According to a report by Statista, there are approximately 2.34 billion social media users globally. Many consistent social media users do not know how to properly maneuver and socialize on whatever platform they chose to use, which is why it is vital that we, the future generation, learn to use it correctly. Three tasks we did this unit that heavily impacted how I use social media to my advantage are my To Kill a Mockingbird narrative, blood type lab, and unit project.
When we were first told we had to do a narrative for the novel we had just read, To Kill a Mockingbird, I immediately felt chills run through my body because I did not feel very confident in my narrative writing skills. Despite my doubts, I decided to challenge myself by choosing to do the jailhouse scene through Mr. Cunningham's perspective, as there was more room for creativity. When I began I knew that I wanted to incorporate into my writing some original dialogue, self reflection, use different techniques to create suspense, and of course mix in as many sensory details as I could. In the beginning of my writing I found it difficult to develop my character to create an engaging narrative, but I kept pushing myself to work harder and do my best. Half way through I found that it was as if the words were flowing out of me. By the end of this task, I had developed many of my English skills such as using the sequence of events to create suspense and using all different types of narrative techniques to my advantage to produce a well written final paper.
In science we focused on vaccines and how they affect our immune system. To begin our learning journey we first researched different types of vaccines and the mysterious ingredients they contained. We then took numerous notes regarding vocabulary we needed to know to understand vaccines, how vaccines work and innate vs acquired immunity. After doing all these smaller tasks, we then had to apply it to a larger scale: our immune system as a whole. Our innate immune system is what we are born with and when a pathogen invades the phagocytes do not know what specific bacteria it is. All it does is simply attack it not caring what it is juxtaposed to our acquired immune system which attacks specific bacteria. When an antigen enters the body, the T cells latch on while the B cells and helper T cells produce more antibodies. Some B cells and helper T cells develop into memory cells so that the next time the antigen enters the body the cells can quickly demolish it since they have done so before. To see this process in action, we did a blood type lab where we took my partner, Isaac's, blood type. For this we took Isaac's blood and amalgamated it with anti A, B and Rh serum to see which one it reacted with. Isaac's blood agglutinated with anti Rh serum, meaning that his immune system attacked the foreign antigens, causing a swarming of antibodies. Throughout this whole process I learned fascinating information about vaccines, as well as how our immune system responds to them.
Now for my final piece of work: my website. Running my website taught me how to have a positive social media platform and how to develop a solution for my problem I chose. Once we were told we could select any problem that we are passionate about, I immediately knew I wanted to focus on animal testing for cosmetics. It was difficult coming up with a solution for such a massive issue, so I had to scale it down. After a lot of trial and error and emailing many professionals I finally came up with my solution: creating flyers for large companies to carry in their store as well as color coding labels visible while shopping. The flyers I have created are a list of cruelty free and non cruelty free companies so that while the consumers are strolling along purchasing their products they may see which brands are cruelty free and not. I learned through this project many people are not aware of what is and is not cruelty free, so hopefully this will enlighten them. Another idea I had was to color code labels you see when purchasing products so that green may resemble cruelty free and red may resemble non cruelty free. This project taught me to set feasible goals, as well as how to develop and employ strategies to solve problems and how to use technology to enrich my learning.
(To see my website I created and more about my solution click here)
This unit was by far my favorite because I got to deeply analyze a character of my choice, learn about the intriguing subject of immunology, and create a solution that I am very passionate about. When we began the unit I felt daunted by my problem and all my tasks, but I learned that by using technology and my tools to their fullest potential, I can create work I never thought I could accomplish.
Works Cited
* All Products Require an Annual Contract. Prices Do Not Include Sales Tax (New York Residents Only).
"U.S. Population Social Media Penetration 2017 | Statistic." Statista. Statista, 2017. Web. 31 May 2017.
Monday, May 1, 2017
Analyzing TED Talks: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
I believe this is the most popular TED Talk because he has chose a topic that he is very passionate about which is evident because the detail he goes through throughout his speech. Also he does a great job at keeping the audience 'on their toes', his presentation fun and informative unlike most speeches that are very long and boring.
Starts with thought provoking question
presents the background of his topic (education) and states interesting facts to capture the audience.
then he presents how to change schools to boost creativity
ends by reverting back to his topic and how to cautiously and properly execute his vision
¨Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty
was not sought. (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014).¨
Over 75% of the murder victims in cases
resulting in an execution were white, even
though nationally only 50% of murder victims
generally are white.
A study in California found that those convicted of killing whites were more than 3 times as likely to be
sentenced to death as those convicted of killing blacks and more than 4 times more likely as those
convicted of killing Latinos.
What I have gathered from analyzing this very informational PDF is:
There is an ambiguous injustice for people of color
the government seems very willing to spend tons of money for executions even though, financial speaking, it is less efficient
Question: Why does the government spend so much money on executions when keeping the criminal in jail is much cheaper?
Unit 3: Reflective Assessment
There are a plethora of human caused disturbances in nature. My class and I have spent about two months educating ourselves and others on our environment and environmental problems by creating a solution for a specific problem, learning about the food web, and fossil fuels.
We were given the task of discovering a current environmental project and doing research to find a possible solution. I chose to do my project on the recent epidemic of coral bleaching and my solution was the peridotite rock. Through this project highly developed many skills such as how to contact a professional
(the link to the video I created on this topic is here) and write thorough analysis. One of my biggest struggles is analyzing text and during this project I challenged myself by implementing an image in my research essay to use as evidence and properly analyze by deconstructing the image piece by piece. I had never done this before so having this tasked strengthened and expanded my analyzing skill set.
To begin our ecology section of this unit we began by assembling ourselves in our own food web. We were put in small groups and given an envelope with index cards with different living organisms written on them. We had little to no knowledge on the terms we were given so by having to assemble ourselves and researching the terms ourselves. Since all the work was done by us and we were not spoon fed the information, all the terms I learned latched to my memory much easier. For some more guidance on the food web vocabulary we next took note son each of the new words we ha learned so that we could secure our newly gained knowledge. Next to really push us, on our field trip to the UC Davis Marine Lab we were able to use and apply all these terms to questions we had and use it to better understand what the scientist were telling us.
Just recently we had a student lead teach back about different types of fossil fuels, how they are made and how they effect the environment. Each student created a few google slides to present their topic and then each generate their own unique demo so that students that are more visual learners, like myself, could have the information click with their slide presentation. This lesson as a whole was very informative on teaching us how fossil fuels are made, how different types of natural fossil fuels are damaging to the atmosphere and so much more.
(Image one is an example of how different fossil fuels burned and what they release and image 2 is an example of how the organic matter gets compressed over centuries.)
This unit has been an amazing learning experience and has developed so many of my different skill sets in different areas. In the beginning of this unit I thought that I would know everything we would be learning but there was so much more than I thought to be learnt! Through this unit I have also become very self aware of my environment by trying to use less trash, to developing solutions to global issues. Not only am I the one learning all of this, but as well as everyone around me as I spread the knowledge from one person to another.
Saving the Corals!
Over the span of about 8 weeks I have worked on researching the recent outbreak in coral bleaching. To view my research paper click on this link and to view the slides I created for my presentation click here. Feel free to contact me or leave comments regarding this project.
We read this article about the black lives matter movement and it gave a brief recap of the Martin Luther King Jr. movement. It also compares that in the 60's there was not as much technology as there is now so to spread the word they would write newspapers. Now we have this amazing technology allowing to use social media to portray what is happening but we need to remember to do it in an appropriate manner.
Deep Dive: Fracking
Today we were given the option to do further learning on any topic we desired. I chose fracking because after getting the broad sense of it from our student teach back I was still a bit puzzled. Here is the video I chose to watch.
I chose this video because they have over 3 million subscribers meaning that many people rely on this for their own learning. Also the person in charge of the design and story board Philipp Dettmer has created many educational videos and has done many types of information design.
Creating our Project Rubric
Today we all got in our groups and designed a rubric for us all for when we present our environmental project. (To see what we came up with click here). I would recommend other classes to do this because it helps the future presenters think of what they will need to do to receive a higher grade and it puts the student in the teachers position so that they can see how difficult designing a rubric can be.
Self Evaluation: Questions You Should Ask Yourself
Are you satisfied with your learning?
• Are you satisfied that you demonstrated your knowledge and skill?
• How does your work compare to the expectations on the rubric?
• With which parts of the assignment (project, performance, etc.) were you most
satisfied?
• How closely does your work on this assignment (project, performance, etc.)
reflect your learning?
• Why do you think this assignment worked for you?
• Were there any parts that didn’t work?
• How did you do the assignment/project? Be specific.\
• Were the strategies that you used effective in helping you reach your goals?
o What learning strategies were helpful? Explain.
o What would you have to add to learn more, do better, etc.?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your effort?
• Did the amount of time, effort and strategies used help you reach your goal?
• If you were to do this over, how could it be improved?
• As a teacher, what can I do to help you?
• What can I do to increase the value of this assignment/project, etc.?
Unit 2 Assessment
There are over 200 classified mental disorders that exist according to Mental Health America. During all of our second unit we studied how different problems in the brain affect the mental disorder a person will have. While learning about mental health three assignments that have greatly impacted me are my mental health unit project, Romeo and Juliet psychoanalysis and the cauliflower brain write up.
For my mental health unit project 2 other people and I decided to do make a video called The Day in the Life of a Schizophrenic to help spread awareness about the mental illness. To prepare ourselves for the video we would produce we made sure to do a substantial amount of research since this is a very sensitive topic. As a result of the the research we gathered a few facts we found are that some schizophrenics may see ghost trails, or they may not finish a sentence when talking because the voices they hear interrupt them and that it is hard to stay on their medication because it contains very negative side affects. On the day of our exposition I specifically remember that after a cop watched our video he told my group and I that it was an excellent video and he deals with schizophrenics at times and he thought our video was a great explanation on why schizophrenics experience what they do. Overall this project really opened up my eyes on what schizophrenia is and to treat everyone kindly because you do not know what they are going through.Link to video.
Another piece of work that helped me during this unit was my Romeo and Juliet psychoanalysis. For this I chose to do Mercutio because it was evident that he was a schizophrenic. To write my essay I had to deeply analyze the quote I chose to prove he had the mental illness and I also did a significant amount of research again on the symptoms. Since a major requirement was to chose a strong quote and thoroughly analyze it so I was a bit scared because analyzing was not my strong point but this assignment really helped me improve this skill. My peers helped me tackle this impediment I would have when analyzing my quotes and helped teach myself how to properly breakdown a piece of text.
The way we did cauliflower brain lab was a task that I enjoyed and was very helpful for my knowledge on all parts of the brain. The first part of what we did was that we were put into groups and we were each assigned a part of the brain to find the definition for. Then we used the head of the cauliflower to represent a brain and then used tooth picks to label where each term was in the brain.
After we organized all the terms with their corresponding definition and made our 'brain', Neto cut a chunk of the brain off and whatever was cut was 'so damaged' it was basically gone on a person's brain.
With this new information we had to write as if we were the person, how the loss of parts of their brain affects their everyday life and what the function of the missing part of the brain did. (To view my Brain Narrative go to the science page of my blog.)
The way NEW School decided to go about educating all of us on mental illnesses was remarkable and very informative to the point where I now feel confident on my knowledge of all these mental illnesses. All of the work we have done is not at all similar to what I used to do in a typical classroom setting which is what I love because the way NEW School has taught us is so engaging and interesting that each day I was excited to see what we would do next. Furthermore mental health is so incredibly relevant for teens because many have depression or anxiety and with all that NEW has taught us such as coping skills for stress, what negatively or positively impacts our mental health etc. we will now know how to properly address our mental health issues or others.
PTSD TED Talk
After watching this TED talk on PTSD it has really opened my eyes to how to help people with this disorder. Most people believe that the reason why most veterans have PTSD is because of the war flash backs and that there is not much we can do to help. Well to help the veterans we must first help ourselves because since now our nation is so divided and we alienate veterans with this disorder and it just makes it worst. To help them we first need to create unity in our community so that everyone feels safe and included.
Webinar: Depression
Major depressive episode physiognomy agitation , fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day, feelings of
worthlessness, cannot concentrate, reoccurring thoughts of death reoccurring suicidal ideation
adolescents with major depression is 30x more likely to die of suicide
in it severe form affects about 9% of adolescents
Genes 30-50% liability to depression is due to genetic factors
Depression is an evolutionary phenomenon
Awareness is key to a depression diagnosis
screening is only appropriate for patients that are at highrisk
Diagnossis
diagnossis takes longer bc of parents focus on irrability and oppositionality
teachers focus on academic preformance
cannot bring oneself to speak about it
diagnossis should adress presence of manic problems, underlying medical issues and risk assesment
Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa is a potential life threatening eating disorder that is a cycle of bingeing and compensatory behaviors such as self vomiting designed to undo or compensate for the effects of binge eating. People with bulimia often judge themselves harshly because of their self perceived flaws. It is not only about food but also self image.
Types
Purging bulimia. You regularly self-induce vomiting or misuse laxatives, diuretics or enemas after bingeing.
Non purging bulimia. You use other methods to rid yourself of calories and prevent weight gain, such as fasting, strict dieting or excessive exercise.
These behaviors do often overlap in attempt to rid of extra calories
Symptoms
consuming large portions of food followed by behaviors to prevent weight gain
self esteem overly related to body image
a feeling of no control when binge eating
Warning signs
binge eating
purging behaviors such as self vomiting, laxatives etc.
withdrawal from usual activities
behaviors and attitudes indicating that weight loss, dieting, and control of food are becoming primary concerns
Health Concerns
Electrolyte imbalances that can lead to irregular heartbeats and possibly heart failure and death
Inflammation and possible rupture of the esophagus from frequent vomiting.
Tooth decay and staining
Chronic irregular bowel movements and constipation as a result of laxative abuse.
A mental disorder is something that affects a persons thinking or emotional state and behavior. Anxiety can be good and bad. Sometimes it can be used to describe how you are feeling when watching a scary movie and it keeps you on your toes or excited. When it is bad it interferes with daily tasks or... Some symptoms can be physical or emotional like biting nails, muscle tension, irritability, or constantly watching for signs of danger. The person may notice that it is an overwhelming feeling and is constant which means it is problematic. There are many causes of anxiety but a few are substance abuse, life circumstances like significant losses, or high levels of stress for a long period of time. What really shocked me is that 80% of those with anxiety that don't receive treatments.
Depression is generally characterized as a mood or loss in interest or pleasure or daily activities for two or more weeks. Depression is not always caused by environmental factors, drugs, etc. but as many people don't know it can be hereditary. There are many symptoms and a few can be change in weight, change in sleep patterns, or fatigue. Some people have trouble differentiating sadness and depression, it is normal to be sad about a major life event that occurs but it becomes depression when you become sad for a certain period of time and not only do you become depressed when reminded of the event but the person is constantly depressed.
Treatment options for mental disorders are psychotherapy and/or medication and counseling services. To get treatments you must go to your doctors first to rule out any other causes for what the person is feeling.
Different types of mental disorders can lead up to the person being suicidal and some symptoms can be that they're talking about seeing someone soon and in reality they're dead, giving away prized possessions, etc. When someone is put in the circumstance of having the feeling that their friend is suicidal what they should do is QPR, question, persuade and refer. First to question them it is important to come from a caring place and the person may be very blunt or not when asking. Then to persuade the person to get help it's important to make sure that wherever they go they feel comfortable and safe to speak. Lastly refer them to counseling, therapy or other resources.
Test Taking Tips (mult. choice)
what is the question asking
write down everything you know about the question
look at each answer one at a time- mark true or false
which option is answering the question
*70% of the time the longest answer is the correct answer
Tucketo Panel
What about: How to start intro for essay, strategies for science and english
PANEL NOTES
make eye contact
act like just having conversation
ENGLISH
Unusual fact to grab attention
make sure relates to issue
how book relates to topic sentence
Also use quotes about central topic about essay
link quote to deeper meaning
make sure to explain quote
do not restate quote with own words EXPLAIN quote and deeper meaning and why it connects
If use question make sure very strong and professional
BASIC PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE
Hook: grab readers attention
Transition: explanation and analysis
significance about hook? How connect to thesis/hypothesis
In science we focused on vaccines and how they affect our immune system. To begin our learning journey we first researched different types of vaccines and the mysterious ingredients they contained. We then took numerous notes regarding vocabulary we needed to know to understand vaccines, how vaccines work and innate vs acquired immunity. After doing all these smaller tasks, we then had to apply it to a larger scale: our immune system as a whole. Our innate immune system is what we are born with and when a pathogen invades the phagocytes do not know what specific bacteria it is. All it does is simply attack it not caring what it is juxtaposed to our acquired immune system which attacks specific bacteria. When an antigen enters the body, the T cells latch on while the B cells and helper T cells produce more antibodies. Some B cells and helper T cells develop into memory cells so that the next time the antigen enters the body the cells can quickly demolish it since they have done so before. To see this process in action, we did a blood type lab where we took my partner, Isaac's, blood type. For this we took Isaac's blood and amalgamated it with anti A, B and Rh serum to see which one it reacted with. Isaac's blood agglutinated with anti Rh serum, meaning that his immune system attacked the foreign antigens, causing a swarming of antibodies. Throughout this whole process I learned fascinating information about vaccines, as well as how our immune system responds to them.
(To see my website I created and more about my solution click here)
