social media

Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot these days, but it can sometimes be difficult to answer the question of what is social media. The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.

Social media is fast becoming a new type of therapy. Even if you have never been in therapy or counseling, we have all seen it played out in television, movies and books and know what therapists will ask.

Here are just a few phrases that will be familiar:

“Share your feeling”- Well then welcome to Facebook. Here is a place where you can share your personal thoughts, relationship status, list your friends and tell all your likes and dislikes. This is sharing for the masses.

“Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind”- The idea of free association is to get you in touch with yourself and is a perfect fit for Twitter. This site allows you to quickly toss out 140 character thoughts and share them with your audience 24/7.

Rorschach Test- “Look at this picture and tell me what you think”- This one can play out on a few sites. YouTube is the first that comes to mind where people post their videos and wait to see what everyone has to say when they add a comment. It’s also found on sites like Flickr and on your Facebook page where your friends and even the general public can share comments on your photos.

When people wonder why some are fascinated with social media it could be that they are intrigued by the new technology and others have found a new outlet that lets them save money on conventional therapy.

global warming

One of the major challenges of the 21st century is global warming.
Global warming is when the earth heats up (the temperature rises). It happens when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere, which increases the temperature. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. Many cannot take the change, so they die.

Greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere that collect heat and light from the sun. With too many greenhouse gasses in the air, the earth’s atmosphere will trap too much heat and the earth will get too hot. As a result people, animals, and plants would die because the heat would be too strong.

Many things cause global warming.One thing that causes global warming is electrical pollution.Electricity causes pollution in many ways, some worse than others.In most cases, fossil fuels are burned to create electricity. Fossil fuels are made of dead plants and animals.Some examples of fossil fuels are oil and petroleum.Many pollutants(chemicals that pollute the air, water, and land) are sent into the air when fossil fuels are burned.Some of these chemicals are called greenhouse gases.

The government is doing many things to help stop global warming.The government made a law called The Clean Air Act so there is less air pollution. Global warming is making people get very bad illnesses that could make them disabled, very sick, and sometimes even die. The Clean Air Act is making many companies change their products to decrease these problems. Part of the law says that you may not put a certain amount of pollutants in the air. Hairspray and some other products, like foam cups, had this problem. Making and using these products let out too much volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), ozone-destroying chemicals (chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s),and related chemicals (such as CO2) into the air. Now, almost all of these products have a label on them telling people what this product can do to the environment and many people.

The Clean Air Act has also made car companies change some of the things inside of the cars. Cars pollute a lot. While cars make more than half of the world’s smog (visible pollution in the air), many things that cars need to move and heat up make even more pollution. Some things that are inside of cars, buses, trucks, and motorcycles, like gasoline, pollute the air when the fuel is burned. It comes out as a chemical and when mixed in the air, forms smog.

Education in the 21st century

Education in the 21st century is flexible, creative, challenging, and complex. It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities. With improvement in science and technology, learning has been made simple and easily accessible, We now live in an increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex, media-saturated society.

Learning strategies in the 21st century make education simple and it shapes the mind of student to be a better leader, the strategies are :

To learn collaboration, work in teams.

To learn critical thinking, take on complex problems.

To learn oral communication, present.

To learn written communication, write.

To learn technology, use technology.

To develop citizenship, take on civic and global issues.

To learn about careers, do internships.

To learn content, research and do all of the above

Technology plays a critical role in supporting 21st Century learning environments. Providing one-to-one computing gives students and teachers the hardware and software tools to do their work. But even more profound is when technology, through the school’s network, provides a collaborative learning environment that houses curriculum, assessment rubrics, living grade books and communication tools.