Real Rap with Glen Casey: "Too Much Screen Time?"

22 January 2011 by Glen Casey (Oasis)

Hey parents, are you worried about your kid’s social lives because they are spending too much time in front of screens? According to the December issue of Philadelphia Magazine, teens are spending 8.5 hours per day staring at screens. Spending that much time in front of screens is not healthy. It can have a major impact on your social life, cause a drastic change on your physical well being, and can change your psychological state. According to a popular website for parents called Parent Talk, 55 percent of the teen population of the world is addicted to being in front of a screen.

Teens today spend a lot of time in front of screens, and as a result they start to lose social skills. Teens are so busy at home on their cell phones, I pod’s, and computers, they start to forget about involvement in other social activities. For example, they could be hanging out at the mall with their friends. This may seem as an insignificant activity, but it helps a lot. Say a child gets into a conflict with someone, they will know how to resolve the problem rather than not knowing. Staying in front of those screens like they do, doesn’t help resolve the situation. Also kids who spend a lot of times in front of screens can develop a speech problem. For example, if you are spending too much time texting, or listening to your iPod then you don’t speak as often and could develop a stutter problem.

Next, teens spending a lot of time in front of screens can have a major impact on their physical wellbeing. Kids can become obese when they are sitting in front of screens. There are many advertisements for junk food products, such as candy bars chip’s, soda, etc. When teens see these advertisements they go out and buy the product, than go back in front of the screen to eat them. When teens over eat and drink like that with out moving, weight is being gained because there are no physical activities involved in their lives. That kind of lifestyle always leads to obesity.

Finally, teens that spend the majority of their time in front of screens tend to have psychological issues. These days, a lot of teens are a lot more aggressive than usual. Today hip-hop is all about drugs, money, robbery, and things of that nature, and teens tend to act that way. Television has a big impact on teen’s lives. Inappropriate activities and behaviors that are viewed on television can be interpreted as “Cool” and mimicked. What they see can lead them down the wrong path. Also when teens spend a lot of time in front of screens their attention span drops, sometimes drastically, sometime a little. Because television is so exciting, young people have become accustomed to being entertained. So when someone is talking to them, or needs their attention, the teen gets easily distracted. That’s how kids spending a lot of time in front of screens can affect their psychological state.

In conclusion, kids should rethink the amount of time they spend in front of screens. It is not healthy at all to spend 8.5 hours a day in front of a screen. Kids should go out and get involved in sports, jobs, or any activity. If you are active then there should be no worries of any of these things happening. But remember that when you spend 8.5 hours a day in front of screens all of those things that were mentioned can happen.

Celebrating Creativity With New Student Artwork:

Artwork by
Charles Thomas (Top)
and
Maurice Hainey (Bottom)

Girl's Basketball Gets A Righteous Win!!

21 January 2011 - by Fatima Jewett

The Lady Jaguars won recently, 50-32, against West Philadelphia. Before the game, rumor on the street was that we would lose. We heard about how one of the members on the other team might score 20 points herself. During our pre-game warm-up Mrs. Moody noticed our mood and told us that “when you practice like you do care, you will play like you don’t care”. Our starters had a tough time during the first quarter. Mrs. Moody told us that we looked like we were “scared of them”, and when we said we weren’t, she said “prove it!!” Now it’s the second half we get back in and were playing great now. Later on in that quarter a sub came in for me (Raya). After the time out the (refs) walks over to us and says watch out for them because they like to push and elbow people when they start losing. So When raya went to go make a lay up they pushed her out the way and she fell the (refs) call it and now the other team is getting real angry . After Raya makes her 2 shot the game continues number 3 from the other team cracked one of our players and she mad the lay-up . Now Mykia is angry because she got cracked, so it’s our ball now and Mykia has it. She was coming down the court when number 3 tried to stick her. Mykia cracks her back now and two other girls try to stick her. Mykia makes number 5 and 21 run into each other and draws the fowl. Tar-ren steals the ball and drains a three-pointer that wows the crowd. Another steal by Janaya leads to a three-point-basket at the bell. There was a lot of pushing and shoving, and bad feelings were voiced loudly. At one point Mrs. Moody had to keep us on the bench, but when we were up, we were able to sub in most of our bench. Other players such as Fields, Jamese, Shydera, Dashawna and Janaya were all able to make contributions to our WIN!! In the end, we tried to show good sportsmanship, but the other team screamed and cursed us. We were happy in the end!

STEM STUDENTS UNDERWATER?

21 January 2011 by A. Jubaid and F. Begum

“MIT Sea Grant's new Sea Perch program introduces pre-college students to the wonders of underwater robotics. Part of the Office of Naval Research's initiative, "Recruiting the Next Generation of Naval Architects," this program teaches students how to build an underwater robot (called a Sea Perch), how to build a propulsion system, how to de-velop a controller, and how to investigate weight and buoy-ancy. This endeavor is one of many exciting new projects funded by the Office of Naval Research as part of its Na-tional Naval Responsibility Initiative. The initiative focuses on bringing academia, government and industry to work together to ensure that the talent needed to design the Navy's next generation of ships and submarines will be there when needed.” - Drexel Engineering Website
Sea perch means build your own Underwater Robot and other wet projects by Harry Bohn and Vickie Jensen, the sea search program was created by the MIT Sea Grant Col-lege Program in 2003 with the goal of generating interest in underwater studies. It is a good project for all of the stu-dents. They can have lots of fun to doing it. The first day of our sea perch program, we had lots of fun. We spent our time learning about the sea perch. We learn about lots of things we use everyday in our life. Actually sea perch is a robot you make to work under the water. We also can learn about work to done by other sea perch teams. The US NAVY uses sea perch robots to look at their work under water. Its also teaches us how people finished their work with the robot under the water. By doing this project we can know lots of engineering thing. This is a part of science and part of engineering. It is an awesome project for student’s who might want to be engineers someday. We can learn lots of things that will be useful in our career fields.
We will make this under water robot as a group and enter it in a local, regional, and possibly a national competition. We are working with the Drexel University community of stu-dents and staff, but will compete with other schools as well. There are teams from both middle schools and high schools in the Philadelphia area.
The Sea Perch program is a kit that allows stu-dents to simple construct a simple, remotely- operated un-derwater vehicle, or ROV, from PVC pipe and other readily available materials. There are many students involved in the project and the teachers that are mentoring our students are Ms. Kim, Mr. Sell, Mrs. Bess-Pashak, Ms. Silver, and Mrs. Sible.

Africa to Hip Hop Dance

by Kenyatta Cook (STEM)

African to hip hop dance is a new social enrichment that is part of the change at our school. This class is led by Ms. Mason and in my opinion she is an awesome dance teacher. We all are appreciative for her teaching us this dance. We are learning how African dance has helped to develop into hip hop dance. We are currently learning the funga and deligo dances from African culture. There are 13 students from every grade and academy. We are learning how the African dances have influenced hip hop and how we can identify with our cultural heritage. It is fun and we are learning a lot.

I CRY!

11 January 2011 by Markeeta Fudge

I Cry when i get bad grades
i cry when bad things happen
i cry because my brother's in jail :(
i cry when i don't get my way
i cry when i'm in trouble
i cry when people hurt my feelings
i cry when my grandmother cries
i cry when i think about my mother
i cry at funerals
i cry when i'm sick
i cry because no one cared
i cry because life no longer has any meaning
i cry because in the battle between love and survival, love lost
i cry for the mothers who saw their babies dying in the arms of strangers
i cry for those who gave up for themselves, their family, and the world
i cry for those who no longer believe there is a god above

I CRY BECAUSE I DO!

Boy's Varsity Basketball Chalks Up Another Win!!

Yesterday the Boys Varsity basketball team defeated Benjamin Franklin High School. 70-51. The team was paced by seniors Rafeeq Bush and Martez Lyles. Bush scored 22 points while Lyles scored 15 points and added 10 rebounds. The team improved their record to 7-2 in the Philadelphia Public League. “Yesterday was a total team effort,” said Mr Castanza the Jags coach. “ We have been practicing very well and have some HUGE games ahead of us before the playoffs.” The Jags next game is on Thursday at Furness before a crucial week of games next week when the Jags will face Bok(Monday at home) and Mastbaum(Tuesday at home) before travelling to first place PET on Thursday.

UCMentoring Program: Time Machine Program

Mr. D's Time Machine: 3-D Photography, Virtual Reality, and World History Presentation:
Click on the Picture Above For More Information