Category: Grade 9

Floral Decadence- Mini Inquiry Poem

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Theme: Environment/hubris; Inquiry Question: Why do we only focus on the tangible or the material in our culture?

Floral Decadence

Us frail flowers, flutter and flurry,

Fearing your declares.

Our dainty delicate florets,

Becoming mangled with many tears;

 

A manmade monstrous machine

May make its way to our empire,

Where it leaves all of our leaves,

In a big blustering smoke of fire.

 

To wish if only we could escape

The evil enemies that emerged,

In our humble home where

Harmful Homo sapiens have occurred.

 

Who knew you loved us not,

When you plucked our pretty petals.

Who knew you found pure joy

In turning meadows into metals.

 

Your destruction- is it pleasing?

Dealing death to our domain?

Don’t you care your conscious cruelty

Left our daisies copper-stained?

 

Plants are perished, weeds are withered,

Stems are slashed, ground is gritty.

One more canvas cleared,

For the cultivating city.

 

Your greedy group may one day gain

Our pure and grass-fed power,

But how will you ever forget,

That you filched it from a flower?

 

Floral Decadence is a short, structured poem that talks about how the need for control is taking over humanity. It seems to tell how we only focus on the tangible things in the world and don’t appreciate the intangible, such as natures beauty, and once we finally do realize its importance, it will no longer exist. The world has been around way longer than humans, but these last few generations have begun to neglect the very thing that gave us a life to live in the first place. Kaitlyn’s poem touches on the problem of how our mankind has been taking advantage of nature. People are becoming very selfish, and Floral Decadence mention’s the negative affect it has on the earth itself. The world’s natural beauty is one of the most indescribable experiences one could have in their life, and it is so important that we take care of it, so others have the chance to do the see it for themselves. I think what Kaitlyn is trying to say, is that if we see power as the most valuable thing in our lives, we will end up destroying the things we care for, and need, the most.

Hubbard2017DAReflections

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Article 1:

This article was basically about people who were creating fake accounts and using them to input their own opinions “anonymously”. It makes me really angry, seeing how people would use fake identities to do this just to make a point. Its also kind of scary, knowing that there are actually people out there who would go this far to get their opinions out there. It makes me realize just how cautious you have to be when a stranger “adds” you on social media, and how you shouldn’t put out information that people can use against you. I have learned a lot about the Digital Footprint this year, and seeing this adds to the fact of how important it is to be aware of what you do and what you put on the internet, because now there is actual proof showing the types of people who take advantage of stuff like that.

Article 2:

This article talks about how people are pretending to have lost their family or friends from the Manchester incident to get retweets and likes and attention. This is really disgusting to me, because this is a real incident that actually happened to people, and the fact that people use this to get attention is so disheartening. There are actually people who did in fact lose their family and friends, and now people may be questioning if they are lying or not too. It is so insensitive to the situation, being such a serious one that just recently happened. I just can’t believe people would use situations like this to get attention. I would have never thought our generation of people to be this unkind.The part about the article that talks about how “Common sense says that a version published a few hours after the incident probably isn’t done properly”. It makes sense, because in that short amount of time, it is very difficult to get the full information about the incident, and that probably means most of the info is untrue. I will take this piece of information into consideration when I encounter articles quickly posted after, so I can get the real information, instead of the fake.

Now, after reading both these articles, I have learned that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on the internet, because people will go to the extreme to get what they want, whether it is attention or putting out opinions. When I read things online, I will make sure to keep an eye out for situations like these that are fake, and make sure others around me do the same. I hope people will realize just how wrong this is, and eventually put a stop to it.

Data Analysis Thoughts

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I think statistics have a big role in the society because it applies to a lot of everyday things. We need statistics to help us understand pieces of information, or help us make a decision based on recorded facts and trends. I don’t really know much about statistics, but I do know that if we didn’t have them, it would be a lot harder to interpret info.

AFTER READING THE ARTICLE:

After I read the article, I learned that statistics are very helpful for things like the weather forecast, and medical information and history, which are both things that require statistics to help people make the right decisions on things. With knowing statistics about those two things, people can make decisions like what they are going to wear according to the weather, or if a certain medical treatment was successful in the past.

Problems with Statistics:

There are a lot of problems with statistics, such as faulty statistics, which is basically when a statistic that my not be necessarily true is used to authenticate a point or argument. Another problem is bad sampling, which is when a group of people is chosen to take a poll or sampler, but it is sampled towards a crowd that may be biased to the questions. This results in a statistic that is not completely accurate, and when it is used, it could mislead people into thinking that is how majority of the community thinks, though that is not really true. The problem of unfair poll questions go along with this. Some may phrase a question in a certain way to encourage people to answer in a particular way. Many polls are rigged in this way, so you have to think what the questions is really trying to say. Also there is a problem with misleading poll statistics, which is when a statistic is released, but doesn’t provide all the information, and that can make the poll seem different or more exaggerated than it really is. A poll can seem shocking, but it may only be because it is under certain circumstances. Also polls can be misleading when someone is showing a change between specific dates or times. Information can be manipulated depending on which two end points of the data you want to use, so in some cases, the chosen dates or times can be completely arbitrary, making the information between them seem  a certain way. Another problem with statistics is when some use qualifiers, which means when someone wants to make information sound more impressive, they would use certain words to make the category more specific and therefore easier to be ranked higher in it. And finally, there is the problem of percentages. Even if a statistic is correct, people can make it sound more dramatic by either using the percentage or actual number. Depending on the total, a percentage can make a stat look bigger or smaller, though it is the same as the real number. As you can see, Though statistics are very useful, they can easily manipulated to make you think a certain way, so you have to ask yourself what the information is really about, and what context it is in.

Whirligig Introductory Assignment

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BREAKING NEWS!

Are Humans Falling Apart?

By Kaitlyn Shaw on March 30th, 2017

            I have witnessed the mysterious “human” creatures for the first time in my entire life, and the sightings were quite a tale. I took a trip over to the planet Earth, and learned many things about the habitants at the high school Riverside. Such things like their newfound obsession for an object called a “phone”. This small, glowing rectangle seems to be a new form of communication for the humans. The humans talk into this “phone”, which supposedly is getting transferred to other humans who also have phones. Why not just talk to each other face to face? They use their phone for many other odd activities as well. Things such as sending digital letters, or “texting”, and looking at photographs through an application called “Instagram”. If they wanted to see what that other human did on their vacation so badly, why not just ask them? This form of communication, if used long term, will eventually isolate these humans. These humans also seem to be very worried, stressed you might say, about things as simple as who likes what they are wearing that day. They get very insecure about how other humans see them. They seem to have so much stress that they do things like consume a beverage called “alcohol” or consume “drugs”, which makes the humans act really funny and giddy. It makes them do stupid things that could risk their own life. I went undercover as a teenage human girl and headed to a “party”, a social gathering human’s have to have fun. They were moving around really weird, which is apparently called “dancing”, and there was a lot of alcohol and drugs there. I asked one human girl about it and she said, “yah you should try it, its cool”. Apparently consuming these things makes you look cool to the other humans. After my trip, I have come to the conclusion that the behavior of the humans will eventually break them apart, physically and mentally, seeing that they continue their new forms of communication and ways of life.