A couple things about the women's soccer program. This is the first year under a new coach/coaching staff lead by Noreen Herlihy. She was my former coach at Slippery Rock, under her new leadership we have made history in all of the programs past. In just under a year with coach Herlihy, we are the first women's soccer team to have made it past the first round of our MAC (Mid-Atlantic Conference) tournament ever in program history. We were ranked 8th, the last seed in the tournament, and were forced to play the number one seed in an elimination game. With that, we raised to the occasion and played to win and ended up winning after double over time, and into penalty kicks. But ended up losing in the semi-finals of the tournament. Now we are on the road to win the MAC tournament next season. If you ever want to know more about the program/team/schedules just visit our home page.
I have always enjoyed my math courses in grade schools because of the course content and also my teachers. I am looking forward to becoming a high school math teacher. I find it interesting the ways to look at a math problem, and the different ways that different minds think about it. I have wanted to go into this field of study since I was in sixth grade, I have had some of the best teachers I could have asked for. They are my inspiration in going into this subject matter, I want to be like them. They made the classroom a fun learning environment, that used all different kind of technology in the room.
For the most part I hate all this technology, we have become so dependent on all it. When I was growing up my favorite part of the day was after school and playing in the backyard or when my dad was coaching, going to one of his practices and running around with all his college men soccer players. That is what I think of as a good childhood, but now when I think of childhood it frightens me. I think of little kids having all this technology and only interacting with each other via the internet. In this article it talks about how we are becoming less creative because we are less bored since we have the internet to keep up entertained. Here it talks about how boredom helps creativity. My mom is constantly worried about my little sister in a way that when she was younger she was always writing these extremely creative and interesting stories, but now she is glued to her phone and does not write any stories. This is just an example of how our phones and constant internet access can be a bad thing. That is only one point of social media and its impact.
Looking at the social media, I use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and GroupMe. I grew up in the time when you everyone had a MySpace and that was just such a big hit that quickly faded out and became Facebook. I do use all my social media on a regular basis, and when I get bored laying in bed. I try to avoid using my phone as much as possible, and when I am around friends/family/public I try to stay off social media as much as possible. In general I would much rather talk to someone person to person than via social media, but there are always the exceptions to that.
Facebook, I do not totally agree with Mr. Watts on it being dead. Yes, I agree that it is not nearly as common with the now teens, but for me I that is how I stay connected with family, my sister who moved away, my cousins that are my age, my old high school friends. I like to be able stay connected with people and for me I always was traveling for soccer and became very close with my teammates parents and so I think that may skew my perception a little more than most. I like to use Facebook on a daily basis. I do use it almost as much as any other of my social media. But for the most part for the now teens that were not that exposed to actually using it, I can see how they use it as just a good place to store all of their pictures in different albums that is easily organized and viewed, and for them it really is a dead social media. But it will always be the "go to" social media to "creep" on someone.
Instagram, that is always a good one to brows and 
to go through when you are bored. I do not really have any particular reason for being on this one. I do use it post pictures 2-3times a week to display what a great weekend I had with my best friends or a shout out to someone I haven't seen in a while. I like to go through my Insta feed to see what everyone is feeling today. For this one I tend to follow, musical/inspirational sayings/friends. I like to use Instagram as a way to really see what someone is like and read captions to pictures. Like Mr. Watts says, this is the social media that is used for when people choose one really good photo they like and then edit it and want to show the world. For this media, I completely agree with what he says.
Twitter, I have never really gotten the hang of it. I agree with Mr. Watts in saying that "a lot of use simply do not understand the point of twitter." I for one do not understand the point of it, for me I mainly only use it to follow Slippery Rock athletics, and their games. Also like to use it to see what our school tweets about our athletics. I know a lot of people that use it to tweet "inspirational/emotional" song lyrics. And that's okay, its a place where some many people are constantly tweeting that you do not really get judge for it. I am one of those people that hardly ever tweets but sometimes re-tweets fun things or game stats.
My favorite social media is Snapchat! I do not know what about this social media makes it so fun to be on, but I think that Mr. Watts has summed up this app so well with how it can literally play out how one goes out. I think this is my favorite because you can be silly and send "ugly" pictures of yourself to only a certain people and not feel embarrassed or pressured to be someone else. I like being able to have a conversation with my sisters when we are so far apart and still see their faces within the conversation. Whether the pictures are actually saved or not, in reality I don't think that it will really make a difference or stop us from sending the pictures we do. And for the most part we are only send snaps of us having a great time with friends, a hangover in the morning, our great food choices, or selfies.
GroupMe, is the last source of social media that I mainly use. For me it is the most useful social media to get in contact with my teammates or other groups I am involved with. For soccer we have several group chats within that app, and it is very easy to navigate between groups and to rename the group if we need to. It is easy to get information between people, and it is nice because you can even send individual people messages if you need to. It can also be fun to change the groups names, and pictures for the group. When using the app, it helps to make plans with people by whether they like a message or not. For groups I think this is the best social media! So for this I do agree with Mr. Watts with it.
In a classroom setting I use to hate using any kind of social media for any assignment or class. I thought it was a waste of my time to have to get on the internet and do something, but now that social media is such a huge part of our society and culture I think that it can be very helpful/useful. Teachers that can incorporate social media into their classes I think have a good grasp on how today's teens are living. I feel that twitter is the best social media that can be incorporated into the classroom, for it has all the tools to connect with.
Technology today is slowly taking over the lives that we are trying to live. We depend on it in our everyday lives, we have grown attached to using it all the time. It's sad to see little kids today being able to almost navigate an iphone better than me, but at the same time it is impressive all the advancements we have in technology. I just worry about how lazy we become and how creativity is decreasing with always relying on technology...
