Current Event for Week of 11/13/06

Season special after player beats illness

Canton South senior lineman football player, Josh Neff is trying hard to lead his team to state championship, but nothing this team could possible have to endure would be anything like what he's been put through within the past 8 months.On March 7, 2006, his world changed. After missing a few days of school due to what he'd thought was illness, he ollapsed at school and seizured. He was rushed to a hospital by ambulence with a fever of 106. It turns out that the "flu" was actually Epstein-Barr virus which is a cause of mononucleosis. It had moved into the brain and caused it to swell.After being taken to Akron Childrens from Mercy Medical Center, Josh was put into a medicated coma which lasted 5 days and developing pneumonia durring his hospital stay. After many more weeks, Josh returned to school and football 45lbs lighter and has managed to play in every game of his senior year.

Read the article here.

Current Event for Week of 11/13/06

NYC schools' cell phone ban earns parents' ire

Recently, a NYC school placed a ban on cell phones causing uproar in parental concern for their children. Starting off as a rule without consequences, weapon searches now include the confiscation of phones.

Read the article here.

Do you think the phones should be banned?
What are your reasons for keeping cell phones?
Whose right is it to decide whether cell phones are permitted or not?

Current Event for week of 11/13/06

Meet The Lunch Lady's New Friend

Many public schools, elementary especially, are moving to quicker, andmore efficient ways of getting students through the lunch line. Schoolsare beginning to rely on computers to get students through the lunchline, and one of those ways is scanning students finger prints. When astudent goes through the line, they will place their finger on ascanner, which reads certain parts of the student's finger print toidentify the student. The student's entire finger print is not stored,and parents have the option to refuse the let their child use thesystem. The new systems replace lunch tickets and paying in cash,instead, parents can send enough money for a month at one time withtheir student to add to their account. Almost all Perry elementary schools plus Pfeiffer use a computer systemthat requires students to enter a pin number, instead of scanning their finger, which draws the price of lunch from their account.

Read the article here.

What do think of this new technology? Is the finger print scanning aninvasion of privacy? Do you think that this new technology givesstudents more time to eat their lunches or do you think that glitcheswill cause students to lose eating time?