Social Media

While my family and  I have used several social media sites, the one that we all seem to have settled with is Facebook.  Initially we all had myspace pages.  We have always been connected to our boys pages.  Initially it was to monitor what was going on in their live, now I think it is just to keep up with what is going on in their lives.  Being unhappy with the lack of site monitors and the unwanted messages in our in boxes, we left myspace and went to Xianz.com, a Christian social media site.  The site was 180 degrees from the monitor perspective, and we felt secure with our boys on the site.  We also used it to promote our Christian band and it was through that site that we found a church in a town we moved to a year later in another state.  We also created a band site at faithfreaks.com, as well as a few other Christian media sites.  In addition to sharing our music ministry around the world we also were able to minister to hundreds through the various media sites.  It was a real ministry.  The end of our band and computer viruses (we felt we got on the sites) drove us away.  Eventually my oldest son created a facebook and we joined shortly after.  Now I use the site to keep up with family and former students, and I waste way too much time playing facebook games.  My oldest son communicates with friends and promote his Christian band.  My wife keeps up with old high school friends and family.  My middle son uses it and youtube to show people his ability to do splits in ways a man shouldn't be able to do.  My youngest son seems to stir up and keep up with his friends drama.  Honestly I miss the days of xianz and faith freaks.  Maybe because I enjoyed the ministry, maybe I felt like it was a better time, probably it was both.

Technology at Westfield High School

Technology is in the hand of the beholder.  Saying this I mean that how one views technology at Westfield depends on how one views technology.  If your idea of technology is one teacher laptop, a digital projector, sixteen student laptops shared between three teachers, and one SmartBoard shared between seven teachers then Westfield is looking good on the technology front.  If not then if you want technology, then be prepared to write a grant or spend some of your own money.  I bought a laptop and an Interwrite Pad just to get to what I consider to be the bare minimum.  I personally think that there should be enough laptops in a school for each student to have their own laptop.  Not buying the textbooks they don't read would go a long way to paying for some of those laptops.  In addition I believe that classes should have clickers or be allowed to use something like the "Vclicker" software that turns cell phones into clickers.  Westfield (and Fairfax County for that matter) is a frustrating place if one wants to be ahead of the technology curve.  I tried to get permission to use a free trial of a web based artificial intelligence chemistry tutoring software and was told that I had to go (way) up the ladder to have it approved.    The students now days don't respond to the same old same old methods of the past.  They were born with more technology than I had the first twenty-five years of my life.  With that said if the schools don't start adjusting on the fly we will lose our students (at least their interest) the way the church that I grew up in lost members through the eighties and nineties with the "If it ain't in the hymnal" (spoken with my most proper English) attitude that has all but about closed the doors in several churches.  We must do better!