#and it allows me to link the academic articles to my thesis statement without it sounding like a university paper

[blackhholes]

Photography and Death in Teen Wolf

Using Photography as an Analogy in the Experience of Death and Mourning by Paula Mahoney / Photography, Memory and Survival by Martin Golding / Visual Codes of Secrecy : Photography of Death and Projective Identification by Julia St George

Written for @teenwolf-meta‘s Meta May Monday theme: power.

In the essay In Plato’s Cave Susan Sontag writes “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and, therefore, like power.” When examining the power the kanima, and as a result Matt, holds in the second season of the show it’s important to note that initially this power wasn’t all-powerful. It had to be channeled through a conduit. Through photography.

In Fury Matt tells Scott “All I had to do was take their picture, and Jackson would take their life.” Matt’s photos become a sort of pre-mortem death photography, where traditional post-mortem photography serves as a way of immortalizing the recently deceased, the photography of season two acts moreso as an omen. The second their pictures are taken their fate is sealed and Jackson will take their life.

There are limitation to the power of the photograph though, despite Matt photographing Jessica the kanima is incapable of killing her as she is pregnant, this forces Matt to step outside the rules established and once he does he starts to transform into the kanima himself, this allows him to wield Jackson as a weapon without the use of photography and now all he has to do is think about killing someone and Jackson will do it. 

Matt doesn’t uphold the rules he himself created and his hubris in believing he no longer needs the camera to control the kanima and the power he feels he has gained as a result eventually lead to his own death. 

[karyll]

My reading record! <3

Good day, Ms. Bayo! This is what I have learned during your lectures.

Unit 1: THE NATURE OF ACADEMIC TEXTS

In this unit taught me the difference between non-academic and academic texts.

Non-Academic Text:  which is personal, emotional, impressionistic, or subjective in nature. Such writing is often found in personal journal entries, reader response writing, memoirs, any kind of autobiographical writing, and letters, e-mails, and text messages.

Academic Text: is defined as critical, objective, specialized texts written by experts or professionals in a given field using formal language. Academic texts are objective. This means that they are based on facts. The emotions of the authors cannot be felt from texts or materials.

Unit 2: THESIS STATEMENT AND OUTLINING

I learned to construct a thesis statement and make a plan in this class. You can describe your perspective on a topic or question in a single line for thesis statements, and the core idea will affect the flow of the rest of your work. If you are writing a thesis report, the first step is to explore your topic first, think and plan, gather information & data, and look into credible connections for one fact or detail. A thesis statement contains four elements: viewpoint on a topic, a response to a question, a challenge sentence, and a single sentence that summarizes your case. Analyze, interpret, compare and contrast, show cause and effect, and choose one side of an issue keywords to remember for a thesis statement.

Outlining asssist the author in categorizing key topics, ensuring that paragraphs are well developed, and organizing paragraphs for consistency and purpose. Remember that a well-written outline includes a thesis, each paragraphs primary concepts, and each section supporting evidence and details. The benefit of adopting a topic outline is that it allows you to organize your thoughts on your subject ahead of time.

Unit 3: WHAT IS SUMMARY AND TECHNIQUES IN SUMMARIZING A TEXT

This unit taught me also how to define the term "summary". A summary is a shortened and condensed version of a text. Summarizing a text entails condensing its main points into a paragraph. A summary has two objectives, first is to reproduce the text's main ideas and point,and the second is to describe the concepts and ideas in exact and specific language. These are the steps you can take to preview your work. 1. Pay attention to the title 2.Think about the content. 3. Have the author's details on hand. 4. When and where was this text first published. 5. Is there a link between the period in which it was written and the field of study in which it was published 6. Go over the chapter titles and headings. 7. Why was this text assigned by the professor

This is how you should get ready to write a summary : 1. Make use of the previewing tools available to you 2. Read the introductory paragraph carefully. 3. Read the first one or two sentences of each paragraph, as well as the last one. 4. Maintain a constant movement of your eyes. 5. Study the final paragraph carefully.

These are the elements that should include a summary. First, is to mention the title and the author's name in the first sentence. Second, is to add the author's thesis ; lengthier articles are separated into subsections to organize material. Third, is to mention the author's name in the first sentence. Minor facts and ideas should be left out, as well as particular examples. Avoid expressing personal feelings or opinions. And try writing your summary's initial draft. The purpose of producing a summation is to repeat a texts main concepts. A paraphrase is a restatement of a text, passage, or work that provides meaning in another language.

Unit 4: WHAT IS PARAPHRASING AND TECHNIQUES IN PARAPHRASING, PARAPHRASING VS QUOTING

Paraphrasing is when someone uses their own words to express another person's message or information, they are paraphrasing. Learn the definition of paraphrasing, discover how to accurately paraphrase information, and study examples of paraphrased sentences and paragraphs.

Here are the guidelines in Paraphrasing : 1. Read and text & comprehend its meaning 2. Emphasize or underline the main idea 3. Recall the main idea that you emphasized. 4. Obtain the original text and compare it. 5. Compose your own words. 6. Verify the meaning. 7. Examine the sentence structure and formality. 8. Stick to the ideas presented. When you want to avoid or minize direct quotations, rewrite the author's words without changing the message, or use your own words to express the author's idea.

Quoting means matching the source word of word ; It is usually a short section of the text ; the cited section appears between quotation marks, and the source must be credited. Always remember that quotations should not be used in place of paraphrasing or summarizing.

Here are the guidelines in Quoting : 1. Copy the exact portion of the text that you want to use. 2. Use quotation mark to indicate the beginning and end of the quote. 3. Document the source's information. 4. Properly format your quotations. When you want to start your discussion with the author's position or highlight the author's expertise in your claim, argument, or dialogue, use a quote.

Unit 5: CITING SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Citation is the process of giving credit to the writers whose creative and intellectual work you utilized to support or complement your study. It is critical not only to obtain knowledge from trustworthy sources, but also to corrrectly document all borrowed ideas, facts, thoughts, arguments, or information and credit them to their authors or invertors. The goals of citing sources are to provide acknowledgement to the original author of a work, to promote academic writing, and to assist your target audience in identifying your source. There are two types of citations : in text citations and reference citations. The in text citation demands the author to reference the speficics about the essays. The entire bibliographic entries of all references utilized by the writer who are referred to as reference citations.

In text citations has four guidelines: 1. APA, 6th edition (pg. 169,179) Basic Citation Rules 2. Basic Rules from the MLS Handbook, 7th edition (Chapter 6) and MLA Style Manual, 3rd Edition 3. (Chapter 7) Finally, the IEEE Editorial Style Manual, 2014 (pg. 34), and the AMA Manual of Style, 10th edition (Section 1, Part 3). In addition, there are four reference citation guidelines : 1. APA 6th edition 2. MLA Handbook, 7th edition 3. IEEE Editorial Style Manual (2014) 4. Finally, AMA Manual Of Style, 10th edition.

This is what I have learned in your lectures, Ms. Bayo! Thank you so much! ❤️

[beatiewolfe]

TEDMED2020 x Beatie Wolfe - the script

Talk In A Nutshell 

Beatie Wolfe brings the artful core of our humanity to life through music that highlights the depth of our human intention for storytelling and ceremony.

The Script

Opening Story

I’ve always loved the stories of albums, the tangibility of records and the ceremony of listening. From the time I started writing songs (age 8) and discovered my parents’ record collection, I saw records as musical books, with the artwork providing the perfect backdrop for the story, and I loved opening them up and entering into the world of the album. There was also a ritual to the occasion. I started imagining what my album could look like, what it could feel like, what worlds I could create. When it was time for my first album to be released, it was a very different era with the digital replacing the physical. So I thought about how to connect the two and that’s what my work became centred around. Reimagining the vinyl experience but for today.  

Statement Of Thesis: Music Is Core To Our Humanity

Why was this so important to me? Because music IS core to our humanity. We are a musical species more than anything else and music imprints on the brain deeper than any other human experience. 

I believe that there are three things that allow something to go deep, to stay with us and forever change us. These are: tangibility, storytelling and ceremony. 

Tangibility… as in a physical art form or space to explore… this could be a record jacket or the world’s quietest room… anything that grounds us in our present reality through a touchpoint. 

Storytelling in the broadest sense of the word, the ability for the artist or creator to tell a story through their work that can engage the imagination and transport us.

And lastly but perhaps most importantly… Ceremony, the space around and within the experience that allows us to go deep, to be fully immersed.

I believe that these three things set the stage for the music and allow it to imprint. Imprint so that every one of those experiences becomes a part of who we are and what we carry with us. This doesn’t just apply to music, it applies to anything, everything that helps to reconnect us with ourselves and one another. It’s these experiences that help to keep us alive inside. 

What Threatens These Musical Values Today?

Tangibility, storytelling and ceremony had always been part of the physical music listening experience and were just some of the things we lost when we moved to digital. 

The digital era created access, it presented solutions but it also created an idea that we could fast track a lot of what defined us as humans to begin with and without the true cost or value reflected in the process.

Music now floats around in its intangible sphere as part of the background noise along with everything else that sits there… news articles, notifications, calendar reminders, social media… everything occupying this same superficial stream of information that infiltrates our day-to-day lives, bombarding our sensory systems until we are numb, overloaded and fatigued. Music, and art, have become part of that constant background chatter and we have forgotten why they are so much more.

How Can We Rescue Music And Restore Our Humanity? Science 

There is a fine balance between what needs to be innovated and what needs to be preserved. So how do we reconcile the value of music and art in an industry that has decided that albums are obsolete and that singles need not be more than jingles, forgotten as easily as they are made? The opposite of imprinting. 

I found part of my answer in neurology. The great late Oliver Sacks studied the power of music extensively and grounded what a lot of us feel intuitively about music, in science. In Musicophilia, his book about music and the brain, he documents the impact of music for every neurological condition from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s, Autism to Schizophonia, showing how music is a remedy, a tonic, an orange juice for the ear. 

And I realised that there was no greater application of music than this healing application… using music to reconnect us with ourselves and one another when nothing else could.

A seed was planted in the back of my mind and when I found out that my grandmother had been diagnosed with dementia I decided to take my guitar with me the next time I visited her and play her my songs… because why not? 

Surprising Impact Of Live Performance For Patients With Dementia

Watching my grandmother transform from being confused and agitated to joyful and relaxed with just a song, moved me so deeply. I then decided to play for my father-in-law at his care home in Portugal and when the home director asked if I would play to everyone in the ward living with dementia and Alzheimer's, of course I agreed. Realising that no one in the home spoke English (except for my relative) and that my songs were unfamiliar to the residents, I expected a nice ambience at best. However watching people start to wake up, engage, clap along, even dance in their chairs, and become visibly reanimated from the music, just as Oliver had described, I realised that something important was happening. 

And then the director informed me it was the best he had seen the group in the 10 years he had been there.  

Something was crystalizing into view. What if music’s power was so strong, so interlinked with our own sense of self and wellbeing, that even without the memory component it could be a tonic, a remedy, a “way in”. What if it was the music and not the memory making the magic? In Musicophilia, Sacks had theorized that “music does not have to be familiar to exert its emotional pull” but he had not tested this. I had seen the tip of precisely this and wanted to see how much deeper it went.

Launch Of Research Project

Inspired by this insight, I began the Power of Music and Dementia research project with the Utley Foundation in 2014. The idea was to recreate what had occurred, naturally, in Portugal but this time with controls in place and the caregivers and doctors monitoring the residents. The intention was to show that even when memory was taken out of the equation the power of music prevailed.  

As part of this project, I went into care homes all across the UK and performed a set of my original songs while the residents were monitored both during the live performance and the weeks following as they listened to the same songs on headsets. 

The results were amazing. Both memory and communication were improved during the duration of the project and I saw some of the most powerful reactions to music I have ever seen. Reactions that imprinted on me forever.  

I watched David transform from a catatonic-like state to dancing. And Anne who had not spoken a word in 7 months; during the performance broke into song. Every one of these breakthroughs felt like the most vital link in the chain of our understanding about what moves us, what restores us, what makes us uniquely human. 

Global & Academic Recognition; Launch Of Charity

What began as a small research study in the UK was then recognized by leading academic and research institutions and was suddenly getting global attention. I found myself sitting with the top neurologists and brain experts as they picked my brain on the subject. And all because I asked a question, not as a doctor but as a musician. 

Today music for dementia is becoming a global movement. The charity, MusicForDementia2020, (established out of my project) is now actively working to get music in all care homes in the UK by the end of this year and I continue to work with them as an ambassador. 

Conclusion / Restatement Of Thesis: Core Power Of Music

So what did this teach me? It taught me to celebrate the experiences that keep us alive inside, that remind us of why we are here in the first place. At a time of more access than ever, how can we retain a sense of value? How can we choose to carve out deeper moments within the noise? How can we protect those endangered experiences that become our touchpoints, that shape our emotional sensibility, our identity, our wellbeing and create vast canyons and reserves in our very being?

We realise the importance of these choices when we realise the intrinsic value of music, and art, to us all as sentient beings.

When you have witnessed the power of music as medicine in this pure and concentrated way, which cannot be staged or fabricated. It either works or it doesn’t. When you see what music can do, even when language or memory are removed from the folds, see how the first few notes evokes a smile, a hand twitch, instantly, effortlessly and this builds and grows and it’s just them and the music... No tangible memories, no narrative, no point in time. Just them and the music, there and now. And the brain opens up like a flower, gently unfurling, presenting new pathways you never believed were there…

And you realise… that music is a necessity for those living with dementia because music is a necessity for every one of us. 

[english102-1031-blog]

All Secondary Schools in America should integrate Career and Technical Education Along with Academic Education

 All Secondary Schools in America Should Integrate Career and Technical Education Along with Academic Education

 Did you know, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In October 2016, 69.7 percent of 2016 high school students were enrolled in colleges or universities.” That means 30.3 percent of students will not be seeking higher education and will possibly be looking for jobs in the American workforce. Not all high school students are able or want to go onto a post-secondary institution for higher learning. Therefore, we must be mindful of the implications of whether the DOE is in fact preparing all students to be career and college ready. All secondary schools should integrate career and technical education (CTE) because it provides students with more options for their futures, decreases high school drop-out rates, and reduces unemployment rates in the United States.

What was once known as vocational education is now referred to as career and technical education. In the past, vocational schools were looked down upon, and were known as a less significant form of education. When students who attended vocational schools were given academic tests, such as Math or English tests, they did not score very well. Consequently, they were not being prepared academically, but they were ready to begin the occupation they were being groomed for. Vocational education by itself does not prepare students academically, if the student reconsiders attending a post-secondary institution for higher learning, they may feel unqualified or inadequate in their academic knowledge.

Integrating a more balanced curriculum that marries CTE and core academics would help benefit more students. Rather than just the 69.7% who plan on attending an institute for higher education. Schools in America have historically been designed as a “one size fits all” even though children have different learning needs, interest, and aptitude. Common core standards are not designed to create a more reasonable environment that is student centered. Instead, it focuses more on students who will most likely go on to a post-secondary institution, while ignoring the needs of students going into a Trade, the Military or other professions that help to maintain our economy.

The argument in the article, “Career and technical education must be integrated with academic course work” written by Gary Hoachlander and Christopher J. Steinhauser complements my thesis statement precisely. The authors address the schooling systems in California and how they need an innovative approach to marry both career and technical education along with core academics. However, I feel this concept would benefit all secondary schools in the U.S, not just California. The authors believe that encouraging teachers of career and technical education to work together with teachers of academic education to align their coursework and cooperatively teach interdisciplinary studies that tackle real world problems. The authors claim “The ability to problem-solve, think critically, communicate, collaborate, design and innovate is essential in our globalized economy. Neither CTE nor traditional academic coursework alone can deliver these outcomes.” The authors also mention an approach called Linked Learning which is being utilized in over 40 communities throughout California. This approach combines strong academics, career-based classroom learning, real-world workplace experience and personalizes student support. According to Connect Ed, students participating in the Linked Learning approach earn more credits throughout four years of high school, students are more prone to graduate than drop out, and it is reported that students have improved confidence in their life and career skills.

I absolutely agree with Hoachlander and Steinhauser, integrating CTE and core academics would be giving students the opportunity to thoroughly understand what they want to do in life. Often, students don’t realize what they are interested in until later in life. For example, after I graduated high school, I did not want to attend college right away. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as far as a career. I struggled to decide what subject I wanted to major in. Then finally in my late 20s, I realized I should be majoring in Interior Design because that’s what I love to do. However, if I was offered career and technical education while attending high school, things might have panned out differently for me. So, by providing students with both options and combining the two educational courses, it allows students to get a feel for the real world. While also giving students, the academic education foundations needed to continue onto a post-secondary school if desired.

College students may benefit from this concept as well. Some college students may know what career field they are interested in, then a few years down the road and thousands of dollars in tuition later they will realize that the career and college degree they have chosen was a mistake. By integrating career and technical education with academic education, it will allow all students to understand the various professions the world must offer and undoubtedly apprehend what careers interest them, rather than guessing what they think might interest them without any hands-on training.

Another issue that career and technical education can assist with is, reducing the amount of high school students who drop out before graduating. As reported by Michael E. Wonacott, since 1982, studies have shown statistical evidence that career and technical education has in fact improved the numbers of students graduating, particularly the students who were at risk of not graduating. He also states that “statistical evidence seems strongest when CTE involves an emphasis on learning both academic and CTE knowledge skills.”

 I also believe incorporating CTE along with academic education could possibly help lower unemployment rates, which would help to boost the economy. If the DOE equipped students with essential skills needed for the workforce, then we would have less unemployed Americans. Students would feel comfortable in what they are learning in school and may feel motivated to get started in the career choice they’ve been prepared for.

Career and technical education should be an essential factor implemented into America’s secondary school systems in today’s society. All secondary schools in the United States should integrate the CTE approach along with a strong academic curriculum. By doing so, many students could benefit from it through various aspects including more options for their future endeavors, prevent students from dropping out of high school, and students will acquire greater employment opportunities due to the skills they’ve obtained. 

As Albert Einstein said, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

-Tiara K.