All news in From the Middle (6-8)
United Nations Speech Syria VS Turkey
Fahmeda:
Good morning delegates of the General Assembly and chairperson. My name is Ahla Osman and along with Mehtab Bahar, we are honored to represent the country of Turkey. We are here to discuss the matter that Syria’s civil war will soon affect our country of Turkey. It is a great concern to our people, especially since Syria has chemical weapons that are continuously being thrown at us.
For the past two years, Syria’s civil war has been crumbling on, proceeding in the deaths of more than 600,000 people. Due to this civil war, more than 150,000 Syrian refugees have fled to their neighboring countries like Turkey. According to BBC News Reports, “Syria is believed to hold chemical weapons-including mustard gas and sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent-at dozens of sites around the country.” Quite a few artillery shells have landed in Turkish territory. Due to this civil war, many Turks are being killed. My uncle was one of the five Turks who were killed in the border village of Akcakale. He has a 6 year old daughter and a 5 month old baby boy. His son and daughter will be growing up without a father. His wife was devastated hearing the news of losing her husband. Due to this civil war, many people are losing their loved ones. Losing a loved one is as torturous as going through poverty and suffering from slavery.
Marzia:
We need to take action on Syria! If this keeps going on, our fellow Turkish citizens will be in more danger. We’ve tried everything we possibly could. We have ignored the weapons Syria is sending us, but we can’t handle it anymore. We decided to send fighter aircrafts back to Syria as a warning to prevent them from testing their chemical weapons near us, but that didn’t seem to work either. We need the United Nations to hold sanctions on Syria. We cannot allow President Bashar al-Assad to continue using weapons on his own citizens, especially since President Bashar al-Assad is killing our Muslim brothers and sisters. We need to create a peace treaty with Syria, not allowing them to test any weapons near us. President Bashar al-Assad’s motive to use chemical weapons is like Iraq’s situation with Saddam Hussein. Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein unleashed chemical weapons on his own citizens 25 years ago, killing thousands of innocent human beings. If we do not take action, matters will only get worse. We have already dealt with a case of militarism when Germany was building up their army during the Great War. Should we sit and wait for another great war to begin between Syria and Turkey?
War is death. With Syria’s civil war continuing, more citizens of Syria are dying and due to this civil war, we are being put in danger. Once again I repeat myself; we must stop President Bashar al-Assad from using these chemical weapons. We cannot sit here and let another war begin. If we do not stop this, Syria will constantly test their weapons near Turkey. Nationalism was one of the causes of World War I and a duplicate of this is unnecessary and life threatening. We have to show pride in our country and not allow President Assad to continue killing his own civilians. We care about our Muslim brothers and sisters in Syria, but we can’t have them staying here as refugees forever. We do not want to be drawn into this civil war in Syria and we call for peace. Let us perpetrate ourselves so that we can protect our country from Syria’s crisis.
speech usa
Welcome Ladies and gentlemen. BY GEHAD STACY AND CINDY :)
We are honored to be here and we appreciate that you want to listen to our opinions on our conflict here. We will be speaking about what is happening in the USA.. Everything that is affecting our country and causing many issues. USA is suffering greatly and must take precautions.
The world is like a puzzle, if one ‘peace’ is missing , then something goes wrong.
We are not too happy of what’s going on in our world today. There are big problems, which soon might get even bigger. One of them is between the United States and North korea.
:Before we come up with a resolution, we need to address the problem first. North Korea has been launching nuclear missiles without any concern to what this will impact on other countries. What’s so bad about nuclear missiles, is the fact that when they were used in the 1980’s in result the explosions caused bad climate, leading up to food grown becoming waste and unable to eat. It’s not like something that could be easily fixed as well, these effects are still going on, including in this moment. It will attack us both physically and economically
. It will affect us physically by causing climate changes, such as: killing plants, animal habitats, and it will cause bad health to the animals we eat; which will make the prices increase for those who are still well. Since each country will be too focused on their own citizens, they won’t look interested in shipping goods, leading the economy to flunk. North Korea has been ignoring our notices, us asking them politely to stop doing what they’re doing, but yet they don’t listen. They claim to not having anything to do with it, but yet, satellites can sense heat due to the missiles. They are doing things behind our back, North korea shouldn’t have access to these missiles. They threaten us and told them that if we don’t stop warning them, they will bomb our property, But we think they are only bluffing, because we are more powerful.
This can lead to a war, about 100 years ago WW1 happened. And what mostly caused this war was countries alliancing with each other. For example, Germany allied with Austria-Hungary and became more powerful. Then other countries did the same, and that caused the war to last four years. If you look at it, the same thing is developing, The United States is allied with Japan, and North Korea is allied with china. So if anymore serious problems go on between the U.S and North Korea, other countries might step in and make a /bigger issue, than will soon turn into a war.
We know that what North Korea’s government is making a mistake, and if they maintain this course of action, they might just face the consequences. Our solution is to give them one more chance and warn them one more time, and take all the bombing weapons. The president of North Korea will also be warned the most. He should be the one that’s aware of all this and should have everything under control. North Korea is supposed to be a really poor country, yet the government has enough money to make these weapons. Instead of wasting their money on weapons and trying to get attention, the government should help get food and goods for their country.
:If they are still stubborn, then they will lose ALL their weapons and pay for any damage that might have hurt the environment and the surrounding countries.
The world needs to take action by using their brain in a good mater. Because if we don’t then a 3rd world war will happen, judging what’s going on with other countries too. Just imagine a painful new war, with all the new and advanced weapons we have now, 1/8 of the planet’s land may disappear from all the nuclear bombing. Without peace in our puzzle, which is our planet, many things could go wrong.
Lily's Powerful Watch
In the story Lily's Powerful Watch there is a lot of action going on. In the beginning of the story you can see that Lily is bullied by the "popular group" at school. She really hates it, but is too scared to say anything about it. She already gets the feeling that her senior year is going to be the worst of all years that she has known these "popular people". On her way home Lily sees a watch on the ground, and decides to take a closer look at the watch. Lily noticed that on the watch, in little print, it says "Wish upon me, and change the world". This is the part in the story in which Lily has to make the good decision or bad decision. The good decision is she doesn’t take the watch that she finds on the street, and the bad decision is she can’t take the watch off and the watch will forever be on her.
This project took me a very long time to create. I created this entire project throughout the 4 days that I had available to work on this project in class. Each class I had one hour so it took me approximately 4 hours to create my scratch ethical story project. On the first day I was making all of the backgrounds and picking out the sprites and their costumes. On the second day I started working on the scripts for all the sprites and the stage. On the third day I continued working on the scripts of the stage and the sprites. On the fourth day I was testing my scratch ethical story but realized that I had so many mistakes. Some of these mistakes were that there were sprites that were walking right over each other. Another mistake is that sprites were talking to other sprites but facing the other direction. Another mistake was that when sprite were in conversations they would put their inputs all at the wrong times. Then there was also the mistake where sprites were having conversations but the sprite was looking in the other direction. So I spent all of the fourth day fixing my ENTIRE ethical story. That part took a very long time. This is the process in which I took in creating my procedure.
While doing this project I learned a lot of things. My greatest strength during this project was making the sprites broadcast to each other correctly. This was so great since I have practiced this a couple of times when watching and redoing what was explained throughout the scratch tutorials. The skills that I really need to work on is making sure that my plot for the story s a little more gripping filled with engagement and entertainment in it. I plan on improving this skill in the next project by actually working a little more on thinking and coming up with a better plot for my next story. I would also imagine the story more. I could maybe even write it out and then make a storyboard. That way I could have 2 documents that will help me create a better plot for my story. This is what I learned while creating this project.
Dylan's Secret
This story shows how Dylan learns the importance of making the right choices. Dylan goes to a private school for rich kids, but he only goes there on a scholarship. In fact he is very poor which makes him hungry and tired all of the time. He doesn’t tell the other kids that he is poor, and they make fun of him because they think that he is purposely wearing ratty clothes and smelling bad. He still does everything that he can to fit in. One morning his mom gives him strict instructions to go to the food pantry for breakfast. So he is faced with a difficult decision when the coolist kid in the school asks Dylan to accompany him to the grocery store. Will Dylan tell his secret and go to the food pantry, or will he save his secret and steal from the grocery store. Its up to you...
I created this project in Scratch. First I used the glide blocks to make the title glide across the screen. First, I created the title panel by making a black background. The title floats across the screen and my name appeared in the bottom right. Then both sprites hide, and the background changes to the one in front of Dylan’s house. Dylan and his mom have a conversation that introduces how poor Dylan is. I used the say and broadcast blocks in order to create this conversation. They say goodbye, and the mom walks off of the screen. Next, it switched to the background of a main street. Dylan and a cool kid Ryan are talking about a test, and it is obvious that Dylan is trying to impress him. Then, Ryan asks Dylan to go to the grocery store with him. Dylan doesn’t want to, but doesn’t want to say no either. This conversation is also created with the say and broadcast blocks. Then they walk (glide blocks) across the screen and reappear at the left with a new background which shows a grocery store and a food pantry. Then I made the viewer interaction section. Dylan presents both options using the think block (going to the grocery store or the food pantry). The food pantry sign and the grocery store sign both have 2 costumes, each a different color. Then I used the if touching mouse block, so that every time the mouse is touching the sprite, it is a different color than when it isn't touching the sprite. Then I used the when clicked blocks so that when the food pantry sign is clicked, it broadcasts a message that starts the good branch, and when the grocery store sign is clicked, it broadcasts the start of the bad branch. When the food pantry sign is clicked, Dylan uses the say blocks to tell Ryan his secret about being poor. Ryan makes fun of him and glides off of the stage to the right. Then Dylan glides to the food pantry and the background changes to a breakfast buffet in a food pantry. Dylan's other friend Jack appears. They have a conversation about being poor using the broadcast and say blocks. Then they glide across the screen. When the grocery store is clicked Dylan uses the say block to tell Ryan that they will go. They glide to the entrance of the grocery store, and then the background changes to the donut aisle. They use the say blocks yet again to have a conversation about donuts. Then 2 chocolate donuts always go to Dylan and Ryan using the forever blocks and the go to Sprite Dylan/Ryan blocks. Ryan glides off the screen to go pay. Dylan glides off the other way and the background changes to an emergency exit. Dylan thinks (think block) I hope I don't get caught, and them glides to the door. This is followed by a broadcast that causes the Alarm to change colors every 0.2 seconds. I did this by creating costumes of different colors for the alarm. Then I used the when I receive block to set off a forever block with a next costume and a wait 0.2 seconds inside of it. When the sprite hides, this doesn't matter anymore. Then the store manager glides in from the right, and uses the say blocks to scold Dylan. Then he hides, and the background changes (set off by a broadcasts) to the parking lot of the grocery store and the food pantry. Upon this message being broadcasted, the signs for the stores also reappear. Ryan tells Dylan that he isn't going to be friends with criminals and then glides off of the stage. After the end of both branches, g12 is broadcasted which hides all of the sprites and changes the background to plain black. Then the credits sprites appears at the bottom, and glides to the top in 3 seconds.
During this project I learned how to make animations more viewer friendly. I was able to create the animation to involve the viewer by allowing them to choose Dylan's fate. It was also viewer friendly that when the mouse was touching the sprite, it was one color, whereas when the mouse wasn't touching the sprite it was a different color. Learning how to allow the viewer to interact with the animation was a benefit of this project.
The Very Greedy Mouse
The Very Greedy Mouse is a story of a mouse that sees an apple and is very happy. He pushes it to his home that is a hole in the wall of a human’s house. The apple was too big to fit inside the hole but because he was so greedy, he didn’t want to let go of the apple and so he kept on trying until the human that owned the house saw the mouse and screamed to get rid of it. The mouse then has a choice to run away and leave the house forever or, he could stay at the house to get the apple later.
The way that it was created was on Scratch and a lot of broadcast blocks. I created the sprites and backgrounds first so that I wouldn’t have to later and concentrate on the scripts later. Well, it wasn’t that hard to make but it was just very long so it took a long time. I thought that the hard part of this project was the costumes that I had to make all of the sprites have. It’s hard for me to paint or draw things on the computer so it took me that longest. The scripts were mostly just broadcasts and when I receive’s because that way, the sprites won’t cut each other off while they're talking. It was kind of hard to make the ethical decision though. The mechanism was ask and then, the viewer would type in the answer which was either a or b. then, I did and if or else block and it was if the answer was a, then do this and if it was not a, then do that. I guess that you will just need to patience and time to do this and it will come out really well.
In doing this project, I thought that my greatest strength or achievement in making this project was that I learned how hard it was to make a movie. I usually just watch a 20 minute show and think that show was horrible but since I have also experienced it, I won’t complain anymore. It took me like ten hours trying to create that two minute long ethical story and so, I would think that just that 20 minute video would take a whole day or more to make. The skill that I found out that I needed to improve on was procrastination. I did most of the project on the last day and was very stressed out since I also had more homework on top of that. On the next project, I should really plan my time out and see the difficulty of the project before spreading out my time.
Decision Making Hardcore (An Ethical Story By Kyle Kovacs)
This story is about how temptation comes to a certain boy named Ross and how he resists the temptation of the man that he had proposed to him. This is part of the story, " The immediate size-up, the man was 6 foot 3 inches with a trimmed beard, a face with scars, rough nose, crude smile, but the weirdest part was his tuxedo that he was wearing. It was solid black satin mixed with silk, but had screaming three-dimensional faces on it like tortured souls. With a snap of his finger, he took away the boy’s glare at the tux and he made the souls vanish. Odd, when you think about someone in a tuxedo with a crude face, you think that they are evil or menical. This man had a melodious and yet convincing voice so that you believed almost everything that he said. He said he had a proposition to make." Mainly, this shows how the story is going to play out and how this could affect him.
In this project, most of the story was created with inspiration of and old story that I once heard by my parents. It caught my attention because it showed the conflict between two people and how one of them actually almost tricks the other one. This project was created by the evolution of Scratch and how it creates an efficient story. I encountered problems with drawing in which now I am going to change the storyboard so that I can actually make a good story that is accurate.I finished most of the good ethical decision in my project along with making some vital broadcast changes which could have possibly messed up the whole project. These are some of the steps along with timing and drawing which helped me create many of my backgrounds and designs.
In this project, I learned things such as patience and availability which showed me how to make some changes and to create a successful story. I think that I did very well on the scripts and dialogue and also with the timing because it gave people a chance to read what was going on and not going way too fast. I think that the different control blocks played a key role in my story because it shows how I can command a character to wait or go again.I think that areas that could be improved on are using the broadcast blocks and also getting certain pictures and having the creativity to make new stages. I think that I can work on this by seeing what control blocks/ broadcast blocks that I had just used in the story so I won’t get confused.
The Poor Child
There was a poor boy that lived in California during the Gold Rush. His name was James. His parents and his two sisters past away in a fire and he was the only one that survived. He worked in a coffee store where he cleaned the floor but his salary was horrible. He earned $1 per hour. One day, he was walking to the store when he finds a treasure map under lying on the ground and covered with dirt. He picked it up and he saw an “X” mark near the coffee shop. On his way, he found a shovel and he took it with him. When he came near the coffee shop, he went to the exact place where the mark was on the map and started digging. After a couple of hours later he felt a noise when he was digging. He found GOLD! He took a rest after all the hard work he has done when all of a sudden his worker comes and finds him sitting there with a pot of gold. YOU’RE LATE! said the owner. But instead of yelling at him more, the owner took the shovel and knocked the boy out and took the pot of gold. After a few minutes the James woke up and he couldn't find the pot of gold but the map was still in his hands and there were more marks on it. Luckily he dug those places up and found more gold. Even if he lost the pot of gold, he found more than that. This taught him a lesson: What goes around comes around.
It took me a couple of days to create this project. The first day I made all of my backgrounds and I started doing the animation. For example, I saved the google images to my desktop and then I copy and pasted it to scratch. After that, I started creating the actual animation. I used this sad kid from scratch to be one of my sprites. Lastly, I edited his face and his body. The next day I did many things that were difficult for me. For example, I didn’t know how to hide the title after the introduction as well as my name. I didn’t know we weren’t able to make the viewer do anything except choose a decision. Another thing that was difficult for me is that I had trouble changing the background without asking the viewer do anything. I used the broadcast and receive button. Otherwise, everything was really easy to create. On Thursday, I had a lot of trouble doing task. For instance, when my background was supposed to turn green, it turned blue instead. I had to make Zoe help me for my project because I didn’t know what to do. Also my background paused all of a sudden when I didn’t even see the wait block. Most of the parts were easy except for the backgrounds. I had some trouble with one of my sprites but thankfully Kyle helped me with a lot of things. I had trouble with broadcasts and receive blocks because when I pressed them they didn’t work. Anyways, I did all of backgrounds and I made all of my sprites. I finished half of my project in class. It required a lot of work but i managed to finish most of my project. The last day, I uploaded to the scratch website. I felt accomplished once I finished the whole project because it needed a lot of work. It took me five days to complete this task which means it was time consuming. The project required a lot of control blocks especially the broadcast, when I receive, and finally the wait blocks.The task was really fun doing this project.
My strongest part during this project was that I was able to use the control blocks correctly. Before, I barely understood how to use the broadcast and the receive buttons but now I mastered it. The weakest part for me during this subject was that the task was very time consuming. Even though we had a lot of time, I decided to do it two day before it was due and I jammed everything up but I managed to finish. This was a bad idea but I still did it. It took a lot of time which was my weakest part because I kept on taking breaks while doing the project. Otherwise, this task was very easy and fun. I learned a lot of things while doing this task. The first thing I learned was how use control blocks. For instance, I didn't know how to use the when receive lock and the broadcast block. Also
The Poor Man
This project was for tech class. The main goal in this project was to make a two minute long story that included an ethical decision. My project is mainly about how an old man is poor and works very hard in order to support his family. He tries to do this and ends up having to beg for money from people in the village. He doesn’t earn any money and ends up taking a walk into the cliffside which leads him to his ethical decision.You need to watch the animation for more details!!
I created the project by going to scratch and adding different things that were needed to complete the project. For example, I had to give the script in scratch a “ when the m key is pressed, choose the bad decision” this is an example of something that I needed to use to complete my project.
My strength during this project was knowing how to create dialogue and make actions at the same time. This made it more engaging for the audience to be interested.
I think that I needed to work on completing the task at an earlier stage in order to add different things that needed to make it a better project. Next project I will try to finish it earlier.
Trouble...
This is my animation. Two girls were talking on the phone getting ready for the first day of school. They are best friends. Who knows? Will they stay as best friends? As they were talking, the topic of their crushes came up. It turns out that Kelly and Lily like the same guy... Austin. When they find out they like the same guy, they were disappointed and shocked at the same time. They got ready for school and hung up the phone. They met outside to go to school together. They barely talked on the way to school. Noticing they would be late, they ran to school. In school, everyone was happy to see Kelly wanting her to sit next to them while Lily sat on the other side all alone. After that class ended, they headed outside where Austin appeared but had to go right after. This is where the ethical choice was to come. Does Kelly ignore her or talk to her? What will she choose to do?
To create this animation project, i used a website called Scratch. I downloaded the software in order to use it. To create the motion in this animation, I used many blocks to create the scripts. I created and inserted backgrounds and sprites. I had a total of 8 sprites and 10 backgrounds. It took me many hours to create a 2 minute or more animation. I inserted dialogue as well for the sprites to say. Many blocks were used. Without Scratch, I couldn't have done the animation.
When creating this animation, I learned many things. One was successfully creating the animation. Another was using the sensing blocks to use in this project. I learned how to fix the timing of the dialogue as well. Instead of using the wait block, you can use broadcast. I used both of these blocks to create the dialogue. It turned out to be easy. I also learned to keep the dialogue on a bit longer. This way it is easier for viewers to understand and read the dialogue better.
Muggers Gonna Mug
Learn more about this project This discussion post is about the project that I did for my technology class in Scratch, a program developed by MIT. It is a story in which there is a man minding his own business in what I decided to call Random City. He is walking down the street, and he almost gets mugged by a man with a gun. He soon finds this old lady being mugged by the same guy, and jumps him. The main character, Adam Adams (original, huh?), gets the gun and shows that he knows a really gun when he sees one. He then asks the old lady for advice on what to do with the mugger.
I made this project using Scratch, as already mentioned. I did this over the course of what seems to me like six or seven hours. It feels like that long because I'm sick of seeing the Scratch program open with this story up. I used a lot of broadcasting and receiving, if there are any Scratch users out there who know what I'm talking about. When someone was done talking, the command for someone else to talk was received and the script (list of actions for that sprite (characters or objects)) was carried out.
I learned about organization a lot when doing this project. It was very hard to search for each [broadcast ___] block (part of a script) that corresponded to each [When I receive ___] script starter. It's not the hardest thing ever, but it helped me stay organized and remember where everything was.
