Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Night Before...

As I sit here trying to compose my thoughts of Chapters 1-5, I can't stop thinking about how tomorrow I'm going to be a father. For the past 9 months I have been imagining what tomorrow might be like. The further away from the actual day the easier it is to picture it. Now the night before I do not know what to think. I am experiencing excitement, nervousness, happiness, anxiety, curiosity all at the same time. I just want to meet this person that my wife and I will spend the next 18 years (at least) molding him/her into a respectful citizen. I look forward to the adventure of parenthood as I will begin it tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Nonstop HTML!!!

My life has been nonstop work these past few weeks. It has almost been three weeks since my last posting. My wife is due with our 1st child in two weeks. I have been getting the baby's room ready and trying to stay afloat with my job, my graduate classes, and my extra service positions. I am the webmaster for the Rahway Middle School web site and also the Union County Educator's Association web site. This year I decided to redesign the RMS web site because it was basically crying out for a "makeover". The Principal and the rest of the Staff have been really pleased with the new design. So much so, that more and more teachers are approaching me to get their clubs or class projects on the Web. As much as I am flattered, and excited to work with everyone this couldn't happen at a worse time. I am about to become a father, and my time will shift toward my child. That is why I am trying to finish coding all of these pages so I won't have so much hanging over my head later. I had just set up five new web pages before I started this post. And now that I am finished, I have to go update my Publishing to Web (EDTC 617) web site.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Online Social Networking

Social networking gives individuals the opportunity to meet new people, reconnect with old friends, and establish business contacts. There have been online social networking services popping up the past few years. The two that are the most popular are Myspace and Facebook. I think a lot of good can come out of social networking. Social networking sites give young musicians and artists a chance to post some samples of their work to gain more exposure in a sort of cheap advertising campaign.

Recently I read an iteresting article that talked about Myspace and Facebook and the types of people that join each network. Although I am not that familiar with Facebook the article seemed to make sense to me. According to the article, "The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other 'good' kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. MySpace is still home for "kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school." By listening to the buzz around my classroom as to which students use Myspace, and which students do not, I have to agree with this statement about the choice of a social network being a social issue. I find that most of my honors' students do not use Myspace; however, I do not know if they choose Facebook instead.

I think it is really interesting that these two social network services can be debated just as someone might debate Mets and Yankees. If further research proves that this article is correct then I would argue that we have online social cliques as opposed to a social network.

Levy, Steven (2007). Social Networking And Class Warfare. , Newsweek, Vol. 150, 6