Special Blog Post #1

WolframAlpha

After doing the Wolfram Alpha search for the populations of China, India, and the United States, I found that in comparison, our country is tiny! There are 309 million people in the United States. Seems like a lot right? Wrong! China has 1.35 billion people and India has 1.21 billion. In a square mile in the United States there are 87.3 people. Compare that to 1058 people per square mile in India and 376 in China, this country is down right roomy!

The next search I did was for the comparison of Coke and Pepsi sales and what I found surprised me. Pepsi Co. sells $65.7 billion worth of product a year while Coke only sells $47.6 billion in the same time span. This was astounding to me because I always thought that Coke was the bigger company and therefore sold more. 

For my third and final search I looked up the literacy rate for Iraq and the United States. These results were also surprising. For the United States our literacy rate is 99%. This is not surprising. In Iraq, however, the literacy rate is much lower at only 78.2%. This is representative of what different cultures view as priority. 

I think WolframAlpha could be useful to students in that it allows them to understand comparing and contrasting in a way that they are comfortable with since the format is that of your basic search engine. It also allow them to have a vast amount of all various types of data at their fingertips without having to sift through dozens of webpages and books. 

Gary Hayes Social Media Count 

The Social Media Count is a webpage that is a virtual ticker with tabs (Social, Mobile, Games, and Heritage) and the rates that different areas of these headings change over certain periods of time (Now, +1 day, +1 week, +1 month, and +1 year). When I pulled this webpage up, I just sat there and stared at it. I couldn't believe how fast these different things change!

This means that as an educator, I'm going to have to learn how to function in an ever-changing environment. I'll have to learn how to master new things not only well but quickly. It will definitely present some challenges in the years to come, but I'm hoping I'll be prepared for them!