Video Games and Music

My Inquiry project will be on the effect of violent video games and music on student behavior, more specifically if there is a negative impact. I have been exposed to violent media since I was very young. When I was in the 4th grade, I was already playing Doom and Castle Wolfenstein, the two most violent video games out at the time. Personally, I think that they do not have a negative impact, because my exposure did not make me more violent I don't think. I never did anything malicious towards anyone, and I am an all around peaceful person. It has always made me mad to see Dr Dre and Doom get blamed for causing a school shooting, because to me that is just ridiculous. On the other hand, most of my sources support the argument that violent video games and music do have a negative impact on students, and that they are in fact to blame for the rise in violent student behavior. I need to do my own research when I observe a classroom, because just seeing who owns what type of violent media will give me insight into what kind of affect it really has on a student.

Education websites

I found some information on the education websites that were given to us in class last week. I found info about what the Abbott decision is, which was a case in New Jersey about funding in urban school districts. Essentially, the case was about equal education oppurtunity for every student that lives in an urban district. One thing that the Abbott decision that I got from the article is that the schools that are part of Abbott have to offer pre-school. Universal pre-school is a good thing for any school district, because it lets students start learning earlier rather than later.
The NCLB section of the ed.gov website was interesting. The government is trying to reauthorize NCLB, and they are hoping to make some improvements to it. They want to close the achievement gap, they want to better prepare students for post secondary education and the workforce, and they want to restructure underperforming schools and give parents more options. All of these things sound good, but I am not certain about how well this will be received. Our discussion last week in class about how idealist ideas about how to fix our education system sometimes don't pan out when it becomes policy. I believe a way more pragmatic approach to NCLB would make more sense, rather than throwing niceties at the reader and telling them "this will work".

Since I am not sure exactly what to post, since the main page of my classes blog page has not been updated for a month, I'll just put a reaction to last weeks class up here. I thought the reading that we went over was very informative and very useful. It lays out what a teacher should be doing in the classroom to engage students in active learning. When I read the reading on my own, I did not fully grasp the ideas presented, but in class everything was broken down and explained fully. The AEIOU concept is easy enough to understand that a teacher could remember it forever, and put it to use daily in their classrooms.