Sparknotes is evil

Spark-note  it or actually read. Most people like to read but do not do it all the time. When we become to lazy or  just don't feel like reading an assignment we turn to Spark-notes. Sure it is a great source to find a summary in last  nights reading assignment so you can get those 5 points in class the next day but it is also a bad thing. Especially if your teacher knows you only read Spark-notes. Spark-notes is a general summary of a chapter and is very vague. It doesn't give you any meaning full attachment to a character or to what is happening. So sure you might get what happens in a chapter right but you won't get what the characters where feeling when this happens and that can cost you those 5 or ten points that you were trying so desperately to get anyway. Another thing Spark-notes leaves out is the pure joy of reading a book. There is no setting when you read the summary so you can not imagine it in your head as well. It also leaves out the great things in a book like the humor and the adventure to a book that lets your mind wander and gets you lost in the book you're reading. Personally I would read the book every time but I too also get lazy or do not feel like reading so I turn to Spark-notes, my grades do show for it the next day though. Spark-notes can be helpful though, especially when you are reading a complicated book like Tale of Two Cities. It can be helpful in the sense that after you read through a part of the book and don't understand it then you can turn to Spark-notes to help you understand it. All together, Spark-notes is not a good thing to constantly turn to and is not in any means a substitute to actually reading a book.

picture story

 Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel

 is about a family

 That adopts a baby chimp named Zan

 As part of a science experiment 

 To teach him American Sign Language

 Zan becomes almost like a little brother to Ben

and they are practically best friends

 But when the grant gets denied

 Because they think Zan isn't learning

Then Ben has to fight 

For his little chimp brother.

does he win or lose?

you will have to read it to find out.

 how to sign Family in asl

Zan's favorite drink

vlog

Comments

To Jackson Bates... Hey whats up Jackson. I liked your picture story. I haven't read the book that you made this about but just from this I can sorta tell what it is about. I'm guessing that it is about a kid who's parents are lawyers on a hard case. Then the kid uses his knowledge to solve the case. If I'm right then your picture story is pretty good. One thing I think you should add is some humor though. You're a funny guy so I know some humor can be put into it. It's pretty good though. To Michael Crouse Michael, I like your picture blog. I am currently reading this book as my second quarter book and I can relate to most of the pictures on here and the other parts I haven't gotten to yet. I know your humor and know you can be alot funnier and more creative with some of your pictures though. All together it's a good blog post though. To Walker Upton This picture blog incorporates some of the major points in the book. I don't know if there was a loading problem but it wasn't completely done on my screen. You're also very funny and i know that if you put in the effort you could of made this better and funnier. 

My Awesome Grade

First of all, I want to say that I loved my first quarter grade of 95. Because of this grade the list of what I did wrong will be very brief. I was told that my blog was very well organized and I showed the clear ideas of what i was trying to accomplish. My content and ideas were pretty good too besides my links. My pictures, music, and video related to my novel really well and was interesting to listen and look at. My conventions and usage were definitely my worst parts. I had little grammar mistakes but my sentence structure would sometimes be hard to follow or understand so I need to work on that. Altogether though I did really well and kinda like blogging now.

Now I like blogging but I can not say the same for the beginning of the year. I was skeptical of this blog when it was first proposed but it was better than writing papers. At first I didn't know how I would do the assignments in the time we were giving because I am normally a procrastinator. But after a while I got into the groove of doing them and didn't complain as much. Now, starting the second quarter, I am looking forward to doing the blog. I will probably incorporate a lot of the first quarter blog prompts but slightly tweaked to make it different and entertaining. I am for sure doing the Animoto again because of the way it turned out and I've always enjoyed doing movie type things like that. I have some ideas about some different things for this quarter but I haven't decided on them yet or I would tell them. I'm looking forward to this quarter and my new book though.

My new book is Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel. This book is about a kid named Ben. His father was a renowned behavioral scientist that adopts a chimpanzee named Zan. Ben's father is trying to see if Zan can learn a  more intelligent language such as sign language. Soon after they get Zan, Ben becomes his favorite. His father tells him to not get too attached to Zan because he is just and experiment but Ben doesn't want to believe his dad and tries to protect Zan from an unimaginable fate. It's a story about families, humanity, and choices. It seems really interesting but I mainly chose it because it had a monkey in it and monkeys make me happy. I can see a lot of humor coming from this book too so I think the blogs will be easier and more fun to make. I am kinda excited to start this quarter's blogs.

Around the World in 30 Seconds

http://animoto.com/play/HAMrllAfmufdyI4GtpvKHw

Vlog

This is just a brief description of what I think of the book. It also promotes the book somewhat and I don't give away much so you'll have to read the book to see what I mean.