Assessing and Preparing Students for the 21st Century With Common Core State Standards

I found this reading to be both interesting and a little difficult to understand. The reading discusses the Common Core Standards and how it is used today. Before the current advanced ways of CCSS, "most decisions in the workplace were made at the highest levels and then communicated to lower levels, which limited innovative to creative contributions throughout the chain of command (Leu, Forzani, Burlingame, Kulikowich, Sedransk, Coiro, and Kennedy<--authors)." I found it shocking that CCSS was like this before the current day. What shocked me was that, because employees were at lower levels, they were not required to possess or use higher level of thinking skills or digital literacies, since they simply just followed directions. Why was this a thing? Doesn't that mean that employees at lower levels did not get the same opportunities as higher leveled employees?

Small Differences Matter: The DNA of Online Reading Comprehension

The first sentence from this reading caught my attention immediately. "Two percent. Just 2% of code separates us from our Chimpanzee brethren." You would think the percentage would be a little bit bigger because there are some differences between the chimpanzee's and us.

The reading discusses strategic text assembly such as, Navigational Strategies (multitasking) and Comprehension Monitoring (understanding). The reading also discusses Socially Complex Texts and Multimodal Design. Socially Complex Texts consists of Sourcing Skills (skills on how to evaluate websites) and Analytics (how an idea travels). Multimodal Design discusses about the design of writing and the meaning behind the making of our writing). 

I liked this reading because it breaks down the steps of online comprehension and how we can use the different skills shared in this reading and add it to our writing or research. Annotating this or reading others annotations would have been fun and interesting to see, but I was having trouble annotating or seeing other annotations. I love the break down and description of each topic because it helps the readers understand what they are reading and makes it clearer to understand. 

Stop Killing in the Name of Science

There is a petition that was shared on change.org, stating that animals (rare) are being killed in the name of science. The animal that was stated in this petition was a rare bird called, Moustached Kingfisher. This rare bird has been a victim to losing its habitat to deforestation and to the introduction of feral cats. The author to the petition has asked those who strongly believes that this is wrong, to join them in asking Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, to discontinue the practice of killing in the name of science. They state that, "We can study and help rare animals without taking their lives." 

"Killing in the name of Science?" How does that sound like we are helping these rare and beautiful animals? What are we showing or teaching the next generation of kids when they here that we are killing these animals in the name of science? I would be  shocked or horrified if someone told me they were killing animals "in the name of science." This needs to stop. If you agree, please sign the petition above.

Give Grey Wolves their Status Back

There has been a petition going around concerning the Grey Wolves in Oregon. Their Endangered Species Status has been removed due to their numbers increasing. The actions of ranchers and poachers has caused these wolves to go extinct in the first place and now because they have been taken off of the Endangered Species list, they are in danger again. In Wisconsin, a similar problem occurred, meaning that the wolves in Wisconsin were removed from the Endangered Species list because there were sustainable numbers of wolves. The petition shared states,"Conservationists in Wisconsin have estimated that around 44 percent of Wisconsin wolves aged seven months or older died each year after their protection ended in 2012."

Wolves are one of my favorite wildlife animals. Taking them off of the list can be dangerous for them because the ranchers and poachers can start hunting them again, which would then cause them to end up on the list again. They could be victims of an accident as well. There is no need to remove the Grey Wolves off of the Endangered Species list because they are still in danger to many threats around them. If you feel the same as I do, please sign the petition in the link above. Let's help these beautiful creatures keep their protection status.