Again, I thought the presenatations yesterday were really good. All were well organized and well preapred. I liked the presentation that looked at the athletic apsect of education, it was something that hasnt been covered yet and was a new perspective about college. I also like the fun facts that were used in the deaf learning presentation. They helped to keep the class engaged in the presenation. Finally, i connected well with the presnetation about special education becuase it meshed well with my topic. Her slides were well placed and had good flow. Overall, the presentatins were really good and interesting!

April 28th Presentations

NCAA Athletes:
I thought that all of your information was really interesting. Although from what you presented, it does seem like you have a lot of information. Was 6 pages really enough to cover all that you discussed in class, or did you leave some of that out. As I said in class, I really liked how you compared athletics to music and the arts and how people with those majors are 'professionally trained' but can sell their works for profit, but student athletes cannot.

Hearing Impaired:
I really like that you're including a contrast between hearing and non hearing educations. I think that it will make your points stronger.

Special Education:
I actually had no idea that there was such a disparity in regards to minorities and special education, but thinking back to my school I remembered that in our school (of roughly 1700 students) DEFINITELY under 100 were minority, probably under 50. But most, if not all of those kids were also included in the programs that our school offered as additional assistance to 'supplement' classroom learning. It really makes me wonder where there is such a disparity and what really accounts for it. I think reading/researching the topics for your paper would be really interesting.

Oral Presentations 4.28.10

I had never really considered the aspects of disproportional special education until the presentations on Wednesday. I found the quote, "you cannot have a disability on your own", intriguing because it is basically definable by judgement in terms of disability. A disability doesn't exist until a student is recognized for it, because how is the student to know that they are different unless someone tells them so? Deaf communication and expression was also an interesting topic. The functioning of the human brain has so much to do with how anyone lives their life, whether they have a disability or not. This presentation made it clear that deaf people start life by learning hand signals in similar ways to hearing children. I found the presentation on the treatment of student athletes to be interesting as well. I didn't realize that the only programs to generate money are men's basketball and football. I also had never considered the treatment of athletes in comparison to art, dance, and music students on scholarship. I found the analogy of an art student being paid for selling their paintings in a gallery compared with a football player not earning anything for a tournament (for example) to be intriguing. All and all, our oral presentations went quite well and I enjoyed hearing everyone's topics!

I thought that Colleen's presentation was very interesting, especially the ways that deaf children's brains develop compared to hearing children. Developmental and learning processes were my favorite sections in AP Psych, so I really enjoyed learning about them and how they are different in deaf culture.

Eric's topic about the unfairness of NCAA rules was interesting because I've never thought about them before. Maybe getting some students' perspectives about these problems would strengthen yourhis
I've really enjoyed the presentations about special education because there are so many arguments concerning it. I had never thought about disproportionality of minority students in special education. This focus is very unique and I wish Maggie luck with her final paper.

Great job everyone!