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Lake House press impresses Anandians

VISIT: The corridors of Lake House were packed with teenagers last week. Grade nine students of Ananda College visited Lake House and on their way out they stopped for a while to express their thoughts to Daily News Teen.

Sithira Selaka Arriyapperuma, 14 said he has never come to Lake House before.


Chathusha


Dharshaka


Indunil

“I saw how the newspapers were printed. It was very interesting. I gained a lot of knowledge. We are going to make a newspaper in class. I enjoyed this visit,” he said.

“I thought it was a big press but I have never seen a press. Today I experienced the making of a newspaper.

There were lots of things to see. We got a lot of knowledge,” said Chathusha Wijenayake, 14.

Darshatha Gamage, 13 said the visit was important for a lesson they had in school. “There is an English lesson in our book about printing newspapers. The visit was important and it gave us the main idea of printing a newspaper. It was very enjoyable,” he said.

“We learnt everything from designing to printing. It was quite interesting. The knowledge we gained will help in our studies. We will do a project on our visit to Lake House,” Naveendra Malalgoda, 14.

Indunil Herath, 14 said he found newspaper printing very interesting. “I saw how newspapers were edited. We went to the proof reading section also. I have seen a small printing press but not a big one like this,” he said.


Sadeepa


Chandula


Thisal

Sadeepa Basnayake, 14 said the visit was fun. “We learnt a lot about publishing and printing newspapers. It was interesting and fun. We will do a newspaper in school and I am its editor,” Sadeepa said.

“The visit was interesting. We have only read newspapers. We didn’t know the procedure. The Lake House staff explained all the steps. I was impressed,” said Chandula Padmasiri, 14.

Himal Jayatilake, 14 said the visit was fantastic. “I have never seen such huge equipment before. I couldn’t imagine and I have never witnessed such sights. The printing was super fast.

The staff gave a good understanding about the procedure of printing a newspaper. It was a brilliant experience,” Himal said. Thisal Gamage, 14, added that the visit was interesting and he gained a lot of knowledge about printing newspapers.

“I have seen the printing of newspapers on television but I got the opportunity to experience it. The machines


Vasura


Sahan


Nadun

 were huge and the process was amazing. I thank the teachers for organising the visit. I liked it very much,” said Vasura Jayaweera, 14.

Sahan Samarasinghe, 13 added that he was surprised by the technology used for printing. “I have only read newspapers. It was a great opportunity to see the printing of the newspapers. We learnt about the machines used. I gained a lot of knowledge,” he said.

Nadun Dissanayake, Devin Indula and Oshadha Thamarasa added that the visit was interesting. “We saw a lot of things. The visit was very interesting. We enjoyed a lot and it was a great opportunity to enrich our knowledge,” they said.

The teens thanked their teachers and the Lake House staff for providing an opportunity to enrich their knowledge.


Devin


Oshadha


Shihan Eyeing the top rung of the ladder

TALENTED: U D Shihan Moses of Enderamulla St. Sebastian College who displayed outstanding performances at the Western Province Inter-School Sports Festival at the Sugathadasa stadium recently, is also equally good in his studies.

Shihan became the champion in the 100 and 75m running events and 75 m long jump surpassing students from more than 125 schools.

Shihan has bagged several awards and certificates in painting and musical contests at St. Sebastian Church


SHIHAN:going places. Picture by Mahinda Vithanachchi

 School.

“I feel I have the right sort of skills to ascend the ladder to the next level,” he said.

“My father gave me all encouragement and motivation to unearth my hidden potential. He took me for practises and was in constant touch with my coach and without him I would not have achieved this”.

He made an special mention of his coach Tuan Rajs Hasuna Jamad. “He gave me all the support and guidance and strove to derive the maximum out of me. When I think of the Western Province Sports Festival where I won the first place in 100 and 75m athletic events, it revives all my positive dreams,” Shihan says.

He was just a few points behind the national school record for the 100m event.

“This is an unexpected achievement. I did not think of victory when I entered the game,” he said.

I have represented the school many times at inter-school sports meets and shown exceptional performances. That is why the school selected me to represent at the Western Province School Sports Meet.”

“The success or failure of a game rests with our perserverence and fortitude. My aim is to reach the top in the ladder of sports,” he said.


How television/electronic games affect our studies

PROS AND CONS: The widespread use of video games, the question arises naturally as to the effect of these games on children’s studies. I myself am an ardent video game player and I know how they can cause us to neglect our studies. I myself confine playing video games to around an hour on weekends and holidays.

However I too have found myself on more than one occasion, glued to the screen for several hours.

Although this may not severely impact studies as such occasions are rare for the majority of children who play video games, a few children make it a habit to play video games for several hours every day, sometimes from morning until night on holidays and not only does this cause them to fall behind in their school work and studies but also affects their health as they become “couch potatoes”, seated for hours in front of the screen without engaging in any physical activity.

What can be more damaging to the majority of those who play video games is the fact that after playing video games for a long time and sitting down to study or do homework, you cannot concentrate on your studies as best as you could because it is natural for the mind to wander back to the video game you have left behind if you have been playing it intensely for many hours.

In addition, after playing video games for several hours on end, headaches and eye strain can occur, making it impossible to study afterwards. The next important aspect of video games which affects children’s education is the type of game they play.

For example constantly playing violent games can corrupt the minds of younger children especially and make their vision of the world narrow.

In short, video and computer games appear to be a waste of children’s time which could be used to spend studying, negatively affects their health and perverts their minds, so their studies are adversely affected.

However, as with everything, video and computer games have several advantages, including benefits for children’s studies as well. There are many games which are designed for educational purposes and this gives children the opportunity to learn the “fun” way, instead of merely reading and memorising boring books.

Such games make studying more interactive for children and therefore help them in their studies. Some say that gone are the days when children used to read books for entertainment and actually learn something instead of seemingly useless video games nowadays.

But to my own personal experience, I believe that even ordinary action games which may appear at first to be of no use, can be educational to children.

Many popular action-shooting games are set in the battlefields of the Second World War and Vietnam War, and these games take us through the major events of the wars with accurate dates and descriptions, making it a more interactive way to study and helps us to learn more effectively than a big history text book.

Such action games also make a child’s brain sharper and make them think fast as such action games require instant decisions to be made, making the child more alert and responsive to his/her surroundings.

There is also a certain genre of game known as strategy games, where the player controls a village or a whole regiment of an army and the player has to collect resources, establish a base, improve the army or village, defend the base and win battles to complete the game.

Such games are not only educational as they are usually set in important wars or are about ancient civilizations, but they also help children to be more organised as playing such games require organisation skills and actually involve a lot of planning and thinking ahead, which are skills required by children if they are to succeed in their education and future career, whatever it may be.

In conclusion video and computer games can affect our studies and education both positively and negatively. It depends on how we children use it.

The best way to play video games is to limit playing them to around an hour or two per day on weekends and holidays, but not to play games for a straight hour, instead to break it up into around half an hour or 15 minute periods during study intervals to relax their minds and learn something at the same time.

In this way children will not become too engrossed in the game and disturb them when studying and it will not pose a health hazard or affect their studies, instead it could help them.

Children should also select the correct type of game, limiting playing very violent games but instead playing games from which some useful skills and knowledge could be gained as well as being fun to play.

Using video games in this way would not only affect children’s studies positively but will also help them to acquire skills such as planning ahead and quick thinking which will help them in their future.

TRISHAN FERNANDO - Colombo International School, Wattala


Focus on children’s issues at ‘Walk for the Child’

WALK: Children’s issues will be the poignant theme of the culmination of Gateway College’s 10th anniversary celebrations, one of the main events of which will be a charity walk titled ‘Walk for the Child’ on July 28.

The walk will be preceded by street dramas held a week before at Excel World at 7.30 p.m. and Nugegoda junction at 5.30 p.m. on July 21 and 22. These short dramas will focus on some of the problems faced by children. They will be largely bilingual to attract a wide audience.

Around 5,000 are expected to join the walk which will start at Bauddhaloka Mawatha and end at Gateway College in Rajagiriya.

On the same day, an exhibition titled ‘A child’s world’ will be held at Gateway College.

“Usually such an event is held to raise funds for the organising institution,” said Dr. Harsha Alles, Director, Gateway Group.

“However our focus is on charity and we have singled out two special charities to which the funds raised by this event will be donated. One is the Children’s Heart Project of Sri Lanka and the other the Maithri Nivasa orphanage.

“We chose the Children’s Heart Project of Sri Lanka because the problem of children with congenital heart disease in Sri Lanka is severe and heart-rending.

Around 1,800 children are diagnosed each year with congenital heart disease and the State can cope with only some 600 operations.

Therefore at any given time, there are over 1,000 children waiting for a life-saving operation and because of the large number the wait for an operation is about two years. Many children do not survive the wait.

“With a timely operation however, most can go onto living a normal life. So it’s just lack of funds that kills children for most of them hail from backgrounds of grinding poverty.

The Children’s Heart Project of Sri Lanka aims to eliminate the waiting list by collecting funds primarily to support the Government to build capacity; and in the interim to also provide financial assistance to a limited number of children requiring urgent intervention and having to seek private sector facilities in Sri Lanka.


‘Pabasara Warna’: a victory through effort

ACHIEVEMENT: Pabasara Gunasekara, 13, is studying in grade four at the speech rehabilitation school, Nawala. She is a victim of Autism, a brain development disorder that manifests itself before the age of three and has a steady course without remissions or relapses.

Art helps to develop the mind. It is a form of communication for those who prefer isolation. Art brings its creators in contact with nature. It was a slow and gentle process of learning for the teenager but under the guidance of her parents and veteran artist Champani Devika, Pabasara had emerged victorious.

Her exhibition of paintings titled Pabasara Warna will be held at the National Arts Gallery on July 16 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

 

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