C4T 3 - David Wees

David Wees specializes in mathematics and technology. His blog is called 21st Century Educator. The first post I commented on was titled "Rethinking the standard school schedule." In this post he is advocating the four day school week for schools. His post is based on an article that talks about a 40 hour work week providing the maximum amount of time where productivity occurs. The four day school week has its advantages and disadvantages. Some advantages are that it won't drain students as much in one week. The extra day that they have will, in theory, provide the extra time the students need to complete the work they have outside of class. A disadvantage is that they will start their school year earlier to make up for the time lost by taking away the fifth day of school. This takes away from their summer, and some kids are engaging in learning activities with their summer break. However, this includes another advantage. Starting school earlier will lessen the gap where some students aren't learning. Not every student spends their summer engaging in learning activities so this will help the students not lose everything they learned the previous school year.

The second post I commented on was titled "We need social media etiquette." In this post he gave a list of ten rules that he thought should be implemented on Twitter. He mostly discussed rules to make Twitter useful and rules about being respectful. I have to admit that when I first found out I had to have a Twitter account for this class, I was reluctant. However, back then I had a different view about Twitter. I thought it was just a place where people wrote useless information that they thought was important like what their cat ate for breakfast. Through this class, though, the usefulness has become apparent to me. If used correctly, Twitter is an effective tool that promotes the sharing of information and ideas. It's like all technology. If it is used properly, it can be an indispensable tool.