Even a thousand words cannot give us the same feeling as a picture does. Behind every image, there’s a story behind it, a more meaningful story than it appears to be on the picture. That’s why we take pictures, to record the best moments of our life, or even when we are down, to remind us what took we here today.

When Life Gets You Down 

Credit: Punch by Fabien Viet via Flickr CC by NC 2.0

You Need To Get Back Up 

Credit: Punch by Fabien Viet via Flickr CC by NC 2.0

Because Dedication Always Pays Off 

Credit: First US Men’s Boxing Medal by CHRÖS MCDOUGALL via Google Images CC by NC 2.0

When life gets you down, you need to get back up, because dedication always pays off. 

Jai and I decided to choose a topic that inspires people, and our goal was to use different boxing scene to represent the concept of hardships will lead us to the acme in our life. At the beginning of our discussion, we thought about exercising, we spent two classes discussing and finding images about exercise. However, it didn’t work out, and we had to give up our progress and starting a new topic. During the second discussion, Jai was inspired by boxing, comparing it to life. From his words, I actually found many similarities between Life and a Boxing game. In a boxing game, our opponent is the hardship in our life, the judgment, conflicts everything that is trying to trip us over. The moment of winning represents success, no matter if it’s an A+ on the course, or winning a basketball competition, behind those glorious moments, we need to make a great endeavor, go through plenty of hardships, and a thousand words can’t describe the feeling.

The first image represents the hardships of our life, the black and white theme represents the hard times, the punch represents the moment when we were beaten down by hardships, for our caption, we say “when LIFE gets you down” we say “life” because life supposes to have full of obstacles. In the second image, we connect the caption with the first one, even though two images are different fighting scene, but our caption empowers the image, and make a connection that sticks two images together. It means to overcome the obstacle, it will eventually pay off. With the caption, it connects the second image to the last image, the image shows the moment of success, Jai and I wrote “Because Dedication Always Pays Off” we added the word “Because” in order to connect the second caption with the third caption. We wrote our caption to be like a quote that is being represented through three completely different images, and that’s the power of WORDS and PICTURES.

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INTRODUCTION  

What is the first thing you picture in your mind when you hear the phrase “Digital Citizenship”? unerasable digital footprints? Or a completely different behavior? And What is the first thing you picture when you hear the word “Citizenship”? Are these two terms actually different? Actually, no. There’s no such thing as digital citizenship, it’s simply citizenship. 

YOu Are You.  

We all seem to act “differently” online than we act as a person in real life. WHY? under a “Protection” in this digital world, researchers discovered one of the most common concerns which a lot of people decide to behave differently for —-> ATTENTION <—- on the internet instead of for personal sakes. You can do whatever you want. say whatever you want. if this is the case that represents YOU, then who is the REAL “YOU” since you can do whatever you WANT on the internet which you can’t do, or do not have the courage to do in real life. the internet will be a place where you fully represent yourself as a person.  And you are being the REAL YOU in this VIRTUAL world that doesn’t EXIST, expressing your own thoughts. On the internet your thinking is still your thinking, your behavior is still your behavior, but these different behaviors are just representing you as a person in real life, what it means is that your thinking, is completely represented through your behavior even online. you are you, there’s no difference between you as a digital citizen and you as a real person. they are all considered CITIZENSHIP.  

IT’S SIMPLY CITIZENSHIP. 

Everything you do is being tracked on the internet, it’s called footprints, just like in real life, you can’t take back what you’ve already said or done. We should be aware of what we do on both internet and real life, it doesn’t mean a fake username and a fake age will provide security protections on the internet, thus it is important to operate your account appropriately and behave respectfully in the online community. By behaving appropriately and respectfully, IT MEANS:

RESPECT OTHERS, RESPECT The COMMUNITY, RESPECT YOURSELF. 

• • Treat others THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED.  The way you treat people online will be reciprocated just like in real life. 
  • Always understand that your online behavior REFLECTS YOU as a person in REAL LIFE. 

Online Security and Privacy. Give other people space and privacy. 

Respect others means to respect yourself because the way you treat people will be reciprocated, since the burgeoning market of technology and social media,  technologies become more accessible to all the age groups, there are young generations and older generations, we have to support each other as “DIGITAL CITIZENS“. Do not lead the conversation into a conflict, sexual, or even over religious content, these kinds of contents will all affect emotions and thinkings. Or even in a worsened case, your inappropriate behavior will violate the laws.  

Finally, it is extremely important to be mindful of what you say something, do something, or post something next time. Always make sure that there’s no offensive, sexual and violent content, because what you said or posted will not be GONE, even if you deleted them, the internet is .

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DEEP AND DARK

so be MINDFUL… of what you do.

The Importance Of Handbooks (Introduction): 

Inside a simply decorated cover, carries the school’s spirit and goals, it is more than a handbook, it is more likely to be a parent,  shapes the students, and develops their understandings to the community as well as themselves. The content inside the handbook is crucial in developing the students. its perspectives, concepts, and culture are all crucial factors because everything in the handbook represents how the students will be influenced by this place. So, what makes a good handbook? In what way can the handbook help to develop a student’s identity?

Kaohsiung American School Handbook 

Morrison Academy (Kaohsiung) Handbook

Staples Highschool Handbook 

Mission Statement: 

Should the student focus more on grades or his being as a person, this question is considered to be one of the most discussed topics, a lot of people would choose both, but it doesn’t mean that every academy would do this. Oftentimes the mission statements in the handbooks serve as a guide to all the students and faculty members in their learning career or even future, and it will usually become the most important thing in the handbook, most rules or concepts are written based on their mission statements, thus, we can see if the schools focus more on the development of personal characteristics or academic performance. 

Handbook Analysis (Mission Statement) 

MAK (Morrison Academy Kaohsiung): MAK is a Christianity based academy, on page 8, it introduces MAK’s expectations to the students in the community, they want the students:

• To be spiritual, as a Christ follower.
• To be an effective communicator, which they want every student to contributes to their own groups and connect with each other.
• To be a critical and creative thinker, MAK wants the students to analyze, interpret, evaluate, and synthesize concepts within various contexts.
• To be a lifelong learner, and maintain intellectual curiosity.
• To be a moral and ethical citizen which they want the students to make ethical decisions from a Christian perspective.
• To be a wise and responsible steward which they want the students to serve others generously and compassionately

From MAK’s expectations to the students, we can see that as a religious academy (Christianity) they focus more on students’ personal being as a person. what MAK expects from their students is not to get good grades on their academic performances, but to become an individual that have high personalities and remain the passion to learn. The handbook clearly demonstrated how to achieve their expectations, the instructions that students should follow are all written based on their mission statements, for instance, on page 19, which talks about “impact program”, a program which students in secondary school would do in order to prepare for high school, it shows that in 8th Grade, MAK expects all students to grow in confidence, grow leadership and accept that God is challenging by doing hard things. What MAK does for their students to prepare high school is not higher up their grades, instead, they let the students challenge themselves, knowing there will be more challenges in high school which they have to accept it. The handbook not only states the expectations, but it also connects everything to the expectations to further demonstrate how the student will be developed as a person throughout the learning process in the campus.

Kaohsiung American School (Mission Statement) 

Reversely, even though the handbook states to develop good personal traits, KAS focuses more on academic performances, the handbook doesn’t mention the policies to develop a good personality. The handbook states that KAS want students to achieve academic excellence and prepares them to:

• Become Balanced Individuals, the students have to be balanced on academics performance, athletic performance, and arts.
• Become Independent learners, the students have to be passionate to study
• Become Global Citizens, the students have to be ethical, aware and cooperative.

The handbook is not as detailed as MAK’s handbook, the handbook mostly focuses on the instructions around the community.  however, KAS also develop their students based on mission statements, such as BIG time which can not be found on the handbook, in BIG time, students will be either doing the independent study sessions (Independent learner) or activities that will balance the students (balanced individual) such as orchestra or concert. However, BIG time is no longer BIG without the G, even though the handbook clearly states that they want students to become a global citizen which required them to be ethical aware and cooperative, the BIG time does not include learning session that will help a student to become a better being.

However, the handbook gives many details on academic fields, all the learning standards have been explained explicitly. Unlike MAK and Staples, KAS handbook gives more straightforward instructions by applying bullet points and shortened sentences, which makes the instructions more understandable.

In conclusion, KAS handbook gives explicit instructions on how to achieve academic excellence, which helps the students to develop their identities by becoming a more balanced lifelong learner. the process of development can be done in several ways, such as the variety of elective classes, BIG time learning sessions, attend concerts, performances. The purposes of these activities are all shown in the handbook.

Connecticut Staples Highschool (Mission Statement) 

“The Staples High School community inspires learning, fosters integrity, and nurtures empathy” This is the first thing appears on the handbook, the mission statements are not as detailed as KAS’s and MAK’s, but it demonstrates a balanced concept of both integrity and learning, they also added “natures empathy”. The purpose of this is to make the student become more optimistic, study shows that nature will give a calming effect which helps depression, under a stressful environment, being empathetic to nature will benefit the students mentally as well as physically. On page 26, the school allows “extraordinary education” which means educational travel, the school will qualify the application if the trip fits the requirements.

The way Staples high school inspires learning is providing independent study sessions. On page 11, it discusses the purposes and benefits of independent study and also organized the main ideas into bullet points to present the ideas in a more straightforward way.

Finally, from page 8 to 10, the account explains being integrity as a person and also academically, but the handbook mostly focuses on academic integrity, such as plagiarism and cheating, the content is very detailed in explaining the kinds of integrity and the consequences for academic dishonesty.

The Staples high school handbook shows how the school connects their activities to mission statements, it is very crucial in developing students that fit the school expectations. The staples high school not only teaches the knowledge, but it also teaches many life lessons.