Kenzie’s Blog

I think that learning is something that you do in school that helps you know more about life and your suroundings. I love traveling around the world and seeing different places. Recently, we did a unit about different countries. I was named the farmer of china. I personaly think that the farmers of each country is the most important for the countries economy. I also think that learning in groups helpes me because I have someone to talk to if I have questions. I also like learning in groups because usually when I read a history book by my-self I get side-tracked and dont learn as much as I could. When you are in a group, you can also discuss what you have learned, and share your thoughts, then you could see what you are learning about in a different way.

When you learn something it feels really good because you can go home and tell you mom, “I learned that blahh blahh blahh today!” And you are also proud of yourself because you worked hard and you got something in return. Knowledge.

“How can you tell when you’ve learned something?”

I think that when you have learned something you can tell because you have confidence in yourself and you are proud of yourself!

In January, a Google attack was suspected in two Chinese schools.  One school was the Lanxiang Vocational School, and the other school was Shanghai Jiaotong University. Both schools denied attack for reasons. I choose this story because I think that it is a very serious problem, and because it involves my country that I am re-searching right now in class.

From the article that I have read online it is telling me that both schools have denied attacks. Lanxiang Vocational School denied attack and said “Investigation in the staff found no trace the attacks originated from our school.” Which I think that this school could be the place where the attack originated because no-one in the school is going to tell on their own employees. On the other hand the Shanghai Jiaotong University denied attack with the statement saying “There is no Ukrainian teacher in the school and we have never employed any foreign staff,” Li said. “The report was unfounded. Please show the evidence.” Since the investigators suspected a link to a computer science class taught at the school by a Ukrainian professor. The investigators also said that each school had the help of the military. Which both schools also denied.

After reading this article, I have learned that hacking something is very bad, and you can go to jail for doing a crime like this. But why would the two different suspected schools want to hack Google? To find information on the US? If I was part of this I would have chosen something else that was not so popular, because obviously you are going to get caught. Something as big as Google I dont think was a good idea. But in either case I would not have done anything like this anyways. To read more on this situation go to this link: http://www.topix.com/world/china/2010/02/china-school-denies-link-to-google-attack-report.

For this blog post I decided to write about why American food is so cheap. Since I am American it was interesting to read this article, especially when over the last summer I thought about Americans becoming overweight with all the fast food restaurants I saw driving down all the main roads. After reading this article, i agree, but also disagree with the writer for many reasons!

I agree with the fact that the easiest way to become overweight  if you don’t have a lot of money. Being thin is expensive, because fruits and vegetables are becoming more expensive over time.  If you dont have a lot of money then you buy the cheap foods and goods that you can afford with the money that you have, this is usually the unhealthy goods. Eventually, you start to gain weight because this is all you can afford so you dont buy anything else. You dont have a variety in your foods, which can be very unhealthy if you dont have the right foods.  I disagree with the author about the fact that a dollar  buys 1,200 calories of potato chips and 250 calories of fresh vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. This seems to be a weird measurement. Why would you measure in calories? If you were t measure in volume it would be the opposite because fruits and vegetables have less calories then a deep-fried bag of chips.

I think that food in America is cheap for good and bad. After reading this article I thought more then before about what I eat everyday.  If I was in the States, I would try to encourage  my friends to eat better and healthier because the States are soon going to be not a very healthy place. To read more about this topic you can go to: http://business.theatlantic.com/2010/01/why_is_american_food_so_cheap.php

     If I had one wish, it would be to help that people in Haiti. There was just a recent earthquake that killed over 100,000 people. In Haiti the country with over 2 million people, is running out of supplies such as water, and food. In Haiti family members are crying for their lost loved ones, and are looking at them lying on the ground under a damaged school and many other buildings. This is very hard for me because, just a earthquake can kill over 100,000 people in an instant.

     If I had one wish, I would wish to help the families in Haiti, because many of them have lost their family members or they are suffering from injured bones, or starvation since this country is running out of supplies. This is the third night many people have been on the streets because their houses were destroyed and they didn’t have any other place to go. In an article I read on MSNBC it says “Bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of women lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather. Bodies of men were covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets.” Once I think about this, and how hard it must be for family members, I feel very loved and blessed that something like this has not happened to me. This is why I want to help these struggling people.

    If I had one wish, I would help the families and Haiti struggling for their lives. I think that helping others in need is a good thing in life, and I think that I should also do something for others. People are loosing their lives from starvation, laying on the street, and I am complaining about the dinner that we had last night. After reading this article it really made me think about others situations, and made me VERY thankful for what I have. Do you feel that you should help others in need as well?

En mi mochila, yo tengo uno carpeta verde per clases differentes.
En mi lapicero, yo tengo la calculadora azul.
En mi mochila, yo tengo el libro de Humanidades. El titulo es los de afuera.
En mi lapicero, yo tengo un goma blanca.
En mi mochila, yo tengo tres folderes de colores differentes. Dos es azul, y un es gris.
En mi mochila, yo tengo uno cuaderno.
En mi mochila, yo tengo dos lapizes azul y murado.
En mi lapicero, yo tengo una pluma bonita.
En mi mochila, yo tengo un pluma azul y un lapiz azul.

At Immigration Day today, I learned a lot about how getting into the United States was back in the 1990. From what I went through, It seemed very hard for them, and I bet I only went through half of what the immigrants had to go through.

My Character for this Immigration Unit is Manya Socolova. She is 19 years old, born in the year of 1881.  She grew up in Russia, and her religion is Jewish. She is looking forward to  moving to the United States for farming, since she was kicked off her own farm from people in the city. She would also like to move the the States so that she can start a new life. Manya is in good health conditions, but she has had no education since most people did not go to school around these times.

Today in the Socratic seminar, I think that personally, we don’t need the basic facts because they will soon be out-dated, and they will not help us in the future. I think that the effect this will have on our new learners is they will either be taught the basic facts, and they will not know what the real up-to-date facts are, because they were taught the wrong facts, well not really the wrong facts, just the old facts. As schools, I don’t think that you should teach students how to work through the old knowledge , and create new facts, because what if the facts that you just made up are fake? I think that it might be good to teach then how and not what, but I think that would be really hard to teach to our new learners. I think that now these days, many students and teenagers are not doing their work as good as they should. When they need to find out information, they go to the Internet and it does all the work for them. Then they just skim through the information that the Internet has found for them. I don’t think this is a good way of learning, but it is fast, and it saves you time that you could use doing something else. This would also help them in the future if they slow down, and learn a topic very well. Yes, I think that the Internet puts students out in the world because before the Internet, you would actually have to go to places to get information about a city or country, or you would have to look in a encyclopedia. Now, with the Internet…you can to look at many different sites to get the information without leaving you house. I also think that as a school, you should help students pay more attention, because if you teach students with short attention spans, what is the point? If they cant pay attention for as long as a class, then why would you teach then, because they wouldn’t get anything from the class.