Semester One Math Reflection

Math, for the first time in seven years of schooling, actually attempts to stop the problem of students learning something once, and forgetting is immediately after the unit test. But then again, that doesn't inherently mean success. Yeah, I'm not too good at review, and easily forget things if not reiterated several times. Although I master skills quickly, I lose them quickly as well. I'm not too capable at requesting assistance either, and I rarely attend help sessions due to at the time the sessions are laid out, I already understand the topic. I do possess fellow students to question, but they themselves do not exactly have oodles of time. I can try, however. One of my major liabilities is my trouble with operations, which is problematic for units such as factoring or properties of exponents, where the main skill is primarily operational. Most other units I understand reasonably well, except my requiring a refresher on inverse relationships (which was a minor unit anyway). All in all, the units have been reasonably successful, but just requiring some extra help.

This organizer defines all the different forms of equations

Map Goals: It's pretty clear that I need to get better at basic computation skills. Particularly the most simple and obvious calculations of six times two can cause a fatal mistake at a crucial time which can be catastrophic for several questions. I may also require work on geometry, but not nearly as much.

Presedential Campaign Speech

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/#folders/0B38tFRoUNOIlY3h1eGstdk4wSXM/0B38tFRoUNOIlbkF6c0xMd0Vqc00/0B38tFRoUNOIlX3J4WklPbzVpazQ

Tech Ed Blog Final

This isn't much of an ending!

The box is unpainted, the wires are unperfected, the edges are unsanded, the code is uncompressed, and the lag is bloody murder! It's an achievement you can still call it a game when it has an FPS of three! But odds are, while we did make a Gantt Chart, and checked up on progress every now and then, I think we began to falter in progress because of an... absence of planning, to put it nicely. The game was begun with the sole message, "We need to make a game, and it will be a 2d platformer, and it will involve Nyan Cat". Really not a good place to start. Remember kids, always plan for stuff! Even the stuff you don't plan for! Like when we figured out that our configuration of gravity wasn't usable with platforms. Plan for that too. It's difficult, though, but things go very wrong otherwise.

Things that annoy, vex, make angry, make cross, anger, exasperate, bother, irk, gall, pique, put out, displease, get/put someone's back up, antagonize, get on someone's nerves, rub up the wrong way, try someone's patience, ruffle, ruffle someone's feathers, make someone's hackles rise, raise someone's hackles; enrage, infuriate, madden, incense, make someone's blood boil, drive to distraction, goad, provoke; informal aggravate, peeve, hassle, miff, rile, nettle, needle, get, get to, bug, hack off, get under someone's skin, get in someone's hair, get up someone's nose, put someone's nose out of joint, get someone's goat, give someone the hump, rattle someone's cage, get someone's dander up, drive mad/crazy, drive round the bend/twist, drive up the wall, drive bananas, make someone see red; Brit. informal wind up, nark, get across, get on someone's wick; N. Amer. informal tee off, tick off, burn up, rankle, ride, gravel; Brare exacerbate, hump, rasp. ANTONYMS pacify.

Bubble-Wrap
     Apparently it's "too noisy" to pop. So I just have sit around and stare at it allll day. And believe me, i have a shortage of self-control, so this is really difficult

Grammar
     I do not deny that I am a horrible, horrible, horrible grammar Nazi. I, as a word, should be capital. There is a difference between there, their, and they're. You had eight years of education, where they've been drilling into you EXACTLY how to spell definitely, or beautiful, and you STILL fail to spell it right. Guys! It's not so hard!

Imperfection
     Painful if you have OCD. Put the darn stuff back in the right cupboard! Make sure everything is the right way up! turn off your stuff before dumping it into a big pile!

Cliche'd Ideas
     Policy one: If the idea isn't original, it's not a bloody idea at all. Don't bore me with copies of popular stuff. The original is always better. Like in our poetry unit, almost 50% of the class did "descriptive" poem that, let's be honest, meant nothing. Yeah, that's a good metaphor for snow, yeah, that's a pretty picture of a tree... but on poem number fourteen, they all start sounding the same. Not one of the poems that got into the finals was entirely cliche'd description of love or money or loneliness.

Getting stuck with incompetent classmates
     Contrary to popular belief, students work much better with friends. Even problem students. If problem students are with their friends, at least they won't bring down another group of hard-working students. And don't give me the ol' "In real life, sometimes you have to work with people you don't like". In real life, incompetents get fired. It happens all the time! Every single time you pick partners, stuff goes wrong! We pick our friends specifically for the purpose of working well together, and now you're trying to rip that apart. I remember this has happened in my 7th grade final science presentation, my entire 6th grade poetry unit, in my 7th grade Social Studies "Systems of Government" skit. All because you think we can't pick proper teams.

Spanish Semester One Reflection

Many teachers have different philosophies and approaches to stuffing as much stuff into a child's mind as possible. However, one of the prevailing ideas is that if a kid can't use a concept creatively, they can't use it at all.

Our first major unit (excluding the politics of Puerto Rico and the basics of geographic features) happened to be the topic of "deportes" (not deportees) meaning sports- and our final test was probably the most hilariously insane project ever to be designed. In the words of our "instructor", "Design me a sport. Then make a presentation on its rules, regulations, and resources needed". What was insane about this was not the instructions, it was who she gave it to- three impossibly immature and possibly insane eighth graders. For example:

"Objects needed for playing: 1 puck, one court, water, 4 narwhals and 8 unicorns."
It didn't say we had to be realistic, right?
Ah well. It was definitely an improvement over many of the more boring projects we have done. I prefer the ability to actually talk to an audience over to a computer, and the ability to be creative with what we create. This was one of the only school projects which my group actually put in considerable effort, creating a map of made-up countries in which the sport was popular and even drawing up imaginary famous teams of the sport. A model learning lesson, indeed. The last straw in the hat for our first unit, ingraining the concept of sports in Spain permanently (until, of course, the final exam whereupon we all forgot everything).

The presentation is linked here.

Reading Reflections: BLAAAAAAWG!!

I am probably the world's most errant, abrupt, unpredictable, and confusing reader the world has ever seen.
Book intake volume is bang on the dot. Fourteen books calculated, fourteen books goaled, fourteen books achieved. Great. The more notable statistic is how I got to fourteen. In the span of one week sometime in October, I burn through an unbelievable five books. It takes me the rest of a semester to read seven books. Unbelievable. Apparently, weekends and holidays somehow push my reading speed incredible high, but it crashes and burns on school days. Although I do find it preferable- reading books intermittently causes confusion (how ironic) and disrupts my pattern of thinking. However, burning through the entirety of a book in a short span of time somehow does not bother me- where others would be stultified before the hour number hit double digits, I barely notice the passage of time. Some people just lost interest so quickly.
Now, the problem of variety is a topic I have long since grown weary of. See, I have problems not being bored by reading a book too grounded in reality. Not that there do not exist good non-fantasy books around, such as "the Wednesday Wars", but I would not exactly say it was completely... realistic. This is debatable, however.
All in all a reasonably productive semester. After much coercion, I have been "influenced" to attempt a far more difficult read, none other than the world-famous classic, George Orwell's 1984.

The majority of the information was something I did not know, but there was little that surprised me. I mean, I didn't know four Americans would die every twenty minutes, but does it surprise me? It's reasonably obvious that a whole darn lot of Americans die from food related problems, I just can't put a number on it. However, it irritates me greatly that Oliver completely failed to say anything other than "You're eating wrong. Americans are eating very wrong. Your kids are eating wrong. Here, have some shock statistics." There was zero, zilch, nada, and absolutely no recommendation on what the heck we should do except stop eating junk. There wasn't even clarification over what junk food is! Are chips bad for you? Of course not. There's very little sodium, fat, and calories in a serving of chips. How many servings are there in a bag? Information like this is completely omitted. For someone who doesn't know they're eating wrong, this is a powerful lecture. For someone who does, there is relatively almost no take-away whatsoever. This should be an introductory video to the nutrition unit. It's no use to us otherwise.