AMAZON RAINFOREST

STUDENT´S WRITING

I´m going to talk about the Amazon rainforest because I like it, I love nature and I´m worried about it. 

The Amazon rainforest is the biggest jungle in the world, it´s 5.5 million square kilometres. It is in South America, in the Amazon river valley. 

There are nine countries with part of the Amazon: the biggest part is in Brazil 60%, in Peru 13%, then Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. 

In the middle of the Amazon valley there is a river, the Amazon, the largest and widest river in the planet Earth with 6,992 km. and it is navigable.

The Amazon rainforest is the largest and the most biodiverse in the world with 2.5 million insect species and thousands of animals: 2,200 fishes, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, 278 reptiles, all these species are classified but many more aren´t known. There are 438,000 species of plants discovered or catalogued: the total number of tree species is 16,000. 

We can see the most poisonous animal, the Poison Dart Frog, in the Amazon. The Pygmy Marmoset is the smallest monkey and lives in the Amazon too. 

The Amazon is the 50% of the rainforest  in the planet.

SAVE THE AMAZON!

By David Marco Navarro

DID YOU KNOW: Star Wars lightsabers

WHAT DO LIGHTSABERS' COLOURS MEAN?

STUDENT´S WRITING

                 In the first six episodes of Star Wars films lightsabers were red, blue and green; and purple only for Mace Windu because the actor asked for it.  On the contrary, in the Expanded Universe there were many different colours. Although now colours are used for decoration, in the past they could have had a meaning.

                 In the original trilogy, the jedis' lightsabers were blue but the Sith´s were red. This could be a simple code, blue for the good ones and red for bad ones. 

Despite Jedis´ lightsabers were blue, Yoda´s and Qui-Gon´s were green and also Luke Skywalker´s was green in episode VI The Return of the Jedi. This was because George Lucas thought that Luke´s lightsaber couldn't be seen clearly in the battle versus Jabba el Hutt over the Sarlacc.


On the other hand, the Imperial ships' lasers were green but the Rebellion ships' lasers were red. So we can´t say that colors are an actual code for the good ones and the bad ones.

                    Actually, the lightsabers´ colour depends on the crystal used to concentrate energy when the lightsaber is built. After the Old Republic, the Lord Siths´ lightsabers used to be red because there were made with artificial crystals. 
On the other hand, the Jedis´ lightsabers used to be green or blue because they were made with Adegan natural crystal form Ilum planet. Padawans performed a ceremony in the ice caverns form this planet, where they found these natural crystals.

                    Finally, we can say that there are many different colours for lightsabers (there was even a black one once) but there is not a simple clear code for them. It depends on the historical moment in the story, the contrast with the setting, directors´ decisions or even actors´choices.

Test: What Colour of Lightsaber Are You?

by Alex Leal

DID YOU KNOW: Video games almost dissapeared?

VIDEO GAMES CRASH '83-'85

or Atari shock

STUDENT´S WRITING

                 In the 80s, video games became very popular and a lot of enterprises begun to create video games. On 21st June 1982, many enterprises went into bankruptcy due to a crisis, a giant recession of the video game industry.

        The crisis started with the loss of customer's confidence as there were an excess of games and consoles in the market. At that moment the consoles were: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Astrocade Bally, Coleco Vision, Coleco Gemini, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Fairchild Channel F System II, Magnavox Odyssey, Mattel Intellivision, Mattel Intellivision II, Sears Tele-Games systems, TandyvisioN and Vectrex. 

          Another fact that caused the crisis was Atari's promises of disastrous games like E.T.: The extra-terrestial and the adaptation of Pac-Mac from the arcade format. Both games were pitiful. They had all kind of errors you could imagine. 

               
                 The video games' industry almost disappeared but a glorious day Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) went on sale alongside the famous Super Mario. This led to the sale of video games again activated. The success of Nintendo and the settlement of quality standards for developing video  games helped the industry to recover.

                Since that day, all gamers in the world thank Minoru Arakawa, who created Nintendo of América in 1980, for helping video games industry to success. Nowadays,  the industry is so big and earn so much money that nobody could believe that in the 80's video games almost disappeared.

by Aaron Garicano 

Why is English spelling so weird?

Here a few words of explanation about what you´re continuously asking me! 

POLAR BEAR vs BROWN BEAR

STUDENT´S WRITING

I´m going to talk about polar bears and brown bears because I like them. Both bears are similar but they are very different. 

Let´s see!!

The polar bear is fatter and taller than the brown bear. The brown bear´s eyes are brighter than polar bear´s. The skull of a polar bear is longer than a brown´s bear´s one. The teeth of a brown bear are longer than a polar bear´s but the canines are bigger and sharper. The claws of a polar bear are shorter than a brown bear´s claws because the brown bear uses them for digging.

Both bears live 25 years but sometimes the brown bear can live 30 years. The polar cubs are born blind between November and February and they are two or three of them each time. Brown cubs can be one, two or three and sometimes four. The polar bear does't hibernate but the brown bear does for five or eight months a year in winter. The polar bear lives in the Arctic Circle and the brown bear lives in the woods of Europe, North America and Asia. They eat different things: the polar bear is carnivore so it eats seals and other animals, and the brown bear is omnivore so it eats plants, honey, insects and fish.

Continue reading... interesting information come next: ...

Their scientific names are similar because the first name is Ursus for both but the second name is different: the polar bear is Ursus Maritimes and the brown bear is Ursus Arctos.

Other interesting difference between these bear is their conservation status. The brown bear is in the group of Last Concern and the polar bear is in the group of Vulnerable. I am angry because we are destroying their habitat by helping the Global Warming to melt the ice where they live. 

Both bears have names in other languages: the Inuit people in the Arctic call the polar bear "Nanook" in their language and the Sioux people in North America call the brown bear "Mato" in their language.

I hope you like it!!

By David Marco Navarro

DID YOU KNOW: Liquid Paper

STUDENT´S WRITING

Did you know that the first liquid paper was called Mistake Out? And did you know there were different colours?

In 1951, Bette Nesmith Grahm was a secretary and worked writing a lot. She made many mistakes and she was looking for a way to correct them. She invented a kind of tempera paint mixed with her kitchen blender and put it in samll bottles with the name of Mistake Out written on them. She shared this liquid with her partners at work.

Bette used correction liquid for five years and her son´s chemistry teacher helped her to improve the formula. She began to sell it in 1956, then she built her own company and changes the name to Liquid Paper. In 1970 there were different colours of Liquid Paper, like blue or green, to use them in different coloured forms.

Bette offered her product to IBM but they didn´t want it. Bette decided to sell it herself from her home during 17 years. She started to win money and the enterprise grew. Finally, Global Gillette bought it in 1979. Now, 200 people work in it and make 25 milliion bottles of Liquid Paper every year.

I hope you enjoyed it and learned something!


By Sandra Marco Navarro

Ed Sheeran ...UNPLUGGED!

STUDENT´S WRITING

      Ed is an English singer and songwriter whose brother Matthew is a classical music writer. Their parents are from London but or Irish lineage, both work in jobs related with Art; his father is an art curator and her mother is a jewelry designer. Ed was born near Halifax on  17th February 1991.

HOW DID HE BECOME FAMOUS?

     On 2005, he began recording music and left home to go to London where he played in the street and in small venues. Jaime Fox invited him to play in his program. Jaime let him a bed in his house and his studio to record. Finally, he became an international famous pop star as more people saw him over the Internet through Youtube.

DOES HE CARE?

     On 2012, he was a volunteer to help homeless people. There, he met a prostitute who is called Angel. She told him about her problems and he decided to help donating the 40,000 pounds of a concert in Bristol.

HIS DISCONNECTION!

     On the 14th December 2015, he wrote in his social networks: `I find myself seeing the world trough a screen and not my eyes.´ Sheehan took this decision after finishing his world tour, where he became one of the biggest pop stars in the world. 

     He got his fame with 24 years old and with his last disk called `X´ (sentimental mellifluous style). The New York Times called him `the first pop songwriter in a long time who becomes a fan phenomenon´. 

`THINKING OUT LOUD´

     I think he has lived an exciting and funny life despite being so young, only 24. Nevertheless, he is tired of using social networks. 

     Internet can help you in many things, as Youtube helped Ed to become famous; but on the other hand, Internet does´t let you time enough to do other things, for example looking the world with your eyes, as Ed has recently stated.

By Carolina Barrera Fernández