Google 20% Project

For my Google 20% Project I plan to learn about the moon.Here is a link to the video I made to pitch my idea to the class. I don't know much about the moon so I plan on learning things from the basics(like the distance from the earth) to discoveries found on the moon to things like eclipses and blue moons. I chose this topic because I'm interested in space. Like every 5 year old, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.But my fear of the soul-sucking darkness of space has temporarily slowed down my career of being a successful astrounout and walking on the moon so, instead I will learn about the mysteries of the moon from my computer. I won't need much materials to do this project other than access to the Internet. I plan to take my information and present it in a prezi thats pretty and awesome looking. Some road blocks I may run into are not having enough information. If this does occur, I will expand my research to other things like if the moons on other planets have the same properties as earths moon. Also, I will discover the reasons for the similarities and differences in these properties.

Is Chris Langan successful?

Recently in class we read about Chris Langan and saw him appear in the game show 1 vs. 100. Chris Langan is said to be "the smartest man in America" and he has an IQ of 195. There's no doubting that Chris Langan is smart but he hasn't been able to use his intelligence to become successful.  My personal definition of success is someone who makes an impact on the world and others. In the book the Outliers (where we first heard of Chris Langan) we are learning how different factors affect our success. If success was simply being happy and content with your life, Gladwell would've wrote things like "do what you love and love what you do." But being happy isn't success. I wouldn't say I'm successful because I'm happy when there are people out there earning millions of dollars and making a difference in the world. Those people that change lives are what I call successful. Chris Langan is currently married, raising his farm animals and is happy, but I wouldn't call him successful because he's happy. He had the ability and responsibility of sharing his ideas with the world. But, since Chris didn't go to college, people don't take his ideas seriously. There are plenty of people who haven't gone to college and don't have very good jobs and are considered unsuccessful, but Chris Langan is one of those people and he is considered (by some) successful because he's happy. Why should Chris Langan be called more successful than those people just because he has a higher IQ? I do believe people should be happy with their lives but when it comes down to the point, Chris Langan is no more successful than the average man.

THE KINDERGARTEN DEBATE

After reading Gladwell's opinion and the opinion of Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, I'm stuck in the middle. Depending on your child, delaying kindergarten can be either a good or bad thing. Like Gladwell states, delaying kids from kindergarten make them the older kids in their grade, automatically giving them an accumulative advantage. Those kids may often be perceived  as gifted and above average.  Just like in sports, red-shirting your child puts them a step ahead. On the other hand, the young children of the grade start off with a disadvantage that carries with them onto college and grows in the process. But, like Wang and Aamodt say in "Delay Kindergarten at Your Child's Peril", after awhile, the older kids get bored and start to careless and become less motivated. Meanwhile, the younger kids in the grade do better than the kids the same age in the lower grade because they had more time in school. This is where I'm stuck. These assumptions don't apply to everyone and I  can even see some counterexamples in our class. Unlike what Wang and Aamodt say, the older kids in our G&T class work hard and try to get good grades. In contrast, Gladwell states that the younger kids have a disadvantage and don't do well because they are far behind but in our class the younger kids do just as well as the older kids for the grade. Overall, I don't think there's any specific way to go. Delaying your child isn't necessarily better. I think the best a parent can do is base their decision on the needs of the child because every child is different.