School can be really overwhelming at times. Especially when your trying to make yourself stand out to colleges with sports, community service, and other extra curriculars, while maintaining good grades, and taking a million different mandatory test for individual classes and the ones colleges want (SAT, etc.), all while trying to have some sort of social life.
Hola,
On April 19, 2010 the 20th annual Goldman Environmental Awards were held in San Francisco, California. Smashcast got the chance to check it out and we asked the youth about what they that young people could do to contribute to the Green Movement.
Hey guys,
I have been quiet for awhile, but I can assure you it was for good reason. The past month or two, I have been learning a program called 3D Studio Max. Things got complicated fast, but after some trial and error and a little more trial and error, I was able to make something presentable.
Freshman year. Your first year of high school. The year when everything and every one is new and scary. Sophomore year is when you start to get the hang of things. Junior year is the year when you work yourself to death getting your transcript perfectly polished for college. Then Senior year rolls around. Senioritis sets in, and you get ready to graduate. Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior. Everyone knows that’s how it goes. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if the last year of high school was optional? What if you could go straight to college after just three years of high school? Would you?
In Utah, this idea could become a reality. Republican State Senator Chris Buttars put forth a bill that proposed making the 12th grade optional in the effort to reduce Utah’s $700 million dollar budget deficit. Buttars projected this proposal to save $60 million dollars if put into practice by the 2010-2011 school year. Within the educational community, there’s a bit of controversy over the bill. Supporters of the bill believe that students will benefit from the optional last year of high school. Those who have fulfilled their requirements can graduate early, eliminating Senioritis and saving the state money. Those who oppose the bill believe that the 12th grade is a fundamental and necessary step in high school. John Balden, president of the Utah chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, called the bill “very shortsighted.” Others believe that by eliminating the 12th grade, some students will enter college at 17 and not be ready to face the real world.
Personally, I think making Senior year optional is a wonderful idea. When applying to college, admissions officers look at the applicants grades up to their Junior year. By the time senior year comes around, most students have gotten all of their core classes out of the way. They spend their last year fulfilling performing arts or P.E. credits. If a student has completed all necessary classes, I think they have earned the option of skipping 12th grade. I myself am currently in an alternative high school. I currently attend Independence High School in San Francisco. Here, I attend class once a week and I independent study all of my classes. I have also recently passes the California High School Proficiency Exam, which in the state of California is equivalent to earning a high school diploma. If I have the equivalent of a high school diploma and I can teach myself my high school curriculum, shouldn’t that mean I’m ready for college?
This last Sunday, legislature of historic proportions passed through the Senate. Universal healthcare, which has been one of our president’s chief campaign promises, took one giant step towards becoming reality with a vote of 219-212. While it still had to undergo some minor revisions, this bill represented the largest reform in healthcare since Johnson’s formation of the medicare and medicaid programs.
The television reality show America’s Best Dance Crew is a competitive series that is climbing the charts in popularity for best dance show. This show has great crews from all over the United States, and most recently Puerto Rico and Canada also. It captures the art of dance, music mixing, and costume design. The winner is all up to the citizens of the United States to vote for their favorite dancers and help them become America’s Best Dance Crew. The show has been running for four seasons and now going on the fifth season. This show has been known to be accurate when it comes to a winner being announced. However, for the first time, an error in the voting calculations has caused an uproar in America.
Winter is upon us in full swing and many expectant sports fanatics know what that means: the Winter Olympics. Many will tune in to NBC, the sole network with the rights to air the 2010 Olympics, to watch figure skating, downhill skiing and curling, as well as some of their other favorite snow-time sports; but among the snowboarding and hockey, there is a deeper issue plaguing this year’s festivities.
With all my other assignments done. I had pretty much nothing to do. Well I couldn’t just do nothing so Simon and I decided to mess with 3-D because, why not?
The new era of blogging has moved in and unpacked its bags. What is this blog era you might ask, well a couple months ago we had the chance to interview two bloggers from the Huffington Post, the top blog in the net, and they gave us a little debriefing. Watch the video to see our report!
The Smashcasters had an opportunity to meet with One Web Day’s Executive Director and produced this video about how they see the digital divide manifested in their communities and some strategies for overcoming it.
