1 . Georgianna McKenny’s award-winning podcast (播客) begins with a blaring alarm. It’s an alarm clock, waking her 17-year-old cousin, Mariah. Back in January, living in Jackson meant waking up without access to clean water. No showers, no drinkable water out of the tap, and, for a few days, no school.

Georgianna is the newly-announced high-school winner of NPR’s fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge. In a year with more than 3,300 entries from middle and high schoolers in 48 states, her winning entry tells the story of the toll that Jackson’s water crisis has taken on the city’s students.

Georgianna struggled, at first, to settle on a subject. Then she mentioned the water crisis, which has troubled Jackson for years, while texting with a friend from another state. “She lives in Georgia,” Georgianna remembers. “I texted her, and she was like, ‘What is that?’ Like, she didn’t know about it. I was really shocked.”

Once she settled on the Jackson water crisis, and specifically, on her cousin Mariah’s experience of it, Georgianna had something just as powerful as experience. She had purpose. “No water comes from the tap.” Georgianna’s podcast is about a few tough days in January, when low water pressure across the city hit families and schools hard.

“Something so simple as using the bathroom has become difficult,” Georgianna says. “They ended up shutting down some of the bathrooms because the toilets could no longer be flushed (冲洗),” says Mariah. The school administrator told Georgianna, the water problems even affected what students were given to eat. If there was enough water，the cafeteria could prepare full, hot meals. If not-sack lunches. Mariah, Georgianna’s cousin, was not a fan. “Imagine getting turkey and ham-and-cheese sandwiches for seven days straight. It felt like we were in prison.

NPR judges loved Georgianna’s entry because she took on a major story in her community, conducted in-depth interviews and made excellent use of sound. Now, in winning NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge, Georgianna Mc Kenny is getting exactly what she wanted: A platform to sound the alarm on behalf of the kids of Jackson.

3 . Will we ever be free from the constant stream of notifications(通知)? The headache caused by your phone beeping and vibrating 24/7? Being contactable whenever and wherever you are?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d find it really difficult to be sociable without social media. It would be extremely hard to keep in contact with friends and family, especially if they live far away. Organising meet-ups would be a nightmare–imagine having to set a date in writing or in person, weeks in advance. What would happen if you were running late? You wouldn’t even be able to ping your friends a text to let them know. Events on Facebook and WhatsApp group messages have made organising everything so easy. They’ve enabled spontaneity–if it’s a sunny day, why not go for a picnic in the park?

But I find social media stressful. If you’re not checking your phone at least every half an hour, you might miss out on something important or fun. If you don’t message that friend you haven’t seen in a while, they might think you’ve forgotten about them. If you don’t remember to shower your bestie with ugly selfies, you might not keep up that Snapchat streak!

If you’re meant to be doing homework, can you resist the temptation to check why your phone is flashing? If you have friends round and there’s a lull in conversation, are you tempted to tap out a quick reply to your friend on the other end of the internet rather than playing a game with your friends on the sofa next to you?

In the 21st century contact is quicker and easier, but that doesn’t mean we have more free time.The ability to send a quick message to one friend means we have time to send one to five others, and before you know it you’re having five conversations at once. How can you really concentrate on any of them? And if your Twitter or Instagram feed is buzzing, why bother going outside to kick a football about or signing up for music lessons? You’re entertained enough–you just never have time to relax, let off steam, enjoy the world. Try leaving your phone at home and doing something productive, maybe even alone, today–you might feel all the better for it.

6 . How to Average Results from a Student Survey

Student surveys provide a lot of information that school administrators can learn from.     1     The students’ attitude towards their programs and services can be measured by averaging the results from the survey. Here’s how to average these results.

    2     The student survey must be purposeful and should acquire specific responses from students about specific school programs or services. If the survey is well designed to persuade honest answers from students, then the survey will achieve the best results.

After all the survey questionnaires have been filled and returned, the results can now be tabulated (制成表格).     3     To get the average from the student survey results, each answer must be added and the sum should be divided by the total number of student forms. This is the average number of respondents who answered a certain way.

On a survey question that provides levels of satisfaction, respondents can answer with numeric values (数值), from 1 to 10, according to how satisfied they are. If five forms were given and returned values of 2, 2, 5, 5 and 3, the sum would be 17 and then dividing that by 5 will get you an average satisfaction rating of 3.4.     4    

    5     In the above satisfaction level survey, answer choices can be represented with a tick on “Yes” or “No” . Out of fifty students who were given survey forms, about 45 students answered “No” , rating 90 per cent, and the remaining 5 answered “Yes”, rating 10 percent.

Using numeric values is a simple way for respondents to rate questions or statements and would be easier to average the results at the end of the survey.

7 . Water shortage is occurring in some of the US’ biggest freshwater reserves and it is also evident in other parts of the planet, according to a research study published in the journal Nature last month.

The research study was conducted by Xander Huggins, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria and his fellow researchers.

The Earth has less than 3% freshwater with only 1% is accessible to the growing human population. Both natural freshwater reserves and freshwater in reservoirs may be at risk if their amount continues to drop and the population continues to increase. In 2021, there are approximately 7.9 billion people by January 31, according to the United States Census Bureau. The research study found 34 trends in terrestrial (地面上的) water reserves observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment ( GRACE ) satellites from 2002 to 2016. These trends were acquired when the researchers examined 1,024 basins across the world with the goal of understanding how water availability couples with social processes in the community.

According to Huggins, the main factor they studied were freshwater stress, which is related to the amount of H₂O that naturally leaves the watershed or basin per year. The higher the stress or exit of water from the basin means that there will be less water available for ecosystems and for people’s demands, Huggins explains. The significance of the study can be of interest not only to water specialists and water conservators but also to government policy-makers. Huggins stated that after mapping the most high-risk freshwater sources and creating a framework to identify hotspot basins, policy makers will be able to prioritize a specific location.

Huggins shows that while the US score highly in terms of social adaptiveness based on the study’s freshwater stress factor, the country has many freshwater concerns that goes be-yond between freshwater stress and freshwater storage. The states of Illinois and Ohio have the highest levels of lead (铅) pipes carrying water from freshwater basins to residential households. Meanwhile in Colorado, an estimate from the Colorado Water Center predicts there will be a 20% to 30% less water of the Colorado River Basin by 2050.

8 . Half of all Australian teens now spend more time, or as much time, online with their friends rather than seeing them in person. This is despite the fact that one third of boy’s and 42 per cent of girls say social media makes hard times even more tough. Teenagers who went from using social media weekly to daily had a higher risk of depression and anxiety, the researchers found. New research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies has renewed concerns about the impact of screen time on teenagers’ mental health.

The findings showed 46 per cent of 16-year-olds and 36 per cent of 14-year-olds spent the same time contacting friends via Snapchat, video gaming, Instagram or TikTok as seeing then face-to-face. The findings also showed 7 per cent of 16-year-olds and 5 per cent of 14-ycar-olds mainly interacted with friends electronically. The highest percentage of children who communicated with friends mostly via social media were 16-year-olds with autism (自闭症), the researchers found. The study, which has followed 10,000 children since 2004, surveyed 14 and 15-year-olds and 16 and 17-year-olds about the time they spent online.

Australian Institute of Family Studies researcher Pilar Rioseco said, “The platforms young people are using to commune have changed significantly and digital devices such as mobile phones have become more readily available to adolescents.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that many young people connect, with many having to rely heavily on digital technologies to keep in touch with friends and family.” Dr Rioseco also found that a quarter of teens were victims of cyber-bullying, including threats and name calling. A quarter of those with autism said being online made it easier to be themselves and almost half said being online helped them feel better during difficult times.

Dr Rioseco said online connection “appears to have benefits for some young people in terms of helping social connection and providing support during difficult times” . “Providing young people with the skills to communicate safely online and deal with cyber-bullying is critical,” she added.