This is an inspirational video of a man named Randy Pausch. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon and is dying for pancreatic cancer. He gave his last lecture on campus on September 18, 2007 and this is the lecture found on YouTube. Pausch tells his students what he has learned about life from looking at death. If anyone has had a bad year, needs a lift, or just wants to hear a man’s childhood dreams, then this is the video you must watch. This video shows how in every situation you face whether it is bad or good, you must keep going and fulfill your dreams. Randy Pausch is an extremely educated and creative man who wants to share with everyone his upbringing and family as well as some helpful tips to go about life and everything that life throws at you. Even though this video is long, watch it and watch it till the end. You may cry at times, laugh at times, but I promise you that you will take a walk in the right direction and move forward in life, just at Randy Pausch wants his family to do.

“Perhaps the relationship between the Internet and the perceived rise in plagiarism is not so much one of writers’ disease and textual promiscuity as it is of readers’ access to the plagiarized texts. It is from this logic that online plagiarism-detection programs are derived: If unethical writers have access to text online and plagiarize from it, then gatekeeping teachers can also access the plagiarized text and catch the offenders.”

“Understanding Internet Plagarism,” makes me chuckle when I read this. This essay allows readers to see into plagarism and even adds a little humor on the topic. Plagarism has been around for ages, even back when Shakespeare supposedly stole his work from another source. Now many teachers are using plagarism detection programs to sort through their students work to determine if this the work is done by the student and only done by the student. The essay shows how you can simply buy an entire paper online for a particular fee and how people think they can get away with it. This detection programs can put phrases into the program and can pull up where students have plagiarized from.

I cannot believe that students are still trying to buy papers online and think they will not get caught. I remember years ago when students in my English courses in high school were buying papers online, and teachers then had access to this special detection softwares. You would think after all of these years, people would actually realize how technology is constantly increasing and plagarism is much easier to detect. Schools constantly discuss plagarism in schools and even have the topic of plagarism in most school’s handbooks, so why are students still doing this? I guess we will never totally understand this answer, but I feel it is laziness and some are just looking for a way out and feel they will never get caught. Think again, cause you will get caught!

As I looked at the “Understanding Comics,” I must say I was absolutely amazed at how comics work. I know I may seem extremely out of the loop because I have never read a comic before, but I find it utterly amazing at how comics are read and how comics are interpreted. I first learned how to read a comic as to which square to look at next as I read. I even saw how different images can be interpreted differently with the many different characters. I really loved reading this as it looked like an exact comic, but showed the differences in comics and made you want to read it again.

After I read about comics, it made me think about the whole argument in class about video games and if they are a waste of time. From listening to students who play video games constantly and who love reading comics, I’ve discovered that these particular students are very creative and enjoy discovering new games and new creativities. Before this course, I felt as If video games took up too much time and were potentially a waste of time, but now I feel that they do serve a purpose just like comics. Video games and comics are a form of literacy and do serve a purpose in education. Comics allow people to want to read in a much different style than just reading a book and can make reading more enjoyable. Video gaming allows many to experience how to use a video game and learn strategies to win each game. I must say that I think I am going to start reading comics and take part in video games.

This Youtube Video on the “NJ Teacher of the Year” is an excellent video to look at and see what teachers could also do to improve teaching. This is an inspirational video showing a physics teacher at Bergen County Technical School who is an example of an excellent teacher. Students share their words of how this teacher makes everyday an enjoyable day in the classroom. The school is extremely proud of this teacher as students want to take the physics course and strive for excellence. This school has one of the highest enrollments in the AP physics program. The school believes they have such a high enrollment from the great teacher who teaches physics. Take a look at this video and see what you can incorporate into your classroom.

Feeling Stressed? Scared of teacher burnout? Did you know that there is a great site out there designed to help teachers as well as future teachers prepare lesson plans? Well if not, then you should really consider signing up for TaskStream. This site can be found by going to taskstream.com and looking at all of the wonderful features. All you need to do is sign up with a username and password so that you can log on and pay a fee for the months you wish to use this. This can make a teachers life much less stressful as the site is very user-friendly and is easy to find those pesky standards that teachers must add in to their lesson plans. Once you create a lesson plan, there is an option to send the lesson to other readers such as the school or professor that needs to review the lesson plan. This is an effective way to ensure you are creating the lesson plans in the correct way and takes less time to create. So do not hesitate and take a look at the features and examples on taskstream today. You will be happy once you did!