Ara Blog

Today we researched courses offered by ARA.

The study that I chose to look into was health. I chose to look into health, because most of my thoughts and conversations about my career have been related to health. The subject in health that interests me the most is osteopathy, because it is used to treat patients with various types of health problems, which connects most to the health jobs I’ve talked to about. I’m still not certain what particular job I want in the future, but I hope to make progress and find out which job I want.

Character Strengths

Why do people want to know their strengths?

People may want to find their own strengths for a variety of reasons. The reasons could be to benefit themselves or another person. Here is a list showing why someone may want to find their strengths.

  • Curiosity
  • Feeling Lost
  • For fun
  • To achieve a goal
  • To make someone proud or impress them
  • To help someone
  • Personal Development
  • Help with Mental Health

Slide 5 Questions

Why use Character Strengths?

Character Strengths can be used to benefit ourselves or other people. Someone should use their strengths because it is a skill they are confident they can do well. Their strengths motivate them to use it in order to achieve something.

What are my top 5 Strengths?

According to the VIA survey, my top 5 strengths are Fairness, Love, Gratitude, Perseverance and Hope.

What do they mean to me?

These strengths are pretty realistic; I can imagine times when I have shown these values.

Wananga Goal Setting

How to set a S.M.A.R.T Goal

Specific – When setting a goal, it needs to have a what, when and why. For example, if you want to pass school, you need to be more specific; for example, what do you want to pass, when do you want to pass it, and why do you want to pass it.

Measurable – With that goal, you need to be able to measure your progress. Measuring your progress is important because it helps you keep track of how close you are getting to your goal, and it is also important for keeping you motivated.

Achievable – The goal that you make has to be achievable. When setting a goal, be careful and make sure it is actually achievable, you also don’t want to make the goal to easy.

Relevant – Make sure the goal is relevant to what you need and what you want. It is unnecessary to set a goal that doesn’t correlate with what you need.

Time-Bound – The goal has a limited time to be completed. Its importance is to make sure the goal-setter completes through improvement and prevents making minor efforts to achieve this goal.

My goal – Get my learner’s license by the end of this year by doing at least an hour and a half of drive.govt per week.

Blog Questions – Ki O Rahi Origins

Explain the links between the legend of Rahi and the game of Ki o Rahi.

There are parts in the story that link to how the game is played. For example, Rahi almost died, but he was saved by a giant eagle. The game also symbolizes unity and harmony, which links to the game Ki O Rahi because to play well and score, you must work well with your team by using teamwork.

What values are expressed in the game?

In the game, one of the main values that is expressed is teamwork. Teamwork is a huge part of Ki O Rahi because the players will encounter problematic situations. Having teammates that you can communicate with and pass with will help avoid these situations and bring you closer to scoring. Another value expressed in the game is strategizing. Ki O Rahi involves lots of strategy as you and your team need to plan ways to prevent the other team from scoring and ways to help your team score.

Take one value from the game and explain how it is linked to the origin story

Those who score with the Ki will encounter obstacles by the opposing team as they try to prevent them from scoring. During these situations, they can pass to their teammates to help with these obstacles. This represents the obstacles that Rahi faced on his journey to saving his Wife, Ara, and the help he had along the way while doing so.

 

 

Michael Discovery Task Blog

Hello my name is Michael.

In Health, we were required to choose a topic and research and write about it. The topic that me and Xaviar chose was the effects of gaming on the mind and body.

Firstly, we had to choose and answer 6 big questions. These were our questions and answers.

What are the positive and negative outcomes of gaming? – Xaviar

Playing games can come with either a positive or negative outcome depending on the game you are playing; for example, games require trial and error to progress. Online gaming and offline gaming can lead to friendly relationships between NPCs and online players, this is an upside to gaming and where there is an upside there is always a downside such as online gaming can cause frustration due to hackers and trolls, for people who play offline there are overpowered NPC’s, and annoying NPC’s that gives you bad quest and rewards ruining your gaming experience.

How does gaming affect the brain? – Michael

Gaming can have both positive and negative impacts on the brain. With positive impacts including improved cognitive functions that can be beneficial in the real world.  Whereas, negative outcomes can result in being disconnected from the world due to excessive gaming; resulting in the inability to distinguish their actions from the real and fictional worlds.

What assumptions are made about gaming/gamers? – Michael

A basic assumption is that gamers are people who can be considered ‘shut-ins’. People who avoid social activity and their physical well-being. Gaming can be viewed by others as unhealthy and being associated with violence due to the popularity of games including guns.

How does gaming lead to poor mental health outcomes? – Xaviar

Excessive gaming can isolate individuals, reduce face-to-face interactions, and weaken social support networks. Along with this gaming can cause your mental health and your physical body to neglect your Responsibilities such as ignoring work, school, or personal obligations, causing stress and guilt to build up over time.

What are the effects on gaming on the economy? – Michael

Without games, jobs that require coding and creativity may suffer. Games come in many different forms, more commonly known as genres. Here people can play either shooting or fantasy games. Which requires people with jobs to code these games or artists to draw up concept art of how a game may look.

What other issues does gaming link with? – Xaviar

Excessive gaming can lead to unhealthy eating and drinking habits. Instead of regular meals, you might find yourself reaching for high-calorie, fatty foods. Similarly, your water consumption could be replaced by energy drinks, which many gamers rely on to power through long sessions. This shift in dietary choices can ultimately contribute to weight gain.

Once we had our 6 big questions, we had to describe 3 strategies for improving well-being in the short term or long term through gaming.

 Strategy 1: Take your time and enjoy the game that you are playing,  a method for this is to minimise your gameplay and enjoy the little things that games provide for your enjoyment. – Xaviar

Taha tinana

By minimizing your gameplay, you can spend more time on self-improvement, ensuring you are secure and well-rested, which will prepare you to face the challenges of the day.

Taha hinengaro

Appreciating the small details that games offer can improve your mental state by encouraging more thoughtful gameplay and a richer experience along with how your feelings can affect your gameplay.

Strategy 2: Treat gaming time as a sort of reward. – Michael

Taha Hinengaro

If we were to play games after a task or challenging activity, it can make us happy when we play games, knowing that we have earned it. This can also give us a reason to go out and do stuff

Taha Tinana

Gaming is something that makes us sit still and have little movement. This is bad if done for a long time. But what if we gave ourselves an activity to do outside before we play games?

Strategy 3: If you don’t feel like playing games, just don’t play. – Michael

A habit among gamers is they may feel the urge to play games even when they don’t feel like it. Examples of when this may happen can be from experiencing burnout, procrastination, or boredom.

Taha Physical/Hinengaro

Rejecting the urge to play games gives them time to think about themselves and their goals. This time is important for developing and accomplishing what they need/want.

Taha Wairua

When rejecting to play games, it allows the person to take notice. Taking notice lets the person realise the other things that exist within the world. This can help build the person’s gratitude and motivation.

 

From there, we began our big project. We chose to create an animation that teaches us to take notice and appreciate the outside world. We chose to do this because that is one of the more common and known problems that gamers usually face.

Reflection

It was challenging when we were working on the animation because there were many days when me and my buddy were absent. This required me to do some of the work in my spare time at home.

I coped with the challenge by listening to music while working at home so the work was more enjoyable.

I worked well with my buddy because we both had the same ideas and goals.

I am really proud of the animation because we put lots of effort into it.

Climate Change Events

Flooding

Spain Flash Floods

Recently in Spain, there have been flash floods that killed over 200 people.  Scientists have two possible theories that the flash floods are connected to climate change. The first theory is that the warmer air holds the rain in the air and then dumps the water causing the flash flood. The second theory is related to jet streams caused by weather systems moving across the globe.

What causes floods?

  • Constant/Consistent heavy rainfall in a certain area that builds up into a flood.
  • Tsunamis
  • Overflowing rivers
  • Excess melting of solid elements in an area.
  • Climate change causes weather for floods.

Why is climate change the cause?

Climate change changes the earth’s weather patterns. These changes cause the earth to match the steps needed to cause the floods. For example, climate change has been causing more rainfall and rising sea levels which are core parts of causing types of floods.