One News Article

China not only had a terrible earthquake, but also an up coming disastrous flood. The New York Times has provided a news article about the possible flood in China, Shanghai. The earthquake occurred in May 12th, 2007, Sitchuan. It was shacking so hard that even parts of Taiwan was a little bit effected. It caused about 67,000 death in main land China, and about 20,000 are still missing. Beside, if you look at the bigger picture, that is not it. There is still a possibility of having a horrible flood coming up. Since the earth quake had caused some damaged to the dam, which is in Tangjiashan, and it had been raining during the beginning of May. It raised up the water level while the dam is already in danger. So now the Chinese also need to dig sluiceways to slowly transfer the water out of the dam.

An 8th Grader's Perspective (THE STORY)

I'm still reading my flashcards, I made last night, in the school bus. I wish Justin and Eugene could shut up because it's really hard for me to concentrate. Better yet, I hope the bus would break down again like last week, so I could possibly skip today's all-school gathering. The best thing about going to school by bus is that no one can blame you when you get to school late. Anyway...shoot, I think we are almost there. Why does Mr. Perkins like to have us presenting during all-school gathering so badly? He probably enjoys seeing us embarrass ourselves. I never really know what I was talking about, when I was up there. It might be a whole different story if I could use Chinese to present... No, wait, actually, I don't know. You might think, "heh, it's only about fifty-sixty people starring at you," but, no, it's not that easy. I'd rather present to a thousand people that I don't know. I hate it when all the ones I know looked at me while I am speaking. Especially that most of them would come and talk to me about my presentation. Sometimes even when they say things like, "you got a nice presentation there," it somehow still sound so sarcastic. Alright, we just arrived, and, no, we are not late at all. In fact, I think I still have about three minutes. I don't know. The clock on the top of the school building is never correct.

When I got upstairs, I don't see any of the other eighth graders were still looking through their flashcards or whatever that they needed for their presentation. I wonder if it were that they all gave up. Daniel got up first. He always had that kind of luck. I couldn't hear him well due to both his breathing into the microphone and my anxiety. After Daniel, just when I was saying to myself, "not me, not me..." I hear Mr. Perkins asked, "you want to go up next? Okay you go up next." There I go, standing in front of sixty or so people, all the ones that I know... And the next thing I remember was the moment I woke up in Ms. Chen's office.

Bann Cell Phones??

I always thought that it is unnecessary to use cell phones at school. There is no need for any student to make any phone call while at school, whatsoever. Even if a student needs to make a phone call, she or he can always borrow a phone from the school. However, the news report from Tech Learning shows how cell phones can be a necessary tool for education. The way the schools use cell phones is pretty similar to how we use computers in learning. Though, I still don't think it's necessary. Why is it OK to use computers but not cell phones? Because cell phones are not easy to type things out. I sometimes use my cell phone to text message my friends, and it always takes about ten minutes just to have a few sentence down. Beside, I mainly use informal language, or the MSN language, in those messages, so I can't imagine how long it will take when it comes to serious school work. Another thing that cell phones would not work as good as computers do is that you can not use cell phones to do research. Unless your cell phone is really high tech.
Comparing the use of cell phones and computers for education, the only things cell phones would be better are simply that cell phones are cheaper and easier to carry. But they are way harder to "communicate" I would rather hand write my 10 pages of research paper than typing a paragraph of a reflection with my tiny cell phone. In the conclusion, the idea of using cell phones in education is cleaver, but it's not so practical. Even if all the students follow the rules and not chatting by their phones in class, it is still hard for them to do school work. So, no, I still believe cell phones should not be used during school time.


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An 8th Grader's Perspective

We were to write a very short story of an eighth grader's experience of going to have a presentation during all-school gathering. I thought it was pretty hard to do, at first, because it's always uneasy to try writing with someone else's perspective. However, during the process, I figured out an easy way of doing it. Since one of the eighth graders, Connie Chiu, takes the same bus as I do, so I could write a story base on what she might be thinking in the bus.

There's probably not much for me to add. I am done with it as in a very short story form. There are some details I could add on, but I don't think those are necessary when it comes to a "very short story".

Short Stories Reflection

The first story I read was called "It's Just The Sun Rising." I like the author's writing style, mainly because I found it pretty similar to my own. The story talks about how his family and that he draws a portrait of his father every year. There might be some symbolism going on, however, I don't see any but that may be that I didn't find it myself. He tells the story in a well constructed manner, though. Although I didn't actually "learn" anything from him, but I could pretty much have a good sense of how his family, life, and feelings. Although he did not show much dialog or with his family, his description on how they are really allows you to know them.

The other one is called "The Alien Encounter" written by an eleven year-old. I knew he was eleven year-old because the description says so. However, you could still guess that he is not young, according to the story. I don't know how I can explain this. If you go and read it, you can tell the story line is naive. I don't mean whether it is good or bad. It's just naive. The tone of the story doesn't sound naive, though. His voice actually sounds a lot more mature than what most people would expect to hear from an eleven year-old. I like "It's Just The Sun Rising"s voice better, though, because it sounds more like someone is telling the story, unlike "The Alien Encounter" which sounds too much like a story and personally, I think it loses the "feeling" of the story. It's like what the OWL site mentions, "do more telling than showing." He spends more time on describing things rather than showing them to the readers and let them have their own opinions.