ICT in schools [Part 2] aka. why I hate my school

Just spent another 20 minutes learning about how my school wants me to learn. So I was sitting there putting my time to an actual practical use, instead of sitting and filling in a paper timetable that I would most likely never look at again. I decided to organise my timetable that is on my HTC android, the teacher walked past and saw me twiddling on my phone. To which he commented and I quote "organising your time is more important than texting" as he indicated at the timetable in front of me. To which I replied that I was not texting and in fact I was reorganizing the calendar on my smartphone... he let me do my thing. But I must comment that for a school that prides itself on using and teaching technology it seems to do very little of either.
This is most defiantly not the first time that a teacher has told me off for using productive and helpful technology in class. Another example is in my English class we were told to get out our planners, so hence I pulled out my old phone, a blackberry. And started typing in her instruction, my English teacher harshly told me off. I explained that this was my PDA and I was doing what she asked, she exclaimed that I could have asked/told her that I used a PDA over a planner. I had done that with all of my teachers, including her at the start of the year. What I failed to mention to all of them was how much of a fool I felt as I did so, its hard doing something different than everyone else at my school, especially in regards to technology. There is only one teacher who is qualified in I.T. and there are few who even understand the basic "have you tried turning it on and off again" and the "is it plugged in" rules. The teacher who was/is the I.T. manager of the school (according to a reliable source) actually caused the school server crash (not intranet or internet) and it took the I.T. dept. A week to fix whatever they did.
Maybe the school should focus on keeping their teachers upto date with technology before they start making exaggerated claims about their "wonderful techsavvey" school.

This is not a blog post

today has been a long day
and I don't really want to write at all, I would rather goto bed and have a play fruit ninja or finish the book I am reading so I can lend it to @jokermanMK or tweet about losing the sensation in my feet or txt a friend or liking random things on getglue or lying peacefully in the dark listening to music or painting my nails or perhaps even catching up on my maths work or re-arranging my binder or tiding up my art folio or downloading more apps for my android phone or downloading a new firmware update (Running isn't working too well for me right now)or eating boiled lollies or mint slice or timtams or dark timtams or dark mint timtams or learning c# or changing my twitter profile picture or hugging someone or getting a cup of tea or making a video or making a game based video or resting my eyes or reading a manga or hugging a rock or working on the my ordy videos (sorry) or playing with my towel or praying or casting magic or drinking glo or studying for my exams or watching doctor who or watching youtube or catching up on the news or checking the weather or answering questions on GameFAQS or whirlpool or reading on autechheads or working out why my fan is over there or cleaning my room or reading lockergnome.com or... okay you get the point... I don't want to blog nor am I going to today

Faith

So recently @londonjustin wrote a blog post about faith from a view point that I shall crudely surmise as Agnostic and his friend @the_helen replied from a Christian viewpoint.

So I though considering my deep diving into the bible via the bible project (that's having a little nap at the moment and moving to tumblr in the next few weeks). I though I should put my own views and experiences in to this discussion.

I was Anti-Christian, I thought all Christians and Churches were deeply flawed, worshipping an evil god on the wrong terms. I have found peace in my own faith (witchcraft, neo-paganism)and through my faith learnt a valuable lesson. That people are people, and institutions are institutions. As Helen brought up some Christian groups have done amazing work that has helped many many people without discrimination based on their faiths, nationalities, races, or Identity.

There have also been things done in the name of the Christian god that are so horrible and twisted and the though of them, though many are long past; were what haunted me in the times when I was strongly Anti-Christian.

But you can't judge all video games because one is mental and nor can you judge all churches or Christian sects just because one particular one is filled with nutters. Each person is an individual and each person follows the word of God/Goddess/Neither/Other differently. As Helen wrote "Someone’s faith is a part of them the same as their character is-I’m sure you wouldn’t shun someone because they are extremely extrovert." and I guess that is true, but in my case further than that... would you shun somebody because of what you thought they believed. Would you presume that my belief in my Lady and the fact I wear a Pentical means that I am a Satanist or an Evil Witch, or a little from column a and a little from column b?

I judged Christians and Christian Organizations based on that mindset for a time.

My most important point must be though, through my faith I learnt to love. To respect and love everyone, and I don't think anyone can deny that whatever causes you to respect and love is not a bad thing.


(Sorry if this doesn't make much sense its past 1am and I really need to catch some Zs)

Life sux

Okay, I know this
You can stop posting it on fb
You can stop being irritated when I do my whole obviously insane thing
This is me, I do crazy stuff and I'm sick of people being surprised
If you don't like it
Unfriend me
Unfollow me
Unlike me
I refuse to let all the bad stuff that happens to me make me impossibly depressed
Because yeah, my life could be suxxors
I could be suicidal and depressed and refuse to let anyone talk to me
and yell at all the people who act all messed up
I could be "Normal" "Typical"
My goodbyes could take 5 minutes
I could do everything you say
I could cry myself to sleep
I could sleep normal hours
And eat regular meals at regular times
I could wear dresses and poke fun at geeks
I could pay attention to things I don't care about
I could pretend I don't want to see you
That I don't care about you
I could goto parties
I could stop drawing
I could wear makeup like you wear makeup
I could quit caring about issues
I could stop talking
I could stop smiling
I could stop making content because noone really gives a toss
I could smoke until I bleed
I could drink until I'm rushed to E.D.
I could be drugged so much that I can't think
If I have to be like that to be loved
I don't want love
If I have to be like that to be accepted
I don't want to be accepted
My life is my own and if I annoy you just by being me
I don't care how much you life sux
or how many exams you have today
you can go away
because my life already could be suxxors
I could complain
and moan about how stressed I am
But I refuse to do so publicly and constantly
or in a serious way
I don't care what you think of me
I will still respect you
even if you unfollow, unfriend or unlike me

GameFAQs - Answers - Some stuff could be done better

I love gameFAQs.com It is a brilliant site that is my first point of call when I am having any sort of problem with a retail game. but I think that there are some areas that could be better managed and re-organised to give the highest level of support to its users.

So firstly, GameFAQs Answers section is filled with "Unanswered" Questions, questions that have had quite acceptable answers posted, but the person who asked the question has not told GameFAQs that any of them have been acceptable, I personally have left questions "unanswered" for several months. As only one notification email is sent out to me and after that nothing is said, but the reason I think that most of the "Unanswered" Questions are left as such leads onto...

My second point, Is that it is do hard to access your questions profile page, the only way that I have found to be able to do it is to ask or answer a question and then click on my username (hyperlink)If you could get into that more easily then maybe it would be easier for users to track questions, meaning you don't get games with 500 unanswered questions!

Okay rant over

Writing on caffine and crazy

Okay, this post is the brainchild of sleep deprivation, a a few lattes with too much sugar and and a random assortment of music (and yes I will write what tracks I am listening to so if you do feel like going on a trippy - to quote the most applicable term "mindf***" you can follow along) so to begin.

#nowplaying The Sharpest Lives - My Chemical Romance (almost wrote My Chemical Rainbow)

Okay so yesterday I had a meeting with the principle on a range of issues, the ones I was most successful in putting my point across were in regards to the wonders of ICT. To surmise for people who have to read the blog posts that I am planning to write.

#nowplaying Bad Romance - Lady gaga (skrillex remix)

Incompetent tech teachers teaching even the simplest tech subjects poorly and running programs promoting GBL (Game based learning) and ICT when they know little about it. The ones that ask the students why there computer isn’t working… have you tried turning it on and off again *sigh*. You know what I mean right?

#nowplaying Tell Her Tonight - Franz Ferdinand

So I was talking to her and the two main points that I want to discuss here that I discussed with her are Cyber education in schools on a school level and supporting that learning on a peer to peer level

#nowplaying Nalepa ‘Monday’ Remix - Glitch Mob

Anyone who has an email account will know of spam, the most infamous being the flood of email messages that ask you to give you bank account details to your old uncle in Nigeria or the like. Also depending of the sites you frequent the the pop ups that announce to the world that you are the hundredth person too vist this page… click here for your reward (I must also take this opportunity to state that the messages on my page that sound like that are false… and that I did not put them there… the banes of having a site hosted for free on webs) Okay so this may sound too many of you extremely obvious but the reason that these ads and messages still flood the world is because people do click on them.

Okay is is now about... err 8hrs after I wrote that. And I now realise though still sleep deprived at least the caffine has worn off. that... It is really hard to read that... So that is what this tuesdays post is about... My wavering sanity.

Again

ICT in schools (Part One)

ICT is the abbreviation for Information Communication Technology, a complex way of saying IT. I am a wannabe techie and a gamer so obviously, technology and how I learn it in school is important to me. If someone asked my how ICT is in my school, I would have to say excessively poor, and particularly annoying. So I am going to try and Summarize it.
I must start on a topic that I have particularly experienced and still irks me today, multimedia. Multimedia at our school was at the uppermost level software as of 2000, with the installation of Photoshop 6 on the school’s server; the first version of Photoshop to have the now famous (possibly infamous) Liquefy tool. As of 2010 the school made the profound leap to Photoshop 11, also known as Photoshop CS4. But few teachers understood the implications and advancements of this software with over 50 major updates occurring between Photoshop 6 and the release of Photoshop CS4. This is a major culture shift, 6 months after the shift; I personally had the blessing of a teacher attempt to teach me and around 25 others, Photoshop CS4, using the methods of Photoshop 6. I must admit through the tasks that he gave us, I did learn some skills that were invaluable in my overall photo manipulation skills. But there were so many aspects of Photoshop that this teacher was ignorant of, He was teaching a class with the majority of students most profound digital art being produced with MS paint (kind of like comparing walking to driving a Lamborghini) Students were being taught difficult and outdated methods of doing simple things, due to the fact that this teacher did not know the simpler methods. He was and as far as I know still it trapped in the groove that was carved by being trapped in the old technology, and the school overall did not care enough to make sure that this teacher had the necessary training to teach students, I as a student who had little experience with Illustrator I also had the blessing of being taught Illustrator by him, It was a scary experience that almost drove me off using illustrator forever. This year luckily I have a better teacher and constant and current users of illustrator, such as True Nuff’s “Threeboy” encouraging me to expand my skills in Illustrator and I have to give thanks to them. I must admit that I still think the pen tool is going to be the death of me.

Being Late

Being a vce student can be hard work, and most of the administrative decisions made by my school immensely annoy me, one of which is the reason a have the time to start writing this blog post. Our school has a rule that if you are late then the teacher in all there infinite wisdom can refuse you entry to the class and it is counted as a unapproved absence that you have to catch up later.

I don’t choose to be late, I hate being late, for anything. I find it humiliating and feel it reflects badly on me. But the most humiliating thing that I have experienced is entering a class room. Only for the teacher to tell you to bugger off and comeback at the start of the next period. I have be studying at least one vce subject for the past 5 terms and this has never happened to me, until today. Okay I understand there need to be a punishment, especially for the student s who turn up late for almost every class, but I don’t think that should be administrated by the teachers. I know one student who has been chronically late for the past term, and I don’t believe that he has been sent out of a class, all because he has nice teachers who excuse his behavior. For most of term one, I was turning up to school most likely before most of my teachers. When I was late to this particular class, first period. I was sent out in shame.

This should be managed by the coordinators and the punishment not be of determent to our education, like missing classes. Or even if its counted as an absence we get to make up but will still get to complete our classes

What I wrote to a friend Re: You are a "Stupid Windows User"

The reason I use PC, Is because I want an OS that will run everything without the problems that Linux brings, but I don't want to spend and excessive amount on a computer that has little flexibility, Mac is progressing as an OS It is becoming more flexible and the amount of programs that you can run is increasing. And the day that the first MacOS gaming machine will be epic. I choose PC after assessing the other OSes based on the opinions of others and calling me a stupid Windows User is disrespectful and unkind. And I do not appreciate it, Your opinions are your own and I respect you enough not to call You an OS Whore. I like the simplicity that one OS brings, and for me that cant b a mac and I cant be bothered with a Linux Machine