Say sorry to the Aborigines!

After watching the movie "Rabbit-Proof Fence" I realized something. I realized that the Aborigines' situation at the time must of been very sad because all the half-caste children were taken away from their parents and taken to the camps. And this all because of the ethnocentric minds and thoughts of the British-Australian politics. So if you were a British Australian and watched the movie you should apologies to the Aborigines because as you see the movie was full of sorrow and they probably still feel that way about the lost generations.

Molly from Rabbit-Proof Fence

So we've started watching the movie "Rabbit-Proof Fence" and it's mainly about 3 half caste aboriginal girls who are sent to a Gulag but escape shortly after arriving. Molly is the oldest girl of the three. So far we've gotten to a part where they had just escaped but we can already some traits of Molly being the hero. Since she is the oldest one she seems like kind of a leader. She seems to have very good tracking skills as we see in the very beginning of the movie where she catches a huge lizard by following it's trails. Molly is also the one who gets the idea to escape from the Gulag at first place and go back home. At first I thought that was kind of stupid idea and that Molly wan't very smart. However the reason she wanted to escape at right that moment was because she knew that the rain was coming and that it would cover their footsteps from the tracker who would come after them. This is another example of Molly being a good tracker. When the girls get to a river Molly puts down one of the girls bags to trick the tracker and make it look like they were going upstream even though they were actually going downstream. This also shows Molly's good tracking skills. Overall I have a feeling that Molly will be the hero in this movie due to her tracking skills and guide the girls back home where they were heading.

My Learning Profile - A

In class we learned about our learning profiles and apparently I am the profile A so in this blogpost I will talk about what the profile does and how it works towards my learning. Firstly, I learn best by focusing on the details and I process by analysis, verbalization, and writing. I prefer structured learning and appreciate when the information is orderly sequenced and eady for me to analyze it.

I need to develop habits that encourage my gestalt hemisphere processing. Some of these habits and strategies are: brainstorm, visualize unusual images in my mind's eye, trust my intuition, and so on. I should also look at the information from a whole perspective which means I should try to see the big picture from the small detail that I tend to focus on.

The strategies that would help me in my learning are for example that I should be encouraged to understand and synthesize information from a whole perspective, and explore ambiguity, emotions and movement. Positive, enjoyable sensory-motor experiences will develop the skills necessary to emotionally interact and fully access imagination, creativity and intuitive introspection. Also an integrative balance of art, music and freeform movement with cognitive endeavors will be highly beneficial for me.

Lastly, I would like my teachers to know this about me because it might make me learn better and be able to study and perform better in school. I would also like my teachers to know that homework can give me a lot of stress sometime and during stress, I might have difficulties seeing the big picture. So as a joke I advice my teacher to not to give me homework where we are supposed to see the big picture because I might not be able to it! :)

Leonardo da Vinci, a true renaissance man!

I think Leonardo da Vinci was really a true renaissance. He was a painter, an inventor, a weapon maker and a scientist. He liked to paint and invent and was also interested in science and world around him so that's why he was a true renaissance man.

Brunelleschi's courage

When Brunelleschi built the dome of Florence Cathedral he was very courageous. A dome that size had never been even planned to be built so when Brunelleschi was doing it people just thought he was crazy. Keeping in mind that this would be the first giant dome, Brunelleschi was courageous enough to take risks and face the concequences of failure if his dome was unsuccessful. Think about it. If you were commisioned to build something like that during the time when the engineering abilities were pretty low and you would have a big chance of failure due to those conditions, would you do it? Well that's a question Brunelleschi came upon when he was about to build the dome and sure enough he had the courage to take on the risks carry on the challenge. Fortunately it turned out successful and he was able to finish the dome which results in more advanced engineering. So thanks to his admirable courage the development of building strategies and engineering skills could be carried on.

Where do new ideas come from?

That's an easy question, ideas come from brains. Well no. Or they do actually but mostly ideas come from other thoughts and other thoughts come from experiences and experiences come from things that you do and... Anyway the point is that ideas come from thoughts. For example when people thought of flying and birds that fly etc., they came up with an idea to build a plane. And so they did and thanks to them we have planes now so that we can travel all around the world.

My favorite short story from our unit.

Our unit on short stories has just ended and we read few intresting stories. But which one is my favorite? I find that actually hard to answer to because I like both "The Sniper" and "Lamb to the Slaughter". I have to say though, that Lamb to the Slaughter was bit better than The Sniper. The story in Lamb to the Slaughter was really smart but also kind of weird. It was really cool how Mrs. Maloney was smart and tricky. The Sniper isn't a bad story either. I like its theme and the mood it creates. Also I'm interested in all that kind of war stuff so this story was for me if you know what I'm saying. So both stories were great and that gives me a great start for our next unit, whatever it is...