Open Prompt - Thoughts on e-books

I've been using electronic devices for a pretty long time, but it has come to be the first time that I use my tablet as a textbook, replace textbooks.

It was pretty exciting to use my tablet for textbooks at first, I don't have to carry the weight of the heavy books or worry about forgetting my books at home. But, that was only at first. I have never had a chance to use digital textbooks, so I didn't know its disadvantages, I've only seen the bright side. When I went to my Spanish class(the class I have e-textbooks), I opened my iPad, opened the app, found my book, but what do I see, the book is not downloaded?! I thought that was impossible, I started its downloading process last night, but why is it not finished? (Later I found out that it only downloads when I'm in the app) Oh well, that was not a huge problem, I can still go to the website and use the web version. So I opened my browser, went to the webpage, the book opened up properly, I was pretty happy, at first. After a few pages of scrolling, I can't even describe how horrible the experience of using it was. When I tried to scroll down to the bottom of the page, the whole page scrolls, but only not the book itself. I was very exhausted with it. The second day, I had my book downloaded(with my iPad's screen on for 30 minutes the previous night). I didn't think there will be more problems, but, obviously, I was wrong. The scrolling experience was good, a lot better. Unfortunately, there was another problem, when I "flip" pages, I have to wait 5 seconds for EACH page to load! That wasn't a problem if I know the page number we were going to, I can just jump to that specified page and wait 5 seconds, doesn't seem too long. The real problem was, when I don't know the page number. For example, to find the vocabulary of chapter one, which is not in the menu, and we use it quite often, and I don't know the page number. If I started at page 30, and the vocab is on page 50, without other people tell me the page number, I have to load every page(5 seconds per page) and check if it's the vocab, that will take me at least more than one minute to load the thing. How is that "easier"?!

What I'm stating here is not that ebook is just trash, it saves energy, saves the effort(sometimes), save paper usage and help our planet compare to printed books. But in the eyes of experience of reading or using it, printed books are way better than ebooks. Printed books and ebooks both have advantages and disadvantages, but we can't take both, maybe someday, but now we can't, we will just have to make a choice.

Jiahua(Tiger) Wang

9/24/15

Open Prompt - Thoughts on "Lord of the Flies"

I have finally finished reading lord of the flies this week! And I want to talk about the book for the blog.

The boys finally got rescued! Even there was only a few left. I was surprised on Piggy's death, because he was always the one that have new ideas for the community and I thought his intelligence is going to get the group rescued. I thought it was funny that when Ralph and Piggy was wanting to build a fire they never kept it up, but when the two groups are fighting and nobody was mainly working on building a fire, the forest lit up and the smoke was seen. It was not surprising that Jack created his own tribe, because after the first election, Jack, obviously, was not satisfied with the results. I believe the Ralph ruling will work if Ralph had more power in the community and more strict, like Jack. I do think Piggy's death on the clif was an accident, Piggy was annoying Jack and his tribe, even the tribe was pretty violent but they're not that bad to kill a human. I believe part of the reason Jack was more against Ralph and the previous community they had is because the Conch broke, Jack didn't care for it, but deep in his heart, there is still symbolisms of authority in the Conch. I do really like the happy ending, I was afraid at the end, they're all going to die on the island. I really like this book very much!

Jiahua(Tiger) Wang

9/17/2015

"Lord of the Flies" Chapter 6 & 7 Question

The sign that came down from the world of grown-ups was a "sudden bright explosion and corkscrew trail across the sky". After that "a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs". From the description I think it must be an animal or human dropping with a parachute. It is very confusing because it doesn't give any further description about the figure so it can be a man sent to rescue them, it might be beast, it might be just someone dropped on this island by accident. This might symbolize two things. First, it might symbolize they are going to be rescued soon, because it could be something that will help them get rescued, a human, an adult, or something else. It is hard to know if it's an human or not, because Sam 'n Eric saw it "flying" through the forest and chasing them really fast and when Jack and Ralph went on searching the creature didn't leave any track on the ground. On the other hand it might be just the littuns freaking out, it might just be someone running really fast, the thing could have walk through the forest and Jack and Ralph just didn't see the tracks it leaved. Also, it can symbolize a "beast" they have to fight against, maybe Sam 'n Eric was NOT freaking out, maybe it's just flying over the ground. I hope Jack and Ralph will find out something soon.

Jiahua(Tiger) Wang
9/7/15

"Lord of the Flies" Chapter 5 Question

“He found himself understanding the wearisome of life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent looking at one’s feet.” - Ralph

The quote basically means that the boringness if life is when you make a new decision, take a new path. You have to keep looking down at your foot so you don't fall and make sure you stay on the same path, the right path. I agree with the quote, because nobody, no human can keep walking and not falling without looking down at the path. Also when you are doing something, sometimes you have to review what are you doing to stay on track to reach your goal not wasting time on useless things. So before we start doing something, we'll have to overview what are we doing, what's our goal, the steps to reach the goal. When we are doing something, we have to stay with our steps and goal, even if something happens unexpectedly, our goal should stay the same. For Ralph, he is now in a pretty bad situation, people are turning on him, not listening to him. So now he can't just give up on his leadership, he'll have to stick with his goal, like I said above, even if anything unexpectedly happens, we have to stick with our goal, which for him is now maintaining order, stopping the arguments and finding a way to work together. I wish Ralph will stay with his goal and not give up!

Jiahua(Tiger) Wang
9/5/15

"Lord of the Flies" Chapter 4 Question

Yes it has.
At the beginning of the book, the boys were afraid of killing a pig because of the enormity of the knife and cutting live flush. But now Jack is not afraid of killing a pig anymore and even he is happy when he killed something because they certainly need meet to survive(also make Jack fell better). The views of life had changed too. In the beginning, they all just want to be rescued and have a good life like the one they had before leaving their home, now they still want to go back home but surviving is the most important thing for them, surviving is greater than the way of life. The views of power and control had also changed. In the beginning they are in search of adults because they think the adults have the most power to rescue them and it depends on adults to survive, but after they realized there is no adults anywhere they lit their own fire, building shelter, hunting pigs themselves, most importantly, surviving. Adults it's still the key to their rescue but now they have control of their surviving and their own life and power to make decision that will get them rescued or not.

Jiahua(Tiger) Wang
9/4/15

Dear Auntie - From Piggy

Dear auntie,
How are you doing now? Are you still fine? Is the the candy store still fine? I am writing this because so you don't have to worry about me, I am still fine. We been on a plane and it crashed on this island. Luckily, I and some other kids survived. The island is undeveloped and the pilot of the plane died and there is no adults. We been trying to get rescued and also trying to survive. We had a really good chance to be rescued but the other kids are just acting like little children and we missed the ship. The other kids call me Piggy, I don't really like it but it will be fine. I am still the only one who has asthma. I have new friends too, Ralph, Simon. We also formed a society to work together, Ralph is our leader but it's going too well right now, but soon it will all be good. Anyway, we are just trying to survive on this island right now, eating fruits and pigs. We have built shelters on the beach of the island and we built a fire with my specs to draw attention from nearby ships but it hasn't succeeded. I really miss you and the life before this happened. I wish you are still fine. I believe we will get rescued soon and we will meet again!

Piggy
If any body is reading this, please send us help!