Kimberly

This is my comment to Kimberly. She saw that the skills of collaboration and communication are important for school. So I decided to help further her sight a bit. You can see the post here. Grrrr... just saw the spelling error in the comment, wish you could edit comments on those blogs.

Hello Kimberly,

You have good foresight when you believe that cooperation and communication will be important in highschool and university but you can also look beyond this to the even more important work world. There are very few jobs that are completely solo. What would really get done if everyone worked as an individual?

There are chains of cooperation and communication in the work world. We'll take sometihng popular like a videogame for example. What we see is just the finished product but there is so much behind that and it isn't just one person. First there are a group of people who brainstorm a concept. That concept is proposed to their bosses. If he/she likes the proposal and the analysts say it will make money then it starts being made. Here's where the cooperation and communication explodes into action. There are writers for the storyline, concept artists, 3d modellors, animators, computer coders, marketers, legal teams, sound technicians etc. Behind almost anything there is some sort of collaboration. Some peoples jobs are purely just to initiate collaboration!

You have probably heard the anecdote (a saying with a bit of wisdom in it) that goes "Two heads are better than one.". Well if that's true are three heads better than two? Three hundred better than three?

Sincerely,
GreyMW
Student Mentor

Sara

Science Fair's rock! Thought I'd inform about a little known awesome fair that seems like too much but really isn't (Chris and I were going to enter it this year but our most promising idea of converting blood types into O- was discovered and relatively recently (even more irking was that we had the basic idea of how to do it right! But alas I digress...)). If you would like to see Sara's post you can view it here

Hello Sara,

I'm glad to see that the fruits of your labor paid off even before the fair! Would really like to hear how you did. Anyway, I don't know if this is available in Snow Lake but maybe next year you could try out the Sanofi Aventis Biotech Challenge if you enjoy science fairs. This competition may seem very foreboding and tough BUT at the grade 7 or 8 level it is not that terribly involved (though it is a fair amount of work but believe me the awards dinner alone is worth it.). If you are interested don't look at the descriptions of some of the projects as those are probably by the grade 12 geniuses (such as the guy that had the promising alternative to chemotherapy, he won the grade 12 competition for Canada and ended up with over 15000 dollars in prize money). That being said when my friend and I entered the first time we studied how two enzymes in your stomach and intestines break down protein (little did we know at the time that this has been thoroughly investigated). The next year we decided to study natural preservatives such as ascorbic and citric acid (basically lemon juice and vitamin A/C, I can't remember). Anyway we had a blast and won both years so it is very possible. It is not possible to enter this year anymore, but if you or any other driven classmates want to participate I urge you to check it out.

Sincerely,
GreyMW
Student Mentor

Kate / Joey

Read Kate's/Joey's blog post. Seemed to enjoy the Egyptian project so thought I'd whet her palette with a couple other civiliazations. Kind of confused as to what this persons name really is though, link says Kate, blog says Joey. You can see the post here.

Hello Joey (AKA Kate right?),
Glad you liked the Ancient Egypt unit. If you enjoyed that you would probably like reading about the Ancient Greeks or Norse peoples. I personally don't know too much about their cultures as I'm just a mythology buff. But search up the ones you find kinda interesting out of the following outlines of stories about Ancient Greek and Norse mythologies, it is a neat insight into their culture.

Greek Mythology (Interesting to note that opposed to our stories nowadays these don't really have many happy endings)

Narcissus and Echo (Personal fav)
A story about how echo's came to be and the Narcissus flower (along with narcissism, look it up it's a good word). It has the moral of not to love those who cannot show love for you.

Tantulus
A story about the punishment of a foolish king. With the punishment being rather interesting and rather famous. The punishment is that he is given unquenchable thirst and hunger but the kicker is that he is trapped in a river neck high and the water recedes every time he tries to drink. There is also a fruit bearing plant above him but whenever he reaches for the fruit the wind blows it out of his reach.

Bellerophon
The ultimate hero in Greek mythology (or he is in my opinion). Slays many beasts and tames the Pegasus. Tries to join the gods on Mount Olympus but Zeus casually shoots him and the Pegasus out of the sky with a bolt of lightning.

Other things to look up greek mythology-wise:
Perseus & the Medusa/Gorgons
Artemis the huntress
Persephone Wife of Hades
Titan Gods; Birth of Zeus
Chaos, the beginning of Greek mythology

Norse Mythology:

Skadi
Has to choose her husband by his feet

Ragnarock
The final battle of the gods and giants, kinda like the rapture or the apocalypse

Freyja & other Valkyries
Sheildmaidens that take the souls of fallen warriors into the halls of Valhalla where they fight to the death every day in preparation for Ragnarock (and in those halls they are called einherjar).

Other things to look up:
Loki the trickster
Fenris the Wolf
Thor and his hammer
Balder/Baldr the beautiful

Hope you enjoy a little bit of the insight into these peoples if you look them up.

Sincerely,
GreyMW
Student Mentor

Lana

Well been awful busy of late. Finally got back to this and a new topic to comment about! Yay! You can see her post here.

Hello Lana,
That is a great topic for a research project! There is loads of information on it. So much in fact that are you planning on focussing on a certain aspect on it (i.e. big business' role, genetics etcetera)? Or are you going to go for a broad overview of the many aspects? Planning this sort of thing out early really makes the finished product better quality and generally easier (I didn't believe that for a long time, but as the projects get bigger it really is the truth.)

Cheers,
GreyM
Student Mentor

Devon (WIP)

Thought I found a gold mine in Devon's post. He has link to an essay he did but it brings me to a site that cannot be relevant (searchmachine.com or something similar). Can't wait to read it as I was really into Egyptian mythology for a while and just never thought to research the pharoahs.

FYI: WIP means work in progress, I don't know if it is commonly used so I thought I'd clear it up.

Hey Devon the link to your essay doesn't work... brings me to searchmachine.com. Would love to read it (I was quite into egyptian mythology for a long while and their culture is fascinating). I'll check back or you can drop me a comment at:

http://advicethroughetherealwalls.blogspot.com/

Just leave it under any post. I'd leave you my email but I don't know if that would be appropriate.

ttyl,
GreyM
Student Mentor

Adrian

Well don't know if this comment actually worked on Adrian's post as it did not act like the others. Decided to go for a conversation as I find that generally works better than just questions with no feedback. I had to do a project closely relating to fear so I have loads of information at my disposal for future posts.

Hello Adrian!

Is fear powerful? (I ask you this because your word is fear and because you have thought critically about power before)

Comment back( Here as well!), if I disagree with your viewpoint then we'll make this along the lines of a debate otherwise I'll have more evidence for you to back up your answer with.

Sincerely,
GreyMW
Student Mentor

Andy

From Andy's post I could see the unique difficulties with online collaboration but he didn't mention any unique positives so I figured it would be good to ask. You can see it here.

Hello Andy!

I see you had a fairly good time doing this project. I must ask what are the unique positives of working with people from elsewhere that you would have missed out on if you had just worked with people in your class? (I only asked this because I could only see the unique difficulties and not the unique positive from your post)

Cheers,
GreyMW
Student Mentor

Francesca

Wow, I haven't come to realize just how late I'm commenting today. Well what happened with this comment is that the most recent version of my comment was not actually copied, but I really only have a copy of the version prior to a few revisions. The post can be found here and here is the comment, keep in mind that it is in fact subject to change once the comment if approved and is displayed underneath her post.

"Hello Francesca,

Great job reflecting on what troubles you encountered during the progress of your project as well as how you have benefited from it. I also noticed that in your post you signified the explicit importance of teamwork.

So if you didn't have to carry out this project in a group, how do you think your approach or overall appeal to the project would have changed? On another note, you quickly described how you realized one should act when working with an organized group. During the course of this project, were there any other qualities or virtuous attributes that would detail a good leader that were either frequently shown or altogether neglected? And overall, what do you think constitutes a good leader? What about a good group member?

If it helps, try to think about other moments in your life when you undertook a leadership position and you might be able to reflect upon them to extract some of the aforementioned qualities in question. I think that reflecting on work that you have completed before is undoubtedly where you can achieve the potential for maximum growth in your character.

Now before I depart, I really hope that you had a great holiday season and I'd like to wish you a happy new year! Have a great 2008. =)

Arrivederci,
MrSiwWy - Student Mentor"