TED talks

In this post I want to talk about a TED talk related to our project Connected, called 3 fears about screen time for kids and why they aren't true? By Sara DeWitt a worker in PBS kids, a television network directed at children. She tries to make the power of technology as positive as possible in children's life.

Sara starts the talk saying that we can be with our phone all day long but then when a child touches a screen everyone goes crazy and thinks that it's wrong for children to be with technological devices. She defends that it doesn't have to be in that way, that devices can be helpful in a child’s growth. 

Miss DeWitt talks about three main fears that all people have about this topic. It is said that screens are passive, that if a child spends a lot of time with devices he/she would never go out. So what PBS team did was create a sort of interactive videogame where children could “be” animals. Therefore, when a child shut the screen down, he could still be that animal, and when he went out he remembered what he saw in the animal, how it was, what did it eat or the differences between that animal and the others.

Sara says that another fear is that playing games on the computer is nonsense and besides it distracts the child from its obligations. The company (PBS) created a series of games called Curious George that could predict children’s abilities, they could evaluate students. To do this, they compared some data analysis from the game with the average mark of each student.

Finally, the last fear is that sometimes, people think that screens isolate them from their child. Well, Sara says that’s not true, because although you can be away from them while they are playing, the child will be so excited about the videogame he/she just played that he/she could be talking about it for hours.

 

Personal opinion

I’ve always been told that screens are harmful for our health, that they could damage your eyes, your brain, your back, etc. I have always thought that, as everything, it is harmful if you abuse that thing. I mean, obviously that you are going to have bad eyesight if you have been watching a series or the computer for 20 hours without stop, but if you use it in the right way there is no need of this to happen. 

On the other hand I think that children around the age of 3 years old, as the video says, shouldn’t be playing with computers or tablets so early; they should be exploring the world, discovering new things every day. It’s true that society progresses and maybe there are a lot of new ways to make a child discover things through a screen, but well, I believe it’s always more fun to hear the noise of an actual cow, rather than hearing it from a tablet.

Another thing that the video mentions is about learning or evaluating through videogames. Regarding this matter, I think the idea is quite good, but as a supplement, because yes, you can learn some skills from videogames that maybe a book wouldn’t give you, but there are things such as grammar, maths or physical education that a videogame can’t give you. In addition, I believe that it could be useful until a certain age, because as kids grow up maybe they won’t be as excited to play videogames as they were as children.

To sum up I want to say that it’s true that new technologies can help us a lot, but it’s also true that they can be harmful if we don’t use them in a correct way.

https://www.ted.com/talks/sara_dewitt_3_fears_about_screen_time_for_kids_and_why_they_re_not_true/transcript?language=ca

Christmas holidays

In this post I want to talk about Christmas and how I spend it year every year. To me, Christmas is the most beautiful celebration of the year, in fact it is the only thing that I like about winter (because I hate cold, and being an onion with all the jackets, scarfs and jumpers). A lot of people think that Christmas is becoming a materialistic holiday, and yes, obviously the industry gets a lot of money from all the presents, but I don’t think that Christmas has to lose its magic because of this. Apart from spending time with my family, the thing I love the most of Christmas time is the atmosphere; I mean, everyone is in the streets doing their Christmas shopping, the streets are full of lights and people singing Christmas carols… Everything is so magical and it reminds me when I was little and the eagerness I felt during these special dates.

As a tradition every year we decorate our Christmas tree on the long weekend of December, and then it’s when I feel that Christmas is about to start. When the school trimester comes to an end, me and my family pack the suitcase and hit the road to Barcelona. We used to stay in Barcelona from the 23^rd to the 27^th but this year for certain circumstances we only spent one night there, which makes me very sad because we almost didn’t have time to spend with my grandparents. But well, we had lunch all together on Christmas day, which by the way it was delicious and I couldn’t eat more. The following day we got back on the road to arrive to Albacete. We stayed there from the 26^th to the 3^rd of January. There we did a lot of things with our family; we were having lunch all together day in and day out, my grandmother took me and my cousins to the cinema, I saw my friends from there and all the time we spent there was great and perfect. Regarding New Year’s Eve, my sister and I used to spend it having dinner with all my family, but the last two years, although our heart hurt because we love having New Year’s dinners with our family, we decided to spend it with our friends in the village we go to in the summer. Well, after these Christmas days, the 3^rd of January we took the car again, but this time to go to a little village in Huesca to finish the holidays snowboarding. Apart from some falls, to be the second time we did snowboarding, it was quite good.

I have to say that my Christmas holidays have been perfect and every year is better than the year before.

Research project

Last 15^th of January, the nightmare of the research project ended forever, no more stressing about the deadlines, no more experiments, no more surfing on the net for hours and hours to get information. It’s true that the paper itself, was delivered before Christmas, but we still had to do the presentation after Christmas so the stress of doing that was there.

I remember when I was in first of batxillerat and all the teachers told us that the students of second of batxillerat were doing the presentation of the projects, and I thought it was so far away from me, I mean, it was one year away, but here we are with all the work done.
We’ve been searching for information, reading articles, looking for experiments to do, and preparing the paper all summer long, to start the new school year with less work to do, yet, during the first trimester we had to do a lot of things, apart from all we had to do from high school (homework, essays, studying for exams…). In my case, although I had the theoretical part pretty advanced, I still had to keep doing it because it wasn’t as perfect as I wanted. On the other hand, I had to start the practical part, I knew what I wanted to do, but I had to do it, so I missed some classes to go to the lab, I had to stay in high school some afternoons… Even though I had to spend a lot of time, it wasn’t so bad given that I was doing something I like and I want to study it in the future.

Once I had all the paper done, I had to focus on the presentation, so I prepared my presentation, and I waited until my turn. I had the presentation at 5:30 pm therefore I saw a lot of my classmates going into their classrooms, and coming out happy and relieved while I was there super nervous. When the time came, I went into the class and I remember the worse moment ever was putting the pen in the computer and standing beside the screen. Once I said the first two phrases, everything else was so easy and fluid. When I ended, I was so overjoyed, I couldn’t believe that it was finally over; I felt so relieved and euphoric at the same time.

Nowadays, I can say that I am so proud of all that I have done and the mark I got. I’m so happy about the ending of all this stress, but, although the TdR is finished, we have to keep studying until selectivity. 

My future

The future is uncertain, unstoppable and for sure that it will be pretty different from what you expect. I'm going to explain to you how it would be in my perfect future.

In my perfect future I would be very rich, so rich that I wouldn't have to study anymore, with that money, I would travel with Fatine, to every country in the world. We would go to 5 star hotels but also we would have houses distributed in the 5 continents to stay there when we want to be quiet.We would have a lot of dogs and animals, and we would help everyone who would need it. This would be my perfect future, but since this wouldn't happen because money finishes I'm going to explain you something a little bit more realistic.

My future will start tomorrow, I will continue my studies and I will finish batxillerat, hopefully with good marks. I will do selectivity and I will pass it with good marks, my goal is to get a 12 in selectivity to study biomedical science, but since that is quite difficult I will be content with a 10 to enter in some career connected with biology. Before I'll start the career I will take a sabbatical year to travel with my friend Fatine. Since we aren't rich and we won't be in 2 years, we will use workaway. Workaway is a site to travel cheap, it localizes people that need some kind of help and people who wants to travel, so the hosts publish what kind of help they need and what they give in exchange, so the thing is, you can travel around the world only paying the flights and working with a family a few hours a week, in exchange they would let you stay in their house or they would pay you a hotel and they would give you something to eat. We will have to work hard in the summers to save money to cover the flights and we will be travelling for a year. After this amazing trip, we will start our career, as I said before I will study something related with biology because in the future I want to work on a laboratory discovering new solutions to end illnesses. In my years in college I will live in a flat in Barcelona with my friends. When I finish my career, I will take another sabbatical year to travel to celebrate that I finished my studies. After this year, I will start working in some biological lab and I will discover the solutions to many illnesses. From then I'm not very sure about what will happen, maybe I'll have a husband and we will raise a family, or maybe I'll keep living with my friends. One thing I know for sure is that I want to travel as much as I can, and that I will have a dog.

As I said before, this can o can't happen but it doesn't matter, the only thing I want for my future is to do the things that I want and be happy.

New year's resolutions

I think that everyone should set himself/herself some thing to do during the year or life, here are mine:

-Visit as many places as possible

Considering that nowadays, because of my situation (I'm studying, I'm not 18..) I can't travel by myself and go everywhere,, this year I want to visit everywhere that is in my scope.

-Improve in my marks

This term has been hard for me but I think that in some subjects I can do better, so this year I'm going for it.

-Enjoy every moment 

We only have one life, so we have to enjoy it. This year I want to stop bothering myself with little problems,because there are people dealing with bigger problems and I think I have to be happy and appreciate the life I have.

-Learn new languages

This year I'd like to learn new languages, this is a little bit difficult so, if I can't I want to improve my English. I think that knowing different languages is important in life. I love travelling and during my life I want to visit a lot of different countries and places, so it's important to know languages.

-Eat healthier

I think I eat a healthy diet, it's important not only to have a fit body but also for your health. I don't eat a lot of fruit, and I know it's good for the body, so I want to eat more of it. Also I want to stop eating things like kinder bueno, kitkat, and stuff like that.

-Start working on summer

That's a thing I want, but at the same time I don't want to do. I want to start working because I want to earn my own money. But I don't want to because this summer we have to do the TDR, and if I work and I also have to do the TDR, I won't have time to do anything, and I want to enjoy summer. Also, I don't want to work because I would have to work July and August, and every August since I remember I have been in Carcelen with my friends and family.

-Save money

I always have been terrible at saving money, if I have money in my hands I will spend it. So this year I bought a money box and when somebody gives me money (at Christmas, on my birthday..), I put a part of the money box and the other part I spend.

Lets see how many of my goals I can achieve!

Christmas time

I think that aside summer, Christmas time is the most beautiful time of the year. All the cities become full of light, you spent time with your family and friends, you don't have school (although it seems that you have, because of all the homework). 

Every year I spent Christmas eve, Christmas day, and "St. Esteve" in Barcelona with my grandparents and cousins, and this year it wasn't going to be different, but in the end, we didn't spend "St. Esteve" in Barcelona. Well, we end high school the 22nd of December, so I decided that the days before going on vacations will be relax days, so I didn't do anything. The 24th we took the car and we went on our way to Barcelona. Once we were there, we had lunch and we went for a walk. We saw a lot of Christmas lights (one thing that I love from Christmas is drift around and see the Christmas lights). When we went home, we had dinner with my cousins Ariana and Alex, my uncles, and my grandparents. In Christmas we prepared a very long table, for all my cousins and "second" cousins. We ate a lot of food, first of all we ate "galets", after that we ate like a big meat balls, the third plate were crayfish, the fourth was chicken and the last one was fruit salad. There was a lot of food so I didn't eat anything more. The day after we took the car and we went to Albacete, 5 hours later, we were in my grandmother's house. In Albacete I did a lot of things, I meet my friends there (I only see them three times a year so I miss them so much), I went to the cinema with my cousin, I went shopping, I went for a walk every day with my grandmother, etc. I spent the last day of the year with my friends, we went to Carcelen (the village where we spend the summer) and we had dinner, we ate the 12 grapes and we went to the party. We spent a great night together, and I could say that this have been the best beginning of the year ever.

In general, I think that this holidays have been so short, maybe it's because I had a very good time.