I wonder... How long did it take me to write this blog post?

This week for my curiosity blog post, I decided to challenge myself to do three curiosity topics. These three topics are based on education, Psychology, and Social media. Feel free to comment and ask any questions! 

Education: How have modern technologies changed the way of teaching?
This question is very relevant to the present because technology is such an important thing. Many people rely on technology during this time and age. This made we think about how much education has changed because of technology. Learning is now ubiquitous because it is accessible because of technology. Learning is now more than a teacher writing information on a chalkboard. New hardware and software are emerging constantly to provide teachers with a way to make sure that students are engaged while learning. In a 2016 report by Ofcom, they found that 41% of 5-15-year-olds own a smartphone, while 44% of 5-15-year-olds own a tablet. These numbers increase by around 90% for people aged 16-24. For this reason, many schools and universities are now using portable devices instead of using books as a learning tool. According to a study commisioned by education technology charity tablets for schools, which looked at a representative sample of 671 states and independent establishments, nearly 70% of primary and high schools in the UK now use tablets or computers. Use of these devices can vary from class to class, but further research has shown that technology can help children that struggle with school. The internet is a powerful learning tool that provides access to information about anything around the world in a large range of formats, such as video, slideshow presentations, games, blog and many more! Many schools already have WIFI access. Equipping schools with WIFI that is fast, secure and safe will help teachers maximize the value of the internet in their own classroom. With the internet, students can show more creativity when doing projects and presentations. Classrooms used to be a room, with four walls, 24 desks and a shiny apple on a teachers desk. But with technology, classrooms have evolved into an amazing, immersive experience. With new wireless technology, learning doesn't stop when the bell rings and the students leave the room. With platforms such as google docs and google forms, students are able to collaborate and help improve each other's work. They have a chance to work with teachers and get feedback from each other. Students that do homeschooling can use Skype or another video chat platform can work with teachers over video chat! Modern technologies have molded learning in a new way that we never saw coming 55 years ago! 

Psychology: Is stress really harmful?
Feeling stressed can be perfectly normal, especially during times like exams. You might find that being stressed can motivate you to focus on your work, but then again, at other times you feel overwhelmed and can't focus on anything. While stress affects everyone in different ways, there are two major types of stress: Stress that's beneficial and motivating- good stress- and stress that causes anxiety and even health problems-bad stress. According to experts, stress is a burst of energy that basically advises you on what to do. Stress can have many advantages. For instance, stress can help you meet daily challenges and motivates you to reach your goals. In fact, stress can help you achieve goals more efficiently. It can even boost your memory. Stress is also a vital warning system, producing the fight-or-flight response. When the brain perceives some kind of stress, it starts flooding the body with chemicals like epinephrine, norepinephrine and, cortisol. This creates a variety of reactions such as an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. Additionally, the senses suddenly have a laser-like focus so you can avoid physically stressful situations such as jumping away from a moving car- and be safe. Stress can improve how your heart works and protect your body from infection. In one study, individuals who experienced moderate levels of stress before surgery were able to recover faster than others who had low or high levels. Stress is key for survival, but too much stress can be detrimental. Emotional stress that stays around for weeks or months can weaken the immune system and can cause high blood pressure, fatigue, depression, anxiety and, even heart disease. In particular, too much epinephrine can be harmful to your heart. It can change the arteries and how their cells are able to regenerate. Stress is an inevitable part of life, but you can improve the way you respond to stress and avoid or change some of the situations that create negative stress. 

Social media: Can the use of social media, lower teens self-esteem?

This question is brought up a lot at school, that's why I decided to share my opinion on the matter. I think that social media can influence youth to do many things that were unthinkable 30 years ago. Social media has its good parts and its bad parts. With social media, people can perceive themselves as something that they aren't. When beautiful models post images on Instagram, they will get noticed, a large fragment of those people are adolescent teenagers. As we all know, no one is perfect, but these people perceive themselves as perfect and, when a young girl or boy, who doesn't look like that model starts to think that they have to fill that expectation. They feel that they have to be that beautiful and if they aren't they start to doubt their own individual beauty. They think that they have to be as beautiful as someone else. Many young teens feel like they aren't good enough, they have a bad self-image. When they see those photos, they feel that they have to be like that. But since they aren't, they think that they are not good enough. No person should think that about themselves. I think that use of social media can indeed lower teens self-esteem. Social media has its good parts, such as communication with family overseas. But the stereotypes and impossibly skinny figures can cause people to doubt themselves. 

100 word challenge - English

As Elana stepped into the psychiatric unit, she has a strange feeling in her bones. The foul-smelling, fact filing, Frank the psychiatric practitioner died as he was pushed down a well in the middle of the floor. This was really exceptional for Elena because the practitioner was her father so she got to inherit all of her father’s millions. She thought about all that she could do with that money,. The well swallowed him up like a vacuum cleaner. Many said that he died in his sleep, but no one will know how he really died… or will they?

Unrest, proper, Congress, resignation, fortune,

The man was expecting a great fortune, but all he got a proper beating. He was part of a congress, a proper idiot, he was as stupid as a sausage on steroids. He was about to fill in his resignation, but then the boss pulled his hand into a fist and beat him to death. Then he pulled the trigger of his gun. The gun sounded like a tree fall in the forest. No one was there to hear the blood-curdling screams. The gun was like a vacuum, sucking all of the life out of his soon unrestful body.

Health- Resilience

In health, we have been doing a unit on resilience. I am going to cover the following eight topics we have been doing in this unit including, What is resilience, Relaxation, Thought challenges, Mindfulness, Body cues, Empathy, Conflict styles, and a coping step plan. This is my reflection on the unit. This is also an assessment! 

What is resilience?
At the start of the resilience unit, we did a whole range of things. The first thing we did was write our own definition of resilience, mine was "Resilience is not giving up. It is when you have the confidence in yourself to try again. I think it is the ability to recover from a traumatic event. When you have a problem, you pull through. For example, when you are doing maths and you just can’t figure out the answer, by showing resilience, you try and try again until you get the right answer. Even if you don’t get it right the first time, by pulling through and trying again, you will accomplish any goals or obstacles you need to face." My own definition was very similar to the official definition, which is "Resilience is having the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. It’s not giving up. An example is the sudden loss of a loved one- resilient people are able to successfully cope with, or adapt to the associated stress." I think that this was a good chance for me to make sure I actually knew what resilience was. Resilience is important to me because it keeps me going, it makes sure that I don't give up. When you try something new, you almost never get it right the first time, but resilience keeps you from stopping. It makes sure that you continue to try. Resilience is important because if no one had resilience, no one would be able to do anything, people would give up so easily. If there was no resilience, there would be no mathematicians or scientists, no great writers, and no hope. People would have minimal motivation. There would hardly be any inspiration anywhere! People wouldn't try at all. I always try to be resilient, I think that if I stopped trying, I would never accomplish anything. As I said earlier, I always try to be resilient, always trying my best. I think that further down the track I will need to show more resilience than ever! Especially during NCEA. In most cases, exams are one of the most stressful things in a students life, I always see students trying to just stay sane while trying to study for exams. I am normally a quite relaxed person. But I can see myself stressing over exams already! Resilience is one of those things that people need to remember to have, especially during times of utter stress. Another time I should show resilience is when I do my maths work. In a way, I suck at maths, and when I am not really good at something, it really annoys me. I tend to enjoy doing my best all of the time. Even though I may not be the best at maths, I try my best all the time in it. I try my best to accomplish my goals during maths. One way that I overcome my bad skills at maths is to create goals for the term or the week, and I try to accomplish them. Having a goal for maths has motivated me to try my best and to never give up. If I don't accomplish my goals, I will set them for the next week. I always try my best, even though I'm not actually very good at it. Another thing that we did in resilience was when have I shown resilience. I enjoyed this because it made me take the time to think about when I actually showed resilience. This is what I wrote... "I have shown resilience on the netball court quite a bit. When I first started to play, I was really bad, but I never gave up. I made goals each training and each game to improve myself. I celebrated my new achievements. And in my first year, I got the most improved player of the year!" Another time I have shown resilience is when I wanted to do a cartwheel, at the start of me trying, I failed, a lot. But I practiced each and every day. I videoed myself and figured out what I needed to improve on. I really tried to do that when  I was learning cartwheels. This just shows how effective being resilient actually is. This is because, if I stopped trying, I wouldn't have made those amazing achievements that I did! When have you been resilient? Here is a bit of an example of some work about a video about resilience...

Thought challenges
After we did resilience as a whole, we did Thought challenges. Mrs. Petrie used a traffic light as an example of though challenges. Red thoughts are those thoughts that stop you from doing something, yellow thoughts are those thoughts that help us to slow down, and green thoughts are those good thoughts. During this part of the unit, I learned that when you have Red thoughts, you really need to think of some green thoughts. Because if you keep on thinking these negative thoughts, you won't get anything done because your negative thoughts will stop you. I actually didn't know what a Red thought was before we started this unit, but now that I have learned what they are, I can apply this learning to my life. An example of a bad thought that many people have is that they aren't good enough. Now, this is a really bad thing to think about yourself, but many people think it. They think that they have to wear the most expensive clothes or talk a certain way to fit in, so they change who they are. That is a major red thought, but to challenge that thought, you could say to yourself "why should I have to change who I am to fit in"? One of the green thoughts could be, "If they don't accept me for who I am, they don't need to be my friends, I will find some friends that accept me for who I am". This may sound a bit on the harsh side but it's true if someone doesn't accept you for who you are, then they shouldn't be your friends. You deserve better than that. Thought challenges are important because they can stop you from doing something really bad. One of the ways you can apply this to your life is (DISCLAIMER, VERY SERIOUS TOPIC!) if someone offers you a cigarette, you don't just say yes, you need to actually think about the situation. First, you need to think about how that will affect you personally, cigarettes can cause many health problems, you can get seriously sick. Another thing you have to think about is how it will affect the people around you. How will your mother feel if she found out that you smoked? Your family will be seriously upset. But with this certain situation, you need to be careful with what you say. You need to be assertive about the situation. Because, if you start to yell at the other person, you could start a fight. If you say yes, that's just really bad because you are putting your health at risk. But if you just say "no thank you, I don't smoke", that is an effective way to let people know that you aren't going to do it. Cause if you just say "Nah", people are going to hound you to try the cigarette. If this ever happens to me, I will be assertive and make sure that they get the message, cause I'm not messing with that stuff. But these thought challenges can be very effective when you are faced with a difficult situation. I think that this will help many students and people face difficult choices. It makes them stop and think about the decision they are making. It can ensure that people don't make the wrong decision, especially if it is an important decision. This informed me that you can't let negative thoughts get in the way of anything. These thoughts can lead to bad decisions, which can lead to a long time of regret. I did quite enjoy this part of resilience because I got taught a lot about how thoughts can impact decisions.

Relaxation
Another part of resilience that I liked was relaxation. During the first 10 minutes of the lesson, we would relax. After lunch, most of us were very energetic, so Mrs. Petrie let us just relax. We all sat or laid down. We stopped thinking for a while and relaxed. We just breathed in and then breathed out. We clear our minds and focused on nothing. Just breathe in and out. We used our senses to feel everything around us. Some of us just closed our eyes and breathed in and out. While I did this, some of the things that I realized was how tired I actually was. Being a student can be tough, and focusing on yourself can be hard when you have a whole heap of work to do. But relaxing can be a vital thing to help you stay calm and happy. While relaxing, I became more aware of my senses, some of the things that I saw were... my Chromebook, the dirty bricks of the health room and my classmates! Three things I heard was the typing of keyboards, Tamati singing and the relaxing music Mrs. Petrie had going on in the background. Three things that I felt were my bag with my feet, my Chromebook with my hands and the table legs with my knees. Listening to the music calmed me down, after a long day of school, relaxation was a quite nice way to start the last period of the day. Relaxation is important because it helps people calm down and focus on themselves for a while. Relaxation is focusing on the present and keeping calm and focused on yourself. Relaxation, as I said earlier is focusing on yourself, your zen. Everyone individually has a personality and no one has the exact same personality. Relaxing can help you individually as a person. It helps you find yourself and stay calm. Everyone individually has their own way of relaxing and staying calm. After doing relaxation in health encouraged me to develop my own self-care routine. Personally, I like to read books and drink tea. After a long day of school and stress, it’s quite nice to have a way of calming down and staying in the present. I like to drink chamomile and peppermint tea, it helps me sleep and it just calms me down. I do this every night just as a self-care routine every night. Relaxation is important because it can help you stay resilient because it can stop you from giving up, just taking 10 minutes to stop and stare at a wall can just stop you from giving up. Being a student can be quite stressful, and after a long day of school, it's quite important to relax. Anyone who feels stressed should take the time to focus on themselves and have some "me time". There are a majority of ways that people relax, for example, taking slow and deep breaths can slow down your heart rate a little bit and can make you feel relaxed. Soaking in a warm bath can calm people down. Listening to soothing music is quite a good way to relieve any stress, try listening to calm music while doing some mindful meditation. Mindful meditation is focusing your attention on all the things happening right now in the present moment. Even writing down your feelings before going to bed will take any negative thoughts you have, allowing your brain to stop overthinking anything, making sure you get a nice sleep during the night. I have tried to apply these methods to my own life and I think that they have released any stress I have had. Being a student and a teenager can be stressful, so try these methods for yourself and see how you go. Comment down below if these methods helped you!


Mindfulness

After we did relaxation, we started to learn about mindfulness. In this part, we did Mindful eating, being mindful of friends and mindful connections. The first thing we did was mindful eating. I didn't quite understand what it was to start with. But once Mrs. Petrie explained it, I started to get it. Mindful eating is when you savior food and appreciate it. Mindful eating, in my opinion, helps people with savoring food and being grateful for what you have. I think that people should try mindful eating because a lot of people just scoff down all of their food and don’t think that it will be gone in like 20 seconds. Mindful eating teaches people to savor and be grateful, I think I might try mindful eating. The next thing that we did was "Why is laughing good for you?". This wasn't one of the main parts but I still enjoyed it. I have learned about why laughing is good in the past. I think laughing is good for you because it releases endorphins, AKA the happy hormone, it basically makes people happy.  Laughing can improve your mood, laughing can change the way you feel about yourself. When you are with people that make you laugh, you are happy. This is because of the endorphins being released. When we connect with a real friend, it is important to practice our mindfulness skills to maintain the quality of the friendship. Remember that being a mindful friend means to be fully present by paying attention, noticing verbal and nonverbal messages, not being judgemental, being receptive and understanding what your friend is saying, and try to connect and be fully engaged. Our class tried this, my partner was Presayus and we talked a bit about what we liked and our families. What I can remember is she likes to play rugby, touch, and netball. She also has 7 siblings including herself. She had some interesting pets, they included ducks and a pony. Presayus is passionate about sport, she likes to play different sports with her family. Presayus and I were very involved in the conversation. We were friends anyway so it was a bit easier to talk to Presayus. When you are communicating with someone, there are a few signs that you should look for. When someone is fully engaged in conversation They maintain eye contact, They are focused on the conversation, They aren’t doing something else, or don’t seem distracted, Fully participating in the conversation, They are quiet, They are nodding, They are facing you. Likewise, there are many ways to tell someone isn't listening, for example... No eye contact, Doing something else, Not participating in the conversation, They seem distracted, They are interrupting you, They aren’t fully engaged, They are fidgeting, They are turned away from you. If you notice someone isn't listening, make sure that they are listening before you continue the conversation. Being mindful when connecting with someone is important because it is important to practice our mindfulness skills to maintain the quality of the friendship. This means that once, you aren't being mindful of someone, you can lose communication which can lead to the friendship getting further and further apart. I have tried to be more mindful while I am having a conversation. Maintaining eye contact is one thing that I am really trying to work on. Being mindful in my daily life is now one of my goals because I think that it's important. I have been making sure that I keep eye contact and stay facing them. Otherwise, whats the point in talking to someone when you aren't going to listen yourself? I will most definitely try to incorporate mindfulness into my life. Do you think that you are mindful?

Body Cues

The next thing we did in health was body cues. Body cues are a signal from your body that shows how you react or don’t react to something. It can show your emotions and reactions. Eg; Nodding, smiling, or frowning. This was sort of related to our mindfulness topic because when you are engaged in conversation, you need to notice your friends body cues. For example, when you are sad, your body shows it. When you're sad you're likely to be frowning, your head is most likely to be down, your eyes are going to be a bit heavier, your posture isn’t going to be the best when you're sad, you're not going to have a straight back, are you? When you are happy, you're going to be smiling, obviously. Your speech will be a little bit faster than usual. You're going to have a straight back, your head will be up and you will seem a bit brighter than usual.  even though stereotypically peoples body language when they are angry or sad or happy, but it's not like this for everyone. My good friend read a fact the other day that explained the happiest people can sometimes be the saddest. By that, it meant that it has been proven that people who smile and laugh more and seem really happy can sometimes be the ones who are hiding sadness. This actually explains (WARNING EXTREMELY SERIOUS TOPIC) why people who have a family member that has committed suicide or something very dangerous to themselves, almost always say that they didn't see it coming and that they seemed so happy, always smiling and laughing. Interesting fact. Well, I thought it was anyway. But it's also kind of worrying and makes you realize you never know what people are thinking and everyone can be capable of anything. When you are angry, you're not going to be smiling, you will have the biggest frown ever. Your eyes are going to look wide, your eyebrows will be down, your face might be red as well! When you are worried your eyebrows will be creased, you’ll seem less happy or sad. Your face might have a slight frown.  These are the body cues that I learned in this unit. I think that body cues are important because when you engage in conversation, body cues can tell you how a person is feeling. This can be in the hall, you might see your friend crying, what does this body cue tell you? That the person is sad!

When you see someone looking sad, what is your first instinct? To ask how they are of course! Body cues can be very, very useful, especially at high school, when there are many hormonal teenagers running around! In my own regular life, I have many teenagers as my friends and sometimes life can be stressful. But knowing body cues can help you figure out how to approach them. Hormones can cause peoples emotions to skyrocket and make them really sad or really angry, sometimes people just need some alone time. With body cues, you can tell if now is that time. Do you notice any body cues that you show regularly?

Empathy

The next part of the resilience unit was empathy. At the start, I knew a little bit about what empathy was. But after the lessons on it, I started to better my understanding. My understanding of empathy is when you can understand or relate to the feelings of another person. When you are empathetic you can relate to a persons feeling and understand how they are feeling. You can sort of share the feelings of the other person. The official definition of empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. My understanding is pretty close to what empathy actually is. After we found out what empathy was, we learned about the benefits of empathy. There are a few benefits of being empathetic. The first one is that you can understand how someone is feeling, this can be helpful with making friends, someone that struggles to make friends might find it really easy to relate to others this can draw people to you and you might make some new friends when you are empathetic. Another benefit is when someone is sad, you can find it easy to help them, being empathetic means that you can relate to someone's feelings, them knowing that someone knows what they are going through can be a big help when people are sad or feeling another emotion. After doing benefits of empathy, we started to work on we have been empathetic. I have been empathetic to quite a few of my friends, for example, when one of them is sad, I am often one of the first to notice. I never like it when people aren’t feeling happy or comfortable. Sometimes I have had similar experiences as them so I can find it especially easy to relate to. There are many ways in which I could show empathy more. As I said earlier, empathy is being able to feel what someone else is feeling. So showing empathy will make me understand others feelings more, it can make people trust you more. This is because when you always show empathy and be concerned for others. They will start to trust you, I will try my best to show empathy because then I can relate to my friends more. Being able to be empathetic is really important because I want to be able to relate to different people. Sharing the feelings of another can be quite useful. Because they will be able to confide in you and you can confide in them. Acknowledging body cues can also help with empathy. When have you been empathetic?

Conflict styles

The second to last things we learned about was conflict styles. To me, conflict styles are the ways that people react towards conflict. There are three types of conflict styles aggressive, assertive and passive. I think that aggressive communication or conflict is when you are really aggressive about the situation. It’s when you go and attack the other person. This can be seen as bullying in some cases. I think that passive communication or conflict is when you just go with the flow and let the other person push you around. I think it’s when you avoid conflict and they show resistance. I think that assertive communication or conflict means that they are able to stick up for themselves but also are able to see the other person's point of view. They show empathy and they listen really well. We learned an acronym to remember for when we need to calm down. The acronym was CALM, Cool down, take time to cool down and think about the best way to respond, Acknowledge feelings, Take time to acknowledge how you both feel in the situation, Listen and list, listen to how the other person sees the problem. Repeat what the other person is telling you. Make a solution, with the other person, find a way you can both make the situation better. Just find a way to stop the argument and make the situation better for both of you. I think that it's important to be able to understand and adjust to each situation and to the preferred conflict style of the people involved. This means that understanding peoples conflict styles can help you stop the actual argument from the start. By both listening and observing the style being used in the argument can help you to successfully navigate through arguments with the least amount of stress. Knowing these styles before conflict arises can actually reduce and help you to manage your way through a conflict situation. What is your conflict style?

                                                                                                              Coping Step Plans
The last part of the resilience unit was Coping step plans. Coping step plans are a step-by-step plan on how to cope with a problem. It can be used to build confidence and make sure that people don’t feel discouraged when you have a problem. It helps people with how to fix a problem and possibly stop the problem from happening in the first place. For this part of the unit, we did some work on solutions. In my opinion, a solution is a way to fix something or dealing with something. “When there’s a will there's a way”. I like this quote because it explains that there is always a solution. When you are passionate enough about something, you can always find a way to fix the problem. An official definition of a solution is a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation. My opinion and the official definition were pretty similar. I think that I have a good understanding of what a solution is. We had to think about any challenging situations we have faced. I don’t think that I have really faced a really challenging situation before. But, as most people have, I have been in a fight with someone, and at times, that can be a challenging situation for people. I think that there are a good way and a bad way to handle “sticky” situations, for example, if someone runs you and starts yelling horrible things at you, one of the worst things you can do is start to yell back at them, you should first calm them down. Start by telling them to take a deep breath in, this will start to calm them down a little bit, them tell them to explain to you exactly why they are yelling at you. After they explain it in a bit more detail, you should begin to understand why they are yelling at you. Then you should start to talk to each other, using communication can help with a difficult situation. Once you both start to understand the situation, start to communicate more with each other and use your resilience and keep on trying to find another solution. Is life easy? No way! We are all confronted by the challenging situations in our lives. The older we become, the more responsibilities we have, and hence the more we are required to deal with challenging situations. There are always more options to help us cope… whenever you feel upset, you should…. Calm down, remind yourself there is always more than one solution. Talk to a family member or someone you trust. When you choose a solution, think about what will happen in the short term and the long term.  Our activity for Coping step plans was to create a scenario and goal and to create a coping step plan for it. I think that coping step plans are very important because it gives people a chance to think about how they are going to approach something. This means that people that make choices to better that situation. For example, a difficult situation that most people will face at some point in their lives, learning a new activity! This could be learning how to do your nine times tables. This one is something that I can relate to a lot. Maths is my worst subject, I just can't seem to get my heart around all of those complicated equations. But I never give up, I always try my best. One of the hardest things for me to get my head around was my nine times tables. I just can't seem to get my head around it. For this, you would need to break this hard task into steps, then you need to fill your mind with helpful thoughts. and lastly, you need to reward yourself! For step one, you could start off by reciting and reading the times tables off a piece of paper every night before you go to bed. The helpful thought for this could be "If I keep on trying, I will succeed!". This Is a really positive thing to tell yourself. Since you are filling your mind with positive thoughts, you will keep on trying, and won't feel discouraged or anything like that. The reward for doing this could be, for every hour you spend studying your time's tables, you will get 10 minutes of relaxation before you continue studying. These are the first steps of your coping step plan. Once you do this for a while. You can start to develop more steps, helpful thoughts, and reward for yourself to get you closer to achieving your goal! I have started to develop this into my own study routine. Every afternoon, before I do my homework, I plan out what I am going to do. I create an elaborate plan. This has made my studying more effective and enjoyable! What will you reward yourself when you study? Comment down below!

Here is a presentation full of examples of my hard work during this unit. This isn't all of my work, there's too much! In this presentation, you will find many interesting examples of resilience and other things. Enjoy!