Google Timer Tech Tip

I think the tech tip portion I really like the idea of using a timer while studying. Some of my time management tricks are to make list of things that I need to get done and put them in order of priority. Another thing I do to manage my time is to limit what I can do for a certain period of time. I will start on one part of homework and when I finish that part of homework I take a short Netflix break and then go back to homework. I encourage myself with Netflix breaks because when I am in the middle of a season I really want to know what is happening. I think just setting a timer would be a great idea. I don’t do in now but I can see myself using it in the future. I think if I set a timer I would be able to limit how long I spend on each assignment. 

Story: The Princess and the Penguin

One night a girl named Katy was curled up in her bed all tucked in to go to sleep. She was drifting off to sleep when a loud clap of thunder sounded and lightning struck and woke her up. Scared, she ran to her mother’s room with her blanket in hand. She crawled up next to her mother and shook her until she woke up.

 Katy said, “Can you tell me a story to keep my mind off the storm? I want to hear a story about a princess and some penguins!"

The mother thought about it and said, “Okay, I can do that.”

“Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who loved animals. One day she asked her father if she could have a pet penguin. Her dad said, “You can have a penguin as long as you take care of it yourself!” So the princess set out to acquire the perfect penguin.

On her journey she found many lovely penguins. She just had not found the one that seemed to be the perfect companion. The princess found a penguin who she thought was kind, that loved her, and a friend.

On her way home she decided to name the penguin Penelope. Penelope loved the princess and wanted to keep the princess happy. Her favorite place to be was at the princess’s side. The princess, however, was not sure that Penelope would make her happy.

Penelope asked the princess, "What is your favorite thing to do in your spare time?"

The princess went on about her hobbies until they made their last stop.

On the last stop before the castle a penguin walked up to the princess and tapped her on the leg. She looked down and saw a beautiful penguin. She bent down and asked the penguin, "Where is your family?"

The penguin replied, "I don't know. I haven't seen them in a few days."

The princess picked the penguin up and carried him toward the carriage. They searched for his family and were unsuccessful. The princess decided that he should come home with her as well. On the carriage ride home the princess fell in love with the penguin. She decided that he should be named Paul.

Paul showed his love to the princess, but not as often as Penelope did. Paul didn't constantly want to be in the princess’s lap. To the princess, Paul was the perfect pet penguin.

When they arrived at the castle the princess showed them around the grounds. When they arrived at Paul and Penelope’s room she told them," There are a few rules that I need you to follow. The first rule is you do not go outside without letting someone know. The second is don't go exploring the castle by yourselves. Someone needs to know where you are to keep you out of danger."

The princess spent most of her time with Paul. They did everything together from playing together to having tea. This angered Penelope because the princess didn't want to spend time with her. The princess was more enthralled with Paul. She seemed like she didn't care what happened to Penelope.

Penelope was starting to feel left out. Slowly this anger started to turn into jealousy. Penelope let jealousy get the best of her and came up with an idea of how to get rid of Paul. She was going to go outside to “play” while the princess was in class. When she got Paul outside she would take him into the cave that she found when she was exploring near the castle and they would "get lost" and go separate directions trying to find help. Penelope being the smart penguin she was had a map ready for her escape from the cave.

 So the next day while the princess was in class she walked up to Paul and asked, “Don’t you think it would be fun to get out of the castle and go explore?”

Paul, looking at her confused, asked, “Why would you want to go outside this great place?  The princess will be out of class shortly. We can ask her if we can go explore.”

 Penelope looked at him with her eyebrows raised and said, “Don’t you want to explore now? Why do we have to always do what the princess wants to do?”

Finally, after a little more convincing Penelope's plan was starting to go as planned. She convinced Paul to go explore outside.

Once outside Penelope found a cave and told Paul, “Let’s go explore this cave! It looks like fun!”

Paul looked at the cave and responded, “I don’t like the dark, so I think I will stay out here and explore in the light.”

 The princess came busting out the castle door calling for Paul and for Penelope. Penelope was shocked that the princess was looking for her, while Paul was suprised that the princess was scared.

The princess softly asked them, “Why are y’all out here? You know it is not safe for you to be out here."

Paul looked at her with guilt-filled eyes and said, “I am sorry, princess. I just wanted to explore with Penelope.”

The princess grabbed both of them up in a hug and said, “Please don’t ever do that again!” Penelope felt the princess’s love once again, and they lived happily ever after.”

Katy looked at her mom and asked, “Why was Penelope so mean to Paul?” Her mom took her in her arms and said, "Sometimes when someone spends too much time with one friend another friend gets jealous because they feel left out. When they feel jealous they will be mean because they feel like their friend was mean to them. Now, Katy, it is time for you to go back to your own bed."

Katy said, “Do I really have to?"

Her mom replied, "Yes, I love you, Katy!"

Katy hugged her mom and headed back to her own bed.

I used the plot summary from the Greek King and the Physician to come up with my story. The summary of the story was that the vizir was jealous of the physician. The vizir tried to cause harm to the physician because of this jealousy. The king had been sick and no one could heal him. The physician came and talked to the king and made him a cure. The physician had used a polo club that he filled with drugs to help heal the King. The physician gave the King strict orders on what to do with the club. When the vizir figured out that the physician had used drugs in the club, he told the King that the physician was trying to kill him. The vizir was attempting to make the king mad at the physician.  This translation of the story was written back in the 1800's. This story came from a story inside a story. The main changes I made were the setting and time period, along with the fact that I added penguins. I had a character that came into the story who caused someone else to become jealous. The stories are similar in the fact that there were two characters who tried to get another in trouble because they were jealous of the other person.  I changed the time period and the setting because I thought it could become a fairy tale. The image that I chose for this story reflects the two main characters of the story Penelope and Paul. My overall motivation was to write a story that reflected the values that were taught in the original story, but a story that my nephew would enjoy listening to.

Bibliography:

Arabian Nights

by: Andrew Long

Link: The Greek king and the Physician Douban

Paul and Penelope

By: D-Stanley

Link: Flickr

Reading Notes: Arabian Nights' Part B

So the second story that I read was about Aladdin. I think a creative idea would be to take the section of the story where the evil magician got the lamp from the Princess and used the Genie to move the castle along with the Princess to Africa instead of China. I think you could switch this story into being a kidnapping. I think a little girl could get kidnapped by a crazy nanny who wants a child but for some reason can't bare a child. She then goes out looking for a girl who she could call her own.

The Evil magician and the lamp

By: Laura Gibbs

Link:Class page

Bibliography: Arabian Nights

By:           Andrew Lang

Link           Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

Reading Notes: the Arabian Nights unit part A

For this series I had a hard time being creative when coming up with ideas to write about basically because it was like a story inside a story inside a story. The one that stood out the most to me was the The Greek King and the Physician Douban. The reason this one stood out to me the most is because it's a story about jealousy. It can be about a president who likes their provost better than they like their Vice President. There are many options that can be used with this story so I think this is the one I can get most creative with and I can make it like a story inside a story by adding a mother telling the story to her daughter.

Bibliography
Arabian Nights, By Andrew Lang
Scheherazade
The Merchant and the Genius
The First Old Man and of the Hind
The Two Black Dogs
The Fisherman
The Greek King and the Physician Douban
The Parrot and the Ogress
 The Physician's Revenge
The Sultan and the Fish
King of the Black Isles

The King with his Wife and Sister-in-law

posted by: Laura Gibbs 

Link:Class Link

Famous Last Words: Surviving Career Fair week

The reading this week went really well. I listened to the audio books because this week was so busy. This gave me enough time to do both parts of the reading. I remember the journeys of Sinbad the best. I didn't get any ideas from the reading though. I am still working on my reading strategy. This is the only class that I had to do any writing for unless you count a resume. I spent hours working on my resume for the career fair. I loved one of the stories that I read that was in letter form. There was also a poem that I read that I wish I could write like. Things in my other classes are going well it has just been busy with homework. This next week is the end of rush for my sorority, that means that I will not have two events every week just for my sorority that I will have to attend and I can get back to going to Paradigm and Village. I have been extra busy this semester and miss spending time with different organizations. I also miss the time to cook my own meals. I am hoping after this week I will be able to go home during the evenings and cook instead of eating out every evening. I also plan to get ahead on my homework if it is possible. For example, in the past weeks I haven’t finished the homework in this class until the day that it is due. Today I finished most of the work that is due tomorrow a day early. I want to keep this schedule up so I don’t end up like last week and do the wrong homework and run out of time and miss turning in an assignment. I also am about to start exams so I will need to study for those.

Engineering Career Fair 2016

By: OU Gallogly  College of Engineering 

Link: Engineering Career Fair

Wikipedia Trail: From Sinbad the sailor to Calypso

For this article I started off with Sinbad the sailor. I did this because I read the voyages of Sinbad this week for my reading. His stories were very interesting and sort of reminded me of the journey that in the Odyssey. That is why I chose Homer to go to next. I had read some of Homer's book so I knew very little about him. After reading and learning new facts about Homer it reminded me of why I liked his book. It kept my attention and was very interesting to me. That is why after Homer I went to the Odyssey. It has been a while since I read this book. That is why I decided to read a short story about what it was again. After reading about the Odyssey it reminded me of Calypso. I never really liked Calypso because she distracted men. To me that didn't make sense on why she would keep me detained as a prisoner. That was my Wikipedia trail.

Sinbad the Sailor
Homer
Odyssey
Calypso

Homer and the guide 

Link:Wikipedia by: William Adollphe Bouguereau

Health and Happiness meme: Learning Challange

Where is your happiness?

Photo By: Laura Gibbs, Judith Macias, Link:Passion

The reason this one stood out to me is because I really think this is how I feel sometimes. I had a brief period when I wasn't sure if mechanical engineering was for me. During that time I was super stressed out and seemed like I was drowning in school and life. After deciding that this was truly what I wanted to do classes didn't seem to stress me out as much, I loved getting to finish my work and have me time. That is why I think this meme is the important to know about whatever your mindset is towards work. 

Growth Mindset Meme

Entering a New world

By: Laura Gibbs, Link: kittens

I really like this meme because to me this is completely true. You have different mindsets for each thing that you do. For example my mindset changes from when I am working on my engineering home to when I am working on my business homework or even this homework. Each subject takes a different mindset.Each mindset you use will take you into a new world. That is why I like this meme because it describes the way I have to handle my school work. 

Tech Tip: Editing Pins

Healthy Pumpkin Fudge
Pumpkin Cupcakes
A new kind of pumpkin pie
Pumpkin Cheesecake cake
Magical Pumpkin Cake

So all of the post I edited were about pumpkin types of desserts. I love pumpkin everything! Just ask any of my friends that have been to my apartment and they will tell you that my apartment always smells like pumpkin. That is why all my pins are about pumpkin! It is also that time of the year for pumpkin desserts!

Pumpkin Pie

Link:Wikipedia

The Story of Mercede's horrible plane ride

One day Mercedes and Lucas decided to go to Africa to see animals they had never seen before. Mercedes loved wild animals and luckily Lucas loved Mercedes and decided he would go with her. They packed up their bags and headed to the airport. Mercedes had never flown before and she was pretty scared about flying but the excitement of seeing such a new environment kept her going. Once she was aboard the plane she thought all was well. Halfway across the ocean between America and Africa the seat belt light came on and the captain came over the intercom, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please be prepared we are headed right towards a storm so the turbulence will be pretty rough. Please stay in your seats if at all possible.” Mercedes started to get nervous, she had heard of turbulence but didn’t know how bad it would be. A few minutes after the captain came over the intercom the entire plane started shaking. Mercedes and Lucas were scared and they didn’t know what to do, the plane was shaking so much that the oxygen masks fell down and they were told to put them on as an extra precaution. The captain came over the intercom one more time, “Ladies and Gentlemen I just need you to know that the storm clouds we thought we were going through is actually a hurricane. Please brace yourselves as the plane might be going down. After about twenty minutes they thought they were going to be okay and not have to make a water land until there was one flash of lightening that hit one of the engines. One of the stewardesses grabbed the intercom speaker and gave them the instructions to prepare for landing, “Brace! Brace! Brace! Your seat is a floatation device! Brace! Brace! Brace! Please follow the exit signs when we land!” Everyone was going insane; they were screaming at the top of their lungs. After a few minutes the plane made a water top landing, the captain cleared out the plane and everyone made it into the life boats. The life boats got separated but were going in the same direction. After what seemed like days of being stuck on a life boat they finally made it to an island. Once they arrived on the island everyone was so happy to see land. Once everyone was on the land the captain set search groups to look for food, water, shelter, and people. Each group had a responsibility, each group came back almost empty handed. There were no people on the island, very little food, and there wasn’t a good place for a shelter that would be big enough to fit everyone. The captain then decided that it was fend for yourself because he knew that there was no way that everyone was going to make it off the island if there weren’t any people or ships around. They started getting their supplies together and split up all of the goods and tools that were on the plane. After dividing all the supplies from the plane each person only had one days’ worth of food to last them who knew how long on the island. After being stranded on the island for 9 days they experienced their first death. Every day after that more and more people were dying from starvation. Mercedes and Lucas were among the last 5 of the passengers that were still alive after 2 months. They had the mindset that they knew people were coming to save them. People knew the plane went down, now they just need to find the passengers. After 2 months and 5 days they finally saw a helicopter. The helicopter lowered down a rope ladder which they then climbed up and into the helicopter. The crew gave them food and water. Once they finished the food and water one of the crew members asked, “How many of you are there left?” Mercedes answered, “We are the last 3” signaling to Lucas and the Captain. The helicopter took them back to the United States. The next day the president awarded them all with medals of bravery for fighting to live so long on such a deserted place. They also set up scholarships in their names, and gave them a place to take a vacation and recuperate from their journey.

Africa trip

Wikipedia

Bibliography:

The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang

Link: Sinbad: Fifth Voyage

Authors note:

For this story I took the fifth voyage of Sinbad and mixed it a little bit with the plot line of Cast Away. I tried to be creative and come up with another way to be left alone on a secluded island but plane and ships are about the only way to get to those islands. 

Reading Part B: Voyages of Sinbad

For this part of the unit I had a very hard time of coming up with creative ideas I could write a story about. I feel like this whole unit could be wrote in the setting of a distopia. Each having different events to go along with the voyage of a Sinbad adventure. For example instead of huge Roc's from the Fifth Voyage you could use a mother and father alligator and they would be lost in the swamp lands of Africa. The Alligator could pop a tire on their stranded vehicle. Swarming the vehicle so that it can't be replaced. You could use a Star wars ship for the Sixth Voyage. They could be stranded in outer  space after a collision with a asteroid. All of his companions would float away into the depths of space. I really don't have any ideas of how to make the   Seventh and Last Voyage, I am thinking along the line of maybe having a lion get zebra separated from his heard and a lion takes care of the zebra and asks the zebra to track the warthogs. I am not really sure for this story. There is not an abundance of action that happens in this story.

Asteroid collision, by Pizabay

Link: Pizabay

Bibliography:
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang
Fifth Voyage
Sixth Voyage

Reading part A: Voyages of Sinbad unit

This week I am reading the stories of Sinbad and his voyages. There are many stories that you could come up with based off of  these stories. One story could be about First Voyage where a child is riding a bus and falls asleep on the bus and has many obstacles to face to find his way back home. Another idea about a story you could write from these stories would be your could use the Second Voyage where it could be a continuation of my last weeks story of a distopia.  I received a few comments though that I didn't include enough information about the distopia and I could fix that problem this week. The Third Voyage and the  Fourth Voyage I am not sure how I could change them. The Third I guess I could set in the Alps with a huge snow monster and you burn the monster down. The fourth you could make about a distopia too I guess. It's kind of like the Hunger Games almost.

The Snow monster, photo courtesy of pocolover1957

link: Abominable snowman 

Bibliography:

The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang

First Voyage

Second Voyage

Third Voyage

Fourth Voyage

Story: Destination Destroyed

It was the year 2076. Claire along with the people of Struny Island were fighting to keep their town in one piece. It was the middle of a civil war, on an island off the coast of Europe. The island was leading in the growth of a special fruit called strunberries. Strunberrys were used to heal wounds of any type. The island was controlled by President Hoffman.

Hoffman was secretly working on storing all the fruit away and killing each plant off as he went. He wanted to be in control of the island and the medical help it kept. Nellie was his faithful servant who kept this secret from everyone who lived on the island. President Hoffman was suffering from a sickness the strunberries couldn't cure. The president passed away leaving the people of the island in shock of what was to come.

Sean was the Vice President who thought he should fill in while Nellie was the President’s personal representative, who believed that she should take control of the island. This civil war had been in the making for many years. The island was divided in half, one half following their fearless leader Nellie, the other half following their leader Sean.

Sean wanted to keep peace but believed that their main concern should be for the environment. He believed that they killed off the produce with the pollution that was caused by machines and vehicles. Nellie wanted to be the best in every category no matter what the cost was. She wanted this to be the island with the highest exportation rate.

Sean told all the people of the island, “Nellie is a liar! I don’t have the hard evidence yet, but she has been helping President Hoffman keep secrets from us for many years.”

When Nellie heard this she went after Sean saying, “Sean is lying! He just wants to take over this island so he can get rid of all the machine shops and vehicles. Sean only cares about the environment, not the people who live on this island!”

This disagreement caused a civil war within the island. The civil war had been going on for a while when it finally made its way to the town that Claire lived in which was Superville.

Claire really didn't want her beautiful city destroyed. The people of Superville loved their city so much and it was filled with so much beautiful art and architecture. It would be a shame to demolish such a beautiful place. The people of Superville tried everything to detour the war from coming to their city. After their final attempt failed, Claire ran to the mountains and watched her beloved city become a pile of ash.

After the war moved on into another city Claire went back to the city to see if anything was left. She was crushed to find that the whole city was gone. There were bits and pieces of furniture and pictures everywhere she looked. When she found a couch that was still partly intact she sat there trying to calm herself down. She started sobbing and just couldn't stop. After a few minutes she had eventually cried herself into a deep sleep. Her sleep lasted a few years.

Finally, when she woke up she was strapped down to a metal table. There were I.V.'s in her arms and beeping machines all around her. She was scared and didn't know what was going on. Suddenly the doors opened and a robot nurse came in with a tray of supplies. The robot noticed that she was awake and hit the button on the side of her bed.

Her room was quickly filled with robots. When Claire talked to them, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening, the robots never responded. Finally, a bigger robot came into her room and noise filled the room. Claire noticed that the arm of the robot said BOB. The noise coming from the robots was a noise that Claire had never heard before. She tried to ask BOB what was going on and where she was when BOB answered, "We are the new inhabitants of Earth. You have been asleep for 25 years. There are no more left of your kind, and we are trying to figure out why that is. Do you know what happened to the rest of your species?"

This news frightened Claire. Looking down and shaking her head she said, "I have no clue what you are talking about. The last I knew we were in the middle of a Civil War. Why can't I leave here?"

The BOB responded, "You are here so we can monitor you. You can't leave until we figure out what happened to the rest of your species and why they disappeared."

Their conversation finished and the robots left her room. Every day after that day Claire refused to eat or communicate with anyone because she felt so out of place. One day she finally asked BOB what his name stood for.

BOB replied, "Biomedical Orthopedic Body."

BOB then went on to tell her that he was a robot that was controlled by something other than himself. Someone sent him orders of what to do and say. He was pretty much like any other robot body or droid. She asked who created him and BOB went on to tell her that the information she was asking for was classified. They went on and talked for a few hours until Claire was worn out. When Claire was trying to fall asleep, she couldn’t stop thinking about what was in her future. She worried about what will come next in her journey with BOB.





Author's note: I used the story of The Sleep of One Hundred Years. This story is about Onias who saw Jerusalem destroyed and then fell asleep for 100 years. The story of Onias is over 2000 years old and has been passed down since first century B.C.E. Onias fell asleep after his city was destroyed by a fire. When he awoke he knew no one and the place he was at seemed unsettling to him. He felt out of place because things had changed in the years he had been asleep. After he had gone into town he found out everything he knew was gone. He found some of his relatives that still lived near the town. When he talked to them he realized he could never live here because this is not the time and place he belonged in. I got the idea of a civil war from a series that I read a couple years ago called Divergent. I used Divergent and Hunger Games to lay a ground plot for the way I formatted this story. The major changes I made were changing the setting to be in a dystopia and making it in the future. My changes were based off the impression I got the first time reading through this story. I chose the image to represent BOB. I did this because BOB is Claire's only link to anything left after her sleep.


Bibliography:
Gertrude Landa, The Sleep of One Hundred Years 

 

The body of the Future.

Photo by: TexelGirl-Stock

Link:Robot Picture

Reading: Jewish Fairy Tales, Part B

After reading the stories I came up with about three ideas I could use for my storytelling post. The first idea was from the story of The Sleep of One Hundred Years. Instead of this being a story about a man who sleeps one hundred years I was thinking I could make it about a teenage girl. After a Civil war her city is destroyed. She finds a bed that is still intact to take a nap, she wakes up in a stage place with a bunch of IV's running into her arm. She then realizes that her nurses are robot. The second story idea I came up with goes with the story of the King for Three Days. My idea was during a combat fight a girl was taken captive and a man tries to save her harming the people that captured her one at a time. The last story idea I came up with was from the story Fairy Frog. For this story idea I think I would have a grandma leave an heirloom of her dog to her granddaughter, her wishes is that the granddaughter raises the dog and takes good care of her and it will protect her. In a few years when the granddaughter is living on her own someone tries to break into her house and the dog protects her.

 

The Great Protector.

Link: Wikipedia

Bibliography 

The Sleep of One Hundred Years, Gertrude Landa

King for Three Days , Gertrude Landa 

The Higgledy-Piggledy Palace , Gertrude Landa

The Rabbi's bogey-Man, Gertrude Landa

The Fairy Frog, Gertrude Landa