Your blogging experience

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you. 
Beatrix Potter

Tin Phones

When home telephones were the luxury of a few fortunate owners--quite popular and respected in the neighborhood--kids used to play with a more economic and democratic device: a "telephone" made up of two empty tins connected by a long string. You spoke to one empty tin while your playmate listened to you with one ear on the other empty tin and then spoke back to you... that was communication!

From the cave man onwards, communication has always been used as a means to highlight his presence on earth, to survive, to transfer acquired knowledge, to create links with future generations... Proof of this is the presence of petroglyphs, prehistoric paintings in caves, graphs carved on stone... In time, writing became a usual form of communication.

Chinese Manuscript

Chinese writing probably started as far back as 1500 BCE and is perhaps one of the oldest means of communication. The Latin alphabet was created about 600 BC. Writing manuscrips in ink became then a common practice. At first, manuscripts were handwritten and replicated by uneducated people who could not read what they wrote, thus information and secrets were conveniently kept for the priviledged, educated people.

A long time passed until Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1438-1468) changed the primitive printing techniques to a breakthrough that persisted in time: he invented a movable type printing machine that permitted to reproduce a significant number of issues. He could not get funds to continue his project and passed away without living the splendor of his revolutionary device, but he certainly foresaw its importance and, most likely, figured out a world with books molding an illustrated man.

First Mobile

Printed material in the form of letters and books has provided man a powerful source of communication and learning that has been essential in his progress and has added modernity to older, less sophisticated ways of communication, such as the manuscripts used by our ancestors to transfer knowledge; the messenger pidgeons, aka homing pidgeons, used as mail carriers; the smoke signals used by castaways and indians; the Morse code used to ask for help mainly in war; ...

In the last decades, technological advances have significantly changed the way we communicate and transfer knowledge to one another with inventions such as mobiles (especially smartphones) and computers. We started by sending e-mails and we are now reading electronic books, downloading scientific papers, creating webpages and websites, writing blogs, twitting, using facebook...

J. Gutenberg would probably be in a state of despair observing this chaotic, yet organized, way of communication...magical (not mechanical) machines delivering printed documents in seconds... "e-mails" disappearing from the screen of a strange box and sent to people in other countries...friends in front of the box chatting and shopping... guys reading their facebook...

However, using internet and its applications is currently a necessity, an opportunity and a pleasure. I confess that via blogging I have enjoyed both writing the posts and reading yours. Blogging is a public, yet personal way of expressing yourself, allowing you to have a glimpse into my world and allowing me to share part of yours. I hope you have enjoyed this blogging activity as much as I have so that it continues to be useful to improve your writing abilities in English.

Now it's your turn:

What you think about the experience in general
How much you feel your writing skills have developed
What you would like to include in the future
What else you would like to write about

Wordcount: 200
Make comments on 3 of your classmates' posts and the teacher´s post

Our smart brain and its mysteries

"Everyone walks by him, moving randomly and watching nowhere...images like thieves moving in his mind come and go...perhaps illusions that will fade away any minute..."

In times of loneliness, our imagination is a faithful company. We create our own friends who will be what we want them to be: someone to talk to, to love, to care, to hate, to dismiss, to feel pity on, to play with...

Our smart brain provides the input to satisfy our needs. This situation lasts for some time until someone from the actual world talks to you and you realize your own existence and importance. A smiling face in front of you can take you away from your abstract world and be a good company for a while. But, if you are not in the mood,  you shortly afterwards look through that face and immerse again in your own imaginary world. The smiling face says goodbye and fades away, while you only want to dream away...

Today is an awesome day. Early this morning I realized that the sun shines over me, the sky is bluer, the grass is greener, birds fly and sing, the weather is warmer, people walk and greet me. I smile back and say nice words to everyone along the street. I am in the mood for smiling, talking, touching, watching, feeling. I call a friend to have lunch with... It seems that my brain has shifted from the inner, private space to the outer, common place; perhaps it needs input to enrich its library with information from the outside world.

At noon, I enjoy my lunch, sometimes a brunch, in a cozy cafeteria; a good-looking girl waits on me and brings a dish that seems to be better than earlier ones. By the time I get home, I recall the activities done with a feeling of being in command, in closer contact with the real world.

But I wonder if I was in command of my decisions. Scientists have observed that mental processes occurring in our brain are faster than our (sometimes crucial) thoughts or decisions, e.g., when crossing a street, you jump away from a high-speed car before you realize that you are in danger of being hit by the car, even before thinking of the danger, otherwise you might be dead.

What about lunch, sex, sleep, .... ? Hormones and neurotransmitter cells are in charge of stimulating us to take some actions and others to delay or stop them. Thus, when we have lunch, dopamine is produced in the brain, giving you a sense of pleasure and stimulating you to go on eating. If you have eaten too much, another kind of neurotransmitter counteracts dopamine and you stop eating.

A few neurotransmitter cells

Significant changes occur during childhood, but as teenagers, and later as adults, you feel the urge of touching, kissing, loving the opposite sex. Why? Hormones and neurotransmitters are sending messages to brain cells to trigger the sex drive that will eventually lead to reproduction, and thus preservation of the human species... and here serotonin, another neurotransmitter, keeps you pleased as oxytocin and vassopresin help in creating a stronger bond with your partner.

Adrenaline is another neurotransmitter that plays an important role in our lives. Just an example: if you have been severely injured, this neurotransmitter gives you enough strength to withstand acute pain until help comes and/or pain subsides...

So, if my brain et al. are in charge of most of the living  processes, what decisions can I make?

I want to believe that I make the most important decisions in life, such as the kind of person I want to be, the girl I marry, the healthy dish I should have for lunch, the kind of book I want to read, the places I want to visit, the exercises I want to do to keep fit,  the number of hours I want to sleep,the career I want to study, ... are part of my free will.

And I always will be grateful to the mental processes ocurring in the 1.4 kg brain encased in the skull of my head, which is the major organ of the central nervous system and controls most processes and permits that I enjoy living.

Help our faithful brain et al., by having a healthy diet and doing exercises, preventing stroke and other undesirable illnesses.

Now it's your turn:

What organ(s)/system(s)/substance(s) /sense(s) of the human body is (are) amazing to you. Why.
What role it plays
Where it is located.
What size it has.
What illnesses can alter its normal functioning.
How you can help to keep it healthy.

or

Mental disorders or diseases

Name main characteristics of the mental disorder you are writing about.
Population that is prone to have it. (male, female, kids, old people)
Treatment used to control it.
Impact on work force of the mental disorder you describe.
Impact on familyo ,, ,
Impact on society
Add any additional information to find relevant

Minimum numbers of words: 190
.Remember to write a comment on the teacher's post and also to 3 classmates' post.
Remember to write comments on 3 classmates' posts and the teacher´s

The most enjoyable subject...

  In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not.

Albert Einstein

The career or profession of your life has always been an elusive, but important issue. As a young adult, my parents, friends, magazines, institutions in the city were the source of information. Nowadays, you find accurate information at home in front of a computer.

You click here and there to find information about the university that deserves your presence, the career that seems the most promising, that has the best study programme, one whose prestige might be helpful to find a good job, an institution with well-known researchers, an institution that ensures a brilliant future....

Chemistry Lab

Eventually, you find a suitable career and, filled with content, start attending classes waiting for the best class ever and, at the beginning, this seems to happen with most subjects. As time goes by, this excitement changes to a state of normality that persists until you eventually graduate and, on looking back, appreciate their contribution to your personal growth.

In your mind, however, you shall dearly keep a small bunch of subjects, activities in classrooms, in laboratories, activities that had a special flavour because of the contents... the classmates... the teaching staff... the season of  the year... and/or any other activity that made quite an impression on you.

Safety Chemistry  Lab

Laboratory activities demand most of our attention and usually strengthen team work, improving the desirable friendliness of students with a common goal. Thus, lab work becomes quite attractive, particularly to those eager to set up equipments to do, for example, simple distillations, solvent extraction.... Others feel satisfaction upon observation and study of optical phenomena, such as dispersion of white light  through prisms, reflection, diffraction. I actually enjoyed learning chemistry/physics/biology in the labs when I was in high school. The possibility of observing actual phenomena with the naked eyes and also doing with my own experiments gave me an indescribable pleasure that led me to observe with curiosity all the processes occuring in our daily life.

Yet, theoretical activities in the classroom also caught my attention; specially my teacher of biology who created an atmosphere of mystery to uncover the "truth" under common living processes, who made me dream of the varied "worlds" existing in our daily life. Thus, the theoretical data ranged from solid ground information in a particular issue to doing exercises, analyses, and other learning activities.

So, theory or practice? I say both.

Now it's your turn:

Write about your favorite subject this term.

• Name of the subject:
• Describe what you do in classes
• Explain why you like the subject
• State whether your classes are mostly theoretical and/or practical
• What makes the subject interesting

Other considerations that you might use:

• People participating in the teaching activities (teacher(s), auxiliaries, ...)
• Importance of the teaching people in your choice.
• Importance of the subject matter in your decision....
• Approximate number of students of the class.
• Main contents you have seen

Word Count: 180
Make comments on 3 of your patners' posts, plus a comment on your teacher's post