Social Media Unit Reflection

According to the Pew Research Center, about 7 in 10 Americans are using social media for various tasks such as connecting with other people, entertaining themselves, sharing information and look at news content. For the social media unit project, the N.E.W. students had to create their own social media campaign about a topic of their choice, during this process we have learned a new way for people to use social media. Since it's the social media unit, designing a social media campaign was a big part of the project that really reflects how well we understand the many ways that social media can be used to target different audiences and spread the word about diverse topics. We have learned that social media can be used as a tool instead of just something to look through when we're bored. Social media has become very popular over the years and is growing more and more. Most teens today are on social media and many adults are too, but not a lot of them are using social media to the best of it's abilities.

Because of the social media unit, my way of viewing social media has been shaped so that I understand how to use it and implement it strategically in targeting specific audiences in promoting something like a school project or idea. Instead of seeing social media as a way to contact people or a popularity contest, I now see it as a tool. In my unit project, I campaigned my idea of reducing your risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes by using social media as a way to promote my idea and get other people on social media to see my work. Before this unit, I wasn't the biggest fan of social media. I always thought that social media was just a big popularity contest where the pretty girls would get all the followers and the comments and the likes. Now, I view it differently; social media can be a way to contact not just family members, but experts too. A lot of the students that created a social science lab had to contact 10 professionals and interview them, many of the students used social media to find their experts in the field.



There are many different social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest. For my social media campaign, I used twitter because it is easier to use for this particular project. Twitter is probably one of the easiest and most convenient ways to use social media to promote your ideas. I enjoyed twitter especially because I could follow multiple doctors and people that had news about diabetes and I could re-tweet them so that my followers could learn more about diabetes. I could also post my own content on my twitter page too, like my videos from my unit project. I can also easily link my website on to my twitter profile too so that any of my followers can go see more of my work that I've been doing which will further help to spread the word on what I'm doing in school. I loved how twitter only allows 140 characters per tweet so that I can keep it nice, simple and clean so that my followers aren't intimidated by big paragraphs that will take forever to read. Twitter is easy to understand, I never had a twitter account before creating my social media platform but it was really easy to utilize. If ever needed again, I will definitely consider twitter when I need to create another social media campaign in future school projects or even anything outside of school.

Social media isn't just useful in school, it can be taken outside into the real world with careers, passions, traveling or anything else. My passion in life is dance, and I have a blog about ballet that I can promote through social media. Anyone can promote their website or blog by linking it in their bio on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Anyone can take what their passionate about and expand that into something greater like a blog. Having a blog can be time consuming but it can advance to be very successful and beneficial if promoted correctly. Linking blogs and other websites on social media profiles such as Instagram or twitter can lead to more views. Blogger also offers a great opportunity to help promote blog posts. If I am using blogger and I post a blog post, I can have google send a notification to alert all of my Google + followers that I am posting something. When it comes to someone's career or job, if they are an author, actress, singer, or any other kind of job that is very hard to obtain, social media can be a very important tool. Many singers are using YouTube to post videos of them singing or performing their art so that they can get themselves out there in the world and promote themselves. By using social media, many people can build a career for themselves.




In conclusion, the social media unit has been very beneficial to all N.E.W. students, especially me. It has opened my eyes and changed my view of social media and how I can use it as a tool to make me more successful in school, future jobs and any other activities. Social media is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family and show off that new haircut, but it's also a free way to advertise my ideas and work that I'm currently doing. Not only can I take what I've learned to my other classes, but I can take it with me through college and well into my future job. Thanks to the social media unit, I have a new tool that can take me to great places.

Analyzing a Great TED Talk

As honors students are preparing for their TED talks coming up in NEW core, there was an activity in which we watch one of the top 5 best TED talks of all time and analyze it to see why it is so popular. I chose Ken Robinson's TED talk, How Schools Kill Creativity.

Right at the beginning of the TED talk, I notice that Robinson kind of starts out with humor, the audience is laughing and he's starting small talk with them and cracking jokes. Robinson mentions that he's always been curious and interested in creativity and education. It is obvious that he is passionate about this topic and finds it fascinating. He mentions that children always start out creative and full of wonder, however education tends to wipe them clean. He believes that we are educating our students to never leave room for mistakes, to be perfect which of course leaves no room for creativity. His solution for this issue was to encourage students to dance, experiment and make mistakes. It is important to make mistakes because we learn from them and it is important to be creative too. Overall, I think the most popular and great element in this TED talk was his humor and his personality, the way he communicated to the audience was very engaging because it was humorous and made the audience want to hear more.

3... 2... 1... Notes! Death Penalty

Death Penalty Fact Sheet

3 Pieces of Interesting Information From the Article:

• 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.
• Since 1973, more than 155 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. (Staff Report, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil & Constitutional Rights, 1993, with updates by DPIC).
• A report by the National Research Council, titled Deterrence and the Death Penalty, stated that studies claiming that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates are “fundamentally flawed” and should not be used when making policy decisions (2012).  

2 Conclusions Drawn:

Image From Article

• The race of the defendant and victim does impact the outcome of the defendant's punishment, if the defendant is black and killed someone who is white, there is a higher chance of receiving a death sentence.

• Death penalty is a really expensive option, some states like California have spend around 4 billion dollars on the death penalties since 1978. 

1 Question:

• Why does the death penalty cost so much? Is it the drugs? If so, is there an alternative set of drugs that are cheaper?

Environmental Unit Reflection

In Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert claims that “Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did". Humans might have been the start of the destruction of this planet, all the advancements humans have made have caused damage on the entire planet. The environment is what surrounds human beings and all other species that live and operate. The environment is extremely important to the organisms that inhabit this planet, therefore it is necessary that it is kept safe.

Image From My Teachback

Humans have had a great impact on the planet. A great example of this has been ocean acidification. As the years have gone by, humans have been using more and more carbon dioxide due to transportation, building, consuming electricity and so much more. There has been such an increase in carbon dioxide because the use of machines such as cars has increased as well, before the car was even invented, there was a much lower amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there is now. Carbon dioxide gets absorbed by the ocean, which turns it into

Concept Map on Coral Bleaching

carbonic acid, which causes a more acidic pH in the ocean. Ocean acidification can lead to limited shell growth in marine life, damage

the reproductive organs in fish and bleach the coral. For the past 300 million years, the ocean's pH level has been 8.2 however, it has now dropped to 8.1. Conserving the ocean and protecting it from acidification is important because marine plants account for approximately 70% of the world's oxygen. Without this great source of oxygen, humans would surely die out

Model for Unit Project

Pollution is yet another danger to the environment currently that humans have contributed to. An example of this is littering, countless pounds of plastic and other trash has been dumped into water sources all over the world which is contributing to pollution in waters. Although there are many different factors that lead to pollution, trash is one of them and by stopping one habit that causes pollution, it could greatly decrease the current amount of pollution the environment is dealing with right now. One example of local pollution is The Russian River. The visitors and locals at The Russian River dispose a lot of trash and waste into the river that is converting this beautiful place into a gross dump. Not only does the trash pollute the river, but it can also travel to the oceans and contribute to the gyres that are collecting in the rivers. The trash is also harming the wildlife that occupy the ecosystem. Fish species such as the coho salmon, chinook salmon and steelhead trout have become threatened or even endangered due to the harmful environment they occupy. Littering is a serious danger to the environment, not just for the rivers, but also for the animals that live there and the oceans that those rivers lead to. Not tossing one piece of plastic into the rivers or oceans can make a big difference.

Concept Map on Carbon Dioxide

Energy was another important topic that the NEW students learned about during this unit. Humans often use fossil fuels as an energy source, however, it takes hundreds of millions of years for them to form. They form with pressure, high heat and time. Fossil fuels are not considered a renewable resource, meaning that they can't be replenished in a human lifetime. The United States alone uses about 11 billion tons of oil in fossil fuels every year. It is expected that there will be no more fossil fuels by the year 2088. To protect the environment and maintain the fossil fuels, there needs to be a more clean and efficient alternative to the energy humans are currently using. Clean energy sources is energy that does not pollute the atmosphere when used. Clean energy sources can come from the sun, wind, water, and steam. Although these options are very healthy for the environment, they are not as efficient. It is important that humans keep the air from being polluted because it contaminates the atmosphere and can even negatively affect the health of someone that has been exposed to the air pollution for a long period of time.

In conclusion, this unit has taught me a great deal of information about how important the environment is to the humans an animals that occupy this planet. The environment is in danger, humans have many bad habits that are harming it and will cause it to slowly die away unless something is done about it soon. Humans have greatly affected the planet in both positive and negative ways, but the negative impacts can be deadly. Water and air pollution along with ocean acidification are serious issues that the environment is struggling with for a while now, if the people on this planet all helped a little, there would be a drastic change and it could help lead to a healthier environment.  

Deeper Learning Dive

To learn more about a topic that we are unclear about, NEW students began a deeper learning dive where we find a video and try to understand said topic. The video inserted above is from a channel called Teacher's Pet, a channel with a little over 20 thousand subscribers that posts quick science videos for students. The channel is run by a science teacher in California and has been around for about a year and a half on YouTube. The quality of these videos is great and the information is accurate and helpful.

From this video I learned that the study of ecology is basically the study of how organisms relate to one another and to the environment around them. Interdependence is when the survival of a species is dependent on another living organism or nonliving component. An ecosystem is where like a community where organisms react with their environment. A biotic factor is the living part of a habitat while an abiotic factor is the nonliving part of a habitat.

This video helped me as a learned mostly because of the visuals, being able to see pictures and examples while it was being taught to me really helped me to understand the information. The teacher that speaks in the video uses a very clear tone that's at a perfect pace so that I could understand what she was saying, she was not speaking too fast or too slow. Finally, the video was the perfect length and gave just the right amount of information. The video was almost 5 minutes long which is perfect because the video wasn't feeding me so much information to the point where I was overwhelmed, but it also did not leave anything out.

Food Web Task

This morning, NEW students started the day with an introduction to Ecology with a demo. The demo started with breaking up into groups of 11-12 and choosing one group member to be the director. We opened an envelope that contained small pieces of paper, each with a different animal on it. Each student (except the director) selected an animal. The director would help connect the animals with yarn. The purpose of this demo was to help us become more familiar with how different animals in biomes are connected and who are the consumers. 



A biome is an animal or plant community and each group got a different type of biome, ours was rain forest. 

Row-Bot Ted Talk

Row-Bots Ted Talk

The welcome task this morning in NEW was a Ted Talk by Jonathan Rossiter and his solution to a huge environmental problem. He invented a robot that eats pollution, he calls it a Row-Bot because it was inspired by the water boatman which is an insect that lives in the water that feeds on algae. This robot is a perfect example of what NEW students should be designing for their environmental unit project that is coming up.
The main issue that this Row-Bot is targeting is pollution, he mentioned the Algal Bloom off Cornwall in the UK and the Deep water oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Rossiter mentioned that every robot has at least these three components, a body, a stomach and a brain.

Environmental Exploration

We are starting our environmental unit in NEW school, and to start off the day we did an environmental exploration assignment where we watched three videos on an environmental problem that is occurring in the world right now and we had to then annotate an article for each of those videos and then create a concept map.

One of my favorite videos to watch was the one on saving the coral reefs,



This video told the story of a man who is growing his own coral and taking it back to the ocean so that the coral reefs can flourish as they once used to, it's is extremely important that the coral reefs do not die out because they are accountable for a lot of the oxygen that we breathe.

Concept maps was a new thing for many people in NEW school today and many found it to be a great way of organizing their thoughts.



Overall, it was a very interesting and educational morning in the sense that we got to see how other people are solving serious environmental issues and we also got to practice our annotations skills along with learning how to create concept maps.

Self-Reporting Grades

This morning in class, we read about how beneficial self reflecting can be for a student based on the investigations of John Hattie, a professor of education at Auckland University. There are a series of questions that a student should ask themselves when they self reflect,

• 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? 
• What learning strategies were helpful? Explain.
•  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.?

STEM Challenge

On fun Friday, Neto gave us a STEM project to give us some hands on experience, this STEM challenge was to create a water slide for a little toy person to slide down. The slide had to be waterproof and not kill the toy if it were a real person. The longest and tallest water slide that was the safest would win the STEM challenge and that group would win the most points. The design that our team came up with involved using cups as a tunnel for the toy to go through and then at the end there was a plank of wood for the toy to safely fall slide down at the end. When Neto started pouring the water into our slide and the toy was put in, it got a little stuck in the plastic cups but with a little nudge it finally fell through and safely fell to the bottom. 

My team didn't win first place because there were other teams that did a better job at getting the toy through their slide safely that were longer and taller than ours. If we were to do this again, I would have our group widen the holes in the plastic cups so that the toy could fall through more easily and not get stuck, I would also like to try getting a lot more plastic cups and make our slide longer and taller so that we could have a better chance of winning the challenge. 

At the end of the day, everyone's competitive spirit helped create these amazing slides that were very entertaining to watch a toy go down, especially when it didn't work out very well. Nobody's slide was perfect but everyone tried their best and put in a lot of effort. 

Mental Health Reflective Assessment

     "1 in 10 children and young people aged 5 - 16 suffer from a diagnosable mental health disorder - that is around three children in every class" (youngminds.org). The second unit in NEW School was mental health. Throughout this unit, Neto and Tucker taught us a lot about mental health in all three classes that are incorporated into this core, English, science and technology. There were a lot of things that I took away from this unit and there were so many assignments I completed and learned from. 

      In English, there was a writing assessment where we had to select one of the characters from the play, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. The assignment was to study the character's behaviors in the book and decide what kind of mental illness they had. This assignment was called a psychoanalysis of a character. While reading Romeo and Juliet, Tucker decided that while reading a play it had to be performed so that the students can really immerse themselves into the text and have fun. 

Leeann and Kelly Acting as Romeo and Juliet

Riley acting as Juliet

All the students had an option to be an actor, summarizer, vocabulary finder, emotional labeler or a poetic device finder. The summarizers would summarize the selected scenes, vocabulary group would find vocabulary in the scenes that is hard to understand and they would present to the class the definition with examples, the emotional labelers made signs that the actors would wear that would tell the audience how the character is feeling and the poetic device finders found poetic devices in the text. With all these roles available, the whole class can work together to understand the text and also understand the mental health situations that each character seemed to be dealing with. 

      In science this unit we learned a lot about the neurons in the brain, neurotransmitters and what is happening inside the human brain when someone is struggling with a mental illness. We also conducted a lab experiment based on forensics where we extracted DNA and used an electrophoresis gel chamber to find out who murdered Romeo and Juliet. Neto started off the unit with teaching us about the brain and everything there is to know about neurons and neurotransmitters.

Neto helped us to understand that these are one of the factors that go into mental health disorders like anxiety and depression. After we were done reading Romeo and Juliet, Neto and Tucker assigned a new project, there was a murder we had to solve. One of the characters in the book murdered Romeo and Juliet and we had to perform a lab that involved using DNA to find out who the killer was. My group originally thought it was Capulet but at the end of the experiment, we discovered it was Friar Lawrence.

Starting our gel electrophoresis chambers

Extracting the DNA

Preparing the DNA for the gel chamber

This lab really helped me understand DNA more than I did before and understand how to extract it and figure out who killed Romeo and Juliet, even though the lab had inconclusive evidence. 

      In social media and technology, I learned a lot about filming and creating videos and I also learned a lot about depression from a webinar. After we finished reading Romeo and Juliet, Neto and Tucker put us in big groups and gave us a topic and and Act from Romeo and Juliet. We recreated the scene based on our given topic to help show our understanding of both the Act and the topic assigned. For my group, we were given Act 2 and the topic of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. This assignment helped me gain new experience with script writing, costuming and filming. Along with gaining hands on experience with technology, this unit we also got to listen in on something that we may have to experience someday in the future. One day in NEW, we tuned in to a webinar on depression by Dr. Stringaris. 

Depression In Teens Webinar

This was an interesting experience because although webinars aren't the most entertaining thing in the world, it is still something that many people have to experience whether it be listening to one or creating one. Webinars have become a big part in many people's professions. 

      Overall, the mental health unit was a very interesting unit that let my classmates and I experience many different opportunities to help us understand mental health in many different subjects. English, science and technology taught us mental health using writing assignments, plays, videos, labs, filming and webinars. This unit incorporated Romeo and Juliet very well into understanding how to diagnose a mental illness and know the behaviors of someone who may be dealing with a mental illness. Science videos and labs helped to understand neurons in the brain and DNA. Technology helped me to use new knowledge on filming to show how much I know about mental health. 

Sebastian Junger's Ted Talk

The first thing we did in class today was watch a Ted Talk about PTSD from Sebastian Junger. Junger himself served a little in the military before 9/11 and experienced some PTSD himself. PTSD stands for post traumatic stress disorder and it is very common in veterans. Junger pointed out that a lot of the people that live in modern society today are more predisposed to be depressed and have a higher rate of killing themselves than someone who lives in a poor society. He also explained that after 9/11 occurred, crime rates lowered in New York, there was less violence, lower rates of suicide and veterans claimed that their PTSD symptoms lowered. Junger explained that the reason for this is that when something traumatizes a whole nation, they can heal together as a group of people that experienced the same kind of trauma. Junger concluded the Ted Talk with explaining that the reason that most veterans come home from war with PTSD is because it is easier to cope in groups and since America is such a broken society, veterans come home from the war to find that the country that the have been protecting and fighting for, isn't united. 10% of the military experience violent experiences in shooting, watching their friends get shot or getting seriously injured, but 50% of the military people experience PTSD.  It is hard for vets to come home and have to see what is happening in America, Junger believes this to be one of the main reasons for PTSD rates to be so high.

Eating Disorders

Anorexia Nervosa:

Anorexia Nervosa, or Anorexia, is an eating disorder where someone who is already thin or at a normal body weight, restricts themselves of food and has an obsessive fear of gaining weight. 1 in every 200 Americans suffer from this eating disorder. Anorexia is a very dangerous eating disorder that can result in many serious medical conditions such as slow heart rate, low blood pressure, muscle loss or weakness, reduction of bone density, dehydration, fatigue, dry hair or dry skin.

Warning Signs:

Some of the warning signs of anorexia nervosa are,

• Dramatic weight loss.
• Preoccupation with weight, food, calories, fat grams, and dieting.
• Refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food (e.g. no carbohydrates, etc.).
• Frequent comments about feeling “fat” or overweight despite weight loss.
• Anxiety about gaining weight or being “fat.”
• Denial of hunger.
• Development of food rituals (e.g. eating foods in certain orders, excessive chewing, rearranging food on a plate).
• Consistent excuses to avoid mealtimes or situations involving food.
• Excessive, rigid exercise regimen--despite weather, fatigue, illness, or injury, the need to “burn off” calories taken in.
• Withdrawal from usual friends and activities.
• In general, behaviors and attitudes indicating that weight loss, dieting, and control of food are becoming primary concerns.

Treatment Options:

• If the patient's life is in immediate danger than hospitalization might be the best option. Hospitalization can be in a medical or psychiatric ward.
• Because of all the complications that come with anorexia, the patient may need frequent monitoring of vital signs to make sure that they are healing.
• The first goal in treatment is going back to a healthy weight a psychiatrist or doctor can help a patient to find the best way to do this
• There are two different kinds of therapy, family-based therapy and individual therapy. Family based therapy is best for teens because the family can help the child or teen see how much they should be eating. Individual therapy is best for adults and helps to normalize eating patterns
• Medicine is not an option for anorexia

Bulimia Nervosa:

Bulimia Nervosa is a potential life threatening eating disorder where there is a cycle of binging and then self induced vomiting to help loose weight. Bulimia can lead to many health consequences such as imbalance in electrolytes, inflammation or possible rupture in esophagus, tooth decay, chronic or irregular bowel movements and gastric rupture.

Symptoms:

• Frequent episodes of consuming large amounts of food and then vomiting
• A feeling of being out of control during the binging episodes
• self esteem overly related to body image

Warning Sings:

• Evidence of binging
• Evidence of purging
• Excessive, Rigid exercise habits
• Unusual swelling in the cheeks or jaw area
• Calluses on the back of the hands and knuckles
• Discoloration or staining on teeth
• Creation of lifestyle schedules or rituals to make time for binge-and-purge sessions.

• Withdrawal from usual friends and activities.
• In general, behaviors and attitudes indicating that weight loss, dieting, and control of food are becoming primary concerns.
• Continued exercise despite injury; overuse injuries.

Treatment Options

• Therapies like support groups, Cognitive behavior therapy, Counseling and other forms of therapy
• Medications
• Self Care like physical exercise
• Specialists like doctors and psychologists can help

Binge Eating Disorder:

Binge eating disorder is a eating disorder of episodes of binging until the point of discomfort where the person feels out of control. Binge eating can cause

Symptoms:

• Lack of control once one begins to eat.
• Depression.
• Grief.
• Anxiety.
• Shame.
• Disgust or self-hatred about eating behaviors

Warning Signs:

• Eating large amounts of food
• Eating even when full
• Eating rapidly during binge episodes
• Frequent dieting without weight loss
• Frequently eating alone
• Hoarding food
• Hiding empty food containers

Treatment Options:

• Psychotherapy like individual counseling that focuses on changing the behavior and thinking of the patient
• Medication
• Nutrition Counseling with a specialist can help get the eating habits back on track
• Group and family therapy is very important because it helps the family members understand what is going on

Symptoms:

• Lack of control once one begins to eat.
• Depression.
• Grief.
• Anxiety.
• Shame.
• Disgust or self-hatred about eating behaviors