PLN 4 Redo

In his Ignite presentation, named “What could you do with $20,000?”, Blake Boles reveals what students really could be doing with the money it takes for just one year of college. Boles describes an idea he calls self-directed learning. In this idea, a student would, instead of going to college, direct his or her self. The student would learn about what they want to, not what the university requires. They would have complete control of their own future. In his Ignite presentation, Boles depicts an alternative to a college education called self directed learning.

  In his Ignite presentation called “What could you do with $20,000?”, Blake Boles accurately portrays the college frontier today because he shows that a lot of college graduates with a crippling debt and no idea of where to start with a career. Boles reveals the reasoning of Self-directed learning, which is that college degrees have lost their bling because everybody has one nowadays. Students can shape their own higher education, they can focus on what they want, they can study what they are interested in, “For everybody else in the world that doesn't know what they want to do… Wait!” (Boles). Boles is saying that if one doesn't know what he or she want to do with college, to wait and figure it out before he or she makes the commitment. Not everybody is like Steve Jobs. Not just anybody can drop out of college and suddenly become the CEO of one of the most successful companies ever. Some people lack an individual flare, and need the university name on their resume, “But you may say, How will employers find me without the brand?”(Boles). Boles is saying that it may be difficult to find a job without a college degree. And he is right, a lot of people need that on their resume to get a job at all. But, self directed learners can find other things to fill their resume up with, like community service or experience in one's own business ventures, if they even intend to get hired. If one is just going to be an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter what employers think. In his Ignite presentation “What could you do with $20,000?”, Blake Boles correctly portrays the idea of self directed learning.

PLN 2

In Alison Gopnik’s essay, “What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind”, she describes how adolescents are starting to hit puberty earlier and reaching adulthood later. Teenagers in today’s society are not exposed fully to the outside world until their early to mid-twenties. In earlier and more primitive times, children took the roles of adults around the pubescent years of their life, as they were physically and mentally capable. Gopnik supports this idea of earlier puberty and later roles of adulthood in her essay titled “What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?”.

Alison Gopnik displays her view on early puberty and later adulthood in her essay titled “What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?”. Children are hitting puberty earlier and reaching adulthood later. This is because of our school system. Children have begun to start school earlier, and finish school later. When students stay in school for a longer amount of time, their IQs become higher. Adolescents are also more well prepared for the real world and higher education. But delayed introduction to the real world can be a bad thing as well. They are placed into the real world at a time in their lives were the motivational drive of puberty has already washed over. Instead of underestimating risks adolescents tend to overestimate rewards. Teens strive for rewards in school that really are real rewards until they enter the real world much later in life.