POV about the Currents4Kids article "Busy Signal"

   In the article "Busy Signal" by Currents4Kids, the topic phones in class was explored.
   In my personal opinion, phones are seen by a great deal of adults as something "bad" and "everything that's wrong with this lazy generation" and, of course, the stereotype of being a millennial that adults just HAD to give us. There is too much bias, and I feel that is because it is not what they are used to and not what they did as kids, and the natural reaction to something unfamiliar is usually negative. So many people are missing out on the benefits of technology because of the stubborn attitude of "our generation was better", and it upsets me. If you had a classroom without phones, computers, TVs or bright links, even if you don't want to admit it, the kids in the class will be missing out on what technology can be used for in the positive sense.   What the teachers decided at the end was probably the best idea: Make kids use their phones for learning, connecting, researching and pushing their potential to the very fullest so they can succeed in the future. No matter what you say, technology is on the arise, and not letting kids learn how to use it and take advantage of their benefits isn't a good idea.
   The arcticle states: "Thierry Karsenti, Canada Research Chair on Technologies in Education, says most Canadian schools ban mobile devices. But his research shows that enforcing a ban is almost impossible.

He found that 88 percent of the students he surveyed weren’t allowed to use phones in class. Yet 91 percent of them saw classmates texting. Almost two-thirds saw other kids use Facebook. More than half saw nothing wrong with texting during a lesson." So if kids are going to use their phones and bring them anyway, why not just teach them to use it correctly? It really mind-boggles me that some teachers aren't going to teach their pupils how to appropriately use their phones even though they know no matter what they say, the students will use them anyway. 

   And if technology is just so bad, then why is Currents4Kids and Blogger on technology? Why post an article online if being online is so terrible? You can't use technology to communicate a point about how technology is ruining the world without some confusion, because you are indirectly contradicting yourself.

   So, in my opinion, there should NOT be any cell phone bans, but they SHOULD be teaching kids to use it for school as well as letting them text and call in the halls and at lunch for some down time.

   And I like how I use my phone mostly for learning and emergencies, and I would like this balance to stay the way it currently is.

Article Link

March Break Blog

   I did lots of things over the March Break but the one I want to focus on was skiing on Wednesday. I love skiing and it gives me a rush that I don't get by doing anything else. I love the feel of parallel skiing without a worry, trying to get my technique but at the same time enjoying the ride until the very bottom. It is an amazing, stressless experience. It brings me so much joy to just have fun without having to listen to somebody telling me how to have fun. It's just you, your friends, the hill and your skis the whole way down as the wind blows in your goggles and you smile as you simply have fun. The rush down the hill will temporarily turn anyone into an adrenaline thanks to the immanent pleasure of racing down a mogul filled, uneven, and carved hill.  And once it's all over, you get to head to the chalet with all your friends and treat yourself to some scorching thirst-quenching hot chocolate.

   I feel skiing was really the highlight of my March Break because of just so amazing it can be and because I went twice. Each time my friends were with me and we all love skiing. I also just started skiing and I'm really enjoying the experience and hope to learn more tricks and go to more complicated hills. Next season my winter life will be skiing, skiing and some more skiing. I can't wait!

Canada 150

   For Canada 150th birthday,  I want to take a leap into one of my favourite things and prove Canada is the best at making it. And that, of course is...

   Yes, food. From Tim Horton's to smoked breakfast ham to donuts to buffets. Canada is one of the few countries in the world that can truly bring out the food in everything, and make some of the most tasty and healthy meals on the planet. I feel Canada is not recognized enough for both amazing gourmet dishes and our plants and animals exclusive to Canada and I want to talk about one of the mandatory things required for living.
   Some questions I have are:
   What is Canada national dish?
   How do other countries view Canadian cuisine?
   Why do we not have a Dunkin' Donuts?
   What kind of cuisine do we have that other countries do not?
   Where did the name Canadian bacon come from?
   What is the history of food in Canada?
   What was the first foods introduced in Canada?

   Now it's time for research.

  The History Of Canadian Food

   Originally, Canadian food wasn't the tasty Montreal Smoked Meat in a freshly baked bun with maple syrup we know and gobble up as fast as you can say "butter tarts for dessert!", it was the Northern Native peoples with foraged plants and fresh game such as caribou and deer, and eventually they started using taps to obtain sap from trees and create maple syrup. And then came the Europeans. The Europeans were kind of like how we would see a time traveler from the distant future to the Native Canadians. "Look at our majestic spices! Observe as we use grapes and chemicals to make wine! Watch as we--" you get the picture. But even though we had so many things perfect in Canada, we weren't officially a nation until 1867. But finally, as soon as we settle and are declared a nation, delicious recipes are finally on the rise. Probably one of the most iconic of these inventions, le poutine, was invented by a clever and revolutionary Canadian trucker decided to ask for cheese curds on his fries. Yes. A trucker. No restaurant, just a hungry trucker and an idea. By the way, poutine has been officially declared Canada's national dish!

  Dunkin' Donuts V Tim Horton's

   The food war to end all food wars, the unofficially best places to get a donut in the world, and World War Coffee are just some ways to describe the mindset of someone deciding between which is better: Dunkin' Donuts or Tim Horton's. Even though they are both in a different country, Canadians and Americans are in war when it comes to deciding which is better. They have very similar selections like breakfast sandwiches, mini donuts, coffee and the classic glazed donut, but each one has a different taste and style.

  Why I Chose Food

   The Canadian legacy isn't just beaver furs and saying 'eh' over and over, it's about the things that make Canada unique from every other country in the world. And, as an expert in quality and nutritious cuisine, I am really enjoying learning more and more about classic food and drink straight from our very own nation - Canada.

AWESOME Blog: When nobody wakes you up

   In life, the best things are usually the simple things, like when your parents completely forget that you have Hockey early and let you wrap yourself up in your overly comfortable flannel that you got for your birthday because flannel is just. That. Good. Sleep is like being dead without the commitment - the ability to just shut yourself off and do nothing as you relax in your tiny warm bubble of blankets. Everybody knows the feeling of waking up at 7:00 and just going back to bed. If you haven't, I pity you more than I pitied my Mom when I forced her to go on the Leviathan for the first time at Canada's Wonderland. She screamed so loud I felt like my eardrums were trying to escape! Anyway, because I'm tired (Pun intended) of everyone always waking me up while I'm trying to sleep, here's some facts about why you should sleep in.

   1. It's good for you!
   Everybody knows that sleeping is great for you! Your body and mind is working all the time, even when you are being lazy and sitting on the couch munching Doritos watching The Simpsons. Sleep isn't just relaxing you - It's also relaxing your mind and physical body. So don't wake me up - I'm getting healthier! Sleeping is also like a giant dream catcher for stress. When your sleeping, you aren't stressed. Your just dreaming ridiculous dreams about riding whales and racing Sonic the Hedgehog to the top of rainbow Mount Everest.

   2. Babies sleep more than we do!
      As the great Neil Pasricha once said, "We can learn much from the baby". Same thing goes with sleep - those little ones take 2 naps throughout the day AND their 10 hour sleep at night time - all without being interrupted. Those infants sleep like they just ran a 10 km marathon using only their hands. Without water. Or oxygen. Maybe if we all just slept as long as toddlers everybody would be in a good mood and no war or violence would ever happen ever again. Maybe. No, I'm lying, but it's a nice thought.


   3. It's a great excuse for being lazy!
      Even if sleeping isn't for you, there is still that 5 minute space of time between when you go to bed and fall asleep, and that's when I usually think my best thoughts. For example - the idea of a blog post about sleeping came from before I went to sleep (And by the way, that night nobody woke me up early). Even if all those crazy satisfying and enjoyable things don't appeal to you, you could always just lay awake on your phone playing Candy Crush and call it "sleeping" (I'm looking at you, every single adult ever).

   So, if you haven't already figured out that the most satisfying feeling in the world is sleeping like you just died and are lying in a heavenly cloud of cotton candy, I'm telling you now - sleep is the best thing ever, and when no one wakes you up it's even better!

Learning Italian Using Duolingo!

(November 11) For my Genius Hour project I am learning Italian! Italian is one of my many backgrounds and sometime soon we will be going on a trip to Italy as a family and I want to be prepared. I already decided to learn this amazing language before I even knew about Genius Hour, and now I signed up for a program called Duolingo that teaches you fluent Italian and encourages you to log on daily. So far I have mastered some of the basics, but I struggle with verbs that are masculine and feminine or end in you and we as they change for each one. Just now I have been website declared 1% fluent in Italian! I am proud. Now for that other 99%... wish me luck!

(November 25) Ciao! My Genius Hour project is so much fun to do! I get weekly reminders to continue my streak of practise. My goal this week is to go on every day for 7 days straight and do at least two lessons each day. It's going to be tough to squeeze it in to my busy daily life but I still feel if I put my mind to it and practise when I get those email reminders. Even after the Genius Hour project is finished I'm still going to become fluent in Italian, because it something I really enjoy doing.

(December 2) Ciao ancora! So far, my greatest struggle is masculine and feminine words. Italian is weird in the sense that the verbs change depending on masculine, feminine, the group of people you are talking to, and the verb itself. My way of overcoming this problem is to do the more simpler lessons to improve my knowledge on masculine and feminine before moving on. In doing this, I understand this problem better and strengthening my weak words and conventions as well as helping my biggest problem of masculine and feminine. Currently I am 2 percent fluent in Italian and hope to become 100 percent one day.

(December 19) For my amazing Italian themed Genius Hour project I am doing a skit with my friends in Italian! I will be doing it over Christmas break because I need to practice more of those tricky words and phrases and I still need to learn some Italian idioms before I go and get ready for this amazing hopefully funny skit. I haven't been working on my Duolingo in a while so I am going to start doing it again this week. I am still two percent fluent. 98 to go! Arivedicci!

Final Thoughts: My biggest learn about the process of Duolingo is not actually learning the Italian, it's that learning a new language is a lot harder than it looks. It's basically taking something that has just become a way of life and twisting it around, like walking with pegs instead of legs. That isn't something that takes 20 hours to master, so I think that this whole progress has not only taught me how to call someone an annoying rat in Italian, but also that you always need to be prepared for the worst, and in this case, the worst means 2 months of practicing and I'm only 2% fluent in Italian. Now, to the app!

https://www.duolingo.com/

(11 Novembre) Per il mio progetto Genius Hour sto imparando Italiano! L'italiano è uno dei miei molti sfondi e prossimamente andremo su un viaggio in Italia come una famiglia e voglio essere preparato. Ho già deciso di imparare questa lingua incredibile prima sapevo anche circa ora di genio, e ora ho firmato per un programma chiamato Duolingo che ti insegna italiano fluente e incoraggia l'accesso tutti i giorni. Finora ho imparato alcune delle basi, ma faccio fatica con i verbi che sono maschili e femminili o di mettere fine a voi e ci cambiano per ciascuno di essi. Solo ora sono stato sito dichiarato 1% fluente in italiano! Sono orgoglioso. Ora che altri 99%... augurami buona fortuna!

(25 Novembre) Ciao! Il mio progetto Genius Hour è così divertente da fare! Ottengo il promemoria settimanali per continuare la mia striscia di pratica. Il mio obiettivo questa settimana è quello di andare ogni giorno per 7 giorni di fila e fare almeno due lezioni ogni giorno. Dev'essere difficile da spremere in alla mia vita quotidiana frenetica ma mi sento ancora se ho messo la mia mente ad esso e pratica quando ottengo quei promemoria via email. Anche dopo che il progetto Genius ora è finito ho ancora intenzione di diventare fluente in italiano, perché esso qualcosa mi piace davvero fare.

(2 Dicembre) Ciao ancora! Finora, la mia battaglia più grande è parole maschili e femminili. L'italiano è strano nel senso che i verbi cambiano a seconda del maschile, femminile, il gruppo di persone che stanno parlando e il verbo in sé. Il mio modo di superare questo problema è quello di fare le lezioni più semplice per migliorare la mia conoscenza il maschile e il femminile prima di passare. In questo modo, capisco meglio questo problema e rafforzare le mie parole deboli e convenzioni, nonché aiutando il mio più grande problema del maschile e femminile. Attualmente sono 2 per cento parla correntemente italiano e spero di poter un giorno diventare 100 per cento.

(19 Dicembre) Per il mio progetto a tema italiano incredibile di Genius Hour sto facendo una scenetta con i miei amici in italiano! Sarà lo fa durante le vacanze di Natale perché ho bisogno di praticare più di quelle difficili parole e frasi e ho ancora bisogno di imparare alcuni idiomi italiani prima di andare a prepararsi per questa scenetta si spera divertente incredibile. Non ho lavorando mio Duolingo in un po' di tempo in modo ho intenzione di iniziare a farlo ancora una volta questa settimana. Io sono ancora fluente il due per cento. 98 di andare! Arivedicci!

Considerazioni finali: La mia più grande imparare circa il processo di Duolingo non è effettivamente imparare l'italiano, è che imparare una nuova lingua è molto più difficile di quanto sembri. È fondamentalmente prendendo qualcosa che è appena diventato un modo di vita e di torsione intorno, come camminare con pioli invece di gambe. Che non è qualcosa che dura 20 ore da padroneggiare, quindi penso che questo intero stato di avanzamento non solo mi ha insegnato come chiamare qualcuno un ratto fastidioso in italiano, ma anche che hai sempre bisogno di essere preparati al peggio, e in questo caso, il peggiore significa 2 mesi di pratica e io sono solo il 2% fluente in italiano. Ora, per l'app!

https://www.duolingo.com/