Summary Question
- Take a newspaper article and try to take out the key points.
- Get a parent/friend/sibling/hyper-intelligent dog to read an article/speech/piece and give you a topic to search for, you then read the article and just down the key points. Try re-ordering them.
- Practise re-writing articles/paragraphs in your own words and being very concise (i.e. if the article is 500 words - get it down to 250 in your own)
Analysis Question
- Read articles and speeches and see how they interest/persuade people.
- Go on famous websites (BBC bitesize is good) and look how the layout (boxes etc) persuade and interest you.
- Recognise the techniques like hyperbole and simile.
- Watch speeches on youtube and see how many techniques you can spot and explain what they make you feel.
- Look in magazines to see how they emphasise their articles.
Inform Explain Describe
- Ensure you know how to use paragraphs and punctuation.
- Practise describing places and testing these out on others.
- Write to time and then check.
Showing posts with label Summary Question. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summary Question. Show all posts
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Summary Question Practice - Moshi Monsters
Facebook's little brother: Moshi Monsters is the Bebo for tots
Mark Prigg, Science and Technology Editor
Surrounded by huge posters of strange cartoon beasts, Michael Acton Smith runs one of the world's fastest-growing websites from a nondescript industrial estate in Battersea. But while most grown-ups haven't even heard of Moshi Monsters, its founder has none other than YouTube, Facebook and Bebo in his sights.
The site has become a phenomenon since Acton Smith, 35, started work on it in 2004. Players log on to adopt and care for a virtual monster, which can interact with other creatures in their own virtual world. It is one of the world's biggest sites for children, and this week reached a staggering 15 million members — including Gordon Brown's sons. Tonight the firm is throwing a party at the London Aquarium for its users.
It is a year since the company launched a £5-a-month subscription service, although it does not say how many of its members have joined this.
Now Acton Smith's aim is to make the website the children's equivalent of adult social networking sites, following the example of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg: “Moshi Monsters is a social network for kids before they graduate to Facebook, and it gives them a place they can be kids. We also want to add video to the site — YouTube is incredibly successful, but isn't safe for children.”
Acton Smith, who lives in Soho, previously set up Firebox.com, a gadget-selling site of which he is still a director. He stresses that privacy is paramount on a venture aimed at children, and the team have spent months planning a strategy. “We thought a lot about protecting the users, but we think we got it spot on. We don’t information about users, you can't send private messages or post photos and we also monitor and filter conversations where appropriate.”
Acton Smith came up with the idea for Moshi Monsters while he was touring the world looking for toys to sell on Firebox: “I'd go to toy shows, and I saw the huge popularity of pet toys, like tamagotchi. I realised this could be done online, so we simply let the monsters inhabit a virtual world.”
Children adopt a creature from one of six basic designs, then customise its appearance and name it. Monsters must be regularly fed, and can interact with others in the virtual town created by the site (subscription members get access to more areas of the game).
Moshi Monsters, he says is designed so players can dip in and out. “We didn't want a site that children would spend hours on, and the average length of time people play for is 10 minutes. However, they do this before school and when they get home.”
It is designed so that children lose interest after a short period. They can also do spelling or maths puzzles, against the clock in 60-second rounds. “We wanted to keep the site educational, and also ideal for short bursts — the idea is that a child spends five minutes playing a few games per day, not all day randomly wandering around the virtual world.”
“We actually originally called the site Puzzle Monsters, but it didn't test well and was too educational. We realised we can't make it too obvious — Moshi is about stealth education, and fun and enjoyment was our first focus.” Friends of Acton Smith were in New York recently when their daughter started naming the countries of flags flying outside a hotel. It turns out she had been playing a flag identification game on Moshi Monsters.
The site was originally designed for seven- to 11-year-olds, but it now has a broader age range with children as young as three regularly logging on and playing alongside teenagers. There is a slight bias towards girls, something Acton Smith puts down to its graphics. “I'm a frustrated graphic designer, and spent lot of time thinking about how monsters should look — we wanted edgy, with a Japanese influence. They're incredibly cute and girls really seem to like them.”
The site even allows players to obtain virtual pets for their virtual pets. Called Moshlings, 48 of these creatures exist, and are obtained by planting the right combination of seeds, which has led to a huge community swapping the codes needed to get the right Moshling.
According to web monitoring firm Hitwise, Moshi is now one of the quickest growing sites online. “Moshi Monsters is growing a lot faster than its competitors,” said Robin Goad of Hitwise. “Last month it was the sixth most popular games website; a year ago it ranked 60th. Club Penguin, currently the largest children's site, has increased in visits by 11 per cent in the last year. Moshi Monsters has increased by 424 per cent”.
Players come from all over the world. A third are from Britain, a third from the US, and a third from elsewhere. “We have players from Japan, the Philippines and countries everywhere,” says Acton Smith. “Kids are playing the site to help them learn English. I think the key to our success is the action of looking after a pet. Nurturing is a very important play pattern for children.”
Moshi world is polished and slick: “I was completely inspired by Pixar. There is a huge attention to detail with the animation, and to get the tone right so we are not speaking down to kids. There's also a financial incentive for parents — instead of going to shops and spending £40 on a game, they can play Moshi for free.”
Next on Acton Smith's list is traditional merchandising: “We've just signed a book deal for this Christmas and we're also working on trading cards, plush toys and a videogame, along with an iPhone version of the game.”
Even the music industry is a target. “We've licensed the track Hey Mickey and rewritten it to Hey Moshi — there's even a dance. Maybe we can create the next Macarena, and we've made a music video. Who knows, maybe I'll don a monster outfit and go on tour.”
Acton Smith is also a key player in London's emerging social scene of technology entrepreneurs but says this country is lagging behind: “In the US, entrepreneurs are revered like rock stars, but in London we seem to want to knock successful people, and we have to overcome that. I think good entrepreneurs make things happen, they roll their sleeves up and do it.”
www.moshimonsters.com
Summarise what Moshi Monsters offers children and the reasons for its success.
Mark Prigg, Science and Technology Editor
Surrounded by huge posters of strange cartoon beasts, Michael Acton Smith runs one of the world's fastest-growing websites from a nondescript industrial estate in Battersea. But while most grown-ups haven't even heard of Moshi Monsters, its founder has none other than YouTube, Facebook and Bebo in his sights.
The site has become a phenomenon since Acton Smith, 35, started work on it in 2004. Players log on to adopt and care for a virtual monster, which can interact with other creatures in their own virtual world. It is one of the world's biggest sites for children, and this week reached a staggering 15 million members — including Gordon Brown's sons. Tonight the firm is throwing a party at the London Aquarium for its users.
It is a year since the company launched a £5-a-month subscription service, although it does not say how many of its members have joined this.
Now Acton Smith's aim is to make the website the children's equivalent of adult social networking sites, following the example of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg: “Moshi Monsters is a social network for kids before they graduate to Facebook, and it gives them a place they can be kids. We also want to add video to the site — YouTube is incredibly successful, but isn't safe for children.”
Acton Smith, who lives in Soho, previously set up Firebox.com, a gadget-selling site of which he is still a director. He stresses that privacy is paramount on a venture aimed at children, and the team have spent months planning a strategy. “We thought a lot about protecting the users, but we think we got it spot on. We don’t information about users, you can't send private messages or post photos and we also monitor and filter conversations where appropriate.”
Acton Smith came up with the idea for Moshi Monsters while he was touring the world looking for toys to sell on Firebox: “I'd go to toy shows, and I saw the huge popularity of pet toys, like tamagotchi. I realised this could be done online, so we simply let the monsters inhabit a virtual world.”
Children adopt a creature from one of six basic designs, then customise its appearance and name it. Monsters must be regularly fed, and can interact with others in the virtual town created by the site (subscription members get access to more areas of the game).
Moshi Monsters, he says is designed so players can dip in and out. “We didn't want a site that children would spend hours on, and the average length of time people play for is 10 minutes. However, they do this before school and when they get home.”
It is designed so that children lose interest after a short period. They can also do spelling or maths puzzles, against the clock in 60-second rounds. “We wanted to keep the site educational, and also ideal for short bursts — the idea is that a child spends five minutes playing a few games per day, not all day randomly wandering around the virtual world.”
“We actually originally called the site Puzzle Monsters, but it didn't test well and was too educational. We realised we can't make it too obvious — Moshi is about stealth education, and fun and enjoyment was our first focus.” Friends of Acton Smith were in New York recently when their daughter started naming the countries of flags flying outside a hotel. It turns out she had been playing a flag identification game on Moshi Monsters.
The site was originally designed for seven- to 11-year-olds, but it now has a broader age range with children as young as three regularly logging on and playing alongside teenagers. There is a slight bias towards girls, something Acton Smith puts down to its graphics. “I'm a frustrated graphic designer, and spent lot of time thinking about how monsters should look — we wanted edgy, with a Japanese influence. They're incredibly cute and girls really seem to like them.”
The site even allows players to obtain virtual pets for their virtual pets. Called Moshlings, 48 of these creatures exist, and are obtained by planting the right combination of seeds, which has led to a huge community swapping the codes needed to get the right Moshling.
According to web monitoring firm Hitwise, Moshi is now one of the quickest growing sites online. “Moshi Monsters is growing a lot faster than its competitors,” said Robin Goad of Hitwise. “Last month it was the sixth most popular games website; a year ago it ranked 60th. Club Penguin, currently the largest children's site, has increased in visits by 11 per cent in the last year. Moshi Monsters has increased by 424 per cent”.
Players come from all over the world. A third are from Britain, a third from the US, and a third from elsewhere. “We have players from Japan, the Philippines and countries everywhere,” says Acton Smith. “Kids are playing the site to help them learn English. I think the key to our success is the action of looking after a pet. Nurturing is a very important play pattern for children.”
Moshi world is polished and slick: “I was completely inspired by Pixar. There is a huge attention to detail with the animation, and to get the tone right so we are not speaking down to kids. There's also a financial incentive for parents — instead of going to shops and spending £40 on a game, they can play Moshi for free.”
Next on Acton Smith's list is traditional merchandising: “We've just signed a book deal for this Christmas and we're also working on trading cards, plush toys and a videogame, along with an iPhone version of the game.”
Even the music industry is a target. “We've licensed the track Hey Mickey and rewritten it to Hey Moshi — there's even a dance. Maybe we can create the next Macarena, and we've made a music video. Who knows, maybe I'll don a monster outfit and go on tour.”
Acton Smith is also a key player in London's emerging social scene of technology entrepreneurs but says this country is lagging behind: “In the US, entrepreneurs are revered like rock stars, but in London we seem to want to knock successful people, and we have to overcome that. I think good entrepreneurs make things happen, they roll their sleeves up and do it.”
www.moshimonsters.com
Summarise what Moshi Monsters offers children and the reasons for its success.
Aversion Therapy Article
Now's the Time to Quit
Aversion therapy is being used to help people to give up cigarettes, reports Penny Wark
The metronome ticks and every six seconds the man in the white coat says “Puff.” Then he says: “I want you to take deep puffs and focus on how you’re feeling.” The very thin girl on the stool is obliging and draws the smoke into her lungs, but by the time she is on her second cigarette, still taking a deep puff every six seconds, she is struggling. Only when she is halfway through her third cigarette — by now her throat is on fire, she feels dizzy and is close to being sick — does her tormentor allow her to stop.
Cut to another very thin girl being put through the same process. She wheedles, takes tiny puffs and churlishly grinds out the cigarettes she refuses to smoke quickly. Not to be defeated, the man in the white coat offers her another and another until, in a spectacular fit of child-like temper, she refuses to play any more.
This is what smoking does to people: it makes them sick and, if they can’t smoke as and when they want to, it makes them cross. And this is the point of rapid smoking, the procedure described above: to ram home the unpleasant effects of smoking to those who wish to give up. This is smoking cessation therapy, and it is hard core.
“When people quit smoking they should make sure they end with a bad memory,” says Dr Hayden McRobbie, visiting lecturer at the Tobacco Dependency Unit at Barts and The London, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine, research fellow at the University of Auckland, and the man in the white coat. “So before they quit you get them to smoke their last cigarettes, taking a puff every six seconds, until they feel unwell. Most people can’t manage to get through two before they stop.” This is not a new technique — aversion therapies such as rapid smoking were used in the 1970s — but subsequent pharmaceutical developments left them out of vogue. McRobbie believes that rapid smoking has a place in smoking cessation treatment and that’s why he resurrects the technique in Cold Turkey, a Channel 4 programme shown tonight. His smoking guinea pigs are the model Sophie Anderton and the socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, and his task is to reprogramme their minds so that they associate smoking not with rebellion and relaxation but with disease and a painful death. For both women smoking is the final addiction to kick: Sophie has not drunk alcohol or taken cocaine for 18 months, and Tara overcame her addiction to cocaine in 2000.
“Smoking is hardest to give up because it’s legal,” says Sophie. “I smoke because I’m addicted — nicotine should be a Class A drug.”
Sophie has been smoking since she was 15 and smoked 40 a day during her “partying” days. She is now determined to lead an entirely healthy life and plans to run the London Marathon for charity in April. She has also accepted a three-year contract with a smoking cessation product, and knows that any photographs of her smoking will end the deal.
“In 2003 my mother said you’re not allowed to die before I do,” she says. “Well, I haven’t changed my lifestyle that much to get killed off by cigarettes. And I’ve proved in the past that when I decide to do something, I do it.”
McRobbie believes that there is no single way to give up smoking, and that different tactics suit different people. So he tailors Sophie and Tara’s aversion therapy to clash with their concerns. Both lead lives that depend on vanity, so as well as confronting them with the cancer-ridden lungs of a smoker, and depriving Sophie of oxygen so that she experiences the breathlessness of someone with emphysema, Tara, now 34, is made up as she will look at 40 and Sophie is told to smoke in front of a mirror. She hates this. “Hayden told me to really look at myself when I smoke,” she says. “I find that hard because it makes me realise what I’m doing to myself.”
But by her own admission the aversion therapy is at its most potent when — at 28 — she learns that smoking can lead to infertility, and to underline the message she is introduced to an adorable baby. McRobbie makes no claims for rapid smoking, other than to suggest that it could be incorporated into smoking cessation treatment for those who want it. “If you can relieve people’s withdrawal symptoms you can help them with the transition to being smoke-free, ” he says. “This method could be a useful addition to medical treatments. On its own it’s not going to make people stop smoking, but it may be an extra barrier between the smoker and the cigarette.”
Cold Turkey, Channel 4, tonight at 9. www.givingupsmoking.co.uk; 0800 1690169
Read the following article then explain concisely, using the information in the article, what 'aversion therapy' is, and why it possibly works.
Use your own words as far as possible.
Aversion therapy is being used to help people to give up cigarettes, reports Penny Wark
The metronome ticks and every six seconds the man in the white coat says “Puff.” Then he says: “I want you to take deep puffs and focus on how you’re feeling.” The very thin girl on the stool is obliging and draws the smoke into her lungs, but by the time she is on her second cigarette, still taking a deep puff every six seconds, she is struggling. Only when she is halfway through her third cigarette — by now her throat is on fire, she feels dizzy and is close to being sick — does her tormentor allow her to stop.
Cut to another very thin girl being put through the same process. She wheedles, takes tiny puffs and churlishly grinds out the cigarettes she refuses to smoke quickly. Not to be defeated, the man in the white coat offers her another and another until, in a spectacular fit of child-like temper, she refuses to play any more.
This is what smoking does to people: it makes them sick and, if they can’t smoke as and when they want to, it makes them cross. And this is the point of rapid smoking, the procedure described above: to ram home the unpleasant effects of smoking to those who wish to give up. This is smoking cessation therapy, and it is hard core.
“When people quit smoking they should make sure they end with a bad memory,” says Dr Hayden McRobbie, visiting lecturer at the Tobacco Dependency Unit at Barts and The London, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine, research fellow at the University of Auckland, and the man in the white coat. “So before they quit you get them to smoke their last cigarettes, taking a puff every six seconds, until they feel unwell. Most people can’t manage to get through two before they stop.” This is not a new technique — aversion therapies such as rapid smoking were used in the 1970s — but subsequent pharmaceutical developments left them out of vogue. McRobbie believes that rapid smoking has a place in smoking cessation treatment and that’s why he resurrects the technique in Cold Turkey, a Channel 4 programme shown tonight. His smoking guinea pigs are the model Sophie Anderton and the socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, and his task is to reprogramme their minds so that they associate smoking not with rebellion and relaxation but with disease and a painful death. For both women smoking is the final addiction to kick: Sophie has not drunk alcohol or taken cocaine for 18 months, and Tara overcame her addiction to cocaine in 2000.
“Smoking is hardest to give up because it’s legal,” says Sophie. “I smoke because I’m addicted — nicotine should be a Class A drug.”
Sophie has been smoking since she was 15 and smoked 40 a day during her “partying” days. She is now determined to lead an entirely healthy life and plans to run the London Marathon for charity in April. She has also accepted a three-year contract with a smoking cessation product, and knows that any photographs of her smoking will end the deal.
“In 2003 my mother said you’re not allowed to die before I do,” she says. “Well, I haven’t changed my lifestyle that much to get killed off by cigarettes. And I’ve proved in the past that when I decide to do something, I do it.”
McRobbie believes that there is no single way to give up smoking, and that different tactics suit different people. So he tailors Sophie and Tara’s aversion therapy to clash with their concerns. Both lead lives that depend on vanity, so as well as confronting them with the cancer-ridden lungs of a smoker, and depriving Sophie of oxygen so that she experiences the breathlessness of someone with emphysema, Tara, now 34, is made up as she will look at 40 and Sophie is told to smoke in front of a mirror. She hates this. “Hayden told me to really look at myself when I smoke,” she says. “I find that hard because it makes me realise what I’m doing to myself.”
But by her own admission the aversion therapy is at its most potent when — at 28 — she learns that smoking can lead to infertility, and to underline the message she is introduced to an adorable baby. McRobbie makes no claims for rapid smoking, other than to suggest that it could be incorporated into smoking cessation treatment for those who want it. “If you can relieve people’s withdrawal symptoms you can help them with the transition to being smoke-free, ” he says. “This method could be a useful addition to medical treatments. On its own it’s not going to make people stop smoking, but it may be an extra barrier between the smoker and the cigarette.”
Cold Turkey, Channel 4, tonight at 9. www.givingupsmoking.co.uk; 0800 1690169
Read the following article then explain concisely, using the information in the article, what 'aversion therapy' is, and why it possibly works.
Use your own words as far as possible.
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Revising the Summary Question
This is question 1 in your Media Non-Fiction Paper
Get someone(parents/siblings/friends) to find a newspaper article (Guardian and Times are pretty good) and to ask a question on it. For example
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/22/barbara-ellen-comedy
- According to the above article - what current criticisms are there about comedians
Then you bullet point the answers to the question - taking care to make sure it's in your own words.
You could even go one further and get the person to set you a two part question (which is common in the exam) such as:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article6924233.ece
- What advancements are Google making and what are the problems that are going to be caused by this?
Get someone(parents/siblings/friends) to find a newspaper article (Guardian and Times are pretty good) and to ask a question on it. For example
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/22/barbara-ellen-comedy
- According to the above article - what current criticisms are there about comedians
Then you bullet point the answers to the question - taking care to make sure it's in your own words.
You could even go one further and get the person to set you a two part question (which is common in the exam) such as:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article6924233.ece
- What advancements are Google making and what are the problems that are going to be caused by this?
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