For the past several months of working through my Genius Hour project which is Greek Mythology or more specifically, the twelve Olympians,I have found many things that helped me gain more knowledge. This Genius Hour project really gave me the opportunity to truly learn about Greek Mythology and I feel like I already have enough understanding about the twelve Olympians to discuss about them without doubting the words that will come out of my mouth which I find that I always do when I am discussing something.

      While researching and browsing through the Internet, I found some good resources such as greekmythology.com, webgreece.gr and ancientgreece.com because even though it was hard to find reliable sources since Greek Mythology has a lot of story, these websites gave me information that I found quite reliable.I only hope that the final product of this project will be good and 

    For the Genius Hour project, I had looked more into the Twelve Olympians of Olympus namely Zeus, Poseidon Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Hermes, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Dionysus, Hestia, Hera, and Ares. So far my partner and I have learned the basics about them, I also looked into their background and found out a little bit more about them. I have learned that most of them have symbols.

    The symbols of Zeus were the scepter, the throne and the thunderbolt. His tree was the oak tree and his sacred animal was the eagle. The symbols of Poseidon was the trident and his sacred animals were the dolphin and the horse. The symbols for Apollo were the lyre and navel stone. His sacred animals were the wolf, raven and the lizard. For Artemis, her symbols were the bow, pike, cedar, snake, bear and deer. Athena's symbols include the spear, distaff, the aegis. the olive tree and the owl.For Hermes, his symbols include the caduceus(his staff), the winged sandals, and the ram. Aphrodite's symbols were the girdl, seashell, the mirror and the dove. The symbols for Hephaestus were the fire, axe,pincers and the hammer. Dionysus' symbols were the flute, wine barrels, panther and the tiger. Hestia's symbols include the myrth and the art. For Hera, her symbols include pomegranates, diadem, lotus-tipped staff, cow, peacocks and lions. Ares' symbols are the spear, helmet, dog, and the vulture.

      In the last genius hour that I created, I talked about the 12 Olympians that resides in Mount Olympus. During the past few weeks after doing it, I have learned more things about them. I looked more into the family tree of the Olympians,who their parents were and who their siblings were. I know that they all came from one family line but it's still very interesting to know which branch they came from.

       While researching more about the said family tree, I discovered that they came from someone or something called Chaos meaning nothingness. I have not really gone into that yet but I will definitely look in to that next time. The branch that I was just talking about consists of the two sides of children, that Chaos' children, Uranus and Gaea had. It was very engaging to find out that the siblings of the family tree had children together and that continued on for generations, even when the 12 Olympians were born because to us humans, that is considered very inappropriate, but to the Olympians, it may be a normal thing to them. On the next genius hour time that we have, I hope to learn more about the 12 Olympians using the help of a few useful websites that I encountered before like greekmythology.com


10/10/2013 13:30:54


     The career that I chose is to be a medical lab technician. They conduct routine medical laboratory tests and set up, clean and also maintain medical lab equipment. They also log patient samples and prepare them for testing. Although, there are some hazards and risks while on the job, for instance, they are constantly exposed to patients with diseases and also with harmful substances in the lab. They can be employed in hospitals, government research labs,research institutes, etc. It's a type of work where you work mostly in a lab analyzing samples from patients. Education requirements are completion of secondary school and on the job training or completion of a 6-14 month program for medical lab technicians.Job prospects over the 2011-2020 period, job specifics are expected total 40,304 and 41,321 job seekers are expected to be available to fill the job openings. Some laboratories pay overtime and provide medical and other benefits. Starting wage is about 15.50$/hr, average wage is 23.08$/hr and top wage is 35$/hr. 

      The reason why I am interested in taking this career is because of the fact that I get to continue working with science even after school. Science has always been one of my favorite subjects of mine in school. It always interests me how scientist can know about facts and discover new things. I have a few skills and personalities that might help me in the future for this career. Some of my skills include basic knowledge of operating a computer and research skills, although I will need to improve my computer skills as modern technology advances every moment. I have many personalities but one that will help for this career is me being intrapersonal. I also have some abilities that might help and it includes flexibility: to work on more than one tasks at hand,and adaptability: to adapt to different kinds of environment quicker. Nothing really concerns me about this career except for the fact that I am going to be constantly working with samples that might contain harmful bacteria. In the future, for me to pursue this career I will have to go to a good university that will teach me everything that I need to know. 

For the genius hour, I had picked to look more into Greek Mythology but mainly focus on the 12 Gods and Goddesses that resides on Mount Olympus. I chose this because since I was little, I was already interested in learning more about the Gods and Goddesses of Greece. I was so intrigued by what myths and legends Greek Mythology contained that I just had to look into it. One thing that piqued my interest is that how Zeus managed to overthrow his father, Kronos, and save his siblings, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hera and Hestia. Second thing that made me eager to learn more about Greek Mythology was that there were a lot of variations about how the 12 Olympians came to be. Learning more about them just made more curious than I already am. The third thing that made me pry into articles about them is how people from Greece believed these things, I mean when I compare them to my religion, which is Catholicism; we have had many people writing down the words of God which was the result of a book we now call the Holy Bible, we also had miracles that were created by Jesus himself and I believe every single one of them because it is what I believe. I am hoping that by the end of Genius Hour, I will know where their beliefs of these gods and goddesses originated from.

            When we started Genius Hour, the first few days of researching about Greek Mythology was quite brutal as I got to learn more about variations of stories of how each of them were born or what their back story was. There were a lot of different ideas of how Zeus defeated his father. An example is that other stories say that Zeus was the only one who fought with his father after he made Kronos vomit his siblings out and others say that after the siblings were out of their father’s stomach, they fought with Zeus in a war to crush their father. Many websites, like ancientgreece.com, greekmythology.com and the most common used website for researching, Wikipedia were helpful but had minor differences about some of their stories. I have been planning for quite a while now that I should start reading some book about them to get a much more reliable article rather than the internet that has many stories about them but not completely reliable as many people change them to their own personal beliefs. I hope that by the end of Genius Hour, I have gained a greater knowledge of the 12 Olympians of Greek Mythology.

The thing that I personally agree with is about the part where they told us that students tend to be smarter when they are younger than they are older. My evidence is that I have had younger cousins that had good grades when they were in kindergarten and those grades went downhill as they grew up and moved on to elementary school. There are different ways that a teacher can teach their student and that affects of how their students gain knowledge. Whether it is a nice, creative teacher or a strict and uptight one, it still affects the education being distributed to the students no matter what. One thing that also bothered me is that he told us that outside school, cheating is called a collaboration, and i disagree with that. If one student copied all the time, how are they going to learn? How are they going to prepare for the future ahead of them? The thing is people can't rely on other people all the time, they have to face the real world when they finish school, they have to be independent and responsible. A suggestion that I can make is that teachers should have more activities in their class that , if possible, include having to use creativeness. What was interesting is that the video actually had evidence to support the topic that school does  in fact kill creativity, he went thorough every evidence thoroughly to make us, the viewers understand why. He brought out more than enough evidence to support the topic.

Get To Know Me!

9/5/2013 21:49:17

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Hey There Friends!
I go by the name Meryl. Like most people, I have many things that I like. Mainly singing, dancing, reading novels and last but not least, taking a walk in the park. My family consists of my mother and father, my older brother, my older sister and then me. I am 14 years old and was born on the 15th of December. My favorite colors are purple, blue and green, although purple will always be the best for me. I am quite shy around people who are strangers to me but I am warning you now that once you get to know me, I can be a tad crazy and weird sometimes. I am a proud Filipino and I only moved here in Canada in the year 2010 to have my life settled here. In my perspective, family and friends are very important to one's life as they will always be there whether it is to support you, be there through hardships in life or beside you when you achieved your personal goals in life. I am very lucky to have them around me and I appreciate everything that they have done for me so far in life.