Blog cartoon

The main visual element in this cartoon is that there is the kid at the dinner table telling his parents about his Blogger from school and his parents saying “Well, yes, we could read your Blog…or you could just TELL us about your school day. This cartoon is an issue about all the kids that come home from school and not wanting to talk to their parents about the school day, so they just tell the parents to pop up the Blogger and read it. The cartoonist’s opinion is that a lot of the kids nowadays don’t want to chat about their school day at the dinner table. Simply, the quote is the evidence that tells me about what the cartoonist feels. Also the parents’ emotion seems pretty disappointed with the kid, probably because he never talks about school. But if the parents would like to know what we are learning at school, it is better that they go to Blogger and read what we wrote that we spent work time in class working on. This is ironic because this cartoon is showing how sites like Blogger and other newly created sites are decreasing talk about family, and we are writing on a Blog and all the readers are reading from Blogs. The cartoonist could have made this cartoon more persuasive by having the kid using technology, maybe texting on his phone.

Technology

I agree with what Kurt Vonnegut has said about Technology. He says that technology does everything for us. This is true because now all of us rely on spell check, and online dictionaries instead of turning the pages by ourselves. Now we rely on calculators to do our math homework instead of manually calculating the work. The other day in humanities, we had to read the story “Euphio Question”, and in this story most of the characters used a lot of technology, and they are using technology to get themselves happiness. The moral “money doesn’t always buy happiness” is true because you need more than just money that will buy you new machines that make life much easier. Ever since we grew up, we have been living on technology. We are so used to communicating through phones, traveling on cars, and finding information on the computer. If we were asked to let all of these technologies go, we would not succeed. Even though technology spoils us and lets the machines do the hard work, technology helps are in many ways than one. Technology by definition is a new creation. And at one point, walking sticks, wheel chairs, and hearing aids were technologies. Some of us need these today and without it, we would fail more than not being able to use our cell phones.

Technology

In my own words, technology is an invention of something new that is useful to everyone in one way or another. It is the development of new ideas that make life easier for many of us. Something created that was once new to everyone.

I think that day by day technology is being included in many of the schools. Every international school has many computers and laptops that help the teachers educate the students to do research and use Microsoft word document to write stories. AES alone uses more than 100 computers and laptops. Even though we use a lot of technology, it serves the purpose to learn. Many of the technology we use at school are used for a reason, and it is for education. It saves a lot of paper, even though you need to print. It is a good use for presentations also.

The 5 most important are…
Laptop/Computer
iPod
Air conditioning
Television
Cell phone

5 least important are…
· Led
· Weapons
· Roomba
· Line paper
· Manuel print cameras

End of 3rd quater feedback

Some of the goals from quarter two that I have found most challenging are my discussion skills, participation in class discussions, and my writing skills. I believe that I have improved a great amount in my writing pieces compared to the beginning of the year. Now as we move into the year, there have been more reading involved and I have gotten many great ideas of writing from all these books. My discussion skills have improved because I am much more into the talks in the Socratic seminar; however I don’t talk that much about the discussions that happen during class.

Something that I would like to improve on for next quarter is…
To get better marks on my tests and quizzes by looking over my notes. Another one of my goals is to depend on myself more in the class and try to work alone more other than asking someone else for help. My last goal is my class discussion skill that I would like to keep working on till the end of the grade.

Holy War

The phrase “Holy war” is an oxymoron because Holy is a religious word, and religion is completely against war. They believe that violence won’t solve many things. And Holy war is saying religious violence, another two words that don’t go with each other. The reason the phrase “Holy War” is now used is because many of the religions want everyone to follow their, and to get everyone to follow their religion, they kill. One religion will want another religion to follow them, and if they don’t, it means war. Also religions are very holy to their own god and other religions that are against it will say something bad about their god. The followers of that religion get angry and are willing to sacrifice the ones that are going against their god.

cold war debrief

For the Cold War simulation, I was in a team with Lucas, and Nafeesa. We played the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. We being one of the weaker parts of this game had one most important goal to gain as much points as possible. We had gone to the USA and the USSR, presenting them some of the very strong countries we had at a very high price. China for example we sold for 35 points. Other groups that had Africa sold 3 countries for 35 points, when we sold just one. Both the USSR and the USA wanted China and they both bid for it and USA with the biggest bid, won. The winners we knew from the start were going to be either the USA or the USSR considering that fact that they started with around 75 points when the rest of us started at 0. And because of that we did not have many strategies to win, but we competed with other continents that also started with 0 points, like Africa.

The winners of this simulation were the USA and the USSR. The fact that both of the countries started with many points were a huge advantage that allowed them to buy land from the rest of us that sold everything just for some money. There were many risks in this because both the USA and the USSR wanted only to attack each other so whenever they sent nuclear weapons the other needed to be ready to wipe that out. The two countries both lost a few points trying to attack each other. I did not think that the winners were very clear because USA and USSR ended up with many land but ended up with the least number of points. The non-aligned countries ended up with MORE than what they started with. If we would have gone on with the game, USA and USSR will have no points left and us non-aligned countries would be able to attack them. However we ran out of time and at the point which we ended, the winners were USA and USSR.

Visual Communicator

We used something called a Visual Communicator to video tape our research conflict, the “holocaust.” After you have a conflict, you research that. You have to research some of the affects, and causes, some interesting facts, and maybe even of a famous person that was related in that conflict. The main point of using the Visual Communicator is to make it seem like a news cast, and telling everyone out there a lot about it. So once you get all the information you have, you put in into a script and make it seem like your casting news on that conflict. You need your name, background, and pictures from the conflict on the screen so you need to find all the backgrounds if you chose to, and pictures to add more to the cast. After you have the script for word to word of what you’re going to say, you copy paste that into the visual communicator, and they will scroll down with the speed you want it to go so you don’t have to be reading of from the paper and constantly looking down instead of the camera. After, you rehearse it once or twice and when you feel more comfortable you record it and then save it. All your team mates will do this and after that, you put all your mini clips together to make one big news cast.

Using this visual communicator helps in many ways and it’s actually a pretty cool software because its like you’re a news caster! But you need a while to get used to it and know a little on how to use it. Some tips are to make sure you save everyone once in a while. It can be really frustrating to have to record it all over again, and especially if your previous recording was perfect. Another is to practice. Practice over and over again before you record so that you don’t mess up your words, and get tongue tied. The last tip is to speak into the mike, and make sure when you’re doing that you don’t have loud people in the room. You might think the room is not that loud but when you review the recording, you might be hearing your classmates more than yourself. Over all, this is really cool software, just watch out and follow the tips.