Unit 4: Social Media

"Do you guys even do anything in N.E.W?" Is a question I get asked a lot. Unlike any other core this one is special because of the way the subjects are taught. No, there is no teacher in front of us giving a long boring lecture about how the body works. Yes, we are a project based core that uses technology in order to be recognized by community members as well as globally. N.E.W (Next Evolution in Work-based Learning) is not a traditional classroom structure yet breaking that structure.  During my experience in N.E.W school I have learned new skills I never knew I would need that definitely changed the way I do things. In this core I learned to be more independent, think out of the box, and be able to work with other people. During this unit I learned a lot about writing ted talks and narratives, exploring social media, and immunology.

My writing is not as strong as it should be. Writing ted talks and narratives was a big struggle for me and something different that I tried out. I enjoy watching ted talks and how knowledgeable the people are preforming, inspiring me to do the same. I started my ted talk with a question to try to engage my audience as well as shared my story about confidence. It was a struggle for me to write my ted talk because I really did not know how to start or end. Watching other peoples ted talks that tucker provided us with and student ted talks really helped and gave me inspiration on how to write it. When I heard that our class was reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird  by Harper Lee I was very excited because my sister always mentioned it was her favorite book yet I do not enjoy reading. When Tucker read the book to us at first I had to go back and read it myself to understand it more. The Narrative was hard for me as well as writing as a different character. In my narrative I wrote as Jem from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and added dialogue. Tucker provided us with information on how to write dialogue since it was very new to us as well as helped me to implement it in my essay. I never thought I would be writing ted talks but it was a new task that I completed and believe I did the best I could on the narrative as well. 

Teenagers use social media on a daily basis to post pictures not a lot use it to find experts or get information for projects. Here in this technology class we learned to use pinterest and twitter to connect to experts about our topic. Our teachers taught us how to create  boards on pinterest and how to tweet on twitter. I never thought I would use these both to find experts and that is what I did. I found experts on confidence, social media, and mental health that helped me on my topic. I also used technology to create my videos with high school students about their views on social media and confidence I got in contact with them off of social media as well. My unit project was around this social media unit and how it affects confidence. I was very intrigued on statistics that I researched but I was not surprised.

At first I was struggling a lot in science but I believe I see a lot of growth from my first month in this core to the last month. I have improved a lot in this subject and became more intrigued in what I was learning.Science as well is not one of my strongest subjects. I learned a lot about vaccines and viruses this unit that really interested me. It was cool to find out what type blood people are and I never knew the process until we did it in class. It all fascinated me to find out how the blood clumps and why. I also learned about how your body reacts with a virus. The immune system has cells that attack a virus and has a whole process to get rid of it. This system has its own little army attacking the virus. 

At first I felt stuck not being able to improve in this core because it was hard for me to work independently at times when I had to create my own solutions. This unit was probably my favorite out of all of them showing me new skills I can use in the future. I made a great choice for core that really helped me strive as a person as well as a student. This year really helped me shape my own learning and how I would process all the information I was given. This core has helped me think bigger, has given me confidence to strive in projects and get out into the community. I was taught many lessons in this core. There was some bumpy roads but overall my accomplishments would shine over the flaws. This was yet my best year in high school, being in a pilot program with two of the best teachers Tucker and Neto that inspire me everyday. I appreciate all the hard work the teachers put into this program, it saddens me that I will not have another year in this core.