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1. Write an extended definition essay on a relevant topic.

2. Write a problem-solution/claim-counterclaim essay on any cultural or social issue.

3. Organize/prepare an e-portfolio that showcases student’s best works.

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At the recent events of the Fiba World Cup, Gilas Pilipinas got into a heated and personal brawl against players of the Australian National Basketball Team, creating commotion among basketball fans around the world. The heat already began since the eve of the match, when Australian players were seen removing the painted sponsor signages on the court floor. During the warmup before the match, Australia player Kickert was already seen taunting and hitting the players of Gilas Pilipinas. Everything broke out in the third quarter, when players of both teams began to have a brawl in the Philippine Arena, resulting to players being ejected and Gilas Pilipinas losing by default. The brawl was ensued with poor security taking place inside the arena. Filipino fans joined the brawl and threw objects such as chairs and the like.

After the game, Gilas Pilipinas explained to the media about the incident. Coach Chot Reyes stated that “The reality is that Kickert was hitting our players during the warm-ups. He hit Carl Bryan Cruz, he hit Matthew Wright, Pogoy, and he hit Calvin Abueva during the warm-ups. We already restrained the players before the game. We already told them, ‘Huwag niyo nang pansinin,’ when Kickert did all of those things at the start during the warm-ups. We already told them to focus on the game. The foul of Pogoy on Goulding was an offensive foul, it was a basketball play,” Reyes added. “But (Kickert) was the one who came in and decked Pogoy. That was the fifth time. You don’t expect to do it to a team five times and not expect us to retaliate. Unfortunately, that triggered the entire brawl.” Other Gilas Pilipinas players also attempted to defend themselves over social media about the brawl, but now they are offering apologies to the Australian basketball team. Basketball Australia has also apologized for Kickert’s “unsavory behavior”, stating that they “do not play the game in that spirit.” It is now up to Fiba to determine the outcome and pass out offenses to the two teams as deemed necessary.

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           This article talks about the conflict arising between the basketball teams of Australia and Philippines, leading to an unexpected brawl between the two teams. Although others may view it as a very unprofessional act, it may have just happened that the players of Gilas Pilipinas acted on their emotions rather than choosing the less violent options. This could have been their initial reaction due to their frustrations prior to the game started. Nevertheless, their actions have caused a great impact upon basketball fans all over the world, especially among Australians and Filipinos in a negative way. The important thing though, is that despite the tensions created and physical harm dealt, the two countries are ready to apologize to each other for what they have done and are ready to face the consequences that Fiba will be handing over to them in the coming days.

Reference

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           Following the footsteps of his father, Apollo Creed, heavyweight boxer Adonis Creed undergoes rigorous training in his boxing career. Later, he finds a dilemma in striking a balance between his personal life and boxing career. Upon learning that his next big match is against Viktor Drago, the son of his dad’s biggest rival, Ivan Drago, Adonis must do everything he can to continue his family’s legacy. Alongside Rocky Balboa, they both go on a journey where they undergo preparations and realizations towards their future and their shared legacy.

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           Apart from the training and preparations under Adonis’ boxing career, the movie also brings up the balancing between career and personal life. This is very important especially since athletes undergo physical activity almost everyday, and they also have family and friends to take care of. It could be troublesome if an athlete suffers a serious injury, especially for his/her family. Health is the primary concern of the athlete, also since a serious injury can break his/her career and at the same time affect his/her overall well-being. In the worst case, an athlete may die because of strains in practice or injuries from the sport. An athlete must know when to balance his/her family life and sports and set priorities depending on situations.

 Reference

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           The song talks about a person, showing his daily activities. The music video shows clips, none showing the fancy life of people. These shots and clips show the more simple life of some people where they wake up, eat breakfast, watch TV, hang out with friends and such. In the end, it shows the person, hanging out with his friends on a train and staring outside with a blank face.

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           Society today is almost about nothing but fame and money especially towards celebrities and politics. People desire to be like them and live their lives around them. However, this video shows us the exact opposite. The singer, Lorde, shows us the value humble beginnings and that life is not just all about riches. Today, the media keeps on tracking the activities of celebrities and luring people into the finer lifestyle. We always see celebrities and known personalities on the news whenever they are spotted doing something like visiting a mall or just hanging out with someone. Every person goes through these activities but when a famous person does it, it becomes such a big deal and attracts a lot of people. However, they are just normal people like everyone else, and in this case Lorde shows that not all people live or came from a very fancy life.

 Reference

               Education in our society today is a challenge for most students. During their course of education, students undergo many physical and mental changes such as stress, conflicts in setting priorities, and uncommon body clocks. Stress is one of the most pressing and alarming issues for students. Students, especially in high school and college, find themselves bombarded and overwhelmed with requirements stacking from all their subjects. This causes them to panic and work less effectively on the said requirements. Furthermore, it can affect a student’s personal life, as he/she is devoting more time on school-related work and less towards social and family lives. Due to school work, they spend more time staying in school to complete requirements or study in class or in the library. Students also have a hard time managing their time and priorities as a result of stress. Some students may opt to rather hang out with friends and relax as an escape from stress although he/she has a load of requirements for the upcoming weeks. Another issue is the changing of a student’s body clock. This is likely because a student arrives home late due to factors such as traffic or class extensions, resulting to the allotted time to study and do homework to reach until late hours. Heavy workloads due on same days are also likely to force the student to stay up past midnight just to finish everything. Furthermore, uncommon body clocks cause students to come to school with less energy due to lack of sleep. This can directly affect the student’s performance in his/her subjects since the students becomes less participative in class sessions. Other behaviors include sleeping in class, boredom during lectures and clumsiness on hands-on exercises and physical education.

           Learning starts with developing a healthy environment for teachers and students. A healthy environment can significantly reduce stress and anxiety among students when it comes to fulfilling academic requirements. This involves proper teaching practices from the teacher in order to open up more interactions with students and assessments. Donna Walker Tileston, veteran teacher and president of Strategic Teaching and Learning, created a list of what are the best teaching practices.

           Firstly, communication is key to a student’s learning. Proper communication in itself shows the teacher’s support and concern for the student. According to Tileston (2011), “An enriched and supportive environment is so important that none of the other techniques discussed will be really effective unless the issues of enrichment and support are addressed first. In a world full of broken relationships, broken promises, and broken hearts, a strong supportive relationship is important to students.” Talking with the students especially outside class helps initiate a friendly relationship between the student and teacher. Students are able to establish a less authoritarian relationship with the teacher, allowing them to feel more comfortable outside of the usual class hours. In addition, communication is equally important among teachers. In this way, teachers can delegate and plan ahead on giving school work as not to overload the students with school requirements.

           Secondly, teachers must be able to assess the learning capabilities of students. Proper assessment can determine what kind of work will be most fitting for the class. Tileston (2011) further stated, “When possible, give students chances in how they demonstrate understanding, the projects that they work on, and in how they tackle procedural tasks.” Teachers, upon making the adequate assessments, will be able to create proper lesson tasks. This also helps in bringing out creativity rather than standardized outputs. Assessments can range from collaborative learning, or creative works such as videos, roleplay, etc.

           Lastly, teachers must be able to decide in giving homework accordingly to the students’ current workload. In some schools, homework has been banned over the weekend as to give students more time to relax with their family and friends. Homework, along with other requirements, should not be stacked with other subjects if possible. In this way, students are given more time to concentrate on each task rather than forcing them to finish all in a short time period.

           Students also play a role in order to create a stress-free environment. They must be able to properly manage their time between school and other activities. They should be able to set proper priorities. Some of these could be studying for a test rather than hanging out or sleeping early rather than staying late playing games. If the teacher implements his/her plan of action, but the student does not cooperate nor manage his/her time properly, then almost no improvement will be seen on that student.

           Experiencing stress, uncommon body clocks, and mismanaged priorities may be something that students will inevitably go through in his/her studies. Not all students may also be able to properly manage their time. However, these suggestions that a teacher can implement will at least lighten the load of the students so that they can have more time for other activities. As stated earlier, a possible course of action for the teachers is to create a proper assessment of the students. This is to make sure that the teacher is able to pattern his/her activities to the capabilities and interests of the students. In tasks requiring collaborative learning, the teacher can suggest the students to have the freedom in choosing their own groupmates so that they can be more comfortable with who they work with. In modern classroom situations, teachers may opt to incorporate internet sites such as Google Classroom, Edmodo, and others. In this way, teachers can make announcements out of the classroom and post supplementing notes for the subject without the use of any hard-bound paper.

           Students must be able to strike a balance between their school and personal life. Failure to do so, results in negative effects for both school and personal lives. If a university can make policies regarding tasks for students, it can help them greatly in terms of student performance. These policies can include the banning of homework over the weekend or the incorporation of e-classrooms. However, students must also be able to exercise proper time management. In this way, students can learn how to manage tasks in their academics, which can be applied when they start their career.

 Reference:

Buoncristiani, M. & Buoncristiani, P. (2012). Developing mindful students, skillful  thinkers, thoughtful schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hodgkinson, H. L., & Bloy, M. B. Jr. (1971). Identity crisis in higher education (1st ed).     San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers.

Levine, M. (2002). A mind at a time. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

McDevitt, T. M. & Ormrod, J. E. (2002). Child development and education. Upper             Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

I.             Education in our society is a challenge for students.

A.   Students undergo many changes throughout their education.

1.    One of the most pressing issue is stress.

a.    A student may be overwhelmed with school tasks.

b.    A student may also be affected by their personal life.

2.    These issues cause negative impacts on a student’s life.

a.    He may have confusions in setting priorities and managing between school, family and friends.

b.    Students get used to an uncommon body clock and come to school tired.

II.   Learning starts with developing a healthy school environment for teachers and students.

A.                 Communication is key to a student’s learning.

1.                  Talking with the students especially outside class helps initiate a friendly    relationship between student and teacher. 

B.                Communication among teachers is also important.

1.                 Aside from having social interactions, this can help teachers divide their class work, as not to overload the students with requirements.

C.            Teachers must give homework accordingly to the current workload.

1. Some schools have suggested the ban of homework given over the weekend.

2. Homework must not be stacked with other subjects as not to overload

3. Students must be able to devote time for family, friends and relaxation.

  II.                Students must be able to experience a balance in their school and social life 

 A.         If they are not able to balance, it can cause negative effects of one or the other.

B. Students feels that they are unable to relax due to overload.

           Imagine a facility like a government building, or a prison. Most people assume that these facilities along with military bases, banks, nuclear power plants and the like are the toughest when it comes to security. That is true, because the risks are high if ever these facilities were just easily raided. However, this unbreakable security mostly applies only to the exterior. The interior, or the facilities’ networks, are easily broken into by certain individuals. These networks are broken into by hacking, which is defined as an unauthorized intrusion of a computer or network. The truth is, there have been cases when teenagers have successfully broke into these high-security facilities through hacking. Upon a successful hack, the hacker can immediately get access to classified records, personal data and almost all private data stored inside the network. Hacking has become the largest threat in the internet. It can happen anytime, anywhere and to anyone.

           Hacking is a threat to online networks, capable of manipulating personal and private data. These attacks are very dangerous since it gives the hacker access to all the network’s stored information. The hacker can then choose to steal the data and use it for other means, including altering existing data or simply deleting the data. This can be very dangerous especially to data such as nuclear launch codes, or government passwords as these can cost the security of the country if they fall into the wrong hands. Hackers come from different age groups and skill levels, each with their own agendas. One of the common hacker groups are amateur hackers. They are mostly teenagers who hack websites out of boredom and for bragging. They are usually inexperienced and have no specific agenda aside from amusement. The most common and feared group are the black hat hackers. They are highly skilled and experienced hackers, capable of breaking into several networks. They attempt to exploit weaknesses in a network’s security for malicious reasons, such as personal gain or defacing a person or organization. They pull their cyber heists very quickly, making them hard to trace and dangerous. Hacking is also done in different methods. The most common attack are malwares and the trojan horse. They are triggered when a user downloads files from a particularly deceptive website. Another example are distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which block the network’s online services by flooding the flow of network traffic. Lastly, a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack involves stealing information by eavesdropping and intercepting communications between two parties.

           A hacker, when successful in his attempts to hack through, has almost all the freedom to breeze through the hacked network. When a hacker’s agenda is to deface an organization or spread propaganda, he/she may alter and tamper records and sabotage the organization website’s front page with malicious content. If the hacker’s agenda is for personal gain, he/she can gain access to personal records, including the organization’s funds and the bank accounts of associates and transfer it to an offshore account, making it hard to trace. The most dangerous act that a hacker can do is to completely block the target’s network, making it accessible to the hacker only and preventing any access from others. In this case, the hacker can buy enough time to perform acts such as locking down a facility, releasing a prisoner from jail, disabling security cameras inside a facility, or even arming weapons of mass destruction. Dangers of hacking are very high, making it an urgent matter for organizations and facilities to create their lines of defense against these attacks.

           The internet takes up most of the information in our modern society, offering us opportunities for business, education, entertainment, and other activities with just a few clicks. Network security, however, is still at a large risk with attacks continuously causing damage. For example, years after the Internet Worm of 1988 broke into 6 000 UNIX machines, a widespread break-in occurred into UNIX hosts, large enough that cyber security teams like the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and NASA Automated Systems Incident Response Capability (NASIRC) were called to investigate. As a result, hundreds of machines were disabled over two years (Vacca, 1996, p.53).

           Hackers are very elusive, despite them being very prevalent on the internet. Most organizations only identify hackers by their codename and the nature of their work. This is because hackers make it almost impossible for agencies to track them down. In fact, these agencies attempt to fight hacking by hiring their own hackers. However, this decision takes risk for the agencies, so these hackers are closely supervised. In due time, agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have taken benefits to these hackers by hiring them permanently with incentives.

           On most cases, organizations have made it a habit to install security measures for their networks. One of these are firewalls. Firewalls are built to protect a private network from any unauthorized access. Firewalls are useful for maintaining a closed network where any foreign access is immediately identified and sometimes terminated. In a counterargument, some suggest not connecting to the internet at all as to increase network security. Compared to installing a firewall, this is method is particularly harder to implement and maintain, especially with the high demand of internet in professions. Not connecting to the internet does not guarantee safety from hackers either. If the private network is loosely administered, it can simply be compromised by a high-speed, dial-up modem. The effects may be worse than an online attack and there is a chance that the hacked data may be inaccessible or deleted permanently.

           Recent hacking incidents have caused big challenges to those of the Information Systems and Security (INFOSEC) business. INFOSEC aims to provide confidence for users to the integrity and privacy of data that they store and use across the internet. The National Security Agency formed the Multilevel Information Systems Security Initiative (MISSI) to accompany users. MISSI Products allow features such as data-integrity, confidentiality, support for email and database management. All these are developed in line with the website system-security objectives (Whitman & Mattord, 2006).

           Agencies have also developed recommendations toward creating a secure network and combatting common forms of attacks. One common form is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, where access to a network is flooded by data traffic, blocking access of the network. According to a study conducted by Chen, Longstaff and Carley (2006), DDoS saturate the connections of subscribers to their backbone or take down servers inside the network. It is recommended that network subscribers must implement defenses on the outbound traffic of an access network. A DDoS attack can also be mitigated by source filtering in order to reduce to probability of untrusted parties from entering the network and initiating such attacks.      

           Protection and caution must always be observed when managing networks or browsing the internet. A single intrusion by a hacker can bring serious damage to a person or organization, and to the network itself. These hackers attempt to find exploitable weaknesses in a target network. As a result, network security has become a top priority. Even in small networks at home or in mobile devices, it is equally important that they are properly secured. Furthermore, some key software like anti-viruses and firewalls must be present in one’s computer or desktop to maximize a device’s security against any attack. It may somewhat restrict access to certain sites but having these can immediately help in detecting malicious files and untrustworthy sites, reducing the risk of intrusions. Additionally, users must always be cautious when browsing the internet. Sketchy and pop-up websites are potentially dangerous and must be avoided if necessary. Attending to these websites and performing tasks such as downloading files or performing operations in the sites can cause unintentional malicious software or worms to work its way into the device. Apart from websites, malicious software can show as Trojan horses in the form of catchy advertisements. If the advertisement comes from untrustworthy websites or lead you to share personal information, they must be avoided.

           Hacking is a never-ending threat, and organizations have been waging a cyber war against these hackers for a long time. Hackers have devised different methods in initiating their attacks, ranging from DDoS, malwares, trojan horses, worms and so much more. As a result, more and more defensive countermeasures are being developed until now to combat hacking. Although these hackers are particularly hard to track, these defensive software can immediately detect their attempts and at least stop them from further damaging the network. Most importantly, protection from hacking must start in small scales such as personal devices. This is to assure that private information stays as secure as possible.

 Reference:

Amalina, N., Alsaqour, R., Alsaqour, O. (2013). Enhanced network security system using firewalls. ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 8(12),            999-1004. http://www.arpnjournals.com/jeas/research_papers/rp_2013              /jeas_1213_983.pdf

Chapman, D. B., Cooper, S., & Zwicky, E. D. (2000). Building internet firewalls                 (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.

Cooper, F. J., et. al. (1995). Implementing internet security. Indianapolis, IN:                     New Riders Publishing.

Gaigole, M. S., & Kalyankar, M. A. (2015). The study of network security with its   penetrating attacks and possible security mechanisms. IJCSMC, 4, 728-735.                 https://www.ijcsmc.com/docs/papers/May2015/V4I5201599a46.pdf

Harrington, J. L. (2005). Network security: a practical approach. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Holden, G. (2003). Guide to network defense and countermeasures. Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology.

Mattord, H. J., & Whitman, M, E. (2006). Readings and cases in the management of information security. Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology.

Schweitzer, D. (2002). Securing the network from malicious code: a complete guide to defending against viruses, worms and trojans. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Splaine, S. (2002). Testing web security: assessing the security of web sites and applications. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.