Finals.

Finals week is in full swing here at HSU, and I thought I would just take a little time to provide a few tips for surviving finals week with most of your sanity. I plan on making this rather short, because to be quite honest, I'm exhausted.

My first tip in preparing for finals week is actually something you should've been doing all along: Keeping up with all of your work. If you find yourself on the brink of finals week realizing you have to cram a whole semesters worth of material into a few days, or even worse, a few hours, then you're going to have a bad time. If this happens to be the case, may whatever you believe in have mercy on your soul.

Me second tip relates to the first one, in the way that it has to do with time management. Never underestimate the time you will need to spend studying, because as most college students know, professors tend to make your final worth more than a normal test, so that means that it is extra important that you do well on it. If you have spare time the week or so before finals arrive, THEN USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. That time spent may be the difference between passing and failing.

The next tip is sleep. I won't go in to too much detail,since you can find out more here, but please, for the love of whatever you believe in, get plenty of sleep. All the studying in the world means jack squat if you don't sleep enough. This is because sleep is the time in which your brain solidifies the information you've gathered during the day and makes you able to recall it later. Sleep is important. Say it with me--"sleep is important". Good. Even if you have to forgo study time to get a good night sleep, then do it. It is far better to have a good grasp of some information than none at all. Lets say it again--"sleep is important".

 I may make this my last tip, or I may go back and add a few more. Like I said, I'm tired, and I'm going to practice what I preach ^. Anyways. So another good thing to remember during finals week is just to try to remain calm. I know sometimes that seems easier said than done (i have 2 class grades teetering on the results of my finals) but you have to do this. Getting all worked up will NOT do you any good. It will stress you out even more, and could even make you perform poorly on your finals. If you need some ways to get rid of excess stress, look here for some helpful tips. a few things I can suggest that are on that list are as follows. Get outside! fresh air will help ease the tension, and help you feel better. Stop smoking! I'm not going to be "that guy" that tells you the dangers of smoking. I've smoked cigarets due to stress, and I know from experience that they DO NOT help. In fact, minutes after smoking, stress levels can go right back to where they were, or even higher! That's a habit you want to avoid at all costs.

I hope that finals go well for all of you out there. Just remember to be prepared, get good sleep., and allow yourself to de-stress throughout the days leading up to your finals. 

Technology good

So I just watched a video about a pretty awesome teacher from south Georgia. This teacher has, in my opinion, set the standard for how other teachers should try and integrate technology into their classrooms, and stress the importance of technology to their students. This teacher has taught good digital citizenship, made the students learn things under their own direction, and shown that a lot can be accomplished with a good knowledge base in technology. If you're interested, you can watch the video here.

Now I'll begin this portion by first saying that I am no longer on track to become a teacher, as I have changed my course of study. That being said, I will still give my opinion on why technology is important, and how teachers can utilize it.

A lot of the recent advances in technology are really great. New ways for students to become fully engaged in lessons and in the classroom are really great, and there is no doubt that this will greatly benefit students of all learning types. Getting students to be hands on is important. Gone are the days where a high school teacher stands up and lectures for 30 minutes and then leaves the class to do their work (they'll get plenty of that in college). Now more focus is being put into letting students do more digital exploring and figuring things out for themselves.

The teacher in the video also understands the importance of teaching good digital citizenship. Now days, most students have access to the internet...heck, a good number have a smart phone that can do everything a computer does, and that's not a bad thing.In the following link, it says that 40 % of all mobile phones in the United States are smart phones These students have access to VAST amounts of information, and it is very important they learn how to use that privilege responsibly.

All about social networking

For me personally, it is very hard to imagine life without social networking, and I'm sure that a lot of you feel the same way. But have you ever stopped and actually thought about what it is we're doing? For me, there are some really good pros to social networking, but then of course there are the bad things that come along with it. In this post I will be looking at two articles that discuss this phenomenon, and weighing what they say against my own personal thoughts on the subject.

In the first article, which you can find here, the first half really focuses in on the pros of social networking. One of the biggest being that it allows you to "...make connections with other people. This connection can be with people you may have fallen out of touch with, maybe a special friend you'd like to talk to, or just family that you have grown farther from.

Another major appeal of social networks applies mainly to people that want to get something of theirs out into the world. Many social networks allow you to share music, art, and many other forms of media in what ever way you see fit, and that's pretty awesome! I know several people that have posted their own songs to social networking sites, and gained a lot of attention from it, so needless to say that for me, this is a real pro. This allows to share these things for FREE, and that's pretty awesome.

Another pro that this article outlines is the entertainment aspect of some of these sites. Not only can you find and make new friends, but you can challenge them to fun games, help you solve a puzzle (Candy Crush comes to mind) and many other entertaining things. Now, in my opinion, this can be a bit of a con, and I'll explain why. When we get bored, often times we instantly go to these sites for an escape from that. This isn't "bad", but can lead to problems if it consumes too much of your life, or hinders productivity elsewhere.



Now the next article I read, which you can find right here, focuses on the detriments of social networking. In this rather brief article, the author describes a social outing with a few friends. He finds out that many of the people that were in his party had been "checking in", "tweeting", and posting pictures during the dinner. The author then goes on to say that due to the number of followers that one of the dinner guests have, their outing was visible to literally MILLIONS of people. Now, this is where social networking can get a bit scary. All of the people, most of which the author has no contact with or even knows have access to personal bits of the party's evening. It's almost weird to think about that. People you don't even know can see what you're doing, where you're doing it, and who you're with, all by checking Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare (the latter being the main topic of the article). I personally do not make use of the location services that social networking sites offer, mainly for my own peace of mind, but it is very clear that anonymity almost doesn't exist on these sites, which for me is a major draw back.