Professor At the Urban Community College

To be honest with you I have different views about the professor that was putting information about the Holocaust never happening on his instructional college Web site. As a college or University you have to take that material off the site to keep your creditability. However, as a professor I think you should be able to write about what ever you want, as long as you have done research to back up your theory. In this case though I don't know where he would get the material to back his case because it did happen and it was a terrible thing. I do think though that the professor should have his own site to offer this material, not using the college site for his personnel beliefs. College or university Web sites should only be used for instructional or college materials. I think the college should have an acceptable use policy and have consequences if someone breaks the policy. I also think you should have a group consisting of administrators, webmaster, staff, and students to determine the outcome of the broken policy. They also could revise the acceptable use policy as time changes.

I think everybody has a right to their own opinion, but when your talking about creditability of an university it is a different story.

Cost of Technology

With the cost of technology being so high and my school budget being cut, I am in the process of writing a grant. The grant is for Playaway audio books. Playaways are the new form of technology for audio books that look like an IPOD. It is a LSTA mini-grant, that is due Oct 29. I feel over whelmed with class work and the grant. The Playaways are neat and I think students will like them because they are like IPODS. The purpose though for getting them is to help struggling students with reading. Hopefully this will give them confidence when reading. They can following along with the book and when they come across a work they are unsure about, the Playaway will help them. I was lucky that Follett Library Resources had most of my titles that are on our school Reading and English list that match up with our school curriculum. I also like Follett because they have a resource that matches up books with the Ohio Academic Standards. When looking for school media sources this is very important.

I also am writing a grant for 20 new computers, that grant is taking a little longer. I am coming up with a colaboration project with a history teacher and trying to get the grant that way. The computers are much needed in my media center for researching, writing papers, and Powerpoint projects.

This Weeks Class Discussion

I thought this weeks class discussion was a good one. We went over so many topics. The one I feel the most important was the cost of technology. With budget cuts many schools can not afford the new technology that is coming out, plus technology is growing so fast that by time a school gets the technology its out dated. More importantly though, is with schools not being able to afford the technology, it is hurting their students. The whole world evolves around technology and students need to learn the new technology so they can succeed when they enter out into the work force.

There is ways though for teachers and schools to get money. They can apply for various technology grants that are out there for schools. They can have fundraisers. Schools must find ways to get the new technology into the schools and into the classrooms for students use. If we refuse to do this our students are going to be way behind, where the schools that can afford it, their students will be way ahead entering into college and the work force.

This brings me to another subject we talked about, which is the school funding situation in Ohio. This gets me so fired up talking about it. The funding system needs to be changed. They can not keep expecting towns and communities to keep passing levies to pay for the schools. For one older people in these towns and communities can not afford it. Ohio state legislature was suppose to change this way back in the early 90's when the court system said they had to. However, instead of changing the system they added profiency test and forgot about the school funding system. Now we are onto the Ohio graduation test and we still haven't changed the funding system. Something has to be done and hopefully soon.