Tuesday,September 30

What is an infographic? If you don't know, go look it up. Read about it and then in your own words tell me what an infographic is. What do infographics do? How do they work? What makes a really good infographic?

An infographic is a picture or diagram that represents data.  It gives people a visual image of data instead of just a bunch of numbers. They need to be engaging the audience and shouldn't be boring. They add more information about a certain topic. 

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Monday, September 29

Tell me about your Homecoming weekend! If you didn't participate in the Homecoming festivities, what did you do? Share pics!

This weekend I went to Homecoming for the first time with my all of my friends. It was so fun because I got to get my hair, make up, and nails done, which I don't get done very often.  We took pictures at Sydney Renkemeyer's house and then split up into our dinner groups an my friends and our "dates" ate at Kyoto's.  It was really fun and delicious.  When we got to the dance, I expected it to be dumb and boring because that is all I heard that it was, but surprisingly I had so much fun with all of my friends.  Afterwards, we just went to a friend's house and just hung out.  It was a fun weekend overall because I also had two basketball games and went to the Homecoming football game on Friday.

 

Wednesday, September 24

Imagine Mr. Bacon has asked you to suggest one way of improving Blue Valley High School to make it a better place for students. Think about the changes that are needed at your school. Pick one change you feel would really make a difference and explain what it is and why you'd make the change.

Just from being at this high school for about a month, I really like it.  The school is great and always fun to be at but it could use some improvements.  I think that we could use some more school spirit especially during this spirit week. A lot of the people aren't dressing up because they are too afraid to look silly, when the whole point of it is to look silly and have fun.  I also think that maybe the lunch ladies could be a bit nicer.  Sometimes they take our lunch if we are negative and we have nothing to eat that day except what our friends give us and sometimes our parents just forget to put money on there.  They are either in a really happy mood or a really cranky mood. Even though there are some minor things that Blue Valley could fix, it is an awesome school overall.
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Tuesday, September 23

What are your favorite apps on your phone or tablet? Why?

I have a lot of favorite apps on my phone. Probably my favorite app is the mesages app because I enjoy texting my friends because they keep me entertained when I am bored.  My second favorite app is Bakery Story because you can build your own bakery and make cool foods and you can also play with your friends and see how quickly you can level up.  Some of my other favorite apps are Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. I like Instagram because I can see pictures from my friends' events. For example, when my friends went to homecoming at a different school I can see them and what they looked like. I like Twitter because you can tweet what is on your mind,you can see what your friends are doing, or what is trending on the web. I love using all of these apps but I should probably spend a little less time on them. 

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Monday, September 22

What is email? When do you use email in your own personal life? List reasons and ways that people use email. What do you know about "email etiquette"?

Email is a way to send stuff on the computer through your email account.  I use email to get my schedules for sports.  I also use email to send my stuff at school to myself so I can access it at home. Lastly, I use email to receive tons of junk mail!! =) Sometimes adults use email to send out important information and seem a little more professional or sometimes they just communicate through email because that is what they are used to. I don't know a lot about email etiquette but I know to keep it professional and first class. 

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Friday, September 19

Now that you've been in Emerging Technology for several weeks... what do you think? Do you think the web tools (Drive, Evernote, Bubbl, etc.) are helpful to you? Do you think they will be helpful throughout high school or even college? Explain.

I think this class has been so helpful in many ways.  The tools that I have learned how to use will be extremely helpful in the future.  I will definitely use them in the future.  I can stay organized way easier and way more efficiently. It makes it so easy to save something onto my Google drive because I can access it anywhere and I don't have to worry about it not saving or me forgetting to email it to myself. All these tools especially Evernote and Bubbl make it so much easier to do research and save the information we found fast and easy to get to.  Researching will be so much easier from now on.

Wednesday, Septmeber 17

Do you enjoy writing? When do you enjoy it? What kind of writing do you enjoy? Why do you think the ability to write is so important no matter what kind of writing it is? Give an example that you enjoyed writing or hated writing. Why?

Sometimes I enjoy writing, but it depends what I am supposed to write about.  I enjoy writing when I can choose what I want to write about.  I don't enjoy writing when it is a timed write and it is argumentative when you need to grab evidence from every article you read.  The ability to write is very important in every kind of writing because if you are told to write a certain way but you only write the way that you enjoy, then you will have a lot of difficulties trying to write a different way. One time I hated writing was when it was a timed write and I couldn't think how I could answer the question that was given so I spent a lot of time trying to think and then I was rushed writing so it wasn't my best quality of writing. 

Tuesday, September 16

Reflect on this quote. Give an example of a time in your life that this might have been the case.

i agree with this quote one hundred percent. In life you can choose to ready yourself for what is coming up that may be difficult or you can wing it and end up doing poorly. This quote could be used for a lot of things. If you have a big test coming up and you hangout with your friends instead of studying, you would be preparing yourself to fail the test that you could have done well on if you had studied. One example, that suits me more, is in sports. Softball isn't my favorite sport so I don't necessarily make it a top priority and sometimes blow off practicing at home.  Then in games I immediately regretted not spending that extra time because I messed up on something that I know I could have done right if I practiced it more.  Sometimes staying up late and being stressed out before a big test or a game, will turn out better for you rather than you blowing it off.

Monday, Septeber 15

What did you do this weekend? Share pictures if you have them!

This weekend I played in a basketball tournament on Saturday and we won!  It was really fun an I love to spend time with my teammates.  We are always laughing.  This weekend I also went to the Blue Valley game on Friday with all of my friends.  It was so fun to be a part of the high school section even though the freshman section was the worst at cheering.  We won against West and I also got to see my friends that go there, that I haven't seen in forever, so it was nice to see them again. Also, I watched the movies Cyberbully and Nonstop.  They are both really good and I liked watching both of them.

Friday, September 12

What is the importance of research? Why do you need to know how to research? What have you learned in high school about researching topics and finding quality resources? Have you had a helpful teacher that has taught you to research? Explain.

Research is important in many ways. It gives you a lot of knowledge on information you want to know and it teaches us about topics that we may need to know more about in the future.  Knowing how to research is very important.  If you don't know how to research, or set yourself up to make it easier for you to research, getting the facts that you need will be much more difficult to find.  I have learned a lot in high school so far about finding credible sources and how to make my research a lot easier.  Mrs. Edwards has taught me so much about how to know if a source is credible or not and to use databases over websites when you can. 

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Global Issue Selection-Catherine Szukalski

Global Issue Selection
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For my global issue in emerging technology, I chose homelessness.   I have begun researching the issue and you can find my research questions here.

Wednesday, September 10th

Kids these days are spoiled rotten.  They get anything they want and don't work hard towards anything.  All they do is sit around and text one another or spend all day on social media.  The amount of time they spend on their phones is ridiculous. They have to have everything that their friends have, so it is always a competition on who can have the best clothes, newest iPhone, or the best selfie. Kids are showing less and less respect for parents. The words that come out of their mouth are disrespectful and sometimes even bad words at a very young age. They need to mature and not be as crazy.

Tuesday, September 9th

Tell me about the global issue you selected. What do you already know about the issue? What are you looking forward to learning about it? Explain

I chose to do breast cancer because seems like more and more people I know are starting to get cancer. A very close friend of mine had a family member get diagnosed with breast cancer so it has had an impact on my life. Also, my mom did the three day walk for her friend who had breast cancer and it was fun to support her during that. I don't really know that much about breast cancer but I know there could be many ways to treat it. I'm looking forward to learning about the effects and what we can do to prevent from getting it. 

Monday, September 8

What did you do this weekend? Share pictures if you have them!

This weekend I went to the Blue Valley Football game at Shawnee Mission North.  It was really fun because it really felt like I was finally in high school by being able to participate in the theme, this week's was USA, and get out of the middle school section and into the high school section. It was also fun because we beat the Cougars 29-0! On Saturday, I hung out with friends and had a softball practice and we all ate pizza together afterwards.  On Sunday, I saw my cousin and aunt who just moved to Kansas. Then I went to see The Giver and ate dinner at Jose Peppers with my friends.  Overall, I had a fun weekend.

Friday, September 5th

If I could make up an imaginary report card, there would be a lot of classes that I would get an A in such as:

Watching Netflix: A
Staying up late and sleeping in: A
Making people laugh: A
Procrastinating: A
Eating junk food: A

There are some classes that I would fail such as:

Talking to boys: F
Motivation: F
Getting up when my alarm clock goes off: F
Using my time wisely: F

PSA

Wednesday, September 3

Yesterday I asked your to "think differently" and push yourself to be uncommon with your PSA project using Google Slides. Why do you think I asked you to do that? What is the point? Why not just use bullets and headers? Explain.

I think you wanted us to really try to make it unique and put in a lot of effort.  Typically we just make boring power points and it is the same thing over and over again, which probably gets old to watch and grade.  I think you wanted us to try and do something outside the box and see how well we know Google Slides.  The point is that we shouldn't always do the easiest way possible through everything but that we try to make something different and unusual. For example, I made my own gif by taking screenshots of different positions of images on my Google Slides. I also used the tool bar to make lines and shapes and try to make it more unique. We shouldn't always just use bullets because they are boring, unoriginal, and normal. 

Tuesday, September 2

Tell me all about your Labor Day weekend. What did you do? Include photos!

For Labor Day, my family went to the Lake of the Ozarks with my uncle's family and my grandma. My uncle has a boat, a jetski, and we rent a condo. It's always a blast because we go tubing, fishing, and go karting. I love that I get to see my family because they live in St. Louis, so that means we can't all get together as often as we would prefer.  My favorite part of the trip is when we went tubing because it was so choppy out on the water, we were in the air most of the time.  It did hurt extremely bad when we fell off though because we were going so fast and it was so rough.  I also enjoyed riding the jetski for the first time because we could go way faster it seemed like and we could do more turns and fun things. I always enjoy spending the time that i get to spend with my family. Photo Credits