Chris Jordan’s collection “Running the Numbers”is practically made of American statistics. Check it out here. I think that the piece that best represents what it means to be a global citizen is“Ben Franklin”, which shows how much money the US spends on the war in Iraq. I think this because it shows that we spend lots of money on aiding in the war, and it makes the people who see it think and take action about whether or not weshouldinterfere and the consequencesinternally and externallyif we do. Are you a global citizen?
“I’m a constant learner. You need to be a constant student because things change and you have to change and grow.” – Zig Ziglar via BrainyQuote
After reading this article by John Mahaffe for English class, I began to wonder: Does my school, ISZL, prepare me for the future? In the article, Mahaffe says that one thing we know for certain about the future is that “our lives and work lives will be swept by regular waves of change.” In this post, I will discuss some of the assignments I’ve been given and whether or not they will help me adapt to change during the rest of my life.
My school prepares me well for changes in the future. It has helped me learn to organize my thoughts, creatively problem-solve and find the fun in any task.
The two tasks I will compare are the Tribes blog post that I did for Humanities and the game my friends and I created for PE. The Tribes assignment was about tribes that still exist today, and how we can protect them. We had to research about our tribes, come up with a solution to save them, and write an outline using… NoodleTools!
After writing the outline, we used it to make a blog post. This assignment required us to be comfortable with complexity in several ways. In the future, being comfortable with complexity will allow us to be successful in solving new problems in the world, as we did when we attempted to solve the problems of the tribes. There were several factors that we had to take into account, such as the political problem with the government, the economic problems with the solution and the social problem of tourists who bother the tribes, as well as any natural challenges such as natural disaster or geography. These are all factors of problems in real life, and will continue to be factors of problems in the future.
NoodleTools is its own kind of complex. It’s outline software with several layers. It’s pretty easy to learn, but it’s clunky and difficult to work with. This is a place where we learn to deal with the things in life that are difficult or boring, and that sometimes, we must still perservere.
The game for PE was something that we made in groups. We had to use people sense and try to figure out what would be fun for people to play. It was fun to do, and not all that hard. The difficulty came when we tried to play each others’ games and we learned: Openmindedness is important to being able to adapt and find the fun in unfamiliar situations. When we were teaching our game, certain people were not able to do this, and didn’t try to play the game by the rules we had made. It was frustrating, and in the end our game was reduced to simple dodgeball. We know what we should have changed in our game to make it better for people to play, but we also knew to be kind to everyone else who taught their game. I learned what it felt like to be in that situation, so I helped out by being open-minded about their game and trying to adapt. Some of the games were actually quite fun!
Spiderweb, ultomatt via Flickr
The tone in the Tribes assignment was formal, objective and rational. This is because the work was individual and the tribes that we picked were in danger of extinction, which is a very serious matter. We needed to make people understand the urgency of saving the tribes with a logical solution to the problem.
The tone of the game was exactly the opposite, informal, playful and emotional. We were allowed to work in groups that we picked ourselves, so we got to work with our friends. This allowed for us to have fun while making our games as well as consult each other on ideas. It was important for the task to have this tone in order for the class to have fun playing the game, because games are made to be like a break from the tones of, for example, the Tribes assignment.
I think it’s important for all schools to have assignments such as these, where the students can learn to solve the complex, unfamiliar problems that come with change in an open-minded way. One other thing I learned from the drastic contrast in these assignments is that it is important to have a balance between work and play as well as in one’s education in order to lead a happy life in the present and in the future.
Thanks for reading my blog! Do you feel well prepared for the future by going to ISZL? Let me know in the comments!
In this blog post, I am comparing a key theme in Macbeth with one from Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future. For Macbeth, the theme is the corrupting power of unchecked ambition and Glory’s is that confrontation is necessary for growth. Both of these boil down to what can happen when one character trait is pushed to the extreme. In Macbeth, this trait is ambition. He sets his sights high and does whatever it takes to get there, but at a high cost that leads to his downfall. For Glory and the people around her, the trait is avoidance. Her mother commited suicide when she was four years old, and she and her father never really talked about it. They both became depressed and drifted apart as a family, and Glory kind of closed herself off to the world and never really grew as a person. As for Glory and Ellie, they were friends by circumstance and Glory was done with Ellie. It would have been good for their friendship to either have that discussion and confront the fact that they were growing apart, or just let each other go.
My Chosen Question (probably):
How Do Themes Teach The Reader A Great Lesson In Both Works?
I have chosen this question to focus on because of all of the possibilities this question has. There are a number of themes in each work that I can compare to each other, and themes can be built from themes in another work, as seen above. In Macbeth, the theme was the corrupting power of unchecked ambition, and to transfer this to Glory, I was asked What emotion from Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future is the biggest player? In this way, I can convert most of the themes from one work to another. There is lots to write about in this way, as well as pointing out the importance of the theme in today’s world. This is prominent in Macbeth, because it was written over 400 years ago. It’s interesting to learn that most themes are still relevant today, although they may perhaps be applied to other things. Based on these points, it’s probably the easiest question to write about in the exam, to be honest. Other than the ease of answering the question during the exam, this is the question that I want to pick because, in my opinion, it requires more thinking than the others. This is a question that is excellent for debating because discussing the lesson in each individual theme is its own debatable, and people can also say whether they agree with the theme or not. It will be important to think about the theme from all perspectives so that I can take my own stand on it.
In this blog post, I’m comparing the learner I am now to the learner I was last year. I think that my learning style changed a lot this year. This is mostly due to the fact that I changed schools. Not just from middle to high school, but I changed from Swiss school in German to MYP high school in English. As English is my mother tongue, I am more comfortable speaking it than German, even though I speak German fluently. This means that I am now more likely to synergize with others. Last year, I would go along with what everyone else wanted because I was too shy to speak my mind. This year, I am much more assertive with my ideas. On the Hitchcock film project, Maud, Tom and I all gave our ideas and came to a conclusion together. When I gave my ideas, I explained why I thought they were good ideas and built off of others’ ideas as well to combine and make something great!
During this discussion, it was important to use the Harkness Table Talk Guidelines to make sure that everyone felt comfortable contributing to the talk. In order to have a discussion about the book, we needed to all come prepared. While I had read the book and given the questions some thought, I must admit that I had a relaxing long weekend, but didn’t finish my notes or print them out. In the case of characterisation, I think this may have been clear as I didn’t think about the question, but in the rest of the discussion I was able to support my remarks with relevant text that I remembered from the book. I think that I followed the rest of the guidelines well. One thing I did often was paraphrasing, from the 7 Rules of Collaboration. I was always leaning in to show that I was listening. There was a distraction: the computer. Every few minutes it would fall asleep and I had to make sure it was still recording.
Thanks, Maud and Costanza! I liked discussing the book with you. You both gave me lots of new insights on the book 🙂
It’s #teacherappreciationweek, so I would like to give a big thank you to my French teacher, Ms. Porritt. The following are reasons why:
(Basic) Reason #1: Homework
You rarely give us homework, and when you do, it’s always in moderation. I never have to stress about French homework, so thank you, Ms. Porritt, for stress-free afternoons and weekends.
Reason #2: Games
This is the main reason why I want to thank you. French class with you as a teacher is always full of fun and games. I think this is extremely important because it makes the class, or at least me, happy to come to French and willing to learn, which helps the knowledge we get stick better. Your classes are always super interactive, so it supports tactile learners as well as audio and visual learners.
Reason #3: Personality
Many teachers keep their personal lives very separate from the classroom, but I like that we get to hear about what you did at the weekend and when you lived in France. I like that we can get to know you not just as a teacher, but as a person.
The Wrong Student is an excellent lesson on the consequences of plagiarism.
One of the best things a film can do is teach us a lesson. Lessons about family, love, or honesty. In particular, Academic Honesty. Being a student, sometimes a lesson is the last thing I want, but in film, the lessons we learn can often be much more entertaining and therefore sometimes more valuable because we are more willing to listen.
The short film “The Wrong Student” by Danny, Ishaan and John is an excellent example of a film with a lesson built in. The film covers many valuable lessons or themes: Plagiarism is wrong;Revenge is not the answer;and your record can follow you and make life difficult for you later on.
“The Wrong Student” is set in a high school. Under pressure, teenage Jimmy (Danny) plagiarises his English essay from a friend. He was caught, and he thought his troubles with plagiarism were over; he’d sworn to himself never to plagiarise again. A year later, however, it is discovered that his essay and another student’s essay have significant similarities, and his record comes back to haunt him when he is accused by the principal (Ishaan) of repeating his actions.
Confused and not knowing what to do, Jimmy discusses his punishment with his friend, Liam (John), and discovers that Liam knows a suspicious amount about the plagiarised essay. After some pressure from Jimmy, Liam admits that he was the one who plagiarised. Upon discovering this, Jimmy pounces on Liam wanting revenge. The principal pulled them apart and took them to his office. In the end, both boys get expelled. Liam for plagiarising his essay, and Jimmy for attacking another student.
The choice of the directors to exaggerate the actions of Jimmy and the principal was, in my opinion, critical to getting the message across to the audience. The way the principal yelled at Jimmy and shoved the desk across the room and Jimmy attacking Liam were shocking and serious, but also not without humor. The over-exaggeration of these scenes made them nearly unbelievable, but still possible, making the audience laugh in disbelief as a way to relieve tension in the film. Speaking of disbelief, casting Ishaan as the principal was, in my opinion, a stroke of genius on the part of the group. Ishaan, as most of us in the school know him, is generally a pretty quiet person, so seeing him shouting at Jimmy made the scene especially shocking to the audience.
The audience is shocked as Ishaan yells at Danny.
The use of camera angles was very well done in this film. A scene where this really sticks out in my mind is when Jimmy is sitting in the principal’s office and the camera looks down on his nervous face from above. This shot, looking down on Jimmy, makes Jimmy seem small and weak, reflecting the way he likely feels on the inside as he faces the principal. They use a montage, different actions of Jimmy’s showing his nervousness while waiting for the principal to see him.
At the beginning of the film, the tone is upbeat and as the camera pans around the classroom… until the focus comes to rest on the essay, revealing the plagiarism that occurred. In this scene, the use of sound effects and music comes into importance. The upbeat music stops as we see the essay, and in comes a suspenseful sound, immediately changing the tone of the film and making us feel nervous.
All in all, I’m glad to have seen this film. All of the films made by the ninth grade covered how plagiarism is wrong, but this is the only one that showed the consequences of plagiarising: It makes you seem like a less trustworthy person in the future. Check out Danny, Ishaan and John’s blogs and watch their film here!
Thanks to recite for allowing me to create my quote!
“The Wrong Student” is set in a high school. Under pressure, teenage Jimmy (Danny) plagiarises his English essay from a friend. He was caught, and he thought his troubles with plagiarism were over; he’d sworn to himself never to plagiarise again. A year later, however, it is discovered that his essay and another student’s essay have significant similarities, and 
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