What makes us happy?

For our final project we are to find a theme on TED that interests us and narrow that down to a good topic to do a project on. The theme that grabbed me is what makes you happy. Earlier in the year I had one post on happiness and the video that I blogged about I really enjoyed. So, I thought this would be a great theme. Then comes the narrowing down to a topic. What makes you happy, that's a pretty specific thing if you ask me, but lets go smaller and do my final project an happiness in general. What exactly is happiness? Is it just a feeling or something you can accomplish? Happiness is something that everyone wants, but I've never really thought about it much and think it would be an interesting research topic. I have a feeling it will be hard to find the information I need, but knowing this theme is on TED will probably benefit me in the end. Where did the word happiness come from? Does it have a deeper meaning then just a good feeling you get?  So many questions are rolling around in my head, I can't wait to get started. In the end I want to be a happiness expert and be able to answer the question what is happiness, with an in depth, intelligent, passionate answer.

growing up in slow motion

This week we were supposed to find two talks about an interesting topic, I chose living a longer life. In the first video Cynthia Kenyon experiments with worms and their genes to more then double their lives. In the next, Aubery de Grey talks about how aging is a curable disease. My learning goal is will preventing aging cause problems with our population and everyday lives?



I think its great that their is a way to make you live longer, by changing this one gene Cynthia more than doubled the life of those worms. Some people I believe would love that others...not so much.




Aubrey says we age in more than one way, I never really thought about it like that, it Makes sense though. I think it's weird that he thinks of aging as a disease.

if we were to have a learn this button their are 5 questions I have to help reach my learning goal:
1. How much longer does the average person live?
2. What percent of the population wants to expand their lives?
3. How many kids does a typical family have?
4. Will our economy support a higher population?
5. Can we provide the food and houses we need for a growing population?

Learning Adventure Update!

Everything is going great, there is so much to learn and so many websites to go through. I'm having troubles trying to stay on a smaller topic and keeping this project down to something I can handle. Doing research every day has been hard and I have missed some days but in the end I think we will have enough information to say we  were successful.

New Adventure!!!

Once again I have changed my learning adventure. This time Alex Frink and I are going to research what goes on in the mind of a serial killer. What they think, how they got that way, statistics about the types of killers, and many other facts to answer all the questions we have rolling around in our heads in a two week time period.

To do this we decided the best way to find our information is to do research on the internet, a little everyday. Also, Alex said there is a teacher at our school that knows a lot about serial killers and will be willing to answer some questions and help us out when we hit a problem or get stuck. This particular learning adventure promotes mastery because researching and collecting all this information will expand our learning, teaching us more and more every day.

Our main purpose is to learn as much as we can. We want to be able to share what we find with others and answer any questions they have. If our adventure is successful then we will be able to hold a full conversation about serial killers and their backgrounds with what we have found.

Here's a step by step plan of what we want to do, we set up a shared google document where we can keep all the information. We have a list of questions we want to answer and are going to research for an hour every day. We need to learn everything there is about the thought process of a serial killer, if their childhood has effected them, and statistics about most serial killers. Most of our information will be from the internet but Alex knows a teacher who we can talk to, she also has a lot of books we can look at. Any challenges we run into we can talk to her.

Learning Adventure Propasal

In our class we have two weeks to learn about anything we want. Being so close to Halloween I want to learn about paranormal science.

If you have seen the television show Paranormal State you know that Ryan Buell and his team created the Paranormal Research Society. So, using the internet, books, and any resources I can find I will try to learn everything I can about paranormal sciences and what Ryan has been studying. I am going to be doing this by myself unless someone in class wants to join me. 

This adventure will promote mastery because in two weeks time I will be learning as much as possible about paranormal science, getting closer and closer to mastery. I definitely won't be a master but I will know a lot and be able to teach and answer questions others may have.

This learning adventure has purpose because I have always been interested in the paranormal. I know everyone in my family has had unexplained experiences and  this topic is something I have wanted to know more about. 

Flag football!

Powder puff is going on so for my learning adventure I'll learn how to play flag football. We have some coaches picked, decided whose on offense and defense and decided when practices were. It promotes mastery because I'm learning all the rules and plays and everything I need to know to play a game. The purpose for me is to mainly have fun, but knowing how to play helps me get into actual football games better. I am able to create new friends and be engaged in a group sport, and get some exercise.

From Chicken to Dinosaur?

Paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his time trying to recreate a dinosaur. This is the real life story of jerasic park, for the most part.


Who knew you could change a chicken to a dinosaur or that a chicken was a dino in the first place? All the work put into this truly amazes me, there has got to be some autonomy going there.

The fact that all of this can be genetically messed with and changed is fascinating to me. Who would take the time to do this in the first place, I guess the little boy in him never grew up. If people are changing chicken, think about all the possibilities there are. Some day we will have real unicorns and werewolves. I can't wait to see what's next.