Science Technology...

I chose the topic of science technology because those are my strong areas and what I love to do. Ive always liked science all my life as well as technology. When they correlate to make one topic it is perfect for me. An example of how i enjoy these topics is my senior exhibition project of growing hydroponic tomatoes. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil. I am also doing mine in an artificial environment with absolutely no natural sunlight, so i have to provide an environment using technology and science to ensure proper growth of my plants. There are all different types of equipment developed especially for this type of gardening, and the technology just keeps getting more and more advanced as scientists research how they work. here is a picture of my tomatoes currently.

I started looking at news sites like CNN and New York Times to see what i could find about my topic. I found some interesting articles and videos including one about a solar city and one about how a farmer uses cow manure to power his farm, saving him up to 200,000 dollars a year!

How can you use a blog to learn?

Blogs open a new world of information for users worldwide. You can find blogs on just about any topic your looking for. They offer a lot of diversity and allow you to get the insight of different kinds of people. It is a good way to learn because rather than getting the general text book definition of things you can get a wide variety of information based on peoples opinions and personal experience. One thing is ,though, that you cant trust everything you read or hear. You have to read and gather the information you see which other people comment on and confirm or which multiple people may right about. Later you take the information you gathered and confirm it by doing research. On top of that you also get practice writing and reading in the real world. You can also learn alot about people in general. By reading peoples ideas and feelings you may see alot of opinions that you never thought existed. I think blogs are a good way expand your knowledge and open new doors for yourself.

What have I learned so far?

So far, i think the most important thing we've learned is how journalists go about producing an article. I hope to continue to learn about more news elements as well. We have learned about timeliness, prominence, proximity, consequence and human interest and how they plug in to a news article to make it worthy as news. It is interesting how those elements can affect a story and why. A question i have is what kind of importance vocabulary plays in an article, because it has to be able to read by a number of different people and maybe the writer has to be cautious about word selection. I also wonder what kind of effect a writers personal opinion can have on the story they write.

Taking a look into new 3-D technology

I recently read an interesting news article about new 3-D technology, published September 2, 2009 by Jim Goldman of CNBC. I found all five elements which make this article newsworthy. It contains Timeliness, Prominence, Proximity, Consequences, and Human Interest. It has timeliness becuase it is in the process of being developed, and it gives us something to look forward too seeing in the future. The prominence of this story is that is has to do with Sony, one of the worlds biggest electronics companies. The proximity is that this is something that affects not only all of america, but all different places all over the world too. The consequences this will have will be a huge step in technology and it can change the way the whole world may watch a television show in the future. This is something interesting to humans because the majority of the poulation owns a television set and watches it every day.