Gio completed two separate project proposals since his teacher has not accepted his previous plans. The first is to determine the best 911 triage software. Currently, PBC 911 addresses calls in the order received, rather than according to urgency. Gio would present a plan to rectify that. The second is to increase the fire prevention program in PBC to ensure that all properties have working smoke and CO2 alarms through inspection and education programs.

We completed the Capstone Project letter today. It appears that we have constructed all of the required paragraphs with the appropriate subsections.

Gio needed some help with getting through the book for his assignment and writing the 750 word summary and 250 word critique. He still needs to prepare the 3-5 minute oral presentation.

Today we completed the Capstone assignment, which was an intriguing exploration of Gio's personal gifts and talents and how he might share those to build a better world. Gio has many gifts: Being able to relate to and get along with people; persevering to improve a skill, determined to succeed; having a strong desire to do the right thing; being generally in a good mood. He is thinking that counseling might be a good career path. For Bible, we answered two questions about trusting in God that we get the lessons we need to learn.

We completed all of the questions for the Outliers book by Malcolm Gladwell.

For our last class, Zach and I read a piece of contemporary magazine writing from David Foster Wallace. We discussed the structure and nuance of "Consider the Lobster" while reading. Zach really enjoyed the piece which is masterful for its depth of research and stylistic magnanimity. Next, we read a NY Times article about the emergent grammatical function of emojis that followed a sociological experiment designed by a linguistic from NYU. Zach and I then created sentences using emojis and tried to guess what the other person was trying to communicated. We found that emojis are nonlinear and non-restrictive in their syntax; and that they are not fully developed or functional in sentence form; and that they need adverbs and prepositions to be symbolized in some image form for emojis to continue evolving linguistically. A great last class!

Today Zach completed the 1984 creative writing assignment, and we read through to revise and correct grammatical errors. Next we continued to read from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and discussed the structure of the chapter on invention and the diffusion of technological innovation among different societies.

Today, Zach continued to work on his creative writing assignment. Next, we completed watching the BBC movie version of 1984. We discussed the movie's cinematic qualities and editing choices they made when adapting the book for film.

Today, we discussed Zach's podcast that he started a few weeks ago. We discussed the recent supreme court decision Matal v Tam that upheld offensive speech in trademark law. Zach added another recorded segment to his podcast discussing free speech restrictions and cases where there has been overreach and cases where there has not been enough government intervention. Lastly, we began watching a movie version of 1984.

Today we began by discussing Zach's assigned reading homework: excerpts from Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. We discussed how Diamond set up his research questions, the structure of his introduction, and then a thorough exploration into the conquests of the Conquistadors over the Incas in South America. Then we went over a chapter on invention and how some inventions are not brought out of necessity but out of curiosity and out of culminating factors within the society an inventor lives in. Next, Zach continued to write his creative writing assignment, an alternative narrative of 1984.