Use of Twitter is linked to higher grades, study finds

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/world/asia/10iht-educBriefs10.html?_r=2&ref=internationaleducation

           In this article they talk about a study that was done that showd a link between Twitter and student engagment and grade-piont average. They (The Journal of Computer assisted Learning) did the study on 125 college students. They found that the students that used Twitter got on average half a point higher and particpated in class more then the students that did not use Twitter.
            I found this article hard to believe at first. I myself have never had a twitter account and I don't know how exactly it works and most the people that I know that have a twitter account do not have that good of grades. But after I thought about it, I realized that the people that have twitter accounts usually like to know everything and would probably not be afraid to ask questions in class and like to learn new things and follow them.

More Students Choose Universities in Japan

This article talkes about the number of college students studying abroad in . There are more people studying abroad in Japan than ever before (141,774 in 2010). While this is happening the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has found that fewer Japanese students are studying abroad (Down 11% fom the previous year).
I have never really thought of studying abroad before. My sister has gone studying abroad before, to Japan, and I can see why so many people would want to study abroad there, it is just seems like it would be a completly different world in Japan. When I see Japan in movies and the way my sister talked about it, I think if I were to ever study abroad it woud be Japan. I was however shocked that there were fewer people leaving Japan to study abroad than there used to be in the article it does not tell you why it has go down it just gives you the statistics but I plan to look into it and find out why.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/world/asia/10iht-educBriefs10.html?_r=2&ref=internationaleducation

Freedom Writers

          

Freedom Writers is a movie about a young woman, Erin Gruwell, who decides that she wants to help out a group of students in a school in California. But when she arrives at the school she soon finds out that the kids do not want her help. When she first started teaching the kids gave her no respect and showed no interest in learning. Many of the kids had hard pasts that they could not get passed, like Marcus, when he was younger his friend, Clive, accidentally shot himself and died, when the police came they put Marcus in juvenile hall for the murder of Clive. Marcus had been in and out of prison ever since.

The kids in Erin's class had a lot of out of school problems that they had to worry about and did not care for their academic life. They thought they could not get out of their present life and did not think there was a point to try. Erin, trying to break down the barriers between the students and her, tried many different techniques. She talked about what the Nazi's did to show what gang violence can leaded to. She also did things to show how the rival gangs all have gone through the same thing and was not that different. It also made them realize how series what they were doing was. She also tried to use curriculum to connect with her students. She had them read the Diary of Ann Frank because they, like Ann Frank, grew up in a world that was full of violence and anger. The other teacher did not like what Erin was doing at first however. The head of the English department did not even want to give them books because she was afraid they would ruin them. Erin never stopped believing in them and that was what helped them to succeed in her class. Her student needed someone that believed in them because they did not.

From this movie I learned that believing in your students is a big part of teaching because kids need someone in their lives that believes that they can make it.