Friday, December 14, 2012

Cooperative Learning Groups: Effective if Done Right at School

Instigating Cooperative Learning in lecture labs could be beneficial for students to help each other. An educator must guarantee that students will contribute their fair share to carry out school tasks by working together. A lecturer who utilizes a real cooperative learning experience necessitates a number of measures to fulfill distinctive goals in school, such as:
  • Imparting students about the distribution of tasks or division of labor, particularly in a large group
  • Generate a direct interaction between learners
  • Appointing students their specific roles and responsibilities
  • Demonstrating group procedures in order to complete task
  • Granting students group rewards for completing a well done assignment

Plus-points attributes of Cooperative Learning

  • It caters students' achievement through teamwork and group spirit
  • It has social benefits, and also in academics. As it develops both skills, socially and academically.
  • It prepares young learners about job market and team businesses.
  • It also furthers students to acquaint with economics and cost-effective matters


Friday, October 5, 2012

Picking the Right Job After College in this Economy

With the unemployment rate closing in to 12 million, it is a challenge to find a job more so for college students. Some are forced to go into essay writing services in order to have a source of income to pay the bills and put in money for payment of student loans. People go for two jobs at once, some take out more loans, and there are those who scrimp through unemployment benefits.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Megan Keegan Remembered: Even the Good, Young Ones, Die Too Soon Part 2 - Her Essay

Not many college graduates share the same ambition now.  And for that reason alone, and as being a journalism graduate myself, I deem it only proper to dedicate this post and share her essay as a tribute.

“We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves...” “if I’d...” “wish I’d...”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.”

 ____________________

Megan Keegan Remembered: Even the Good, Young Ones, Die Too Soon

Many of the greats have already went their way this year.  They have experienced glory and downfall and had risen from the ashes to be remembered for all time.  They had lived full lives, maybe with certain amount of regrets, but ruled by more happy times. They have proven that they have the talent, the guts, and the will power to make change.

Sadly, that was not the case for Megan Keegan, an English major from Yale University who died a few days after her graduation in a car accident in Massachusetts.  She was a columnist for Yale Daily News, had written columns for the New Yorker and was already slated to be an assistant in a major newspaper.

Her farewell essay as a columnist for the university’s paper turned out to be her swan song to life.  She was an upcoming journalist.  She had dreams. Not really to become big. But just to make a difference.


Monday, April 23, 2012

Hot Triathletes that Graced the Spotlight

Triathlon is the ultimate sport for people who want to try it all at once. This sport encompasses, not in that particular order- running, swimming, and biking. Believed to have originated in France in the 1920’s, going into this sport is a test of endurance.

But enough with history, I’m here to blog about the hot men that endure a total of 51.5 kilometers of running, swimming, and biking. These professionals inspire me to write my essay, join any sporting events or at the very least – watch the sport religiously.


Faris Al Sultan
Faris' German and Iraqi heritage is the core formula of his good looks. He ranks number 5 in Ranker's list of top triathletes. He founded Team Abu Dhabi last year which scouts for potential triathletes from the Middle East. He's very good at keeping his personal life - dating life, to be exact, under wraps as there no known and reports of who he is into right now.



Frederick Belaubre
France's Frederick Belaubre is an Olympian and a multiple champion for European and French championships for the past 10 years. Ranks number 6 in hte top triathletes list of Rankers. He is rumored to be currently dating a fellow triathlete - Charlotte Morel.


Normann Stadler
Another one of Germany's finest ( Germany seems to be in a mission to produce the best triathletes ), Normann is seriously involved with a medical professional, Sarah Horn. He is on number 13 of the top triathletes list.


Andi Baldwin
This guy does not do it all in the sports world but also in the life-saving field. His accomplishments as triathlete has been overshadowed by his exposure on the popular reality TV dating show, The Bachelor. That goes without saying about his lovelife.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Looking Back to the Devastating Oklahoma City Bombing

Seventeen years have passed, and yet Oklahomans still clearly remember what happened that day. The Alfred P. Murrah building in downtown Oklahoma was bombed leaving 168 people dead. Children weren’t spared from the terrible incident. There was panic all over the place. People traveled across the country to volunteer for the search and rescue operations. While the public’s fear of the unknown resurrected, hope that everything shall go back to normal spread.
The said domestic terrorist attack is the worst to have been recorded in the history of US. Perpetrators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were successful in their evil plot. Families and friends of those who perished offered 168 seconds of silence in memory of the notorious Oklahoma bombing. Stuffed animals, flowers and letters were hung on the fence that today surrounds the area where the Murrah building once stood. The Oklahoma bombing reminds us that we should never succumb to despair. People who were directly affected lost their loved ones, yet they were able to move forward. There is no reason for students whose term paper got rejected to be disheartened. We all will have our share of misfortunes. The choice is also ours whether to get or give up.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

5 Photos from the 60s that Shook the World


A photograph is a picture painted on paper that illuminates significant events and memories. As they say, “it is worth a thousand words.” Take a look at these five momentous photos captured in 1960s that literally changed the world.
__________________________________________________


Hans Conrad Schumann jumping into West Berlin 1961
Photographer: Peter Leibing
It shows that a 19-year-old East German soldier Hans Conrad Schumann leaping over a barbed wire in French Sector of West Berlin during Cold War caught in camera by Peter Leibing, it became one of the iconic pictures around the globe. He escapes and later legalized to travel around to West Germany.


Burning Monk 1963
Photographer: Malcolm Browne
The Pulitzer Prize-winning American photojournalist reported influential news through photograph about a Buddhist Monk who ignites himself on Saigon Street. Thic Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist inflamed himself in a busy intersection, as he sacrificed his life for a noble cause regarding political and religious suppression. The famous photograph recognized as the Photo of the Year in 1963 World Press Award. According to some research studies; although he was re-cremated, his heart had not burned, it was deliberated as “Holy” and enshrined in Xa Loi Pagoda.


Birmingham Riots 1963
Photographer: Charles Moore
The Civil Rights Movement Photographer Charles Moore made a remarkable photo that depicts the struggle regarding to equality. It was shown that young individuals being stricken with a high-pressure water blast from a fire hose in Birmingham, Alabama. He protested by means of his passion which is photography, in contradiction of racial discrimination.


The Corpse of Che Guevara 1967
Photographer: Freddy Alborta
The photograph that kept military theorist Ernesto "Che" Guevara alive has become the patron saint of the Cuban revolutionaries. It was considered as a Christ-like mien that bear a resemblance to an Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna's painting called the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.


Execution of a Viet Cong Guerrilla 1968
Photographer: Eddie Adams
The Combat photographer Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for capturing image that became debatable and controversial in Vietnam, also worldwide. The execution of Viet Cong Guerrilla in Saigon named Captain Bảy Lốp during Cold War-era in Vietnam as it changed the history, it defined the harsh distinction between military headed by police chief General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan and the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.

Eddie Adams penned in Time Magazine: "The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths."