College Prep in a College Class

November 18, 2009

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.


CFA launches new social media class.

October 19, 2009

Val Amoroso – This year I was lucky enough to be offered to take a class on inbound marketing and social media that was only open to two students.  The class, which we call SMIM for short, has taught me an enormous amount about marketing and technology.  When we started off this year we read a book called the Tipping Point which has made me look at everything in a whole new way. The concept of a “Tipping Point” is when a trend/idea/ etc. starts to be spread at what seems like an unstoppable rate and becomes an epidemic. Ever since reading this book I go through my day seeing certain things and thinking “Oh that tipped” or “This is tipping.”   After learning about the tipping point we started talking more about marketing. I never realized how thought out marketing on social media was. I thought you would just put everything on a website, on Facebook or Twitter, but you really have to strategize and plan everything out.  Adding onto that we learned about branding ourselves which was really fascinating. When asked to brand yourself it becomes very difficult. You have to be able to think of what makes you unique and different and an asset to whomever you are gearing yourself towards. That was a really cool lesson though because it did make me think a lot about how people perceive you and how you want to be perceived.  It’s amazing to be able to learn about this and have a class on it because this is the future of marketing.

Eddie Offerman – Cape Fear Academy introduced a new class option for students this year called social media/inbound marketing or SMIM for short. I found out Cape Fear Academy is one of the only schools in the nation that offers any kind of class like this one.  I have learned that using social media as a means for marketing is not as easy as I thought. Being able to use a website like Facebook and being able it for marketing is like being able to use a car and being able to use a car for cooking.  If I was to just throw a turkey under my hood and wait for it to get hot, it probably wouldn’t come out tasting very good, if edible at all. This same concept applies to marketing using social media.  If I wanted to market Cape Fear Academy on Facebook, for example, I could slap together a fan page, maybe take a couple pictures, and be done. Chances are, my fan page would be relatively uninteresting and boring. However, now I could make a fan page that engages prospective clients and serves its purpose as a marketing tool for the school. This is essentially was the SMIM class has given me so far, knowledge on how to use social media as a means for marketing BEFORE I actually do any marketing.


January 21, 2009

Welcome to Cape Fear Academy’s Blog.  We look forward to sharing news, information, and ideas on this blog.