Special Blog Post #1

WolframAlpha

When I did the WolframAlpha search I found some pretty interesting statistics. I found out there are 309 million people living in America compared to 1.35 billion in China and 1.21 billion in India. Out of the three we rank the best in life expectancy with a 78.1 year life expectancy. India has a 69.9 year life expectancy and China has a 73.5 year life expectancy. Out of the three country's, India has the highest population growth at 1.44% per year. America is second out of the three with a 0.969% population growth per year and China is last with a 0.63% growth per year.

I did a search comparing Alabama to Oregon and a search comparing France and Germany. In the search comparing Alabama and Oregon I found that Alabama has 4.803 million people compared to 3.872 million people in Oregon. This surprised me a little bit. I thought with a city like Portland being in Oregon that they would have a higher population than Alabama. Oregon's population growth is higher than Alabama's, with a 1.2% growth per year compared to a 0.75% growth. In the search comparing France and Germany I found that France ranks 21st in the world with a population of 64.8 million people. Germany ranks 16th with 82.1 million people. I was surprised to find that Germany actually has a negative population growth. France is growing at a rate of 0.537% per year while Germany is decreasing at a rate of -0.0952% per year.

As a future History teacher I can't began to explain how helpful WolframAlpha can be to me and both my class room. Geographical statistics play a large part in History. In History we want to know who, what, and why. The statistics that you can find in the WolframAlpha search can help answer all three of those questions. I will definitely use WolframAlpha in my class room.

Gary Hayes Social Media Count

It's somewhat overwhelming to see how many things are going on at once in the world of technology. It seems like everyone has a Facebook, and seeing that website doesn't do anything to change that. I'm astonished to see how many Facebook likes are going on in a matter of a few minutes. I can remember when my sister got a pager years ago thinking how amazing it was to be able to just page someone. Now in a matter of one minute 50 people have purchased a iPhone.

The world is constantly changing. I consider myself a glass half full type of person and I see this technology growth as a positive for the classroom. I think we can utilize the advancements in a positive manner. I think I-Pad's and tablets are the most important new tool we can use in the classroom. They do offer distractions for students, but the knowledge that students can learn from them far out way the distractions. Social media can be helpful too. The first thing that comes to my mind is creating a Twitter account or a Facebook page for classes. It's something that I hope I can utilize as a teacher.