Reading #1 - “Hills Like White Elephants” - 4/3/2013
From the short stories collection of Ernest Hemingway, we have the story “Hills Like White Elephants”. It takes place in a train station of the Ebro’s Valley, Spain. In one side of the station there’s a bar where an American guy have some beer and liquor with his girlfriend, Jig. During that time, Jig enjoys the view of the mountains and says that “they look like white elephants,” referring to the color of the valley through the trees. Between some dialog, they got to the point where they discuss about an operation he wants her to go through. She doesn't like to do it and they keep talking about it for a while. The barmaid tells them that the train was coming. He went to the station but there was nothing approximating around. Then, he went back outside the bar to see the girl, who had a broad smile, and she answer that everything was fine and there was nothing wrong with her.
Reading #2- "Paper Permanence" - 4/5/2013
Many people consider that paper is going to disappear from our lives soon. The popularity of e-books has been increased. The convenience of having thousands of electronic books in a small device and the easy access to information makes it a good choice for people’s learning. Some people think, however, that it’s soon to consider this technology reliable enough to use it on education. Computers and electronic devices often fails. Sometimes information get lost between viruses and forgotten passwords. This issues can be easily fixed with good security practices, like changing passwords often and making them hard to guess. So, why don’t better get advantage of the benefits that electronic media has to offer to education? There is a huge amount of e-books accessible from any mobile device with an internet connection out there.
Reading #3- "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business." - 4/8/2013
The Power of Habits, from Charles Duhigg, is a good way to understand how habits work on people's mind and how can we get rid of the bad ones. On its prologue, the book starts talking about how a group of scientists study Lisa Allen, a 32 years old woman with a smoking addiction. They observed and studied her brain activity. Besides her addiction, Lisa had problems with her husband up to the divorce. For this reason she was wanting some changes in her life, so she started to think about life goals. Then her decision to quit smoking was the key that took her to a new life. There was more energy and vitality on her. The biggest accomplish was the scientists' discovery that her new goals had been replacing the old habits neuronal connections on her brain. Studying the story of Lisa, they understood better how people change some habits.
Reading #4 - "Train Ride, Canada" from the National Geographic Photography website (http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/girl-portrait-canada/) - 4/10/2013
"Train Ride, Canada" is a picture that Tatum Wulff, a photo-blogger, posted for the National Geographic website. It shows a Mennonite girl, who belongs to a Protestant-Christian community, looking out of a train window with destination Waterloo station on Ontario, Canada. The photographer said that "This candid photo was taken in October of 2012, but it feels timeless to me." In the picture, we can see the curiosity of her gaze towards the photographer. It was like a link between the young girl and the photo artist. As the online magazine-editor Alexa Keefe pointed on the narrative of the picture, the usage of black and white made this scene "timeless."
Reading #5 - "Try something New for 30 Days", Matt Cutts (TED.com) - 4/15/2013
"Think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it" is how Matt Cutts starts his video on the website TED.com. On his conference, he encourage us to try a new thing for thirty days, with the objective to create a new habit that improve our life. As an example of this, for many people is hard to start a diet or exercise, or even write a novel. However, this video was inspiring because is a good idea to take chances and try whatever we always wanted. It would be good personal-growing experience to free ourselves from a bad habit and have new energies to go on with the life.
Many people consider that paper is going to disappear from our lives soon. The popularity of e-books has been increased. The convenience of having thousands of electronic books in a small device and the easy access to information makes it a good choice for people’s learning. Some people think, however, that it’s soon to consider this technology reliable enough to use it on education. Computers and electronic devices often fails. Sometimes information get lost between viruses and forgotten passwords. This issues can be easily fixed with good security practices, like changing passwords often and making them hard to guess. So, why don’t better get advantage of the benefits that electronic media has to offer to education? There is a huge amount of e-books accessible from any mobile device with an internet connection out there.
Reading #3- "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business." - 4/8/2013
The Power of Habits, from Charles Duhigg, is a good way to understand how habits work on people's mind and how can we get rid of the bad ones. On its prologue, the book starts talking about how a group of scientists study Lisa Allen, a 32 years old woman with a smoking addiction. They observed and studied her brain activity. Besides her addiction, Lisa had problems with her husband up to the divorce. For this reason she was wanting some changes in her life, so she started to think about life goals. Then her decision to quit smoking was the key that took her to a new life. There was more energy and vitality on her. The biggest accomplish was the scientists' discovery that her new goals had been replacing the old habits neuronal connections on her brain. Studying the story of Lisa, they understood better how people change some habits.
Reading #4 - "Train Ride, Canada" from the National Geographic Photography website (http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/girl-portrait-canada/) - 4/10/2013
"Train Ride, Canada" is a picture that Tatum Wulff, a photo-blogger, posted for the National Geographic website. It shows a Mennonite girl, who belongs to a Protestant-Christian community, looking out of a train window with destination Waterloo station on Ontario, Canada. The photographer said that "This candid photo was taken in October of 2012, but it feels timeless to me." In the picture, we can see the curiosity of her gaze towards the photographer. It was like a link between the young girl and the photo artist. As the online magazine-editor Alexa Keefe pointed on the narrative of the picture, the usage of black and white made this scene "timeless."
Reading #5 - "Try something New for 30 Days", Matt Cutts (TED.com) - 4/15/2013
"Think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it" is how Matt Cutts starts his video on the website TED.com. On his conference, he encourage us to try a new thing for thirty days, with the objective to create a new habit that improve our life. As an example of this, for many people is hard to start a diet or exercise, or even write a novel. However, this video was inspiring because is a good idea to take chances and try whatever we always wanted. It would be good personal-growing experience to free ourselves from a bad habit and have new energies to go on with the life.
Reading #6 - "How to Do One Thing at a Time" (Adapted from Women's Health Magazine, May 2010) - 4/16/2013
Recent studies and and articles reveal that the brain works better doing one thing at a time. The evidences showed that when people perform multi-tasking, the things are not done as good as they were doing it one at a time. However, they pointed that there are ways to improve our concentration, like soing yoga and other alike activities.
Reading #7- “Thank You Ma’m." Langston Huges. 4/23/2013
“Thank You Ma’m” written by Langston Hughes relates the story of Roger, a young robber who tried to steal Ms. Jones one night right on the street. Ms. Jones, an old lady grabbed him. She cared about him, taking him home. She treated him like her son and taught him to do the right things. He was moved by her compassion since he could not steal when he had another chance to do it.
Great job for this week's entries, Natasha!
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