Summary Post C4T

For this Comments for Teachers assignment, I was assigned The Fisch Bowl, a blog run by Mr. Karl Fischer. Mr. Fischer is currently the Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado.

In the first post I commented on, Mr. Fischer was presenting the argument that the Denver Post should no longer print horoscopes in their paper, and instead use that space for other articles, because only 3/4 of the population believe that horoscopes are just for entertainment purposes. To this post, I replied:

"Mr. Fisch,


I am a student of Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama and was assigned to read and post a comment on your blog. I agree with your stance on the horoscopes being posted in the newspaper, to a degree. I mean, like you said, 3/4 of the population see them as nothing more than entertainment and that space that has up to now been taken up by it could be used for educational purposes, like something that is actually scientific. But, don't newspapers also serve to entertain? Yes, they provide news and should therefore be educational in some aspect, but there are also the sections of the paper that are there for entertainment and those are some that many people look forward to - horoscopes, book/movie reviews, lifestyle sections, sports, etc. Now, granted, I do not know a lot about the Denver Post, but if it is like a regular newspaper with all of those other entertainment aspects, why not keep the horoscopes? I'm sure that they generate revenue for the paper and provide some with entertainment."


The second post that I commented on was about an assignment that Mr. Fisher was giving his students. He assigned them to read a book that would be discussed and presented in class, which is pretty standard for a high school class. Then he took it a step further, by requiring that they blog about it and suggesting that the readers of his blog get involved in online discussions, which the times/dates/chapters of which were provided on a wiki link. I replied to this post:

"I think this is a great idea! It takes the group reading of a book to a whole new level. Sharing thoughts, ideas, and perspectives of books with classmates has always been helpful to me in understanding things from others' perspective, so branching even further to include their online community would take that even further."