Modern Education

Let me take this moment to just say that our modern education system is messed up.  Seriously!  I saw a video on Facebook of this girl crying because of school and saying she just wanted to give up and be a stripper.  I don't know, maybe she made that video for laughs, but there are other students who feel the exact same way she at least pretended to feel.
I don't like school.  That may be a shock to some people, but it's true.  I don't like school.  I like learning.  I hate when people think that learning and school are the same thing.  They so aren't.  I love learning, actually.  I tolerate school, because right now, that's the best place for me to go to learn things.
But so much weighs upon a person, especially a high school student, while they're at school.  Students are pressured to make good grades, so they can go to a good college, so they can get a good degree and get a good job.  College is pushed so hard that it could turn someone off to the idea of college.
But then you also have students who work.  There's a student at my school, who lives alone and supports himself.  While also being the right hand man of the FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) sponsor.  He's tired a lot.  Why?  Because he's feeding himself, clothing himself, keeping his apartment paid for and still working to get good grades so he can go to college and go into a career with Google someday, by working his way up.  After Google, he plans to go into politics.
There are students that are involved in sports and music and plays half of the clubs at the school, because those are the things they enjoy, but they also have to keep up with their grades.
And school itself isn't a bad thing, but what is is all the classes that students are required to take.  A student only gets to choose three electives.  Three.  That's three things that they personally want to learn about and that they personally can choose to learn about.
Is an advanced Algebra class, for someone who barely understands Algebra1, who wants to be an English teacher really needed for them and their career?  Stop telling students, "Oh, you'll need it later in life, no matter your career", without telling them why or in what situation.  We're big kids.  Give us the real reasons.
Is an English class really necessary for a student who plans to go into a computer engineer career?  If so, tell them why, don't just say "because you need it", "because you'll use it in life", "because you need to be well rounded".  Give them a real reason, please!
And the worst part for me is seeing all of the posters up for the state testing.  Posters saying things about unlocking your potential, and doing great...what about the kid that bombs it?  Has that student not reached their true potential, just because they bombed that test?  Has that student...failed?  Failed at life, failed at school, just flat out failed?
No!  Because those tests prove nothing.  They prove how book smart a person is.  They prove how well a person is at tests.  They prove how fast someone can read.  They don't prove that this kid is good at singing, or that even though this kid reads slow, they remember and understand everything they read.  It doesn't say anything about how this kid treats others.  It doesn't tell anyone that this student is really good at computer programing.
Those tests only state...how well you did on that test.
Why not let students learn about things they want to learn about?  Maybe a student does want to take all of those classes.  Maybe a student actually likes working with imaginary numbers.  Maybe there's a student who actually kind of likes picking apart sentences and sentence structure.
Why not give classes on book publishing, video game making, hey, maybe even intro classes for teaching!  I get that it could get kind of expensive.  But at least get the kids where they love to learn.  Because then they can go out with their own initiative and find the things they want to learn about on the internet, with the teacher's guidance if they get stuck or need help.  That's kind of what PBL (Project Based Learning) is.  That's why I like PBL.
I honestly don't think that there are any students who would go ahead and have school, even if school was cancelled.  I read a book once, when I was younger, called The Secret School, by AVI.  It was about this one room school house school that got cancelled because the teacher either died, or got sick or had a death in the family, I don't remember which, and a fourteen year old girl, one of the smartest in the school, took the role as teacher, to ensure that people were still learning.  Because they liked to learn.
I guess...school isn't really the problem, it's just that students don't like learning anymore.  And probably because it's been shoved down their throats that they have to learn and they have to learn this and they have to learn it this way and that if they don't do well with their learning, they're not smart and have failed.
And this has gotten really really long, so I'll just end it now.
~Katie

Business Teaching Game?

Okay, so...this game isn't exactly a "teaching" game at all.  It's called Flight Rising an is a game completely centered around dragons.  You breed them, train them in battle, feed them, name them, change their genes around, etc.  Where am I getting that it's a business teaching game?!
Well, also, in this game you do a thing called "gathering", four of the gathering types produces food for you dragons, while the remaining two provide you with other items that you don't need to survive in the game, but can give you cool things.

The way that gathering can help with business type skills is that you decide where you need to gather and how much you need to gather there.  Do most of your dragons eat plants, but you have some dragons that eat meat and you have absolutely zero meat?  Maybe you should go hunting.  Are your food stores all stocked up?  Well, why not dig or scavenge?

Then, with the things you've scavenged or dug up, you can go to the Auction House, and sell them!  But oh no!  What do I price my "white rook" for?!  All you have to do is figure out how much other people are selling their white rooks for, then price your white rook at the same or a little lower.  Or...if the lowest price you could sell it for is less than the price you'd get for selling it back to the store...your best bet is to either sell it back to the store, or hang onto it until the price for white rooks goes back up.

You find all kinds of things you can sell, in your "hoard".  It has different tabs for different things.  You decide what you want to sell and what you want to keep.  Some things, it's better to hang onto.  For example, there's a place in Flight Rising called the "coliseum", which is where your dragons can battle either other player's dragons, or monsters.  I stick to battling monsters.  But they need battle items.  If you have a lightning dragon and a fire dragon, but you only have ability stones for a nature dragon, you might want to sell the nature battle items and get some lightning and fire battle items!

There's also a place in Flight Rising called the "trading post".  At the trading post, there's one place where you can get one thing for free every day, another place where someone buys your items for more than you could sell them in the store, but they get to choose what they want and you might not even have it, one where you can answer questions about Flight Rising and get treasure in return, one where you can trade different items you may have for one big item, usually apparel, for your dragon to wear, and a last place where you can turn some of the things you keep in your hoard into goos, mucks, slimes, oozes, and something else, but I don't remember what, and then you can use those, as well as other materials to make more things.

Also!  If there are things you have in your hoard that you want to make sure you don't sell or throw away or give away, you can move them to your vault.  Which is fantastic.  You can even move gems and treasure into your vault.

How does business come into this?  Well, you have to know what to price your items for.  If you're making things to sell, you need to know what's in demand.  A great way to do that?  The forums.  Not all forums are about selling, in fact, there's one forum that's not even for anything Flight Rising related, it's just so people can have fun and talk about anything and everything.

The more I play Flight Rising, the more I realize I'm doing things like, making business transactions, marketing, sort of budgeting (not exactly) and I feel like if you homeschool (or even if you don't), Flight Rising would be a great place to go and sort of make your own business/market on there for selling this that or the other thing.  Maybe I'm way off, but that's just how it seemed to me.

~Katie

Teachers

We have all learned something from someone.  Be this your parents, cousins, uncles, other relatives, the man down the street whose name you just can't quite remember, or even the nice cashier who waited patiently for you to frantically search your pockets for the money that you can't find because of those evil little elves that are constantly hiding your money at the very bottom of your pockets, underneath your phone, keys, and fingernail clippers.  Of course, the most "traditional" way to learn, is from teachers.  Ya know, those people that are hired by a school, the people you usually have to sit in a stupid, not super comfy desk to listen to them drone on and on and on about a topic you care nothing about.  Take me with math...yeah, I hate that subject.  But I've learned a lot from teachers (more from my mom and reading, but teachers too of course).

1. On the keyboard ALT+the tab key lets you switch windows without ever once taking your hands off the keyboard.  This is wonderful knowledge if you're like me.
2. You know when you're reading your Bible and you see some words in italics?  Yeah, those words weren't originally there, they were just added to try to make a bit more sense and put in italics so people would know they weren't originally in the text.  Like, okay, take the Bible verse Isaiah 45:18.  If you take the italizised words out, it changes the entire verse. "For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else."  Okay, read that the way it is.  It seems to be saying God made the earth then it completely changes apparently he is the LORD and there is none else, although that has nothing to do with him making the earth.  Take out the italic words.  "For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I the LORD; and none else."  Now it appears the verse is saying that God made the earth, just him, no one else.  Neat, yes?  Now take a totally random Bible verse.  Isaiah  46:12 "Hearken unto me,ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness:"  Take out the italic word and it just seems weird.
3. The exterior angle is equal to the two far interior angles...I wanted to be able to say I learned something from the math teacher.
4. There was a difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees....I honestly did not know that.
5. You can actually sing loud enough to fill an entire room, without a mic, if you actually project enough.  I never said I was good at that.
6. People can "like" other people out of pity.
7. If you have a new enough version of Microsoft Word, you can put citations and stuff in your document with just a few simple clicks.
8. Don't assume there have to be a few falses in every true and false test.  Sometimes there will be all trues.
9. A person can be a good person...but a not so great teacher.
10. Illegal immigration isn't just in the U.S.A.
11. There is in fact a website where you can listen to tons of Adventures in Odyssey for FREE.

I'm tired, goodnight.

~Katie :)