Class blog – Page 20 – Online Reporting, Research & Writing

Walking out across state lines

Over the course of the last few months we have seen a widespread protest, perhaps the largest since the change following the protest for freedoms from our LGBTQ community. In the United States, students and some educators are now chanting through America’s streets, “March for our Lives.” This revolutionary phrase comes after media outlets such as MSNBC and CNN highlights a supposed flux in school shootings. However, not all students participate solely in “walking out,” some students have done group prayers.

A Catholic school in Denver CO whose students decided rather than walk-out, they would instead pray to honor the 17 students from Florida Parkland shooting. The difference? A national walkout for 17 minutes reached a large number of high-schools and colleges throughout the nation. This school’s approach is similar to what is being suggested by right-wing politics. Where as a nation, America should incorporate God back into the foundation of this country. Thus, these students did a prayer to intercede on behalf of the “souls” that were lost during this unfortunate event in U.S history.

There are three sides to these walk-outs. According to a post published by the Washington Post, there were tens of thousands of students that walked out during this socially accepted protest. Students are protesting for stricter gun laws. However, looking on the internet you will see students holding signs such as, “NRA WE WILL OUT LIVE YOU,” “No More Silence End Gun Violence.” The young marchers has said they are not protesting a particular party, rather they are wanting both Republicans and Democrats to create and enforce laws on an issue they believe has been over-looked. A video of the rally

Not all students participated or believe this is a major issue that should be a focus in America. A North Carolina student was one of 700 students that walked out. The school says according to a person who handles their public relations, “We teach our students to be independent thinkers,” Janet Conner-Knox, who handles public relations for Wilson Preparatory Academy, told CNN. “[Blackman] is an independent thinker.” With this statement it’s plausible that this student opinion is less than a percent of the overall political standing in the school.

A school district in New Jersey decided to give out suspensions to students who participated in the rally. This was done in protection for the students according to a quote from a school’s superintendent. He states, “…Therefore, we believe that allowing and/or supporting them to walk out of our schools on a specific date and at a specific time is not safe and will cause a major disruption to the education of those students, as well as those who wish to remain in class learning” in a snippet taken from Breibart news.

An informative curration about space news!

Nuzzel is a great way to learn about aggregating creative stories and or reading on informative news.

NASA has some exciting news about Chandra’s new discoveries since it’s space launched in 1999. A particular Super Nova was discovered by Chinese astronomers in 1054 A.D. and was labeled as the Crab Nebula. A bright ring of highly energy charged particles around the heart of the Crab Nebula was than observed by Chandra in 1999 near the constellation Taurus. solar-system-emergence-spitzer-telescope-telescope-41951.jpeg free Google art

Since than many observations has taken place, and through X-ray data, Chandra has been able to take photos and extract new information on the Crab Nebula’s evolution. Chandra can detect x-ray emissions from very hot regions of the universe by design. Chandra will celebrated its 20th year anniversary space launch with NASA in the year 2019!

This Aggregation example is a very informative one and a great way to learn a lot in one place however, a lot of information sometimes given in one place can be a bit much.

Crab Nebula short video clip!

Google perks for college shopping

Being in college does have its perks. What do I mean? Well after using a guide to search for different data sets with Google’s advanced search method, I found out how to read and understand them. Using this style of research for data makes things a lot easier when planning for your future.

A great example, the different tabs at the bottom shows the demographics, admission, and cost/comments for school in a given school year. In this case it was for the 2011-2012 year in the state of Michigan. After deleting schools that are not public and four-year I was left with 16 colleges, that was a bit shocking to me. I really was not aware that in this state of ours we had only 16 public colleges. I am not sure if that is a small number; I definitely will have to compare that to other states with a comparable populace.

The school that is the most expensive is Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University. I noticed there are extra charges, and this school as per the comment section will have cost relating to in state tuition/ out of state as well as general education requirement which is also not a standard cost. Some of the colleges do not have in-state/in-district transportation cost while others do. And Eastern Michigan is the only college without this expense in-state/in-district misc expenses.

The complete shocker to me was that the University of Michigan Dearborn is the least expensive four-year college. Now I feel better about my decision to continue my education at this college. My continuous debt if it was concrete would surely thank me.

Renowned physicist , author, and mathematician , Stephen Hawking dies

At the age of 76, Stephen Hawking dies inside of his home in Cambridge, England

Stephen Hawking , a man of excellence with in the science realm has died peacefully at the age of 76, in his Cambridge home in England. Hawking was infamous for his vast discoveries with in science, including research on quantum physics and black holes with in our universe.

Outside of his vast research in science topics, he became a published author when he wrote the book ,” A brief history in time: from big bang to black holes”, in the year of 1988. In accordance the the NY Times Newspaper, the book was ” Making the Big Bang Almost Understandable”. It allowed people who did not have the scientific knowledge to regularly understand those concepts, to allow them to gain insight on the world how he perceived it.

This could be viewed as fascinating because of the time and era when this book was published , not allow of information was produced about space, and space travel just had become a process in the works.

Along with his great life, there were some downward spirals that had taken place. Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , or (ALS) for short. Despite his physical handicap, it never affected his brilliant mind, which allowed him to create more new and improved discoveries with in modern day science.

A good example of a curated story

In Ron French’s curated story, he first presented and quoted the topic that Betsy DeVos discussed in the 60 Minute interview. French did not include his opinion in the story; rather, he curated multiple sources that explain how Michigan education is getting worse each year.

As a reader of French’s story, I was convinced by the data provided that the education in Michigan never been worst. French didn’t make any claims in the story; rather, he provided evidences of data, research, and facts that stated to the reader that Michigan education system is only going downward.

French used multiple resources in his story. Two of the resources that French presented in the story are Michigan spent $80 million to improve early reading and NAEP Data Explorer. The first source is Michigan spent $80 million to improve early reading which is one of French’s publications in Bridgemi.com. Second source is NAEP Data Explorer which is retrieved from the nces.ed.gov.

French used different resources in the story to state the facts that indicate that the education system in Michigan is only getting worse each year. The NAEP data showed the academic achievement level across the state of Michigan.

French introduced “contextually links” to make sure the reader knows some information about the source mentioned in the story, also he provided links to the actual source. For instance, Brian Jacob was one of the sources in French’s story. French provided a link to Brian Jacob’s page that has more information about him “…according to the analysis by Brian Jacob, a University of Michigan professor of economics and education.” (French, 2018).