If you've ever owned a chimney, you know that it can get pretty dirty. There's a whole lot of soot(烟灰) that gets stuck on the inside. That stuff has to get cleaned, or you could have a serious fire risk. While nowadays we have easier ways of doing this dirty job, in the way back days somebody used to climb up the chimney and clean all that soot. And the thing is, not just anybody could do it.

    You had to be really small to fit up in the chimney, so they used to give the task to kids – some as young as four or five years old. They worked for their boss known as a master-sweep. They were often covered in soot, and were very likely to get burned. They often developed what became known as soot wart, a form of cancer.

    Are your unfairness bells ringing? William Blake's certainly were. The physical dangers and widespread unfairness of the chimney-sweeping job really stuck in his throat, so much so that he wrote not one, but two poems called “The Chimney Sweeper”.

    The first poem (the one we're discussing here)was published in 1789 in a book called Songs of Innocence. These little poems took children and the joys of childhood innocence as their subject. As you've probably guessed by now, many of the poems in Songs of Innocence, like “The Chimney Sweeper”, are about the ways in which childhood innocence is destroyed by unkind old adults. For Blake, innocence is, in many ways, a total joke. It doesn't exist, because it's always taken away by the realistic world – chimney-sweeping, death, poverty, etc.

    What does a five-year-old chimney sweeper in 18th-century England have to do with you? More than you might think. It is reported that 150 million kids are in child labor in developing countries. Many of them work long hours and face dangerous health risks. Like Blake's chimney sweeper, these kids are not even given a chance at innocence because experience keeps getting in the way.

    Keeping pace with teachers is a fine way to study English. Teachers are experienced and their plans are systematic. But remember to work in a way that suits you. It's important to learn from past mistakes as well. Keep a notebook to make a record of the mistakes you make－it'll help you avoid making the same ones later.

    The time of life may be hard，but you're not alone. You may be busy studying，but you can show your care by calling your friends or sending short messages. Don't let your friendships die.

    It's as important to live well as it is to study well. Going to bed no later than 11：30 pm is vital. It puts you in the right mood for the next day. You needn't follow a special diet，but make sure you are eating nutritious meals each day.

    The person who plays well，studies well. Having a lot of schoolwork doesn't mean having to give up other activities. Playing basketball or having a talk with your classmates can relax yourself. Time out is not a waste of time but helps you study more efficiently.

    Besides taking the big exam，you have other choices for college. I took the independent enrollment exam held by Peking University and some other students even were preparing to study abroad. Pay attention to any relevant information you can find，whether it's from school，the news media or other sources.

The practice of students endlessly copying letters and sentences from a blackboard is a thing of the past. With the coming of new technologies like computers and smartphone, writing by hand has become something of nostalgic (怀旧的)skill. However, while today's educators are using more and more technology in their teaching, many believe basic handwriting skills are still necessary for students to be successful—both in school and in life.

    Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says it's important to continue teaching handwriting and help children acquire the skill of writing by hand.

Berninger and her colleagues conducted a study that looked at the ability of students to complete various writing tasks—both on a computer and by hand. The study, published in 2009, found that when writing with a pen and paper, participants wrote longer essays and more complete sentences and had a faster word production rate.

    In a more recent study, Berninger looked at what role spelling plays in a student's writing skills and found that how well children spell is tied to know well they can write. “Spelling makes some of the thinking parts of the brain active which helps us access our vocabulary, word meaning and concepts. It is allowing our written language to connect with ideas.” Berninger said.

    Spelling helps students translate ideas into words in their mind first and then to transcribe(转换) “those words in the mind written symbols on paper or keyboard and screen,” the study said. Seeing the words in the “mind's eye” helps children not only to turn their ideas into words, says Berninger, but also to spot(发现) spelling mistakes when they write the words down and to correct then over time.

     “In our computer age, some people believe that we don't have to teach spelling because we have spell checks,” she said. “But until a child has a functional spelling ability of about a fifth grade level, they won't have the knowledge to choose the correct spelling among the options given by the computer.”

    I discovered that inside the-wonderful box lived an amazing person whose name was Information Please. There was nothing she did not know.

    One day my mother went out. I accidentally hurt my finger when I was playing with a hammer. I walked around the house sucking my finger, finally seeing the telephone. Quickly I dragged a chair over and climbed up.

    “Information Please, ”I spoke into the receiver. A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear. “Information.”

    “I hurt my finger…”I cried into the phone.

    “Isn't your mother home?” came the question.

    “Nobody's home but me.” I sobbed.

    “Are you bleeding?” the voice asked.

    “No,” I replied, “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.”

    “Can you open your icebox?” she asked. I said I could.

    “Then take a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger.” said the voice.

    After that, I called “Information Please” for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me her name was Sally.

    Then, there was the time my pet canary（金丝雀）died. I called “Information Please” and told Sally the sad story. “Why is it that birds sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a pile of feathers?” She listened, then said quietly, “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.” Somehow, I felt better.

    One day when I called “Information Please” again, a different voice answered “Information.”

    I asked for Sally. “Are you a friend?” she said.

    “Yes,” I answered.

    “I'm sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “She died five days ago.” Before I could hang up she said, “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?”

    “Yes.”

    “Well, Sally left a message for you. The note said, ‘Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean.'” I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant.

    Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

    While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like partners than tools. For example, these robots will be able to tell when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more properly to the user.

    The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just give general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each person in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

    Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential(潜在的) applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these areas.

    Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's “Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

    The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not aimed to replace workers, but to work together with other employees. “We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.

    Have you ever imagined what it would be like to see the world through an animal's eyes? For example, what a chimpanzee sees as it sits at the top of a tree, or a penguin's view as it dives into the sea to catch its dinner?

    These questions are answered in the nature documentary Animals with Cameras, produced by the BBC. The three-part series was first aired in the UK last month. To explore animal stories "told" by the animals themselves, the documentary's filmmakers worked with scientists to develop cameras that wild animals could wear.

    "Never before have we seen such high-quality footage (连续镜头)directly from the animal's point of view, " BBC Nature executive producer Fred Kaufman told PBS." This miniseries greatly expands our comprehension of animal behavior and this camera technology opens up new possibilities for discovering so much more."

    Indeed, the groundbreaking technology provides a new viewpoint of the animal kingdom. New cameras with enough battery life to shoot for hours at a time were designed to be comfortable enough for animals to wear, according to the documentary's camera designer Chris Watts.

    The technical challenges didn't stop there. Some animals were very curious about the equipment, with some even fighting each other for the chance to wear a camera. In the case of chimpanzees, "we had to create dummy (仿造的)cameras, so that every chimpanzee could get one", the miniseries' wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan told Live Science.

    For animals that were comfortable enough to be with human beings, the cameras could be fitted and removed by hand. But for others, the cameras came off automatically using a timed release and were collected afterward. This meant that the cameras needed to be as tough as possible.

    To avoid disturbing the animals, scientists who were good at dealing with wildlife came to help by putting the cameras on the animals." The last thing we want to do is cause them distress." the documentary's producer Dan Rees told the BBC. "To follow an animal in the first place, there had to be a clear benefit in terms of knowledge about it that might be useful to protecting a species in the future.

    Their efforts certainly paid off. " Footage that captures (捕捉)these rare and exciting glimpses of animals bidden habits is important to scientists, but documentaries like Animals with Cameras also resonate with (引起共鸣)audiences, connecting them with the beauty - and danger - of wildlife in their natural environments," Live Science noted.