2/12/14 My Digital Literacy

Digital literacy is the ability to use technology to navigate, evaluate, and create information.  It touches almost everyone in the world today.  Though digital literacy is very beneficial, it started off very quickly causing many to fall behind.  Most fields require its workers to be some what digitally literate.  Technology is also important when communicating with family and friends.  Digital literacy is helpful in daily life for personal enjoyment and managing events with others.  I want to learn how to use electronics more effectively, efficiently, and safely.  I would like to easily choose and know how to use the best format available when wanting to record information digitally.  Digital literacy is a very important skill set.  In today's world, it would be quite difficult to live without having at least some digital literacy.  So much revolves around it, and more and more is becoming that way as time goes on.  There are digital natives and immigrants.  A digital native is someone born into the digital age.  This does not mean that he or she is automatically digitally literate.  They still have to learn everything in order to become a digital citizen, or a person who utilizes information technology aiding them in engaging in politics and society.  Somebody that adopts technology later in life is a digital immigrant.  Digital natives are hindered in their education due to the fact that teachers today are almost all digital immigrants.  Studies show that technology has changed the way students process, read, and perceive information.  Luckily at Peninsula Catholic, we all use Google Chrome for much of our academic work.  This helps us to gradually grow our digital literacy as we progress through our classes.  This blog that you are reading right now is a product of this progressive learning environment.  Digital literacy has proved most successful in producing successful, lucrative economies in countries around the world.  I found a Ted Talks on digital literacy at the website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78&scrlybrkr=e1737340.  I like how in this video, Doug Beshar compares it with learning to play a musical instrument.  It takes a while for gestures to get engrained.  It takes practice.  He also mentions memes.  They are ideas, behaviours, or styles that spread in a culture.  They have been around for more than one hundred years.  There is a picture from 1905 of a cat in a dress sitting in a chair with text below that reads, ¨What's delaying my dinner.¨  His point is that when people have ideas, they use tools to communicate it.  In the digital world of today, it is much easier to communicate information.  Mr. Belshar says that there are eight essential elements of digital literacies.  They are the cognitive, constructive, communicative, civic, critical, creative, confident, and cultural with the remix at the center.  Real digital citizens utilize these elements to communicate their remix on information they want to share.  Digital literacy is very important.  I am looking forward to learning how to be more digitally literate in my life.

12/12/13 Current Event

Riskalyze is a new company that helps to calculate how much volatility investors are willing to risk.  It uses a web-based questionanaire to find how much people are willing to invest in stocks and what kind of losses may incourage them.  This tool guages the risk the investor is willing to take by asking up to twelve questions.  The investor recieves a score from one to niety-nine.  One means that you should avoid all risk and ninety-nine meaning you have a strong willingness to invest in risky things as long there is a chance of large gains.  Various scenarios can also be tested by Riskalyze.  It has been a real success with companies helping their clients to decide on where to invest their money.  We have been learning about different ways to invest your money recently in class.  I think Riskalyze sounds like a great tool.  It informs people how secure their money needs to be depending on their circumstances.

The informative information in this blog was obtained from myself and the site of http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/12/investing/riskalyze-market-volatility/.

Hey!  By the way, a man is found dead on a Sunday morning. His wife calls the police immediately. The police question the wife and staff. The wife said she was asleep, the cook said he was cooking breakfast, the gardener said she was picking vegetables, the butler said he was cleaning the closet, and the maid said she was getting the post. The police immediately arrested the murderer.

Who was the murderer?

12/3/13 Current Event

Nigeria is now the largest economy in Africa.  It is home to one-fourth of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa and has a booming economy.  South Africa has a good economy, but Nigeria's is more open to newinvestment and has a population that is four times larger.  President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, is improving their economic state now.  His re-election is expected to be held in the first quarter of 2015 but could be as soon as December of this year.  Though Nigeria's economy is doing well, it still has a lack of consistent power resources.  If Nigeria's economy fails, so does the economy of West Africa.  They are in charge of West Africa's success.  One of the major investers in Nigeria's economy is South Africa.  South African banks and businessesa are both partners and competitors.  Increased business between the two countries will hopefully imrove their cooperation together.  I am glad to read that South Africa and Nigeria compete to improve their economies.  Recently, every one in our class did a project on a specific Sub-Saharan African country.  Afterwards we voted on which would be the best to which we should contribute.  It is good that Nigeria is prospering.  This will benefit the entire region of West Africa and improve their standard of living.

Almost all of this exquisite information was obtained from my huge brain, but to  be honest, really all of the facts came from the website of http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/12/03/what-nigeria-becoming-africas-biggest-economy-really-means?scrlybrkr=ad539e27.

By the way.  Why should you never marry a tennis player?

11/21/13 Current Event

Have you heard about the new hundred-dollar bill?  It is new and improved with added security features.  The security thread to the left of Benjamin Franklin's head has the letters USA and 100 on it that can be seen when held to the light.  A 3-D security ribbon above Benjamin Franklin's left shoulder has a the Liberty Bell that changes to 100s when tilted back and forth and up and down when tilted from side to side.The Liberty Bell is also in the inkwell and changes from copper to green when tilted.  The quill used to sign the Declaration of Independence and phrases from it are present on the right side of the bill.  The engraving process includes the effects of raised printing for the first time giving it a unique texture.  Theis new bill will increase the difficulty for counterfitters to reproduce the bill.  We watched a video in class this week on how money is made.  The new hundred dollar bill is upping the ante for security standards.

All of the terrific information put forward in this fantastic blog were mined from the miraculous dark depths of my genius and the website http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/07/100-dollar-bill/2936097/?scrlybrkr=3af3eced.

By the way, try to figure out this cynical conundrum.
Three guests check into a hotel room. The clerk says the bill is $30, so each guest pays $10. Later the clerk realizes the bill should only be $25. To rectify this, he gives the bellhop $5 to return to the guests. On the way to the room, the bellhop realizes that he cannot divide the money equally. As the guests didn't know the total of the revised bill, the bellhop decides to just give each guest $1 and keep $2 for himself. Each guest got $1 back: so now each guest only paid $9; bringing the total paid to $27. The bellhop has $2. And $27 + $2 = $29 so, if the guests originally handed over $30, what happened to the remaining $1?

This radical riddle is from my marvelous memory and the website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_dollar_riddle?scrlybrkr=9c7f19b6.

11/6/13 Current Event

This week we have taken notes on measuring economic activity with G.D.P. and business cycles with its four stages and what caused the Great Depression.  G.D.P. stands for gross domestic product.  It is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a given period.  A good or service must be a final good, be produced during the time period, and be produced within a nation's borders.       Read this blog.                          I think you'll like it.                                              We figure the G.D.P. because it is an indicator of how well the economy is doing. The business cycle is always rising or declining on its way to the other. We go through times of prosperity, recession, depression, and recovery. Today we are thought to be going into a stage of recovery. The Great Depression was, as the name tells, a depression. Caused by farmers going into debt from buying mechanical utilities for farming and America's weak banking system, it was a time of worldwide economic depression from October 29, 1929 to 1933.

By the way, the cross country states meet is this Friday.  The entire team would love to be safe and win.  Please keep us in your prayers.  Have fun watching the Shark Tank episode or whatever you do.

Why do melons always have big weddings?                                                

I obtained all of the information on this page from my brain and my notes from Ms. Weser's economics class.

                                                                                                                                                                                                     

10/29/13 Current Event

Phonebloks is a company that wants to create a phone that all of the different functions are on separate blocks.  Motorola partnered with them earlier this month to create a phone with interchangeable parts.  Project Ara has been quietly tinkered on for over a year by the ATAP team of Motorola.  Motorola is not funding Phonebloks though.  They still rely on donationns to hire developers and rent servers so that it can up a web forum that people can up-vote proposals and feedback on Project Ara.  David Hakken, Dutch designer of Phonebloks, says that he would partner with other manufacturers in concert in what is essentially an open source effort.  I like the idea of a customizable phone.  I, personally, love Apple and want them to continue to improve, innovate and compete with other companies.  Phonebloks would be a great incentive for Apple to innovate, improveand lower the price of their products along with the other popular manufacturers.  This might not be the best thing for Apple and it's competitors, but it is fantastic for consumers.

The ideas and thoughts expressed in this article came from my mind and http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/10/29/motorola-partners-with-viral-sensation-phonebloks-to-launch-a-modular-smartphone/.

10/17/13 Current Event

India has been hoping that abundant monsoon rains would cause higher food prices for months.  Inadequate infrastructure and populist election spending have offset the monsoon bonus.  Much of India's farmland is irrigated by the monsoon rains that normally come between June and September.  There should be more productive fields in most of the country because the rains have continued into October this year.  More production means more supply which should cause lower prices.  That chance is looking continually slimmer because even if the harvest is successful, the products become stuck on potholed roads and in the inefficient storage and distribution systems of India.  General election also offsets the monsoon bonus.  India governments usually spend more on social programs ahead of elections.  Political parties spend money organizing rallies to attract voters.  India's inflation continues to increases, and even miraculous rains might not defeat it.  I think that it is awful that no matter how great their harvest is and no matter how much monsoon rains they have, India continues to plumit into inflation.  Increased products should mean more supply.  That shoud lower prices, but India must improve their infrastructure and populist elections before inflation can decrease.

I wrote this current event using information from my brain and the site http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/10/16/india-is-still-waiting-for-its-monsoon-bonus/.