Goodbye x

If you are of a nervous disposition then I advise you to brace yourself. Over the last few months, like many  people out there (myself included) you may have become emotionally attached to my blog. this in itself is not a problem. However, this has been something I've feared ever since I realised that I'm going to have to hang up my blogging boots for a little while as my work here is done.

We've had some good times (sonic the hedgehog game, talking about soap opera's and for a little while having google adsense on my blog). But, i'm sorry to say that for us it is over. I may make a cameo appearance here and there in the future and maybe when I win the lottery and will be living on an expensive Island somewhere with a lot of spare time on my hands I'll return.

There are many ways you can get in touch with me in the future. For example twitter, Facebook or what the heck just come to my front door I'm approachable. I believe as it is my last blog post I should try to make the effort and tell you guys a funny joke, unfortunately I have ran out of penguins biscuits so that's off the table.

I leave you with this lovely song from Whitney Houston which I believe perfectly sums up the mood of me towards blogger.

It's been an emotional roller-coaster.

Goodnight and god bless

Mathew x

web 2.0 app - Wordle is it good or bad? i decide

I have had a look through some very interesting web 2.0 apps over the past few month making this blog for educational studies, however the one that i found quite intriguing and amusing is called Wordle

You can access Wordle at http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is used to create lovely “word clouds” from text that you give it. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. the text you see is from for example a blog or a website or whatever you want. (are you excited yet?!)

You can edit your cloud so it has different fonts and such. If you like colour, then this app will give you colour. which i think is a useful tip for anyone revising. here's a quote from my history teacher in comprehensive school "the brain loves colour". So kids you know the score. Use it.

Getting back on track, the images you create with Wordle are yours to keep (very generous). You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with other Wordle lovers.

Here is a really nice one made about teachers. ^^

I love using this website although it did take my ageing laptop ages to load it up. I rate it with an 8/10 which in the scale of life, I believe is pretty good.

Thanks for reading

Mathew x

Pros and Cons of Web 2 - Social Networking sites

Since the creation of web 2.0, many websites have been created to be used. Millions of people around the world have signed up to social networking sites and people want to use them for many reasons such as its the new popular trend, promote their businesses/music or meet new like minded people. However, the main reason is to keep in touch with your friends.

There have been many social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo, Facebook and Twitter which have all been created throughout the years.

Some of the positives of social networking sites are that:

• They are worth a lot of money (advertisements)
• Information can be found out extremely quickly (Twitter) 
• Bands have a way of spreading their music to a target audience (Myspace)
• Meet and date people (relationship websites such as match.com)
• keep in touch with friends (Facebook)
• See people anywhere in the world. this helps for businesses and keeping in touch (Skype)

As you can see, there are many positives from social networking sites however, there are a few negatives too.

• Personal information is readily available for most people to see.
• 'Hackers' have gained this information and stolen private details about someone
• Bosses have looked at facebook sites to see whether or not they are mischievous and that they would damage the company's name. 
• Stupid videos on YouTube have lead to people losing their jobs getting in trouble
• untruthful information trending on twitter (deaths, accusations)
• people trolling celebrities (twitter)

I have seen videos of someone who got points on their licence after splashing kids in their car and a guy in Asda who lost his job for taking funny pictures in the staff room. 

Ken Robinson - Ted Talks

Robinson expressed that he believed that the education system has shown that children of today are set up to learn stuff now but by the time they have left school the world will be a different place especially by the time they are 60. However I believe that you learn through experience and you adapt through life-long learning and that you are more mentally developed when you age. You can also take adult learning classes throughout your life to increase your skills and understanding in modern stuff such as Information Technology.

In the speech, Robinson made a point that children are not frightened to be wrong. I completely agree with this statement as children learn through their mistakes and learn through creative play. He used the quote “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” In my opinion he proved that as you go through your education that they slowly drain out the creativeness that you enjoy for your early years and add more right and wrong answers which leads to people being frightened to make a mistake. Losing this creativity means we could lose inspirational figures in the arts as they may be made to focus on the core subjects that they do not enjoy.

Robinson discussed that there was a hierarchy for subjects in education. He believes that subjects such as dance and art should be regarded as in the same light as maths and languages. He also asked why we don't learn dance everyday. When I heard these I was quite sceptical. This is because I believe that children need to learn how to read and write more than they need to sing and dance because they would do that in their own time. I do however feel it is possible to learn core subjects through the medium of dance and using that with numbers could make schooling more fun. He did however make an interesting point suggesting that “Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not because the thing they were good at in school weren’t valued.” I agree with him on this as many creative and inspirational figures have struggled in school and gone on to do wonderful. I believe it is about finding the right balance between core subjects and the foundation subjects that will improve the child's happiness in school.

In his speech, Robinson said that degrees are not as valuable as they were 30 years ago or so. He believes that this is because we go through the education system to go to university, with this, more and more people have accessed university which means that now it is harder to find a job. He believes that to get a job that once required a BA honours, now needs a masters degree. I agree with him on this because there is much more competition for places in this modern age. I also agree with him on that he believes education is to produce university professors. With that in mind it is clear to see why a lot more people have been able to access higher education. Although, this could also be a good thing as if more people are attending university, it shows that means that the population are getting more academical.

Overall I believe that Ken Robinson is a very charismatic figure and I agree with most of his key themes and that a minor shake up of the education system could be very beneficial to the children and the way we learn would improve.

Blog Review

http://mandy-newapproach.blogspot.co.uk/

Here is an educational blog I follow. it is called New Approach and it is updated by Mandy Peace. It has many good and modern approaches towards education in this country.

It has many different topics such as the use of ipads in schools, interesting website tools for learning and even more technological ways to learn.  The blog has been open and updated regularly for many years and has a lot of great educational comments and has opinions on inspirational people in education (ted talks videos).

 I like the fact that there are a lot of web 2.0 apps available that Mandy has decided to use in her blog. They come in handy for students in education and for general revision.

It is useful for my blog because it has all the relevant information I need to make my blog more educational and to make me think of other potential ways to look at education. I have found it very interesting to read and shall continue using it for my studies.

Happy New Year (:

I apologise to my lovely blog followers for not keeping my blog updated. It's been a pretty hectic few weeks with christmas and such. Todays topic is new year resolutions. So, before I start i'd like to wish everyone a belated happy new year *happy face*. There are many different new years resolutions from getting fit to stopping smoking. My New year's resolution for this year is to eat more healthily. I will like to eat a lot more fruit and veg each day because i believe i need my body to have more healthy foods in it. Perhaps im getting adventurous but id like to cut out some of the fast food i eat on a regular basis (unlucky Mcdonalds and Mr Chungs takeaway) I'd love to here your new year's resolution in the reply bit below Thanks for reading. Much love Mathew x