My posts

♣ My writing has changed so much since the beginning of 7th grade to the beginning of high school(now). I have learned so much and really written some true authetic writing

Please answer the following prompt. NO!!! I shouldn’t ever write to one of those again. Those bring out My worst writing that is when I begin to write not authentic. Prompts have no meaning. They just make me right for a grade instead of my own pleasure. I begin to sound like this:All and all, My first reason is becuase… That is the worst crap I have ever heard.

Writing on the blog or the wiki is the only way to go for me. Pull out any of my prompts. Technology > paper.It always will be. When I am writing on y blog I am able to write about what I want to and write as muc or as little as I want about it (as long as it is 1 paragraph). I have learned things about myself that I didn’t even know about. I have shown writing that I didn’t even no was in me. That shows true authenticity. When you write something you hadn’t had capability of before, because you believe in your writing and you write what you want to. That shows something.

My belief= When you write something you don’t believe in it sucks, unless it is for a grade then you are ust writing what the teacher wants to

Good belief= You write what you want on your blogs. GOOD!! That s how it should walways be becuase then you ae able to write about what you want to and express the true you.

Just take at the blog post. I couldn’t have used that much expression on paper, all the crossing out and stuff. Its more fun and more useful to get a meaning across

    Are we as human beings really ready/prepared to step into the future of education. I am not sure if I think it is such a good idea to start to rely on the future of technology as our basis curriculum for our classes. Yes technology has its advantages, but it has many disadvantages that go along with it. I am in between sides personally. I enjoy using technology more, but it also is less reliable then paper. There are very few things that can ruin a paper like a shredder, or maybe your dog eats it, but thats pretty much it. Its different for technology because there are many different viruses on the web and wireless internets that only work 1/2 the time. I would prefer to blog more then writing my ideas out on paper anytime, but it is never fully trustable. It has probably been about 2 weeks since I have been able to access my learner blogs from school, and that hurts my school work because I need to use my blog all the time in class. Since I have started using this new site it hasn't been the "best" second source of blog writing. My very first post I took me 5 tries to post it with continuous errors. 

    I went to the freshman orientation for the high school I am attending next year, a few weeks ago. The orientation began with a speech from the principal. I wasn't acting interested or paying attention through most of the speech. Then he began to start about technology and the advances the school will be making next year. He said that they plan on having a laptop per student next year. That is crazy, that is about 1000 laptops. I don't know if I want my education to ride on whether or not my laptop is going to work today. I don't know though. It sounds really cool and a great way to move into the future. I just don't know if we are ready to do that yet. I think we might need to discover some ways to rid of viruses and faulty internet companies so that we can be positive that our computers will be working every day. So what do we do now? Do we stick in the boring old past of pen and paper, or do we go big or go home and try to advance into the risky future? Please respond to this post. 

    The Cresthill A and B basketbal teams this year rock. We have only playyed one game, but we both won, so it doesn't matter we are still the best. The Cresthill A team won our game against Sierra by 20 points. That is a great imrpvement from last year when we lost to them in the regular season by 1 point. Everyone on the team was meshing together so well. We were making great passes, taking good shots, and finishing everything we did… Really Well. The B team held it a little closer dring the game, but they still came out on top in the end. They won there game by 4 points with some great free trows to finish the game.  Some of the key players yesterday inlcuded, everyone. We were all amazing yesterday.  Everyone was playign so well together. If you would have seen us in practice, we would have looked like we would loe all of our games. We were all hoging the ball for ourselves and making bad team decisions. I think it was just some simple nerves that we were able to get over. Our game yesterday wasn't about being the best player for any one person, It was about being the best team in the school league. Sierra used to be number one.As long as we continue to play like the team we did to Sierra we will be #1. 

My first thing on my list of my personal curriculum project was to do a few posts where I really connected with the issues, or talked about what issues are going on in certain places, and how we should think about them and deal with them.

Here are the links to those three posts

 http://nextmj1.learnerblogs.org/2007/01/31/uganda-and-the-lra/

http://nextmj1.learnerblogs.org/2007/01/10/building-off-of-mooses-can-money-buy-happiness/

http://nextmj1.learnerblogs.org/2007/01/04/my-first-connection-movie-we-are-marshall/

The three posts deal with Uganda and the LRA, We are Marshall, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

5 words: surrogates, tantamount, mundane, trepidation, furtively

473pages 

This is my third Dean Koontz book I have read and the more of these books I read the more I learn about this author and his writing style. My favorite part about this author’s style is the way he leaves me guessing. I guess it depends on how you like not knowing what is going to happen or not. I like this quality in the author because it is the key factor that keeps me hooked on a book. I also liked that he made me ask questions to help figure out the book on my own. Its another key to keeping me interested.

Basically, this story is about a family who has suffered a recent family crisis who live in Downtown L.A. Fortunately their luck ends up turning when they inherit this beautiful Montana Ranch, from a long lost friend’s dad. They decide to move from L.A. to start a new life, but was it the best decision? You will have to read to find out. I love mysteries that is my favorite type of genre. Mysteries are the books you can stay hooked on because they never give you the answer. You have to dig deep within yourself to find it.

This was one of the first books I really stayed hooked on because of another one of the comprehension strategies, “visualization”. This was a big part of the book. One scene I remember visualizing really well was when the other described this portal from another world. As I read it it talked about a big portal from which beings of another planet come through. As it described the portal it talked about the size, shape, and thickness of it. What I pictured was a portal big enough to fit a train through it, yet the portal is paper thin and is invisible from a side view. Even though it just described the portal being just black, the way the author described it so well I was able to add my own flare to the portal seeing it with many more colors in it. Thats what is great about visualization, it brings the best out of your own ideas. It sparks new thoughts, and new stories, within your original story.

I think you make part of the book, along with the author. Without using these comprehension strategies, I personally probably wouldn’t read as many books and I wouldn’t be able to expand my ideas the way I am able to. It helps to make reading more enjoyable. I hope to be able to read more Dean Koontz books and learn more about him and hopefully continue to discover how to use these strategies.

I don’t know what to write about. I am just going to think of random things that have happened to me in the past week. Every time I went to delicious I started singing fergalicious. To the D to the E to the L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Every time.  I was at the Bear rock cafe and I asked myself why there was a lot of bear paintings in the restaurant. Then i started laughing after at myself and my family stared at me. I had the worst service ever at Dave nd Buster’s this weekend. I stood at the front desk for over 15 minutes waiting for the person in front of me to say, “Can I help you?” I mean how rude does it get. She didn’t once acknowledge that I was even there. How rude. A the end of the night after being spent for $50 dollars worth of tokens I ended up getting bitter tasting pixie stixs, a remote control car that doesn’t work and two glass cups that are a cool shape , and one of them has already been dropped and broken. Who knew that a fun night at Dave & Buster’s could be so not fun. My fun weekend sort of sucked. It was also funny. That is my random weekend in a whole. I playd basketball to but that is normal.

She was lost on what to do. Erica had always been a good person putting her life before another but this time it just seemed different. There were several reasons why she didn’t want to sacrifice her own life to show her brother she wasn’t lying. First and foremost even though she thinks it sounds a little selfish she doesn’t want to die yet she wasn’t even 26 yet. She hadn’t even had the chance to have a child of her own. Secondly, If she died then what would her brother do. He couldn’t see what was coming at him because he can’t see the future like she could. So then they wold both end up dying and what would be the help in that. Third, she didn’t want to have to goo through the pain of one of those deaths. The deaths were always so gruesome. I mean what would happen to her. Would she be torn limb by limb, her greatest fear was having someone shatter some sort of bone in her body, especially her knees. The thought just made her wince.

She sat there in her room for hours puzzled on what to do. Every time she though of a new idea she didn’t like it. Finally she got some food to think on. Mmm. she grabbed the leftover steak from the restaurant she was at last night and ate it. It was so good. After finishing it she had an idea. How ironic. She thought what if she showed her brother someone that she had seen was already going to die so it wouldn’t be her fault but hat they died just like they were supposed to.

Who would it be though?? Hopefully not someone she was close to again? If so, who would she choose?

In my opinion this is the best sport ever. Basketball is essential to my life. Without basketball I just wouldn’t be me. I love basketball partly because I am good at it. I love playing in games and practicing. I always want to play basketball. I go to the gym for probably around an hour and a half either to improve my basketball skills, to work on my strength and conditioning, or to do both. Basketball keeps me in good shape and keeps me on edge. It helps to keep me up in school by taking away a lot of time to do homework so I have to do it. If that makes sense. Having conflicts helps me to stay on top of things. Basketball is my passion. I want to continue playing it forever, possibly go pro. So far I am ranked in the top 3 in the state for 8th grade boys and I play for a gold crown team and two travel teams. Hopefully by playing on a traveling team I can expand to being nationally ranked. Thats my goal, and my dream.

The main way I have learned this quarter is my blog posts. The main way I can show this is by showing you I have learned to connect myself to outside events in 3 specific posts (Uganda and the LRA, Can Money Buy Happiness Reflection, and We are Marshall). This has been my biggest achievement. I have been able to dig deep within myself and find ways to connect myself to anything. I have been able to figure out how to deal with my issues y writing it down on paper also.

Well right now in ELT we are learning about the Lord’s Resistance Army or the LRA. It is a rebel group that has been fighting against the Uganda government for a few decades now. The story behind this is really sad. What the LRA does is they basically kidnap children from there homes in villages and force them to do usually become either a bodyguard, a soldier, or the women are usually made into sex slaves. These children are forced to walk from there homes in the villages for miles at night, to get to the city where they can sleep in bus stations, under benches, and in the park because it is safer to sleep there. Then the kids who aren’t lucky and are kidnapped by the LRA are forced to do the most horrible things. Every morning the kids in he LRA wake up to go to fight or to kill other people. They are also told repeatedly that if anyone tries to escape you must beat them to death, and if you don’t you will be killed. Also if anyone tries to escape you will be killed no matter what. When we were learning about this yesterday I was running so many thoughts through my mind. I was trying to relate with the stories we were hearing but I couldn’t. There was no way i was going to be able t relate to anybody who has killed another person out of force and has been kidnapped and turned into a child soldier because…. I wasn’t. Its hard to sit there and listen to these stories and think about all the times I tell people I am so poor. To these people I would be a very wealthy man. If we all sat and took the time to think about the fact that none of us will ever have to go through this. We should all be more appreciative are stuff and think about how much more appreciative we would be if we lived in these conditions in Uganda. My message is just to think.