What I Think About This Blogging Activity

Ever since the second semester started, our teacher has required us to post at least five entries in our blog. In case you do not know what a blog is, it is an online journal in which a person can express his or her opinions or feelings on another person, place or event. He said that these five entries of ours must consist of one required topic, which will be given by him, and the other four are of our own choice. His reason why we should comply to this is that this activity will help develop our writing and thinking skills. Well, I agree with him because personally, I like to write and I think I can persuade people better when I write rather than when I speak. But then, as for me, I think five entries is just too much not because of the difficulty in choosing a topic, but because of these essential factors: time, money and distance. How do these factors affect the blogging activity? Let me give you some points.

First are the distance and time factor. How does distance and time affect the blogging activity? Well, it is like this. We students have schedules that sometimes require us to stay late in school, especially that we are in the second semester when it is usually the time when culminating activities are to be made. To mention some of these, recently are the Dramafest of the Seniors and the Florante at Laura of the Sophomores, which I think are activities that require the students to stay late in school. Now, considering that the students are now done with their practices. They will now go home after a very tiring day in school. They will now ride in a jeepney from school to their homes, which will take at most an hour and a half. As for me, when in normal schedules, I reach home at about 8:00 in the evening. Pretty late, huh? But it is normal for me because I live far from school and I have now adjusted to that. But during practices, like the Dramafest, we leave school very late, about 8:30 PM and I reach home at about 10:00 in the evening. To think that I have to study my other subjects for the next day, I still have to do my household chores. With these reasons, I sometimes neglect my duty to post blog entries. Lucky for me, I have a computer at home that helps my composition faster and it can be answered by proper time management. Well, time management is the always the right answer, but not all students have computers at home, and so with this comes another factor, money.

Once, I was assigned to encode a document that contains 3000 words or more. Precisely, if I was not mistaken, it was about 3142 words all in all. It took me 6 hours to finish the document. I was very tired after that. What is the connection? An entry in our blog must contain at least 500 words. Multiply that by five because we are required to submit five entries per week, you get 2500, not to mention that not all entries are exactly 500. As you can see, it will add up approximately to 3000 words. Again I was very lucky at that time because I had a computer that I used for 6 hours straight. I mentioned it earlier that not all students have computers. Therefore, they have to rent computers in order to post their entries. Imagine a 6-hour usage of computers in internet cafes, how much will they have to spend? Six multiplied by twenty pesos because 20 pesos is the rate of rent per hour, and you get 120 pesos. Is not it too much? Again, I will emphasize that “I” consumed 6 hours in typing. You may ask why? Well, I am the President of the NETizens.Org, I have encoded a lot more documents than any other student here in UP High and I know how to touch-type. Now, if there is anyone who types better than me, you let me know. Can you see my point? One hundred twenty pesos is just too much for a UP student. In my allowance I can save only 20 pesos per day, and please, do not tell me to save more because considering the prices today, I am still lucky that I can save that much. For some students, they can only save 5 pesos per day because their allowance is just enough to put them through the day. Five pesos multiplied by five days, you get only 25 pesos! How the heck can a student fulfill his or her blog requirements if he or she does not have enough money to encode his or her entries?

So, this is my stand, I am not asking to reduce the number of requirements per week, but I just want to know how will a UP student overcome this problems.

Sir Elmer, please leave a comment on this…

State of the Environment Address

I decided to put my speech in our public speaking class into this blog because the message here is very important. I hope you like it…

Name: Paul Andrew Gutib
Occupation: National Environmentalist
Occasion: National Environmentalists Gathering
Speech on the Condition of the Environment

Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow Environmentalists, good afternoon!

We people are now living in a world full of advancements, full of gadgets and full of technologies. The world of information has already entered our homes, our minds and our hearts. There is no question that these things have significantly improved our lifestyle and our livelihood. But do we know all the things that these so-called “improvements” bring? Or are we just blinded by the spark it has brought to our lives?

As an environmentalist, like any other environmentalist maybe, follow a certain law about nature and its processes. This certain law is what we call, The Unwritten Laws of Nature. It consists of statements regarding the rules of nature. One of which states that: Everything has a price. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Now what does this mean? It means that anything you do will hold a consequence whether big or small. By just looking at this statement, imagine what kind of consequence will hold if a major improvement of lifestyle is made possible. To show you what kind, let me share to you some facts about the world today.

We are aware that factories improve the lifestyle of people by increasing the rate of production. But are we aware that for every increased rate of production, there is also an increased rate of devastation? The ozone layer is gradually becoming thinner every year because of the chlorofluoro carbons and smoke emitted by air conditioners and factories. This devastation is a result of continued economical races and improvements. The faster the emission of the smoke, the faster the destruction of the ozone layer is. When the ozone layer depletes, the ultraviolet rays of the sun will enter the earth’s atmosphere easily, thereby affecting the lives of the people. With these consequences, we people are often left to a choice. What are we going to prioritize more, is it the improvement of the society and lifestyle through factories, or is it the state of the environment that if abused and not taken care of will be lost?

Another fact is about the world’s current problem of global warming. Everyday, the earth’s temperature is increasing significantly. It was listed that the highest recorded average world temperature for this decade happened in the year 2005. Maybe it is not very surprising to you because you might be aware that our temperature is really getting hot. So what is the big deal? The big deal here is that the polar ice caps in the Polar Regions are starting to melt. There have been instances that polar bears have drowned due to fewer ice caps. Where do these ice caps go? Well, they go into the sea and increase the water volume of the earth, just like in the movie WaterWorld. What happens? Again, due to the melting of the frozen ice caps, the salinity of the ocean water would decrease making the sea currents altered, which would in turn cause another ice age. Our world could become like of that in the near future. Did you also know that the use of air conditioners to cool the inside of big city buildings contribute to the increase in outdoor temperature? It was found out by Japanese researchers that air conditioners dump enough heat into the streets to raise the temperature at least 1 to 2ºC. From these findings, we can already say that global warming is not only knocking at our doors but is already inside our homes.

Next and lastly, although this is not the last of the problems, is the state of our very own mother country. We know for a fact that the Philippines is a very polluted country. It is known that the Philippines ranks 5th in the most polluted countries of the world. So what is the big deal again? Evidences have been shown that the pollution here in the Philippines is very evident. Traces of acid rains have been recorded by non-governmental and governmental institutions. Now, how do we get acid rains? We get this through air pollution. Sulfur is the main ingredient in acid rains, and we may get this through smoke emissions. Since the Philippines is practicing the PUJ style or the commute style of transportation, and always experiencing heavy traffic everyday, it is no longer a question why there are instances of acid rains here in our country.

Again, we are only left to a choice that we must choose carefully, intellectually and reasonably. What are we going to prioritize more, is it the improvement of the society and lifestyle through a world of technology, or is it the state of the environment that if abused and not taken care of will bring us the worst? It is your choice and please do think about it carefully.

Thank you and good afternoon once again!

The Effectiveness of Animated Simulation and Basic GUI in Teaching Projectile Motion

Basic Physics is one of the most difficult subjects encountered by the third year high school students of the University of the Philippines. Because of this difficulty, our group decided to design a study that determines the improvements of the students taking this course. This study is about the comparison of the effects of the two programs in the students’ performance. To determine this, two groups are made from the two sections, namely Bocobo and Sison. Each group is then assigned to a particular teaching tool. The said teaching tools are the two programs, Basic GUI and Animated Simulation.

The Basic GUI was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic Programming Language, while the Animated Simulation was developed using Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004. For convenient and easier tracking of groups, we just named each group according to the teaching tool they are assigned to.

Before the experiment proper, we first grouped the two sections and see to it that its members are of the same performance with the other section so that the experiment would not be biased. After the grouping, we then developed a questionnaire that covers all the topics of Projectile Motion. We confirmed the validity of the questionnaire by submitting it to Mr. Jover Nuñez, the Physics professor of UP High. After the confirmation of the questionnaire, we proceeded to the start of the experiment proper.

We sent a letter to the faculty asking for permission to use the Physics period for our pretest conduct. The conduct of the pretest was then followed by the exposure to the teaching tool. Each group was then exposed to their assigned teaching tool for two hours. The exposure happened during a Saturday, which also included the discussion of the topic itself. When the exposure was done, we then proceeded to the conduct of the posttest. The posttest questions were the same questions used in the pretest in order to determine the improvements of the students and to make the results comparable. After the posttest has been conducted, we then tabulated the results and gave them the attitude test. In the preliminary tabulations, the group that got a greater mean score was the Animated Simulation.

The attitude test measures and determines the students’ attitude towards their assigned teaching tool. The attitude and achievement test were then tabulated and applied with statistical treatments to determine the significant improvement of the students’ performance. We used the t-test for correlated means in determining the significance of the mean gain improvements, while we used the t-test for correlated means in determining the significance of the difference in the mean gains for the two groups. After the statistical calculations, we found out that the results yielded significant results. Since the Animated Simulation group had a bigger mean gain compared to the Basic GUI, it can now be concluded that the Animated Simulation group is a better teaching tool compared with the Basic GUI. In the attitude test, both teaching tools were appealing to the students since their comparison did not yielded significant results.