Eddie: I am a senior and have been applying to colleges – an incredibly stressful process. Even though I have finished applying to all my colleges, I’m by no means guaranteed to be accepted anywhere. Because of this, I recently visited Elon College to show my interest in the school. While I was there, I sat in on a freshman level psychology class, which, to my surprise, was nothing like what I expected. Before sitting in on the class, my idea of a college course was an incredibly difficult, long lecture given by an uninteresting professor that required my undivided attention the entire time. This was nothing like what I experienced. For starters, the professor was, for lack of a better word, “cool.” She instantly recognized that I was not a part of the class, as there were only 20 students. She introduced herself and told me if I had any questions, I should feel free to ask. This, however, was not nearly as surprising to me as how much I felt I could see myself taking the class. Most of the class was centered around a Powerpoint presentation about early human development, but instead of lecturing the whole time, the professor was engaging and kept me interested the entire time. On top of that, I felt like the material they were covering was on the same level as some of the material I had learned at CFA. That’s when it hit me. Cape Fear Academy had really prepared me for college. In my years at CFA, I had never WANTED to take any AP classes, but I took them anyway because everyone said they would “prepare me for college.” Looking back, I see now that everyone was right.
Val: If you’re a teenager I’m sure you have heard your parents or others adults say to you “I never had that when I was your age.” Usually they are referring to how we whine when our texting may not be working, an Ipod breaks, or the internet is too slow. They always mention how we take all of these things for granted. This got me thinking how even though we have all types of technology for entertainment, there are also countless technological advances that have helped empower us and enable us to become smarter. In my Algebra II/Pre-cal math class, almost everything is online. We have Powerpoint presentations from our teacher, online homework and online tests. The online homework is really useful because it enables you to look at examples of similar problems and if you need more help the program can take you step by step through a problem. It also shows you the pages in the textbook dealing with the problem and instantly tells you if you got the answer right. All of these tools help you to learn the concepts thoroughly and become more successful in the class.
In my European Literature class we did an online project called Voicethread. You make a Powerpoint and are able to post comments in voice and text, as well as drawing on the slides to stress specific points. After we made our own presentations we were able to look at other students’ projects and comment on theirs. It was a really creative idea and helped us to explore literary ideas ourselves as well as easily view and add on to what our peers thought.
Another class that we are using new technology in is my AP European History class. In this class we have started making wikis. A wiki enables the whole class to collaborate and edit a page of work. We have used these to make pages of key terms in which everyone can add on different aspects of the terms, and we can all see what everyone else is adding and even edit it if we feel it is necessary. These pages are really useful for studying and just shows how technology makes studying and learning easier. All of these different educational online tools that we use at CFA have really helped me to learn more and become more collaborative in some of my classes than when we just do regular projects with paper and pen. The aspect of using technology in different classes makes the classes more exciting and also allows the class to fit in more with our lives since our lives revolve more and more around technology everyday.
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