Showing posts with label 2bat-1term. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2bat-1term. Show all posts

Film: Gladiator

This film called Gladiator is a film about a Roman commander that due to difficult circumstances becomes a slave and a gladiator. I decided to do this post about this film because I have seen this film three times and I have always liked a lot. I saw it for the first time when I was 10 years old and it made a big impression on me. Then I saw it again when it was said Barcelona players saw the film before a final and I appreciate more thins that the first time like all the physiological traits the film has. For me the film is a very good example of striving until the end and always keep fighting for achieve what you want and what you think although the difficulties but always whit the senses of honor and good ethic. Finally some days ago I saw the film again on the television and this is the reason why I decided to make this post.


The plot is about a great Roman commander called Maximum who is faithful to the old emperor who treats the commander like a son. The problem starts when the emperor is killed by his real son. The new emperor sends some murders to kill the commander for jealousy. When the commander is going to be killed he escapes but after being some days away he is captured by other romans and he becomes a slave and a gladiator. The emperor has also killed his family so his goal now is to revenge. He starts to win a lot of fights and he with other slaves are sent to Rome to play some fights for the emperor and Roman people in the Coliseum. He becomes very popular there and the when the emperor meets him he can’t kill him unfairly in front of the citizens. The emperor organizes a lot of difficult fights for him and making a lot of traps to prejudice Maximum, but he keep going and achieve to win all the combats. At the end there is the fight between Maximum and the emperor who tamper the event by hurting the gladiator hardly before the fight. Finally Maximum wins the combat but dies and is represented as he finally meets his family (his son and his wife).

1st term and the difficulty of deciding


 These are the last days of the first term. In general it have been like other years but these last weeks we have had a lot of exams and in addition we have to finish research project to correct it all without any mistakes.

But what I think for me is being the hardest this year and the thing about I want to talk in this post is the hard decision we have to do this days to choose our future degree and our future life. During all this year and part of the last one all the teachers, relatives, and mates have insisted in the importance of choose well because this will be my future, but I haven’t made the decision yet. Actually I chose the scientific batxillerat to keep the maximum number of options available and because I really like biology but about degrees I don’t know because I don’t like any specific part of the biology more than others so it’s a bit difficult to decide.



Moreover this term we have been asked in different subjects to write of about our goals, future, etc. and I really don’t know but I use to put some degrees related with biology and the human body but I don’t know if it’s what I will do in my future. ´The last day we were asked about the degree we want to hear about in the university lectures for February.

I really have thought since the start of the batxillerat that I could do the selectivitat and then I would decide the degree I would do depending on the mark of the exams. It seems that this finally won’t be possible but I think we need more information about different degrees and to see how people work in their jobs and more because in my opinion we are obliged to do a lot of general subjects that make us unable to decide well if we are not very decided on we want to do. Moreover I think it's impossible for most of the people that with only 18 or just 17 to decide what they want to do the rest of their life.

Desingend babies and critics


The company called “23andme” has the new patent called “build-a-baby”. This consists on a DNA testing that can tell to the prospective parents the main traits which might have their future babies. The DNA testing is made on a small saliva sample of the couples and apart from predicts the risk of inheriting specific genetic diseases, can also predict details such as height, weight, eye and hair color and even personality of their future offspring.

Baby boy


The first critics have appeared with the obvious question: “How ethical is to build a perfect baby?” Firstly some critics have said that the patent is “ethically and socially treacherous”. Moreover a lot of critics have said that this could be misused to choose the future child traits and design your baby.

Opinion:

In my opinion it’s not ethical to design your baby with the traits you want, but in this case this it could be useful to avoid some diseases. Moreover it’s important to see that in this case this company don’t let people choose any traits but this patent could only let people choose between the different options the parents have in their own DNA.

New words learnt:






http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24381149

Tragic accident and rush for the next World Cup

In Brazil, the host of the next Football World Cup, a tragic accident with the death of 2 workers have happened during the construction of the Corinthians Arena. A big crane collapsed on the structure destroying part of the facade of the stadium while it was finishing the roof structure. Two workers died and the crane operator was taken to the hospital.

The site of the accident


Is not the first accident, with these ones there have been 4 deaths in different accidents. The FIFA and the Brazilian government said that they were deeply saddened by the tragic deaths.

Moreover the World Cup is this next summer and 6 stadiums are not ready yet. The FIFA deadline is on December but it seems obviously the stadiums won’t be finished so it seems that the Brazilian constructors will have to work round-the-clock until the start of the World Cup to finish the construction of all the necessary buildings.

Opinion:

It isn’t the first accident in the construction of the buildings for the World Cup and in my opinion they are organizing badly all this because it’s true that this brings a lot of money to the region but they have to worry more about the workers and the people because they only mind the money and the deadlines. 

Moreover I think they have started to build these stadiums too late because they knew that the World Cup would place there 8 years ago so now it’s not the time to finish too hurry and round-the-clock risking too much.

New learnt words:






http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25127897

A strange cannibalism case

A 55 years old police officer has been arrested for a supposed cannibalism case in Germany.  He is on suspicion of murdering and butchering a man he met on a cannibalism website. It seems that the victim who was a 59 years old man had been all his life fantasizing about being killed and eaten, and offered to be killed in this website. The police have said it will be difficult to find out the truth about what really happened, because is an utterly extraordinary case and even though the police officer confessed, he didn’t say the motive of the crime.

Moreover some parts of the dismembered and buried victim have been found on the suspect’s garden. The only previous similar case was in 2001 when a man was sentenced to life prison for killing and eating a voluntary victim he met on internet. That was an easier case because the suspect posted on a similar web an advertisement looking for a young man for “slaughter and consumption”.

Forensics investigate in the garden of the suspected murderer on November 29 in Hartmannsdorf.


Opinion:

In my opinion this is a very macabre article, and I think that is a bit stupid to let people talk and make this websites on the internet, when they are talking about these things and they are planning crimes. The article say that is difficult to judge the suspect because is an strange case and they don’t know all the details but I think there isn’t any dilemma and this is a mad man who have to be in prison the rest of his life.

New learnt words:




Exam's writing

“Youth is the only thing that matters”

“But your beauty won’t last forever. When your youth goes your beauty will go with it”

Beauty is a very important thing but it’s not the most important thing. Beauty is related with youth, and it’s obvious we can’t be young forever so nobody can be beautiful forever. It’s important to recognize that, because if you don’t, you will be all your life trying to keep something that you can’t.

In contrast you can recognize the importance of beauty by taking advantage of it during your youth.

Moreover it helps you understand that everybody will lose their beauty so you can try to find (in you and in your pair) other important things that will last for ever.

In conclusion, beauty is important but is not the most important thing because it doesn’t last forever, so we must learn to appreciate other things in life.

Is it better to live at home or on campus when you are at university?

The accommodation is a difficult issue for students and their parents. The campus offers you short way from the lecture halls and moreover, what I think is more important, provides you the case to meet new people and improve your relationships with them while you are on the campus. 

However, to stay at home is another possibility that provides you the sensation of staying in your safe zone and the help of your family for any problem. 

For deciding between this two options you have to take in account your income level and that if you go on a campus you will suffer a big change in your daily life.

In conclusion, I think that it could be a good experience to live on a campus to adapting easily to the university life but if your income level is too low or you don't want to see big changes in your life to live at home is also a good option.

Dialogue


Record music with Vocaroo >>

Scenario: Two men sit in a restaurant in Barcelona
Characters: Jaume and Roger


J: Oh man! I heard Claudia wants a boobs increase operation, you know.


R: Oooh really, good thing, she need it.


J: What??


R: This!


J:Sorry??


R: Claudia isn’t happy with herself and this will help her…, you know.


J: Do you think with this operation she will be happy??


R: Sure, big boobs can do wonders.


J: Well, her life isn’t a bed of roses… but I think she doesn’t need it


R: Yes, so this will be a change to better in her life, and also a sight for sore eyes.


J: You’re a fucking materialist, you will never find a girlfriend in your FUCKING LIFE!!!


(Everybody in the restaurant staring at them)


R:Ohh relax, my friend, you are a killjoy, don’t take it so seriously, mate.


J: Okay, I’m so sorry.


R: But you can be happy with your wife boobs size, can’t you?


J: Yeah, that’s true. You’re searching for one with big boobs too, aren’t you?


R: Yeah, your wife’s sister could be an option, couldn’t be?


J: Touch her and I will kill you!! Jajaja.


R: So you should already have killed me!


J: Why you have chosen her?

R: Because she have new big operated boobs, JAJAJA

Oral presentation: smartphones

Jaume, David and me did the other day the oral presentation about this topic: smartphones
We decided this topic because we think that smartphones are something very important in our life and they are becoming even more and more important. Nowadays we can do almost whatever with a mobilephone and a lot of people are investigating to achieve to do the few things we can't do yet.
Moreover this is becoming an obsession to a lot of people and they "live" without their smartphones.
For all this reasons we decided to do this project about this topic.


We used different resourses to develop this project. Specially we used google drive, and prezi because of the ease they provide us to work fast and don't have to meet everyday we want to do something.


The project:

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Smartphones

- Intro - def. and main features -Roger
Hello everybody, TGIF we are Jaume, David and Roger and we are going to show you a presentation about smartphones. Nowadays almost everybody have a smartphone and they have become one of the most important things in our life. Everyday we are using our smartphones for a lot of functions and we are becoming more and more depending on our smartphones. Moreover we can see that is becoming a serious dependence when we see that although we are in crisis, and a lot of people are without work, the mobile phones sells and their prices have remained or even have increased. For all these reasons we thought it was important to talk about this topic and become aware of this paradoxical situation.
Okay first of all it’s important to say that a smartphone is exactly a mobile phone with computer features that at least is able to send e-mails, and have access to internet.
Okay, so firstly we will explain you the history and the evolution of the smartphones, secondly David will talk you about the different operating systems, then we will explain together the most used or downloaded apps, then we will talk about environmental impact, social impact and finally about the future expected development.  Okay so now Jaume will start with the history:


- History: (creation, evolution (photo)): - Tots repartir


Origin of the term (Jaume)
The term "smartphone", however, did not appear until 1997, when Ericsson described its GS 88 "Penelope" concept as a Smartphone that was a device that combined telephony and computing.
Some manufacturers and providers use the term "superphone" for their high end phones with unusually large screens and other expensive features
With the advent of devices with larger screens, the term "phablet", a portmanteau of the words phone and tablet, had come into common usage by 2008.


Early years (Roger)
The first cellular phone to incorporate computer features was developed in 1992 and demonstrated that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. A refined version of the product was marketed to consumers on 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator. Apart from receiving calls,  Simon was also able to send and receive e-mails and pages through its touch screen display. Simon included many applications including an address book, calendar, calculator, world time clock, games, electronic notepad, handwritten annotations and standard and predictive touchscreen keyboards.
In 1996, Nokia released the second smartphone called Nokia 9000, part of the Nokia Communicator line, which became their best-selling phone of that time.
Between 2002 and 2004 HTC gained much popularity in Europe with their "Wallaby", "Falcon" and "Himalaya" models running the Windows Mobile Operating System. They were called Pocket Pc and when the other brands saw started developing their own smartphones.


The recent evolution (Costa)
In the last six years with the development of the first Iphones it started the gr
owth of sales of smartphones.  During all these years apple devices have been very popular but in the last two years Sony and especially Samsung have tried to improve their technology to compete with Apple.  These last years the two companies have had a hard “battle” and they have denunciate between them.


- Operating systems: Costa


The mobile operating systems (that is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs) are the operating system that operates a smartphone, tablet, PDA, or another digital mobile device. The newest operating systems combine the features of a personal computer operating system with other features, including a touchscreen, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS mobile navigation, camera, video camera, speech recognition, voice recorder, music player etc.
The most important ones are Android 72,4%, iOS 13,9%, Windows Phone 2,4%, Blackberry 5,3%, Bada 3,0%, Symbian 2,6%, Others: Palm OS and Windows Mobile 0,4%.  


- Most used apps: - Tots repartir
Communication apps:(Costa) The three apps that I’m going to explain are probably the most used for everybody. WhatsApp, Line and Skype, are in the communication apps, and are very useful because we can communicate to the other people using this apps.
  • WhatsApp: Maybe, if I ask in this class: who have whatsapp? Everybody will say yes. WhatsApp, it’s the most used application of the world. We use WhatsApp to ask the homework to our friends, to talk with girlfriends or boyfriends, to ask to your mother if she has already made the dinner and for a lot of more reasons. WhatsApp. WhatsApp, was made in 2009 and during these for years more or less, the creators                       of this app has earn more than 10 million of dollars. Finally, if we want to see how important is this app for us, we only have to see how many people use this application all around the world. We are more than 300 million. I think that this app has changed the communication in the world and it’s one of the best apps unless you have a bored friend.



  • Line: Line isn’t as popular as WhatsApp, but there are a lot of people that use this application. If you don’t know this application maybe it’s because you only use WhatsAPP, but there are a lot of people that prefers to use Line, I don’t know why because in my opinion it’s a copy of WhatsApp, but there are some differences between these applications. For example, Line it’s a social network, and WhatsApp not, LINE have different emoticons and the most important one is that with Line, you can phone and speak with other people like in a call.


  • Skype: Skype was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennström from Sweden. With this applications, you can do video calls with your smartphone. You can talk to another person while you are watching them. It’s useful if you don’t want to write like in WhatsApp for example.


These three apps, are absolutely free.  


Social networks:(Jaume) With WhatsApp, this three apps are the most used for everybody. The reason is very simple, you can share information, photos, videos, talk with friends… so it’s very useful and entertaining. Everybody knows about these apps so I want to say some new things about this.


  • Facebook: This social networks was created for Mark Zuckerberg. Originally Facebook was used by students of an American university but they decided to open to all the people in the world approximately in 2004. Nowadays Facebook has 1100 millions of users all over the world, especially in USA, Brazil, Indian... 600 millions people have downloaded this app in their smartphones.
  • Instagram: This is a recent app created to share and retouch photos and videos with all the world. If you put some tags, you have the possibility that a person in USA can see your photo, if you don’t put the tags, only your followers can see your photos or videos. This app was created for Kevin Systrom in 2010. Only people who had iphones could have it, but in 2012 this app was in Google Play for all the Androids.
  • Twitter: Jack Dorsey create this app in 2006 and since this year Twitter became more and more popular. Nowadays, Twitter has more than 200 millions of users, every day Twitter generate 65 milions of tuits and more than 800.000 request of search.



Others: (Roger) Apart from the social apps that are the more used, there are a lot of other applications that we use everyday only for entertainment or because they facilitate our life.
  • Games define the first group and the success of these ones is based on the entertainment they provide that usually consists on beating different levels and set your own record and moreover to compete with your friends. The trends on the most used games are always changing but if we want to find the most downloaded free games they are candy crash, angry birds, triviados… and a lot of others and this are always changing.
  • Information apps: apart from entertainment we use a lot of apps to keep us informed about news, but in this group we can include the google maps or gps or a lot of different applications including all the news apps.
  • Apps related with music: This is the last group of apps and has a lot of success. This group include all the apps related with music and the most popular are Shazam which is an app that let you record and identify a song that you hear, spotify which let you make your lists, discover new songs and share all this, and finally we have the music downloaders that how it’s obvious are used to download often free music.


- Environmental impact: -Costa


This part of the presentation it’s one of the most boring so I will try to be brief. We have to obtain dangerous minerals like coltan to make the smartphones, which has shown to cause damaging effects on the wildlife and the population in the surrounding area. Many incidents have been recorded in these countries, whereby men, women, and children worked at gunpoint to mine for these minerals. The conditions in which they worked were not safe, as the workers did not have the necessary safety equipment. This is one of the most dangerous mineral that we have to use, but if we analyze the phone, there are a lot of plastic, which are made with oil.
We have to say that when we don’t like our Sony Experia, and we want to buy the new Iphone, we want to throw away our old phone and use the new one. Companies have been responsible for improperly recycling their old/used smart phones causing damage to the environment.Cell phones can contain dangerous chemicals such as antimony, cadmium, copper, lead, arsenic, nickel and zinc so we have to recycle the old phones.


-Social impact: -Roger /vidio nomophobia el 2on
This is one of the more important factors to consider and it’s probably the one which have made us decide this topic for the presentation. How I have said at the start of the presentation it’s a really worrying aspect of the smartphones because especially in students they are becoming an obsession. This is undeniable if we look that even the crisis the prices and the sales of smartphones have remained or even have increased in the last two years. The recent studies consider this dependence on the smartphones a type of mental illness.  The name of this illness is called nomophobia that comes from the terms “no mobile phone phobia” and is the fear of forget your smartphone or fear of the battery death.This obsession is more usual in students but it can happens in all ages. The main symptoms can be different behaviors such as sleep just next to your smartphone, have and anxious feeling and can’t be without your smartphone more than 10 minutes, feel separation anxiety when you are without your smartphone, and then there are other exaggerated ones which can be to name your mobile phone.
It hasn’t had to be the most exaggerated situation, but everybody who have a smartphone have a minimum of dependence on its own phone. Moreover the experts say that a lot of people suffer this disorder without being conscious of it. And a lot of experts consider that the fact of bring the mobile everywhere or having the mobile turned on during the class for example is a symptom of the nomophobia.
These studies have shown people who said that without it’s smartphone they feel as they were naked and they can’t follow their daily routine.
Here we have two impressive numbers:
- Approximately more than 50% of the population suffers from nomophobia.
- On average, people look at the mobiles 34 times per day.


-(Future development): -Jaume


As we know, smartphones are the thing that become obsolete quickly. Every year appear a new smartphone with more roles and specifications. But companies have to earn money and obviously wants to do that, if they don’t want to be the last company, they have to improved their smartphones and created tablets and things like that. Now I’m gonna tell to you what we can see in new smartphones the next year.


The last smartphone of Nokia was Nokia Lumia 1020 with a big screen and a camera of 41 megapixels. So you can think, this is a perfect smartphone, but they want more. The next smartphone will be probably Nokia Lumia 1520, with a screen of 6 inch, a capacity of 32 or 64 MB and support of 4G.


Apple have throw two new smartphones, Iphone 5s and Iphone 5C, the last one is low cost and you can have it with some different colours. So for this reason, Samsung want to compete with the company and in 2014 you will see a Samsung Galaxy 5. This will include a processor of 64 bits A7 like Iphone 5S and obviously a screen bigger than 5 inches. Probably you will see a camera with 16 ultra pixels but they want to improve the quality of photos if we take this at night. Nokia, to announced Lumia 1020 they showed the quality of their camera and then they compared photos with other photos took by a smartphone of Samsung. So, you will see 16 ultra pixels and you will take better photos at night. Another different thing will be the materials. The smartphone will be recover by a carbon fibre layer and they do this because he wants more resistance in their smartphones. But, the most important thing that we have never seen is that Samsung Galaxy 5 will be flexible. Maybe you will understand what I’m saying in this video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=      Ix_-uRxIKNs


Lenovo Vibe Z, a Chinese brand, wants to throw a low cost smartphone, with screen of 5.5 inches, support for 4G, etc. This brands started to became stronger in the market because of their prices.



-Conclusion (Jaume): In conclusion we can say smartphones have completely changed our lives and our society. Currently, you can see in the street or in bars that people are only focused in their smartphone. As Roger have said before, there are an illness derived from smartphones and especially teenagers are always connected with their mobiles. This trouble can transform a boys or girls, they started to have bad marks, problems with family or friends etc. But smartphones have provide good and useful things. You can search and share information whatever you want, talk with friends, take photos or videos, etc. Is fascinating what we can do now with our smartphones. So, used it in a good way because the consequences can be bigger than what can we imagine.


We hope you have enjoyed with our presentation and if you have any questions please ask.
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The prezi:




Self-evaluation:

I will put here the self-evaluation and the videos. There are two videos because we didn't finished the presentation the first day so we ended the second day. In my opinion I did it better the second day because I wasn't as nervous as the first day and because I think I knew better what I had to say.


Roger Farrés: Smartphones (with Jaume and David)
Presentation (10%)
Do you use any resources? Are the resources relevant and attractive and focused on the topic? Do they support your presentation? Is the timing 5-7 minutes?
Yes, we used Prezi as the main resource. Moreover we showed some shocking videos to keep the audience focused on the presentation. 
10
Body language and eye contact (10%)
Are you looking at your audience most of the time? Are you reading occasionally from your notes? Are you doing any gestures / movement to hold the attention of the audience?
I think that this was the worst part of my presentation because it’s difficult to look at the audience, and I used to watch a lot the screen.
6
Structure (10%)
Do you organize your ideas in order of importance? Do you use discourse markers to make your ideas more clear?
Yes, we did an index, we put the ideas in order, and we use some discourse markers.
10
Content (35%)
Do you introduce interesting, NEW information to your audience? Is your information detailed and clear? Do you give / show examples? Is your information copied from a source or is it original? Did you look up information/facts/ideas in the Internet/books…?
I think we have done an interesting presentation with new information for all the audience because although nowadays almost everybody have smartphone, no everybody knows the history, what they can do with them or the impact they have in the environtment and in themselves. Moreover I think we have talk about the project from different points of view and from differet topics.
35
Language (25%)
Is your grammar correct, complex? Is your vocabulary rich and varied? Do you use sentence linkers? Do you use pause fillers?
I think that I used a correct grammar, with a lot of topic-related vocabulary. About the linkers and the pause fillers I think I have used a few. Even though we can always improve and probably we can improve a lot of gramatical structures.
20
Pronunciation and intonation (10%)
Do you know how to pronounce all your words? Did you check the pronunciation with a dictionary, a classmate or the teacher? Do you change your tone of voice or use a monotone tone all the time? Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions?
I knew how to pronounce the words because I had searched on the google translator and in howjsay. I did it with some breaks to read or pronounce difficult words but in general I think I done it quite fluid. Apart from that I made some pronunciation mistakes like "features" or others but I didn't realize until I see the video and they are because of the nervousness of the moment.
6



Final Mark: (100%)
87%