Author Archives: xiatian.liu

Boxer Rebellion CER and Thinglink Xiatian

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“Do the Boxers Deserve a Bad Rap?”

 

            The Boxers, an organization formed enraged villages living in Shandong Province, do not deserve a bad reputation. First of all, during in 1830s, the British sold Opium, a highly addictive and powerful drug, to China trying to obtain tea. Because of the vast amount of opium that is imported into China, 12 million Chinese were smoking opium which had drastically weakened China’s economy, society, and individuals, causing China to lose against the British in the Opium wars which are two wars started by the British because of a trade conflict. Since the Opium wars—which the British have started—caused a downfall in China’s economic and social power, it is obvious as to why the Boxers has such hatred towards foreigners. Secondly, during the time that a vast number of Chinese is living under poverty and famine, more powerful countries such as Britain, Japan and Russia forced China to sign unequal treaties. For instance, the Treaty of Tientsin, a treaty where China is forced to legalize opium in their country. Later, Britain forced China to sign the Treaty of Nanking, where China is forced to pay for the indemnity of the Opium wars and giving piece of its land to Britain known as Hong Kong. Due to these unequal treaties, the China lost lots of wealth to the foreign imperial powers (Britain, France, Japan etc.) Thirdly, when imperial powers started to “colonize” in China, American exporters and businesspeople started to sell American agricultural and industrial products, which is believed to be undermining Chinese culture. Imperial powers like France built Saint Michael’s church in the French Legation Quarters in Beijing, capital of China, and converted many Chinese into Christians. Droughts also started in the Province of Shandong, causing provision to be destroyed, villagers in Shandong believed the cause of the drought is because traditional Chinese gods angry because the spread of another religion, Christianity, inside of China. Because foreign countries are westernizing China and gradually converting more Chinese into Christians, which made the Boxers think that they are destroying Chinese culture. Therefore, the Boxers do not deserve bad reputation.

 

Boxer Rebellion Introduction

 

“A Sound of Thunder” Summative Assessment

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“A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

Biography of Ray Bradbury

By killing a single mouse that lives a million years ago, the death of that mice might cause hundreds upon thousands of species to die from starvation, completely annihilating ecosystems and inflicting chaos to rise upon every species and ecosystems there is to exist and eventually breaking the ultimate food chain of Earth. Just like in the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the theme of the story is taking what may seem like a small and insignificant action, might cause a drastic change in the future, so obviously the theme is always be careful and mindful about every action you take and everything you say. Furthermore, the concept and main idea of the story “A Sound of Thunder” is related to time traveling, the protagonist of the story is Eckels is time traveling with the Safari Guide back a million of years ago on a quest to hunt down species that has no contribution to the future of humans and society, or in other words, expendable. Coincidently, they met the Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, while the Safari guide were trying to kill the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is trying to attack them, Eckels accidentally went out of the path and stepped on the dirt on earth that existed millions of years ago. Consequently, when they got back to the current year, their society has drastically changed. From the concept and idea of the story, we can tell that the main topic of this story is mindfulness and carefulness for every action you take.

In the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the author believes that we must all be careful and mindful for every single action we take. For instance, in real life, saying something to really nice to your friend versus saying something unpleasant or impolite to your friend might cause a really drastic and different outcome. When Travis is explaining him how killing a mice can inflict significant damage to the future of humans, he says, “But you, friend, have stepped on one single mouse. So the cave man starves. And the cave men, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is our entire future nation.” (Bradbury 226). This quote supports the theme of the statement because it explicates to the readers how just by stepping on a single mouse, taking such an insignificant action, can create a domino effect causing a great drastic change in the future such as, mentioned in the quote; cave man starving causing millions upon billions of humans to be annihilated from the current world. The word “expendable”, by definition, means insignificant, and therefore can be destroyed. Furthermore, the quote says “‘And the cave men, please note, is not just any expendable men.” From the word expendable, we can infer that the author is trying to explicate that the death cave men are not insignificant and in fact, can create a much vaster impact to the future, which is wiping out the entire human species. This quote shows how just by taking a small action, could greatly change the future. As the story continues along its way to the very end, Eckels realized the mistake that he had made when stepping on the dirt that existed millions of years ago and also killing a butterfly, he said to himself, “can’t we take it back, can’t we make it alive again? Can’t we start over? Can’t we-” (Bradbury 236). From this quote we can suggest that Eckels is very guilty and somewhat regretted what he have done. From the sentence, “can’t’ we start over?” we can tell that Eckels is desperately regretting what he has done. This quote shows that we must all me mindful and careful about every step and action we take and everything we do, or else we will regret what we have done.

 

Self vs Self

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“Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes

This is my Found Poem for Humanities, I did my found poem on “Thank you, m’am” by Langston Hughes. This poem expresses the main conflict of the story by using words found in the story, it talks about how Roger, who is the main character of the story is struggling to behave himself.

Biography of Langston Hughes

We can tell that Roger, who is the main character of the book is struggling to behave from the quote “It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse.” It shows that the boy is trying to steal the women’s purse and is up to no good at all, we can also tell from the quote  “Good-night! Behave yourself, boy! she said, looking out into the street.”, we can tell the main conflict of the story is obviously internal conflict because the boy is fighting with his is own behaviors of stealing and doing bad things in society, in other words, we can say that the protagonist is Roger and the antagonist of the story is Roger’s internal behaviors, the women shaped and disciplined him through kindness and compassion from the quote “Then we’ll eat,” said the woman, I believe you’re hungry — or been hungry — to try to snatch my pocketbook.” This quotes shows that the women is offering Roger kindness and compassion to make him behave and not steal, which is what this whole story is trying to solve, which is to change Roger’s inner personality. From these quotes and evidences we cant tell that the main conflict of this story is internal conflict, which is trying to change Roger’s behaviors.

Behavior (my poem)

Roger was a boy,

he snatches people’s pocketbooks

The women took care,

he did not want to be mistrusted

The boy was to behave.

My poem sums up what I had written above, saying what Roger did like snatching the women’s pocketbooks, and stating that Roger is trying to battling against his own behaviors, in my poem I said “the boy was to behave” which is the main idea I am trying to express in my poem which is roger struggling to behave himself until the women taught him to, I couldn’t find any good words I could use to express the feeling, for example, fighting, battling, feelings, behavior, so the best sentence I could form is “The boy was to behave”.

The graphic design is that I used the color black to resemble the feeling of battle and struggle and I made the white part of of the story the Found Poem which resembles Roger being controlled by his own internal evil of stealing.  It might look a little bit bland or a bit too dark, but through these qualities, Im trying to show the internal conflict of the story through the color that I use, I used the darkest color for my graphic design.

The Design Challenge

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My partner is Takumi and my job is to help make his life more convenient, os it all started like this: Takumi prefer dorayaki with milk, it may sound simple, you may be thinking that he could buy dorayaki and go to the other part of the shop to get milk, but it would take some time. I was thinking about a way to make it much simpler for Takumi, so I decided, why not include the milk with the dorayaki, tried to think of ways to make it easier, and that is my sketch for Takumi’s dorayaki, so I made this package that would solve the problem, made a package that is divided into 2 parts, the dorayaki and part and a part where milk is contained, so the next time, he won’t need to buy dorayaki and milk separately. Then I made a prototype, and because of the lack of resources, this is the only thing I can make:

App (Geometria)

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  1. I used to think that by creating a quiz app, you must have lots of screens and a screen for each question because I haven’t thought of using lists which reduces the number of screens. Now I think that in order to become a good coder, you must be lazy, to find a way you can do things much simpler like using lists to create a list of questions images and answers instead of having 26 screens and each screen for a question.

 

  1. Many people at ISB geometry because of how complex it is to solve things like volumes circle areas and many others, when I was in elementary school, even I was. In order to solve this problem, I have designed an app that is both relevant to what 6th graders are learning and what 7th graders are learning, from this app, students can learn many things starting from the simplest geometry, area of basic shapes, to area and volume of composite shapes, this app is great because people are at different levels, my app starts from simple questions to hard ones unlike others that only features formulas for people better at math, this app is for everyone.

 

  1. My app’s name is Geometria, Latin for Geometry. Geometria, has a front page, the very first question, in the textbox, it shows instructions that the format you write your answer in and others. After reading the instructions, they have to delete the instructions and write the answer in the textbox, the image is on the top, then is the question, then is the textbox where you answer your questions. On the right of the textbox, there are two buttons: the submit button and the next button, the submit button checks your answer. Next gets you to the next question.

 

  1. Geometria mainly uses lists. Because of the lack of time, I only have three lists, there is the global QuestionList, global PictureList and the global AnswerList, the QuestionList is lists of question I want to put in my app in order from up to down, PictureList are lists of picture and AnswerList is the list of answers. I programed, when the next button is clicked, then to the next list, and when submit button clicked, it checks the answer in the AnswerList with the answer in the textbox, when it is the same, it says “correct!”. When it is not the same, it says “wrong!”

 

    1. The strength of this app is that it gives the less skillful users an easy time on this app because the question goes from easy to hard. The weakness is that some of the more advanced learners may think this app is too easy and it is not fun. I wish in order to solve this problem, I should broaden the range of questions, I would wish to add surface areas, cylinders, spheres, cones, coordinate plane Check out this video!.App Using Tutorial

Banning single-use plastic

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40% of the global plastic production came from China and that 27% of the mismanaged plastic also came from China. Furthermore, banning sing-use plastic is not an effective way to save our ocean because it disrupts the economy, it is cheap and convenient and other alternatives for plastic is not as productive as plastic. Plastic is a cheap, lightweight and convenient material that Canada and other European countries planned on banning by 2021.

 

Banning sing-use plastic disrupts the economy. According to Polymer Database, more than 2 million employees in the U.S will lose their jobs if plastic industries were shut down. In addition, 359 million metric-tons of plastic is being produced worldwide every year. Coca-Cola is the largest plastic-using company and it uses about 3 million-tons of plastic is. If we ban sing-use plastic, millions of businesses and companies that manufactures plastic will be bankrupts or worse collapse. Not only that but more than 2 million people will lose their jobs in the U.S. These things could lead to the money cycle moving slower which means the economy will be worse.

 

Single-use plastic is a cheap and convenient material. The productions speed is relatively fast compared to other materials that is being produced, which means the price is going to go down since the supply is really high and the demand is lower, plastic is cheap, and it is affordable to most of the people. In addition to being cheap, it is also quite easy to carry too, single-use plastic is strong and durable and very lightweight which has a drastic difference with metal. Therefore, single-use plastic is a cheap/affordable and convenient material to use.

 

Opponents may suggest acrylic and metal as another alternatives to replace single-use plastic. Acrylic is a lightweight material and a cheaper material than plastic. However, single-use plastic is more durable and much more productive than acrylic. Metal could be a good choice as well except the material is heavier and expensive, not as convenient. Convenience is one thing, but renewability is another. Metal is an unrenewable material because there is a limited amount of metal on earth according to Craft Chind. Consequently, other materials are not as good as single-use plastic.

 

Banning sing-use plastic is not an effective way to save our ocean because doing that disrupts the economy, it is cheap and convenient and that other alternatives like acrylic and metal are not good enough. Millions of businesses will collapse and thousands of people will lose their jobs if we ban single-use plastic.

Robotic Petting Zoo Grade 7 Reflection

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What is the most difficult aspect of this project?

The most difficult part of this project is managing your time. You have to manage your time by organizing when or what you will do. For example, my group did not manage time well because we spent too much time making the exterior of the robot instead of focusing on the functionality.

 

What was the most enjoyable aspect of the project?

The most enjoyable part of the project is putting in the component and programming the robot. It is always fun to see your robot actually function and the fact that it actually functions gave us hope to finish the project.

 

What did you do well?

I think we did well on catching up on putting in the components. After we have found out that we only have a few days left, me and my partner started spending flex time and after school building the robot and that is the part that I felt I did well.

 

What should you do differently next time?

Next time, I should not start with something too big. The robot my group planned is very big (around 50 cm in length) and we found out that even if we are the first ones to work on the project, we still can’t be faster than people working on small projects which is considerably less harder to make or stabilize.

 

What did you learn about physically building a robot?

One of the most important things I have learned is a rule that can be applied to safety: to always close your knife we you are not using it; the reason is that people can get hurt. Another thing that I learned is to choose your materials wisely, we used masking tape to stick things together, but we should be using hot glue, so it saves us time and is much more stabled.

 

What did you learn about programming a robot?

I learned that programming a robot is quite easy, but it requires some logic for you to solve a certain program and how you want to adjust it. I also learned that first graders are more impressed about the colors of the animal like when my group made the eyes shine sea green, all the first grader came to us and complimented on how beautiful it is.

 

What would you like to learn about the building and/or programming the robots?

Someday, I would like to learn to python, java script or C++ which is a complex version of programming. That way, we can program much more impressive things than just large pieces of blocks. Learning these complex programming for me also means learning a new language which is what I desire to do.

 

What advice would you give to a student who is at the beginning of this unit?

I would suggest that you guys choose your materials wisely and plan out everything clearly and thoroughly so that way there won’t be any confusion during the process of making the robot. Another important advice is that you guys should focus more on the functionality and make it more creative so it could attract the first graders more.

 

Robotic petting zoo Pegasus