Image provided by: West Linn High School; West Linn, OR
About The amplifier. (West Linn, Oregon) 1921-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 2009)
2009 Forum 5 Backpacks cause more stress than homework N icole C ampbell Pain, suffering, throbbing, anguish, torment, aching, and all because of a backpack that weighs more than 17 lbs.? These are symptoms of possible strained muscles and ligaments. And let's not forget the shoulder and back pain many of us feel the end of the day. If school is causing this unnecessary pain, how can we reduce the weight of backpacks to save ourselves? A heavy backpack makes your back arch, and the weight pushes down, putting pressure on your shoulders, according to Paul Kane, physical therapist. So what is in a backpack that makes it so heavy? Each textbook weighs approximately three to five pounds. So if you have three textbooks, that's almost 15 lbs. to carry around every day. Add about seven pounds worth of binders and notebooks, and with another three pounds for a lilnch and miscellaneous items, the weight quickly adds up to at least 25 lbs.! A common solution proposed by many teachers is to put the textbook in your locker. Often a student's locker is not close to their next class, and for most students six minutes between classes is not enough time to walk from the Music Building to to grab something from your locker. For many students, their backpack is 30 lbs, with three binders, three textbooks, a lunch, and possible sports supplies. That is 13 lbs. over the recommended weight! Could 13 lbs. over the greatest recommended weight sway student's grades? According to Kane, backpack back pain certainly affects your study and concentration. If students' backs are hurting, could it be affecting their grades, mood and consequently their future? I propose we use online textbooks so we-can keep our textbooks off our backs, or teachers could keep ** \ the textbooks in the 'x \ classroom for classes that don’t use them upper often, and only C porch for , have students ^ science, let bring them alone go to home when the lower D porch necessary. ßiotog°Y ■ , Facebook at school presents potential Farmville phishing problems D rake E dwards Every day, I see people at lunch, break and even outweigh the benefits. Imagine you're sitting on the porch, and you have a paper due by the end of Another thing about Facebook is the fact that you can play games. Remember when everyone during classtime, w astin g class. Y o u 're try in g to sta y w a s ad d icte d to D olphin their lives away on Facebook. They should be working or socializing with their peers, but instead they're too worried about harvesting their strawberries on Farmville. Joining groups and making comments on photos is distracting them from doing their schoolwork, cultivating their social lives and finishing assignments on time. All of this because the District decided to unblock the site. It was unblocked so that we could communicate with the outside world, but I beleive that the problems simply focused, but that tab next to Microsoft Word is just begging you to click it. And you do. Before you know it you've spent an hour and a half looking at photos, playing poker and updating your status every five minutes. I'll admit that I am a bit of a Facebook junkie, but I don't think it really has a place at school. I have been distracted at home by the site many times, and I could attribute that to a few late assignments. So why would I want to have that distraction at school too? Olympics? I'm pretty sure Farmville will end up being worse, not to mention Facebook poker and almost every other game you can think of. So the administration has basically given us more chances to play games, which is against school policy. Great. The final threat that Facebook presents is the possibility of phishing. Lately, a countless number of people have had their accounts hacked, leading random people to use their accounts and spam others with ads. According to "You can use the internet for school projects." —Clayton Gelfand, freshman Curtis Nelson, Director of Information Services for passwords, phone numbers and even personal adresses. l 1 9Kg^m g I mÆSÊÈÈ HMi WBÊÊÊÊ Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. the West Linn-Wilsonville School, it’s possible for people to fall into phishing traps through Facebook. Phishing is when people acquire personal information such as usernames, What benefits do you see in using cellphones in the classroom ? The only way to preemptively stop the problems before they start is to just to block the site again. If there's no Facebook, there's no way these things can happen. "There are no benefits except maybe for a calculator.” —Megan McAfee, sophomore ....Il— 1 P it ils ^ JP| 11 f % t k w? "So students can talk to their friends in other classes." "I’m from New York so I could talk to my friends back home during school hours." mm ' • - ; ¿. ■ "i —Kendall Jorgensen, senior —James Markivics, junior ■ 'd É Ê Ê Ë Ê K k 1 All Photos by Libby Kara
