The Marathon

Today there is a race called a marathon.  The name comes from the war fought by the Greeks and the Persians.  The war lasted 60 years. Eventually the Greeks won the war.  They were so happy they sent a warrior named Pheidippiedes to run back to Athens.  He ran 26 miles from marathon to Athens to tell everyone that they won the war.  But when he arrived he died of exhaustion.  That is why there is a race called the marathon.

Why We Should bring our Devices to School

Here's a little persuasive writing I did.












Dear Parkland School Division,


There is an issue I’d like to discuss, we should be allowed to bring our devices to school. We should have our devices at school so we can:

• Use the dictionary App.  The dictionary App is an app that allows you to look up any word you want and hear it so you know it’s the right one.  There’s also a microphone in the top right that allows you to speak your word instead of typing.  It also has a thesaurus. There’s also Word of the Day so you can find out words that you never knew existed.

• Find facts:  Instead of laptops you can use your device to look up images and facts for projects, bulletin boards, and graphs.

•  Look up Experiments: you can tell the teacher more ideas on what they can do for science or social studies.  Or if you have something wrong you can look up that experiment and see if you did something incorrectly.

• Google maps: we can look up where a place is and how far it takes to get there.  It’s helpful for Social Studies.

• Google docs: you can make a story that you want to do with a friend and you don’t have to send it to them or don’t have to be at the same house.  They can go on the story and add on to it.

• Don’t need to wait for laptops:  There’s not enough laptops in the school for everybody so why not bring your iPad or iPod (or iPhone) so you don’t have to wait.  You can just pull your iPod out of your pocket.  It’s right there.  All you need right there in your pocket.

• Notes and reminders: Notes and reminders are something on your iPod or device that you can pout down stuff you need so you don’t forget.  Now don’t get mixed up with reminders and notes.  There’s a big difference.  Notes you can type your notes instead of writing them down on paper.  Now reminders on the other hand is completely different.  You can set a time for a reminder to beep.  For example: “I need to put finish my project at home” and it will beep at a certain time.

Some potential problems:
1.     Students might lose their devices.  They have to give it to the teacher when they are not using it so they don’t lose it.
 2.     Students might be playing games.  Teachers can take the iPod away until the end of the day.  (Personal permission from Noah J)
 3.     Not everybody has a device.  The students can share.

It would be helpful in our learning to have our iPods at school. 
Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Noah Oleksyn
Grade Three
Stony Creek