Technology

1.  I think that you choose blogging over regular writing because you wanted to spice things up in the class instead of doing it the old school way.  Another feeling I get, is that you have a passion for using the world wide web in your classes than most teachers would.  In my opinion, you choose to do blogging because you thought that it would have a better connection to the students because now days everyone does everything on the computer.  Plus, when you do new things like this, it gives students a chance to learn more than just writing.  They get the opportunity to learn how to ass links, videos, pictures and all kinds of other things.  the most important one is Internet Safety.  One slip up on a blog like this and you information is out there until you take it off and is available to anyone that happens to log on to your sight.

2.  Throughout this section of Language Arts, i fell that I have accomplished many things that I never even would have thought of.  I just recently learned hoe to add a full video screen into a post like my solar power one.  With blogging you can change the background of your own personal page and it even goes all the way down to the small detail of getting to choose the color of your text!  I also think that this whole blogging thing has helped my writing immensely.  I feel that the downfall to blogging, which is no automatic capitalization, has helped me pay much more attention to capitalization and punctuation.  The spell check is also a wonderful tool for typing.  It saves a bunch of time when it comes to wondering how to spell a word.  I am a computer person, so the connection I previously thought in my last answer was true about me.  I love to type and find other blogs on the Internet.  The research involved in putting correct information on the Internet is extremely helpful.  I learned so many new things about my topics, but most of it was already in my head from previous experiences.  The most intriguing thing I learned was how fast solar technology has advanced since it first began.

3.  During this section of Language Arts I have learned many key concepts.  On the research side, I have learn a little more information about plagiarizing and how east it can be.  Of course I learned a lot about all the topics I wrote about.  I realize now that, it is so much easier to write about something when you are given specific questions to answer.  Right now, as I am writing this reflection, I am finding it some much easier than thinking of what to write about off the top of your head or surfing the massive world wide web.  As is said earlier, i am a computer person, so I usually like doing everything on the computer when it is available.  I never knew that any of this was accessible for free, plus you cam modify it in anyway you want.  I learned a lot about technology throughout this section because I had to learn about the controls and I wrote all about technology, so that allowed me to see how fast technology has advanced in such few years.

4.  The skills I learned this year in Language will definitely help me in future life.  First, they will help me become a better writer and with this I will better in future school writing and then move on to business writing.  Second,  the technological skills will make all these things easier along the way.  I also might be more capable of showing others how to write or use blogs.  Third, a skill I have found valuable is having friends that are willing to help you whenever you need it and they won’t try and act like they know what they are doing, if they don’t know then they will say, “I don’t know, sorry.”  The most important skill I learned is analyzing because it requires you to look your work over and see what can be different in order for it to be better.

Technology has continued to advance; even in cars, a good example of this specific advancement is the Hybrid Car. This car runs on gas and a battery, but instead of using the battery solely to help start the engine and power other electrical purposes it runs the entire car. You are able to cruise at about forty mph on only battery power. Now, let me explain how these cars work. The basics are that these cars have battery power and gas power, but the battery runs the entire car if you go under forty mph. For example, you are in bumper to bumper traffic, this means you are stopping and starting repetitively which, if only on gas, would waste a lot. Since your car is half electric, this means that as you start and stop it is all battery power, therefore wasting very little if any gas. This makes the car very eco friendly. If you are traveling on an open road at forty mph or less, the battery will eventually die down, thus turning the engine on for a while. As the engine runs, it recharges the battery so it can switch back and conserve more gas.

Since these hybrid cars are electric, they are very quiet. I owned a Hybrid Toyota Camry for about five to six months and it was the quietest car I had ever owned. While you’re in the car you can question if the car is still running because it’s so quiet. The Camry I owned had a hands-free telephone system. This system allows calling and answering phone calls over the car speaker system. This creates a much safer driving environment. This new hybrid technology is becoming wide spread, in some places of the world, and this is good for worldwide environment.

I was watching this documentary on the show, Beyond Tomorrow, and they were talking about how they had a group of kids design their own car and money was not in question. This car was extremely cool with things like pop-out cup holders, folding TV screen in the front of the car for GPS and mechanisms to make the dash board go down into the car and come up when you open the door. These things were cool and all, but what struck me the most was that they wanted it to be a hybrid! They wanted this for two reasons. One was to help save money on gas and help the economy and the other was to make sure the environment was always thought about. I thought that this was a very important feature in the car and was surprised that a group of teenagers thought about this when they could have done so many other things.

Solar Technology has come very far since it was discovered.  In my opinion, Doha would be a great place to have solar panels because the sin comes up at four in the morning and is extremely powerful especially in the summer time.  Solar power is powerful, environmentally friendly and plentiful.  Solar panels are usually very expensive.  They price between $2000 and $3000.  These panels rely solely on the sun and in the manufacturing process do not hurt the environment.

Some cars run on solar technology. These cars aren’t made to go very fast, because these solar cells cannot be connected directly to the engine, so they have to run through a series of wires to become a power source. These immense power sources are extremely small. This is why they are created into panels.  Trying to find a way to make these little guys into more powerful systems has become a major issue.  Many scientists have tried and tried to make each cell more powerful but have failed.  That is why they decided to put many of them together to make them more powerful.  As technology usually does, these panels will get much smaller and contain the same if not more power.

Solar energy is, as i said, a very powerful source of energy but it is an intermittent energy source.  There are some new solar plant projects happening in certain deserts.  For example, if we were to cover the Gobi desert with solar plants, that would supply most of the entire worlds energy!  The idea of concentrating power from the sun had been around since the time ancient China.  CSP, concentrated solar power, systems travel through a series of lenses and mirrors.  These CSP plants very first started in the 1980′s.  Hopefully, CSP scientists will continue to move forward in their ideas for making this power much more efficient and powerful.

Solar energy can be stored in certain facilities for a rainy day.  This amazing power source can be stored in a facility with high temperature molten salts.  They use salt because it has a specific heat capacity and has a very effective rate of delivering heat to other places.  Solar energy started in the 1800′s and was used when electrical power from a grid was inaccessible.  By 1897, the solar cell had been patented and was ready to be used.  Between 1900 and 1929 the solar powered water-heating system was in use.  In 1960, a man by the name of Hoffman created a 14% efficient solar cell after Western Electric had a 2% efficient cell.  In 1977, Jimmy Carter installed solar cells into the White House.  In 1989, reflective concentrators are used with solar cells.  In 1992, the University of South Florida creates a 15.89 efficient thin-film cell.  In 2006, a world record was broken by making a 40% efficient Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier.  It has come along way from when it was first just an idea.

Thanks again for reading and SWITCH TO SOLAR!

Work sited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power

In my last blog I touched briefly on the PS3, but this time I will talk about that and other items like it. I will start with the PS3. The PS3 is a very nice gaming system and has great graphics, but comes at a high price range. As I said before, the PS3 has blue-ray technology and that is pretty much all it is popular for. The games have amazing graphics but are out ranked by the Xbox 360. I just recently got a PS3 for my birthday and since I had prematurely guessed, I went around telling my friends that I was getting a PS3 for my birthday and they said that I should get an Xbox 360 instead, but by then it was too late. They told me to get an Xbox 360 because there is a wider selection of games, but not as good graphics so there are compromises to be made.

The Wii is also very popular among all age groups. It helps the elderly age group by giving them exercise in a comfortable atmosphere and same with younger age groups. This gaming system is nothing but interactive by wireless transmission and receiving. There are sensors on the ends of the remotes and a sensor bar that sits above your TV or above your Wii system. Some of the games that can be played on the Wii are extremely active. You can play baseball, boxing, golf, tennis and bowling. There is also a system called the Wii fit that helps you do yoga, strength exercises and balance games.

Also there is a miniature play station called the PSP. This is just like a regular play station except smaller. This device has access to wireless internet, online gaming and can play only certain types of discs which the games come on. These discs are very unique and can be played nowhere else. If you have PS2 games and then get a PS3 then the games that you had for the PS2 will play on the PS3. The PSP discs are called UMD. On the packages, they will say UMD and then a film strip if it’s a movie or just a disc if it’s a game. There is a slot on the PSP where you can put in a memory card. You can put music, of the correct format, on this card or pictures or even downloaded games. The downloaded games are good because then you don’t have to carry around a million discs so that you can pick from any of your games.

Thanks for reading and have fun gaming!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JegFyijvMA

Over the many years, technology has only gotten more useful yet smaller. For example, when Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, it could only reach forty miles and traveled by wire. Now, we have cell phones that connect people all over the world within seconds. The telegraph required miles of wire and a tapping machine, where the cell phone is much smaller and wireless. Cell phones are still progressing in becoming faster, more efficient and new features like touch screens and applications that can help you out.

Computers have also come along way. When they first came out they were using a system called DOS. If using this system you had to type in the commands you wanted the computer to perform now it does that automatically or with the click of a button. Computers have also shrunk in size. Now, there are laptops and smaller desktops. The laptops are also using a form of wireless connections in order to access the internet. They can also connect people all over the world instantly, either visually or just by talking. There also computer applications that you can have where you can call other computers. It is a much cheaper way to call long distance. I use when i want to call back home.

The speed at which technology has advanced is amazing. It keeps producing new items. Just in the past 14 years there have been at least five new game systems. These game systems tend to be better than the one before it, but sometimes, there isn’t much difference. For example, the PS3 has blue-ray technology which provides better graphics for movies or games. Blue-ray also cost much more than regular games and DVDs. There is not a massive difference between regular and blue-ray. You would have to really be looking for the differences in order to tell.

The sizes of memory card these days are mind blowing! The sizes of memory cards are 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32 GB. Right now I have a memory card in my phone that is 4GB. By the way, 4GB is a lot of space for information. The size of this card is extremely small. The 32GB is not much bigger but you can put a lot of information on it. Thanks for reading, hope you took something away from this.

The Blackberry Storm and the iPhone are created by different companies but are similar.  These two phones are quad-band compatible.  This means that the phones can call over four different frequencies.  These phones are very similar in appearance.

iPhone:

• Depth: .48 inches
• Height: 4.5 inches
• Width: 2.4 inches
• Weight: 4.7 inches

Blackberry Storm:

• Depth: .6 inches
• Height: 4.4 inches
• Width: 2.4 inches
• Weight: 5.5 inches

There is one thing that the Storm beats the iPhone at and that is speed.  You might know that when you turn the iPhone the screen turns with it and same with the Storm, but the iPhone take within ten seconds to turn when the Storm turns right when you turn it.  These phones were created for two whole different reasons.  The iPhone was made for entertainment and gaming where the Storm was made for businesses and large corporations.  Due to their different purposes the applications for them are also differetn.  For example, the Strom has an application that if you have booked a flight, car reservation and hotel reservation, then your flight gets delayed, it will change all of your future reservations automatically.  The applications on the iPhone are more of games and graphical things.  I would lean to the Storm because the pricce on the Storm is right around $200 where the iPhone is at $500-$600 depending on the amount of space you want.  I hope you have learned something new, thanks for reading.