21st century english classroom... #real talk

My feelings toward the activities we do in a 21st century English classroom? I actually like what we do in class. Blogging, facebooking, and fremdenging. I'm not a tweeter... can't figure that thing out ): But anyway, the activities we do are easier for us. It's not like a blow off thing because we still have to do the work which we do in the blogs, but then we get extra credit for just posting our blogs to facebook and twitter. Easiest extra credit ever? I think so. Writing 5 paragraph analysis papers over books is old news now.. Everyone hates that. So I like that we do something different than the normal English classroom. I think interacting with another school across the state is something new and interesting. The text of the books are so much easier to understand this way because you can do different things with the blogs like the picture blog, link up, vlog and so on. So not everyone has to think the same exact way. I would hate having to read the book aloud in class. That would mean that everyone would have to read the same book, everyone has different taste so that usually doesn't work out. Also I enjoy my new book it's one of those books that you don't want to put down. So i can keep my own pace with my reading and don't have to worry about being ahead of anyone in class like I would if we were reading it aloud in class. Blogging= good (:

(insert creative title about sparknotes here)

So, I just read the sparknotes article thing whatever it's called of my new book Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Needless to say... these sparknotes are not a substitute for reading the text whatsoever! I am outraged by the absence of.. the stuff I read in the book.. That was my dramatic talk for the night. (: Anyway, I think that reading an online summary of a book keeps people from actually connecting to the book itself. I'll admit, yes I do use sparknotes on occasion when I don't have time to read a book I'm supposed to, when i absolutely hate the book, or when it's written in all smart language and I'm too slow to understand it and I need sparknotes to dumb it down for me. This book though, I actually like so I won't be using sparknotes on this one. When you use sparknotes and websites like it you don't get the true understanding of the text and you don't see the author's point of view. You also miss out on the emotion portrayed in the book. Some books if you give them a chance you can get into it and it'll be one of those book where you just want to know what happens next and you don't want to put it down. This is what my book is like for me. Others, however, not so much. Either way people should always give books a try, and if you're slowly dying because the book is so boring and you're halfway through and nothing interesting is happening, I would sparknote it. But! you should still skim through the book and pick up the parts that sparknotes leaves out (: