June 26th

   In today's class, we mainly went over the "writing tools" most of us were familiar with, as we used them last year. The writing tools include seven of which help review your writing. Out of all the details Mr.Paterson talked about, I believe I need to watch out on using the word "the" as when writing I feel as though I use it a bit too often. Thus I need to make sure on the whole essay that I use no more than 100. In addition, another thing I learnt about is that windows and apple computers are different when it comes to automatically spell check your writing. Apple computers check your writing automatically even on word documents whereas Windows tends to not do that unless you change the settings. Talking about my personal experience, I use a Windows computer and I write my essays/assignments in google documents where I have access to Grammarly to correct the imperfections of my writing. Then, I will copy and paste the exact same text to the Word document when done, and turn it in. By using an Apple computer, I can imagine the process being a bit more convenient, although I am not mad with the process I need to go through now as all I have to do is copy and paste the text to "Words" (which is not so hard).
   When closing off the class, the teacher went in with his last small talk with the topic of Japan and technology. He stated that Japanese schools were not prepared for the pandemic, and so the online classes were/are not going so smoothly. I agree with the fact as I believe our school was a part of it. (And ISS is probably better with technologies when compared to other Japanese schools which makes me even more worried.) I understand I have said a lot of things about this topic already in the past few blogs but I want to share two more of my experience/opinion on this topic. First is about how my brother's school did a good job when starting the online classes. They decided to share the school's devices (with their students) needed for the online classes before they started. Although I do not know what kind of quality they were, I respect their proactive action. Another point is about how I actually enjoy online classes not only mine (because let's be real it takes less effort for example getting to school) but of my sister's. (When she will allow,) I will be in the same room as hers and listen to her teacher talk while also experiencing the overall atmosphere of the class. I get to learn about the topics they normally discuss and also the facts I normally don't come across in everyday life. This might be what only people with siblings benefit from, but I definitely won't let the experience go to waste because it really is a rare and important experience. (Especially when there is a low chance you can visit University campuses this year due to the virus.)

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