Decision Making Software

Technology has grown to the point were it can now balance out consequences with decisions and map out what course of action to take. I didn't really know much about decision making software until about this week when I started to read into them. This software can manage simple daily life decisions to more complex business strategy decisions. It can map out your daily diet and intake to your stock portfolio's risk to reward rates. An example of this is the MindDecider. This software can create to-do lists, budget households and planning, choice of best job placement or college, to buying the best car or home. With the growth of technology tasks seem to get easier and easier.  

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is very serious problem thats growing in colleges and schools everywhere. Plagiarism usually starts early around elementary school for most kids, with the kids next to them helping the answer a question on a test. It grows custom to kids and which leads them be accustomed to plagiarism and unknowing of its severity. Technology though is helping deal with plagiarism and catch students in the act. New technology scans students papers and compares them to all others on the database and of the internet and if enough sentences or fragments come back similar it will show it to the teacher. But at the same time the internet helps stop plagiarism it also enables it. Many students take work off the internet and put into there own work without mentioning the author. This happens all the time and on written essays it can almost be impossible to detect. Also many websites sell term papers and essays to students. All the students need is a mailing address and a credit card and they can pass all there classes.





-http://orange.eserver.org/issues/5-1/kennedy.html
-http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57836-2004Sep2.html

Ethics

Ethics is vary important part of an individual and how they are perceived by others. I believe that as we grow older we learn from our mistakes and thus this shapes our personality. When I was in the 6th grade I had a test geology and I had forgotten all about it and didn't study at all. So what I did was I looked off the students paper to the next of me whenever I didn't know an answer. The next day when we got our scantrons back I received an F on the exam and then realized there was multiple versions to the test. I learned from that experience that its better to be do test on your own and earn your grade rather than cheat off someone else because they could be just as unprepared as you are.

Public Schools in the U.S.

I think one of the main reasons why our school systems are underachieving and continuously ranking poorly compared to other countries is because of disparity. Depending on were you live determines the level of education you will receive. For instance if you live in a nice suburban area you child will receive a good education were teachers are paid well and teach students to achieve their goals. But compared to living in a poorer rural area, the educational systems are in need of a makeover. Teachers salaries are low which causes schools to hire unqualified staff and many students end up dropping out well before graduation. For instance the average teacher salary for Montgomery County, MD, is 64,000. Montgomery County is were I grew up and it is a really nice suburban area to live. Then you have the state of South Dakota, were there average teacher salary is 34,709. So you wonder how can there be such a big gap between teacher salaries. It's not the Montgomery County is far superior because Maryland's average teacher salary is 54,324. So when you have such a disparity between it causes problems. This is why we have educational problems in the U.S. My suggestion is to put more funding in the poorer rural areas rather than the wealthier areas.

-References
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/howbad/crisis.html
http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Teacher-l-Montgomery-County,-MD.html
http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state