The introduction of the iPad, with its touch screen technology, has allowed even very young children to take advantage of a computer. So what if all children in a school were given an iPad to use in class and take home with them?

    Anne Laure Bazin works in a school where every child, teacher and teaching assistant is given a free iPad to use in and out of lessons. For her, the main advantage of everyone having an iPad had been the improvement in communication. Documents can be emailed straight over to workmates during a meeting. Children submit their homework by email, or through the school's learning environment. Teachers now take the register (点名) using their iPad, which means that there is a record of which children are in school, and which classroom they are in.

    The use of iPad has encouraged greater sharing of resources among teacher. All communication with parents is now done by email. Working as a group in class is much easier as children can share documents. The whole class can look at one child's work by attaching (连接) the iPad to the whiteboard. If a child has forgotten the textbook, the teacher can take a photograph of the relevant (相关的) page and send it to the student in class.

    While the use of the iPad in schools has revolutionized (变革) the way children are taught, it hasn't completely replaced more traditional methods of teaching. Worksheets are still used in class as some children prefer the contact with paper. The children all have a textbook and exercise books. In Anne Laure's school, parents feared that the iPads would replace exercise books and children would lose handwriting skills. Anne Laure says, "The teacher are not ready to let go of the traditional style of teaching. We have welcomed the iPads in so much as they help communication and widen the resources available but we are not ready to let go of paper yet. The children themselves still value their exercise books and depend on them for review."

    If you also have a friend like Francia Raisa, you are really lucky. On Thursday, singer and actress Selena Gomez, 25, used Instagram(照片墙,一款社交软件) to explain why she was "laying low" this summer. She posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed with her friend Francia Raisa holding hands. She said she recently received a kidney transplant(肾脏移植) from her best friend because of complications(并发症) from lupus(狼疮), an autoimmune disease, which means it is the result of the immune system attacking normal tissue, including the kidneys, brain, heart and lungs.

    People with lupus may first experience tiredness, joint pain or a little bit of rash(皮疹) on their bodies and can go for a long time before their doctors realize it is more serious. Many people see two or four doctors before the real problem is picked up. According to Dr. Kyriakos Kirou, roughly a third to one­half of people with lupus develop kidney disease, and up to one in five of them will eventually need a transplant, sometimes because they weren't treated with effective drugs to prevent the immune system from attacking the kidneys. Though Gomez said that she was "very well now," she warned about the dangers of not taking medical diagnoses(医学诊断) seriously, like she did before.

    Her Instagram post also called attention to two major health topics: the need for living organ donators and the fact that Gomez represents three groups more likely to be diagnosed with lupus and lupus­related kidney disease. Nine out of 10 people diagnosed with lupus are women, and most develop the disease between the ages of 15 to 44. And lupus is two to three times more common among women of color, including Hispanic (西班牙裔)women, according to the Lupus Foundation.

    Raisa is Latin(拉丁人), and Gomez's father is of Mexican origin. While it's not essential that the organ donator and receiver be of the same race, people who share a similar racial background sometimes are better matched, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

    Large gatherings such as weddings and conferences can be socially stressful. Pressure to learn people's names only adds to the stress. A new facial-recognition app could come to the rescue, .but privacy experts recommend going on with caution.

    The app, called SocialRecall, connects names with faces via smartphone cameras and facial recognition, potentially avoiding the need for formal introductions. "It breaks down these social barriers we all have when meting somebody," says Bany Sandrew, who Created the app and tested it at an event attended by about 10000 people.

    After receiving an invitation to download SocialRecall from an event organizer, the user is asked to take two selfies(自拍) and sign in via social median At the event, the app is active within a previously defined geographical area. When a user points his or her phone camera at an attendee's face, the app identifies the individual, displays the person's name, and links to his or her social media profile. To protect privacy, it recognizes only those who have agreed to participate. And the app's creators say it automatically deletes users' data after an event.

    Ann Cavoukian, a privacy expert who runs the Privacy by Design Center of Excellence praises the app's creators for these protective measures. She cautions, however, that when people choose to share their personal information with the app, they should know that "there may be unintended consequences down the road with that information being used in another context that might come back to bite you."

    The start-up has also developed a version of the app for individuals who suffer from prosopagnosia, or "face blindness", a condition that prevents people from recognizing individuals they have met. To use this app, a person first acquires an image of someone's face, from either the smartphone's camera or a photograph, and then tags it with a name. When the camera spots that same face in real life, the previously entered information is displayed. The collected data are stored only on a user's phone, according to the team behind the app.

The Kendama World Cup

Old-fashioned fun is making a comeback!

Many kids are putting down their electronic devices and picking up an ancient toy. It is called a kendama, and it possibly dates back to the 16th century.

The kendama is a small wooden hammer with three cup-shaped ends and a spike on top. A wooden ball with a center hole is attached by string to the hammer. The goal is to make the ball land in a cup or on the spike. It sounds simple, but there are over 1,000 kendama techniques and tricks to master.

The game's popularity began to grow after the Japan Kendama Association was started in 1975. Today all ages participate in various competitions, including the Kendama World Cup(KWC).

The two-year-old event, which opens in Hatsukaichi, attracts people from all over the world. Players choose 10 different tricks from an approved list. They are then awarded points corresponding to the level of each trick.

A new Kendama World Cup winner will be named tomorrow in this popular sporting event.

I often teach about happiness and what has become clear is this: There are some qualities unhappy people always have. Here are some of them.

 Happy people know life can be hard and tend to live through hard times. They take responsibility for how they got themselves into a mess, and focus on getting themselves out of it as soon as possible. Unhappy people see themselves as victims of life and stay stuck in the "look what happened to me" attitude instead of finding a way through and out to the other side.

    Most happy people believe in the good in people instead of thinking everyone is out to get them. Generally open and friendly towards people they meet, happy people foster(培养) a sense of community around themselves and meet new people with an open heart. Unhappy people are distrustful of most people they meet and don't think strangers can be trusted. Unfortunately, this behaviour slowly closes all chances of meeting new friends.

    Unhappy people believe someone else's good fortune is stolen from their own. They believe there's not enough goodness to go around and always compare others' against theirs. This leads to jealousy(嫉妒). Happy people know that others' good luck and superior circumstances are just signs of what they also can achieve if they try hard enough. They believe in unlimited possibilities and don't get stuck in thinking one person's good fortune limits their possible outcomes in life.

    There's only so much space between the two ears. Unhappy people fill that space with constant worry and fear. Happy people experience fear and worry too, but they make an important difference between feeling it and living with it. When fear or worry crosses happy people's minds, they'll ask themselves if there's an action they can take to prevent their fear or worry from happening and they take it. If not, they realise they're spinning in fear and they lay it down.

Top Poetry Writing Tips

Tip 1: Poetry involves work, rest and play.

{#blank#}1{#/blank#}It involves hard work, especially in the early stage when you are deciding on the overall form and tone of the poem, and getting the bones of it onto the page. But writing poetry should be a playful activity, too. Have fun playing around with the language, the ideas and the music inside the poem.

Tip 2: Poetry requires both words and silence.

Poetry has been defined as "the best words in their best order". Choose your words carefully for their sounds and meaning. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Just as the white space on the page is needed to shape the pattern of words, so the thoughts that are left unsaid, the pauses and the quiet hints, will add something extra to your poem. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}If you have created enough solid stepping stones in words and thoughts, then the reader will follow you to the end of the poem.

Tip 3: {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

Poets often turn to writing a poem when they experience a strong emotion and have the need to express it. The reading of other people's poetry can also give comfort or a sense that you are not alone in how you are feeling. But be careful not to write your poem with abstract emotions and don't tell your readers how to think or feel.

Tip 4: Writing poetry can be difficult to start and hard to let go.

It is often difficult to know how to start a poem, but the trick is to recognise the beginnings of them, in everyday life. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}They can start from remembering a funny conversation that you've overheard at the bus stop, yesterday's nightmare, a secret you've been told, or an interesting postcard that you have noticed in a shop. If you catch yourself thinking about something for more than a minute or two, that's when you reach for a pen and some paper and start jotting down(匆匆记下) thoughts, words and phrases.

A. But poetry is also about silence.

B. Writing a good poem rarely comes easily.

C. Don't be afraid of the gaps that you leave.

D. Poetry needs an emotion and a control of it.

E. Poetry sets the scene for readers to step into.

F. Poems don't have to come from exciting events.

G. You must write your feelings and views with passion.