “College Student Debt Grows. Is It Worth It?” really gives vivid detail about how bad debt can get for graduates.

An example Kantrowitz says is that if you're going to borrow $10,000 a year for four years, you should hope that the field you've chosen has a starting salary of at least $40,000. If you are going to be borrowing more than that, he suggests looking for a less expensive school.

That might make some people wince — especially those who focused on liberal arts in college. Kantrowitz says it's not that those majors are worthless, but that students have to face the reality of how they're going to pay back the money they've borrowed for their education.

Many students coming into college have no clue to what degree program they want to follow. For example, let’s say we have someone who grew up wanting to be a lawyer and enters a university. He registers for his classes and while he takes them, he finds out that this is something he can’t stand to do. Not only that but let’s say he doesn’t discover this until two years into his degree track. He just wasted all that time and money and might have to start completely over when he switches majors. If something like the above may happen, a student may become emotionally distressed, depressed, and may even turn to suicide. 

“Suicide is the dark side of the student lending crisis and, despite all the media attention to the issue of student loans, it's been severely under-reported.”

Says, Johannsen

Are the risks worth it? Am I strong enough to hold it together and graduated, regardless of what may come my way? These are questions that a ton of students may have asked themselves before clicking the submit button on their application to a university. If I risk getting into deep debt from this education, is it truly worth it? Some might answer that question with a “yes”.

Many people come to college because they feel it is their calling to do something in this world. Take an artist for example. They may not worry about paying off their loans as much because they will enjoy what they are doing in life. Even though they may not make as much money as a doctor or pay off their debt in a timely matter, the fact that they are doing what they love is all too fulfilling and they can’t imagine themselves doing something else. I can relate to this because I am a music major and music majors definitely don’t make good money on even a master’s degree, but if I wake up in the morning and enjoy what I do, how can I complain. 

Even though there may be negatives to going to college, I still think it is a good choice. It is here to help develop skills that might not have been obtained through going straight into the work force. Students have a chance to become more sociable and interact with people of different backgrounds, culture, ethics, etc. that can mold them into responsible citizens. Not only will they interact, but they can truly find who they are in college from the exposer they will experience. Don’t get me wrong, college is not for everyone. It takes a strong individual to handle the responsible and stress that comes with the job. Just remember that college is more than just academics; it is what makes the next generation better than the last. If one works hard and utilizes all the resources in front of them, they can achieve many things.

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Share or Die: A Scary Future

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As I was reading “Share or Die”, a compilation of different viewpoints from different college graduates, one chapter stuck out to me entitled “Unprepared: From Elite College to the Job Market”. In this chapter Sarah Idzik shares her story of being deceived by her college education on how her future work life would be.

To sum up her story, Sarah was the “perfect” student. She grew up in a small town and breezed through high school with no problems, excelling in her classes with all A’s. However, when she moved to the big city and got into college, she felt as though everyone around her was a genius. She was embarrassed when her colleagues would talk about things that she had never heard of.

Eventually she started to pick up on things and adapted to college life by asking questions, reading carefully, etc. She felt that she was absorbing everything in and maturing more quickly than ever before. Unfortunately, she soon realized that the culture of learning is not always compatible with the culture of the job market. The skills she learned in college weren't the same skills she needed to survive in the real world.

To add on to her problems, Sarah did not have a sense of where she was going. Soon after graduation she would have to scramble to fit her bills. She went from expecting greatness to hoping for something that paid. She eventually found a small job where she typed and printed travel documents for globetrotters. After securing this job, she was terrified to leave it in hopes for a full time job. She had worked at the job for three years and had never imagined that she would be doing this kind of work because, while in college, she had wide hopes and dreams of what she could have been doing.

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This story really makes a strong connection with what my class is discussing.  Why college? What is it good for? And is it good enough? These are all questions that we have been asked to answer in our own words. Above all Sarah’s story shows the positives and negatives of college.

First off, Sarah feels as though her college education was an awakening in her learning experience. She learned things that she would've had a hard time learning on her own. I honestly believe that this is true for anyone who is enrolled in a college or university. While in college you learn skills that are hard for someone to obtain on their own. Beyond that, Sarah learned to dream big in college and to think outside of the box, in addition to problem solving and time management. 

So, since I personally can't give my own experiences, I think Sarah Idzik's story paints a clear picture of what most college graduates can expect. The scary thing about it is that she graduated before our economic decline, so now it may be even worse for your average graduate. 

When You Really Think About It.....

Is college good enough?

I've been told time and time again from many different kinds of people about college. I've been told if you go to college and get a degree you will be able to get a job; but I've come to realize since attending college that it simply is not that easy.

If getting a job even with a degree is hard, then why are educators stressing college on students?

 

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Today’s job market is really messy. There are older, more experienced people taking jobs that usually go to early graduates. Because of this competition, having a degree no longer matters; you need a degree and job experience. In the article "Why Your College Degree Is Not Enough" an unnamed author goes to say,

“First off, a degree no longer sets you apart from the pack. Today, high school students are pretty much expected to go to college. Boomers are going back to college.  Plus, there is plethora of specialized technical colleges.  So, there are millions of other people with degrees looking for jobs just like you.  While the realization of the importance of obtaining a degree is wonderful, this shift in thinking took college graduates from the front of the line and placed them right in the middle.  This eliminated the competitive edge that a degree once provided.”

We can conclude that today you may need job experience to hold a career. But most people graduating from college were full-time students and haven’t had any experience at all. So how can a college graduate compete with an older more experienced job seeker?

Internships are great ways for students to gain experience while working on their degrees. It can be a big resume builder that can set your application apart from dozens of others that an employer will go through. Sometimes, if one gets lucky, an internship can lead to a potential career. Even if one discontinues with that type of career, they will take with them long-lasting connections that can create opportunities in the future.

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When you think about the competition in the job market it can be somewhat scary. Students believe that it will be easy to get a job, but they forget to realize how scarce jobs really are. Some people may get lucky and land a job through their luck or connections. Look at Bill Gates, he didn't have a degree. He enrolled at Harvard and didn't have a major and finally just dropped out to start his own company. Sometimes it doesn't matter what degree you have, if you have the right connections, you can have a great job.

Sadly, in the real world, the odds of the average person’s luck won’t be as great as Bill Gates's was, and that’s why it is important to learn the basic functions for having a job. Leadership is an important trait that everybody should possess. In “The Bad Habits You Learn in School” Coleman states,

"Finally, while many schools tell us to serve others, they are rarely structured to actively show us that leadership is serving others. In most educational environments, our primary goal is to serve ourselves — to improve our individual grades, to compete for individual positions, and to maximize our own employment, college, or grad school placements. But as Bill George once said in a panel discussion on next generation leadership, “We are not heroes of our own journey.” People follow leaders who care for them, who share their vision, and who are dedicated to serving a cause greater than one’s self." 

When you have a job you are serving others, whether it’s retail, fast-food, accounting, etc. you are performing tasks that will help someone else. Our education system should realize the importance of leadership and integrate it into daily teaching.

But, often in high schools they aren't teaching students to be leaders. Not only are they not teaching leadership, but they aren't teaching students to think critically for themselves. Most tests are the all to familiar scantron test, where you simply choose between A to E on a sheet that is graded by a computer.There are no thought provoking questions that requires writing, no diversity in expressing answers. In the info graphic "When C's Become A's: How Students Today Study the Least and Score the Highest" it illustrates just how much students' study habits and grades have changed over the years. When a student from the 60's studied for 40 hours a week and made a C it is hard to believe that a student of today can study for maybe 20 hours and end up making an A.

"While it is clear that investment in a college degree, especially for those students in the lowest income brackets, is a financial burden, the long-term benefits to individuals as well as to society at large, appear to far outweigh the costs."

-ERIC Digest

So overall no, I don’t think college is enough in today’s job market. But is it a good investment for the right people? Yes.  College is set up to grow and mature people. Many students who invest time in their college experience and take it seriously usually prosper more than those who choose not to continue in higher education. I’m not saying that it’s set in stone that people who don’t go to college are doomed, but what I’m getting at is that people who do go to college are better prepared for the world if they excelled in their classrooms

Is College The Right Choice For Everyone?

This is an interesting question that can be answered in many ways.

 I look at college as if it were an investment taken to try to build a foundation of learning that will be used in the “world of work”. When you look at it this way, you may tend to think twice and ask yourself “why is this the right choice for me?” There are people out there with all types of degrees and prefixes to their names and still find it hard to find a job. Whilst you have others that go straight from high school and find a well-paying job because of someone they know. Is this fair?

Louis Menand stated that,  "College is, essentially, a four-year intelligence test. Students have to demonstrate intellectual ability over time and across a range of subjects. If they’re sloppy or inflexible or obnoxious—no matter how smart they might be in the I.Q. sense—those negatives will get picked up in their grades.”

So from that I think we can come to an agreement that college is here to help build the skills and aptitudes of students that would be hard to obtain without it. While in college you are not just developing your academics, but you are learning how to socialize with others, which is a big part of being a citizen anywhere.

I personally think that being able to communicate efficiently and clearly is definitely needed in our time. With so many expansions in technology, if you lack these skills you may find it very difficult to interact with others and express what you want.

photo credit: Arbron via photopin cc

What is college good for then?

When we look into this, you will find there are many good reasons to attend a college or university. In these years, students will meet many people and develop not only as a person, but as a citizen. Bobby Fong stated in one of his articles that, 

"The goal of a classical liberal arts education was to prepare students to live in a community as a suitably prepared responsible citizen. In our time, you will need to be citizens not only of a local community, state, or nation, but also citizens of the world.”

If you agree with this statement then we can conclude that college does not only focus on academic success. It also focuses on the overall success of being a good citizen.

There are many other reasons why college can be a good investment. An advantage one could have over another is the fact that you will be offered more opportunities in college if you look for them. No matter the size of the campus there are many faculty and staff that can help students along the way. If a student was seeking leads for a job they could utilize a faculty member for the information, and even get recommendations from them.  There are also career colleges that one can attend to further these opportunities by placing themselves in a school already focusing on their career track.   

Now all of this may sound good, but there are some bad things when it comes to looking into a college degree. It is really expensive to pay for college, and many think it is just a complete waste to attend it.

Debt is a big problem in our country and a big portion of it is caused by loans to attend these institutions. 

The NPR Staff’s article “College Student Debt Grows. Is It Worth It?” really gives vivid detail about how bad debt can get for graduates.

photo credit: cordon.alejandro via photopin cc

An example Kantrowitz says is that if you're going to borrow $10,000 a year for four years, you should hope that the field you've chosen has a starting salary of at least $40,000. If you are going to be borrowing more than that, he suggests looking for a less expensive school.

That might make some people wince — especially those who focused on liberal arts in college. Kantrowitz says it's not that those majors are worthless, but that students have to face the reality of how they're going to pay back the money they've borrowed for their

 Even though there may be negatives to going to college I still think it is a good choice. It is here to help develop skills that might not have been obtained through going straight into the work force. Students have a chance to become more sociable and interact with people of different backgrounds, culture, ethnic, etc. that can mold them into responsible citizens. College is more than just academics; it is what makes the next generation better than the last. If one works hard and utilizes all the resources in front of them, they can achieve many things.

photo credit: Suzba via photopin cc

Why College

The question I was presented with was "Why college?" but when I hear that I think "Why not college?"

Let's be honest, throughout high school we were told more about college than we heard our names. My teachers would compare and contrast high school to college, going on and on about how college professors would be, etc. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that today  it's almost expected to go to college. 

So why did I choose college? Well for one, my sister told me to look at college as if it was an investment. This isn't something I had to do. She explained that I would be investing MY time and money to study so that finding a job could (hopefully) come easier.

I would think about all the things she shared with me during my last year of high school and I've always wanted to have a college experience. To live on campus and meet people from different places was always on the brain. 

So I think it boils down to the point that I want to have this experience and share it with fellow peers. And also because this band is just soooo AMAZING.

And now I have to state the obvious/generic answer: 

I WANT A DEGREE AND A GOOD JOB TOO ONE DAY. 

And in today's time you have to have some form of higher education to receive a decent (overworked/underpaying)job.

P.S. I made that Meme here :D