Poking the Puddle

One of are english assignments is to find out more about the whole KONY 2012 campaign. These are some questions answered from the invisible children website.

1.       A foreign affairs article says that the number of child abductions and the severity of his crimes “Jenkins maintained Wednesday that the numbers of child abductions the charity uses are not exaggerated. They are often the same numbers are greatly exaggerated. Jedediah Jenkins, director of idea development for Invisible Children, replied, as the ones used by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.”

2.       They say that they need to credit the government more.

This is far from an official answer, but Uganda is and has been a war torn country. I think they  have more than their fair share of stuff to deal with.

3.       The financials are shady.  Invisible Children answers this statement saying “The organization spent 80.46% on our programs that further our three-fold mission; 16.24% on administration and management costs; and 3.22% on direct fundraising in Fiscal Year 2011.” There total cost of the Invisible Children organization comes to about $8,894,630 which makes sense when you think about all the programs and the resources that they need to fund and supply, along with still exiting project like building schools and communities. To further understand see chart below.

See URL below for chart.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html

Stats for editorial

These are some stats I had to find for my up coming editorial. Enjoy.

Technology addiction amongst teenagers is having a disruptive effect on their learning, according to new research published today by Cranfield School of Management (UK). Over a third (39.3%) of 11-18 year olds surveyed admitted that text shortcuts damaged the quality of their written English, particularly in terms of spelling.

http://phys.org/news171819640.html

The study also examined how different technologies were used in an education context. “Shockingly,” said Professor Andrew Kakabadse, “a high proportion of teenagers (59.2%) admitted to inserting information straight from the internet into schoolwork, without actually reading or changing it. Almost a third (28.5%) deemed this as acceptable practice despite recognising that such behaviour is considered plagiarism.”

http://phys.org/news171819640.html

Over 60% of the respondents admitted to being “very” or “quite” addicted to the internet, while over 50% are addicted to their mobile phones. The report also revealed that students spend, on average, 1-2 hours a day on social network sites.

http://phys.org/news171819640.html

190 million households will use a next-generation video game console in 2012.

http://www.grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13

80% of an expected 190 million households, 148 million households, with next generation video game consoles will have this console connected to the Internet.

http://www.grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13

Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).

http://www.grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13

Over the past five years the amount of time the average 8- to 18-year-old spent with media is up by 1 hour, 17 minutes a day -- from 6 hours, 21 minutes in 2004 to 7 hours, 38 minutes now.

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/635134.html

http://apps.ksbe.edu/kscholars/blog/aunty-lovina/what-do-teens-spend-their-money

Addictive individuals can spend and average of 70 or 80 hours a week playing these games, reserving little time for work, social life, school or even sleep

http://www.streetdirectory.com/etoday/video-game-addiction-statistics-ecpwcu.html

A new study finds that one in ten youths, aged 8 to 18, show unhealthy and pathological signs of video game addiction. Researcher Douglas Gentile, from Iowa State University, found that 8.5 percent of 1,178 youths studied are addicted to video games, using the same standards for addiction used for pathological gamblers.

http://www.emaxhealth.com/1020/22/30539/video-game-addiction-unhealthy-youth.html

Writing Sprint Log #004

So I'm back to writing sprints again, hope you enjoy.

So this writing sprint is in regards to poster being ripped down. The posters were regarding the KONY 2012 campaign. This is what I had to say.

There is no reason why posters should be torn down or defiled. If people want to put their own anti-KONY literature they can go ahead and do it. But dont be annoying and rip other peoples posters.

Another thing, before you go and start ripping posters and preaching against, INFORM YOURSELF! Dont ct like you know what your taking about if you hae done the research and you cant back it up. If you have a problem with what is being shown and you dont agree, research and get you facts staight and ten make your own conclusions, and make an educated conclusion not a crazy irrational one.

Anyways, thanks for reading my rant (writing sprint) and have a good rest of the week.

See ya later.

Avery Johnson's iPhone

For those who like halo, this is SGT/MAJ Johnson's iphone.

24 hours without the wonders of Technology.

So I (like everyone else in my English class) was challenged to to one of two things. To go a whole 24 hours without my best friend ( Technology), or to log every minute I used technology. I honestly didn't want to log everything so I went 24 hours without tech.

It was really easy at first, if I do say so myself. My friend tried to get me to look at technology but I did not give in. So far so good.

Then I got home and I did some homework ( as painful as it was). My brother, however, went and played video games when I was in the room. I was hard to resist.
Once I was done my homework I went and... and... Well I had no clue what to do. It occurred to me that I didn't do much besides video games. That is currently changing.

So next day was fine, except one of my teachers didn't believe that I was doing 24 hours without tech. I had to convince him that I was by telling him to ask my English teacher. He told me to read the rest of the class.
For the rest of the rest of the day I was fine. At 2:00 pm I got my tech back. I was happy. But something worried me, I was actually reading instead of playing video games, maybe I should try it more often.

Anyways see you next post, and thanks for reading.

Writnig Sprint Log #003

This will be my third and final writing sprint for awhile. The question was: If you could have your cell phone in your head, would you? The answer:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! That would be so annoying, having texts going on in my head. I don't even like my text tone. Plus if I was driving it would a be a major hazard, like I'm peacefully driving and a text appears on my eyes, next thing I know, I'm getting hit by a semi truck. Plus I have no cool apps and it would not serve much of a purpose because it works fine out of my head.

Thanks for Reading and always remeber you can bring a horse to water, but who wants to?

Writing Sprinting #002

The questions for this writing sprint are:

Can you go a day without you cell phone?
Can you go a week without your cell phone?
How many texts have you received in the past 24 hours.

Keep in mind the answer is NOT current and I didn't write and post in the same day.

1) Yes I can go  without my cell phone, purely because I've done it before and it didn't make a difference.
2) see answer 1
3) I haven't actually got any texts because I haven' text any one. I guess I'm busy and I don't check my phone and I certainly haven't text  anyone because of that fact. On top of that I see most of them every day so I don't feel the need to text.

That's that, see ya next post.

Writing Sprint Log #001

This is my response to one of the writing sprint questions. The question was: What would the perfect school for you be like. My answer is the following:

If there was a perfect school out there for me ( highly doubtful), it would probably have a lot to do with Gundams, rock music, Naruto, aircraft piloting, lots of sciences (quantum physics, chemistry, particle physic, astro physics, etc). There would be a lot obstacle courses and gymnast training for Physical Education. There would be various mechanics and shops courses. There would literally be food in every room in the school and juice fountains. Music would be playing on the intercom all the time (preferably rock music). There would be know desks at all, instead there would be recliners and fold out desks. There would be no exams and you could finish courses on your own time. Lastly there would be absolutely no beep test.

That would be my perfect school, but alas such a school doesn't exist. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Digital Footprint

This is a visual representation of my partial digital footprint. Notice the nerdy online games on both pc, Xbox, and PS3. As well, a variety of anime tv shows and manga and favorite video games. I even included a doodle of my personal cellular device (or cell phone).
Enjoy 8).

The Start of My Blog

Hello fellow blogger/blog readers. My name is Nik, and I just started blogging. I must say that blogging was certainly something that I would have considered, but now that I'm here I can barely contain my ideas for my blog. Actually the reason I started blogging was because of an English assignment, but I hope that I will continue outside of school and that lots of you fellow blogger/blog readers will follow my blog.

Just to shed a little light on me (as an individual) I like the Japanese television series Gundam, and my favourite out of the whole Gundam franchise would have to be Gundam 00 (double-oh). I take martial arts and I am a blue belt going on brown soon. I am into video games and stuff like that as well as movies. I like school, though I don't show it often, and I try hard for grades I know I deserve. Lastly I know the name I gave my blog is a little... prideful, but I hope it will be awesome to all bloggers who read.

Till next time.