How To Survive High School, Pt. 2

TECHNOLOGY IS OUR FRIEND

We high school students are a very tech savvy generation. This isn’t surprising. My Nintendo practically baby-sat me. I even tried teaching myself BASIC when I was seven or eight years old. (Yeah, I’m a bit of a geek. I admit it. Are you looking for a fight?) Since technology is a part of our lives, it makes sense that it’s also a part of our schoolwork.

There are two devices you must have for school. You must have a calculator, especially a graphing calculator if you’re an upperclassman. Your math becomes more complicated as you progress through high school, in case you haven’t noticed. Some problems can’t be done without a calculator. Okay, that’s not exactly true. The problems had to have been solved by hand in the past in order for calculators to be able to solve the problems now. I meant that teachers aren’t allowed to let you attempt to solve certain problems by hand. The Supreme Court ruled that allowing someone to solve certain problems by hand is unconstitutional because it violates the protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The other device you seriously need is a computer. If you can’t own a computer, make sure that you at least have access to a computer. Computers allow you to produce gorgeous work and the internet allows you to do convenient research.

Speaking of the internet, here are some websites that you may find useful. All of the sites are free to my knowledge. That means that I didn’t find a cost for the things I tried to do on the sites. Some sites ask you to register, but registration rarely involves money. If you find a site that charges users, try to find out how much free information you can access. Now, I present to you the list.

http://www.sparknotes.com – This is a major study guide website. It offers study guides for different subjects, like physics, poetry, and even health and nutrition. In some areas, like philosophy and literature, the website offers access to the complete text of a work. For instance, I found the full text of Hamlet with only a few click of the mouse. In addition to study guides and online books, the site also has news organized by subject. I found out when Bob Dylan celebrated his bar mitzvah on the site. (What? Who’s Bob Dylan?! Oh, nevermind. You’re young.) The website also offers message boards. You need to be a registered member to post messages, but not to read them.

http://babelfish.altavista.com – This is the altavista translator online. The site lets you translate text (up to 150 words) and web addresses. In most cases, the site lets you translate between English and the typical foreign languages learned in school (Spanish, French, German, Chinese, etc.). I say “in most cases” because I noticed that the site translates from Russian to English, but not from English to Russian. The site also translates from French to German. If you study either Latin or Greek, this site can’t help you. Hey, did you know that gesundheit literally means health in German?

http://www.freetranslation.com – This site is a lot like altavista. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t offer translations for Asian languages. It does, however, allow you to translate from English to Norwegian, but not from Norwegian to English. The site also has those special characters that can only be found in certain languages.

IF YOU'RE NOT BORED TO TEARS, GO ON TO PART 3!

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