PLN9

Because most people don’t realize that soldiers do good deeds, and don’t just fight and kill, Tech. Sgt. Kerry Jackson of the 13th Air Force Public Affairs wrote an important article called “Airmen restore Vietnamese clinic during Pacific Angel” about a team of Air Force engineers rebuilding and repairing a medical clinic in Vietnam. Many people don’t give the troops respect for those fighting and dying so that regular people can sleep safely in their beds at night. These people sometimes even call the troops awful names like “baby killer.” Well, Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors don’t just defend freedom; they also help people. There are many squadrons of different types of troops that are devoted strictly to saving lives, such as the Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers or the Air Force Combat Search and Rescue Teams. Not all of these soldiers help people in action. Some build houses, or like the engineer team mentioned in the article, build hospitals and clinics for underprivileged people. It does not surprise me that the same people who claim to hate the troops don’t even realize that they are also helping people and probably doing more good than the people who are doing the whining.

PLN8

In Dr. Wesch’s video “A Vision of Students Today” shows that education is important. The video tells various facts from students like the fact they complete more hours of activities a day than there are hours in a day due to multi-tasking. The students also tell that many of their professors don’t know their name let alone the fact that they are in their class. If teachers don’t even know who is in their class how are they possibly going to give the student the help he or she needs?

PLN7

“Predator Crash in Central Iraq” from the Air Force.mil website shows that how we treat war is important. The article tells of USAF unmanned aircraft crashing in the middle of Iraq. With all the recent advancements in technology machines have become a regular part of the United States military. Robots of war are everywhere, in the air, on land, and even at sea. All of these war tools are connected in many ways, the most important, they all use the internet.

I recently viewed a video that showed many easy ways to “hack” people’s computers, webcams, and printers. None of these “hacks” were more complicated than simply searching a code on Google. If anyone can do these simple “hacks” imagine what the expert “hacker” can do to a computer, or a robot of war.

I know that the military tools are protected by the best computer geniuses, but where ever there is a will there is a way. The bottom line is that we need to be very careful about how we use robots and the internet in general to protect us.

PLN6

“What Did You Create Today?” by Will Richardson shows that how students treat school is what is important. For most students school is just about getting through the day, spending time with friends, or complaining about homework. Many students don’t understand that the things they learn in school are the same things that will use in real life. Will Richardson’s children were transferring to a new school he decided to get his children to focus on the more important part of school, education. If students would concentrate more on their education, school just might get better for them.

PLN5 "What Matters"

Clive Thompson’s “New Literacy,” shows that the technological revolution is not a bad thing; it just needs to be looked at in a positive way. In the last generation people would grow up writing in school, but not after they graduated. Today, with all the advancements in technology and the use of text in most of that technology, people have a lot more motivation to write, and write correctly. Students will continue to text, Facebook, and Twitter, improving their literacy skills while doing so.

PLN4 "What Matters"

The video “The Machine is Using Us” by Dr. Wesch shows that how we treat the internet is important. When we post anything on the internet, we are supplying new information that a computer can learn. This sounds innocent enough, but recently many (if not all) countries are using the internet militarily. If we continue to teach computers new and mostly false information every time we make a post or upload a video, the internet could someday use the information in a bad way. In the movie “Stealth,” a computer-controlled warplane learns how to misbehave and goes to Russia attempting to destroy a target that it learned about from a fictional source. This is not necessarily what is going to happen, but if Dr. Wesch is right, we need to be careful about what we put on the World Wide Web.

PLN3: What Matters.

“Thornton motorcyclist dies in crash” from the Denver Post shows that safety is what is important. Unfortunately, today a 48 year old man died in a motorcycle accident. The Thornton man was not wearing a helmet when his bike hit a curb and he was launched through the air and received a head injury that led to his death. This is very unfortunate because had this man been wearing a helmet he might have survived. In cars the law is very strict by making people wear seatbelts. On motorcycles, however there is no seat belt, therefore some riders wear helmets, but it is not required by law. The government decided it would give bikers the freedom to choose but sometimes that can be very sad when people do no chose wisely.