Creativity

I believe that most educators would agree that fostering creativity in a student is one of the primary goals when structuring a curriculum. The problem is creativity is a skill that many students either have or don't. I compare it to athletes who perform well during the most pressure-packed moments of a game. This isn't a skill a coach can really teach, either the athlete has that "it" factor or they don't. The same goes for creativity. Once a student reaches the high school level, it becomes more difficult to teach a student how to be creative if they just aren't.  I would imagine that at the elementary level, there are activities given to try and foster a student's creative side. In my subject area (mathematics) it can be hard to see creativity on a regular basis. There is rarely more then 1 or 2 ways to solve a problem so either you follow the strategy laid out by the teacher or find yourself lost. However, there are moments when we discuss certain topics where a student will find a way to solve something using a strategy I wouldn't have taught because it would be too diffiicult for the entire class to grasp. The class I find the most creativity shown is Geometry becasue students have a variety of ways to solve problems using different theorems and shapes in different scenarios. Again though, I only find a handful of students thinking at this higher level. So this begs the question, do those students who don't come up with those alternate strategies not have as creative a mind as the others, or do they just stick to the fundamentals as shown in class? Does that make them less creative?

Inappropriate Sites

Since the World Wide Web reaches every corner of the planet, we must make sure that the content we put on our websites is appropriate for all those viewing it. This is especially true as teachers since we encounter many different students from different cultural backgrounds.
There are many examples of websites with content that is considered inappropriate for our culture. For one, any website that encourages students to cheat by purchasing research papers, book reports, lab reports, etc. online is inappropriate because it it facilitating behavior looked down on by society.
Another website I just recently heard about on the radio (I don't know the domain name) encourages spouses to cheat on their significant others. The website provides false documentation, alibis, and other tools to aide people in duping their husbands or wives.
The last type of website that is inappropriate for the culture we live in is any website that allows offshore gambling. This is a big enough problem for adults to deal with, and now with gambling available to all ages through the internet, the problem has now trickled down into the high schools, and even into the middle and elementary schools.