Two thoughts

for future bloggings;

1) Should all school leavers be able to read & write? Is universal literacy necessary? Is being able to read & write really so important, or is it one of those unexamined 'obvious' 'facts'?

2) Does school provide people with all they need to function independently, or does it create purposely dumbed-down conformists who can be manipulated by the economic machine?

BlogBreeding

What I'd really like is a separate page for my musings about my bloglearnings, so I can keep this space clear for its original purpose. I think to do this in Blogger I need to create a whole new blog, and somehow link them together.


OR.....I could use labels

Googlearning

Well, blow me down with a feather duster. Seems you have to add your URL to Google. I have done this, but still don't show up on slurmfoo search. Maybe it takes a day or so. Will report back.
Now investigating Google Webmasters.

So much to learn

I can see a place for AdSense on the template, but can see nothing on my blog. Maybe I have to wait for ads to show up.
Also, I wonder how I optimise my searchability. I'm not even in the top 20 Google pages searching for teen mind. Even with this title and URL. Maybe I have to say the phrase teen mind a few moree times.
teen mind
oh what oh what is in
a teen mind

OK, lets go see if that helps.......

.......OK, I realise it's a very broad topic (17,300,000 results on Google). However, some of the guff that shows up while this doesn't. There must be something I can do....further investigation is necessary.

See, something odd is going on. A search for teen-mind-blog brings up only 1 site, and this aint it. Even though that's the name of this site. Curiouser and curiouser.....

Right, now watch carefully kiddies. I just did a search on slurmfoo
Your search - slurmfoo - did not match any documents.
So now my blog contains the word slurmfoo no less than three times. It's gotta show up, right?

Yikes! Still no search results for slurmfoo. What's a blog gotta do to get noticed around here?

Show me the money

What do teenagers want? How about some independence and a sense of control or power? One way to achieve this is to have some money.
Now, apparently Google AdSense will place ads on your website, and pay you if people click on those ads. This may be a way for my students to earn some money from their website. Of course I need to test this out (in order to stay one step ahead of the students). So, I have signed up with AdSense. Stay tuned....

Popularity

So now I need to figure out how to attract readers. I'm not even in the top 10 google pages for 'teen mind'. I wonder how to get noticed, how to be found.....

Sex & Drugs & RocknRoll

That’s what I remember wanting as a teenager. Although these days it may be more
"Sex & Drugs & HipHop", which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

School I remember being at best boring; something to get out of the way so we could get on with the real business of life. And at worst, something evil imposed on us with the intent of mind-control and conformity. In the words of the Small Faces “Why go to learn the words of fools?”

So the question must be asked.

Why school?

And especially:

Why force people to be in school?

And what I really wanna know is “What’s best for teenagers? If not school, what’s the alternative?

The Reason Why

My reason for blogging:
I teach teenagers and am looking for ways to keep them interested. I think a student-run blog could be a great learning tool. I only have a couple of weeks before classes start to learn to use blogs myself (and stay one page ahead of my students).
I also reckon that somewhere out there in net-world is the answer to my big question.
Freud's Big Question was, apparently, "What do women want?"
My Big Question is, then, "What do teenagers want?"

BlogBirth

For future reference:
Time decided to start blog from scratch: 3:47 p.m.
Time 1st post published: 3:55 p.m.
Time edited for spelling mistake (oops) 5:23 p.m.