DHS Ted Talks 2025

001I'm one of the other advisers uh the tedex club is TR to present to you this exciting event here at darkmouth high school this is an independent organized event this year we have a live audience and we also be broadcasted via live stream by dhsv media Productions [Music] our theme this year is keys to unlock A New Perspective now you may be wondering who's this Ted guy so if you're new to Ted let us explain what it actually means Ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the Ted organization has covered many areas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics being presented to you here today that before we begin we would like to ask our audience to to be respectful to our presenters by

002keeping the electronic devices silenced and refraining the talking they have put in a lot of hard work into these presentations when we appreciate your cooperation okay here we go our first presenter for tedex DHS 2025 is Emma Cunningham [Applause] no no no I'm not not yet okay Emma is a senior here at Dartmouth High School and plans on becoming a clinical therapist at her University after her university studies she chose her topic for the tedex DHS talk because she has Puerto Rican Heritage on her mother's side she is passionate about bringing awareness to Puerto Rican culture and history because of her visit to the island itself Emma's full name is Emma McKenna Velasquez Cunningham please welcome Emma Cunningham as she presents the heritage of Puerto [Applause] Rico we start on the island of Boran in

003ad and on this island lived an indigenous Clan called Theo Theo had three social class the first class being the the highest level these are the only people that could do the spiritual rituals and then the second class is the nios these were the management and Rel layers and then the final class is the nabas these were the common people but they were also the farmers and Hunters buto focused on agriculture they farmed casava which is a vegetable and a root sweet potatoes and pineapples they also focused heavily on spirituality worshiping two main Gods yuchu the god of casava and of the sea and his mother ataba the goddess of water and of human fertility but what happened to the tyo on Christopher Columbus's F second voyage around the Caribbean he call he found the

004tyo on the island and colonized them for the Spanish Empire they were under Spanish rule for years the end of slavery was in March of 1873 but who led this fight Puerto Rican abolitionist leaders include Jose julan aasta or saguna Rus bis these men were journalists and politicians and they were the ones that fought for the abolishment of slavery we have to talk about the man who earned the name the father of the Puerto Rican Nation Ramon OS panes was a man who earned this name because of his dedication to Liberty in Puerto Rico but also because of his Brave leadership in the First Freedom quest in Puerto Rico called gito deas in 1868 he was also a surgeon and introduced the island to the first procedures surgical procedures using chloroform the Spanish American war

005in 1898 is the reason why Puerto Rico is now an American territory and under the John shafroth Act passed by W Wilson Puerto Ricans gained American citizenship at first they started to migrate in small groups but due to a labor conflict starting on the island they started to migrate in smaller groups in larger groups they usually migrated to places like New York and Manhattan as they started to migrate there they started to experience a lot of different kinds of struggles including racism discrimination and trouble realizing the full benefits of their citizenship on the mainland because of these struggles they built they created the Nationalist party led by pedroo Campos the Nationalist party's um goal was to create self-determination for the island Pedro Aliso Campos unfortunately did end up advocating for more violent revolution this landed

006him in jail and on March of March in March people took to the streets when they heard about his imprisionment they wanted to protest against this but they weren't just there for protest they were also there in celebration of the abolishment of slavery they had a permit to be there but it was revoked halfway through their celebration and the chief of police at the time sent 200 police officers armed with machine guns and they killed 19 Puerto Ricans and injured over a 100 more some other Puerto Rican struggles include the insular cases which is a series of decisions by the Supreme Court limiting the rights of millions of Americans including Puerto Ricans and the United States versus Vell medo voell medo was a man who was receiving Social Security benefits but when he moved to

007Puerto Rico those benefits became illegal and he was sued over $25,000 for the benefits he was accidentally given and as you can see here Puerto Rican inclusion is always a lot higher Puerto Rican challenges to inclusion in financial status is always a lot a lot higher in Puerto Rico including more Puerto Ricans having not having a checking account not having a credit card are having to take out more loans as we can also see here overall Financial well-being is much lower in Puerto Rico than it is in the United States it is also a lot lower for people in Puerto Rico to have higher Financial well-being than in the United States but as we acknowledge the struggles of Puerto Ricans let's acknowledge the beauty of Puerto Rico Puerto Rico is known for its tropical weather

008beautiful beaches and Rich culture here we have a map of Puerto Rico and as you can see the middle of the island is known for high elevation this is where all the forestry and where all the mountain ranges are you can find o Yun off a little bit off the center of this on the outer region is the coastal region it's known for its flat Plains and this is where most of the agriculture takes place and there's a unique region in Puerto Rico called the kst region this region is known for having Limestone formations caverns and one of the biggest cave parks in the United States Alon is the national rainforest of Puerto Rico although small for its size it makes up for it and it's great biodiversity having over 150 ferns and over a

009hundred different tree species San Juan is the Island's capital founded by Juan Fon Leon a Spanish explorer San Juan is known for its huge Fortress called aloto aloto stretches 70 Acres across and has six floors as you can see here the bright colors is called the bright colors of the city is called old sanan and it is law that no two houses can have the same color on the same street some Puerto Rican Traditions dance is very important to Puerto Rico L Danza is the national dance of Puerto Rico La Bomba is the umbrella term for music and dance created by African and Puerto Rican slaves to express their feelings through their hardships of being a slave some Puerto Rican instruments include the gum which is unique it has grooves on the sides and you

010play it with a fork-like instrument and it makes a raspy yet rhythmetic sound and the quatro and the Tipple similar to the guitar but the Tipple makes a lot more of a high pitched and sharper sound than that of the guitar some Puerto Rican Cuisine include Tres Leches which I'm sure you've probably had before here in Massachusetts and tropical drinks on the island are usually made with coconut pineapple and other tropical fruit papa renas is a more traditional Porto Rican Cuisine and it is a fried ball of mashed potatoes stuffed with seasoned meat and these are just to name the few of the most of some of the rich cuisine on Puerto Rico some important Puerto Ricans just include Emy hernes panana which was which is who which is a NASA engineer she builds designs

011and tests electronics that regulate solar array she designed a system which can measure the oldest light in the universe Pablo kic Kon is an oceanographer and chief scientist at I at the National Ice Center he provides remote sensing abilities for ocean Dynamics like temperature Andor Marine processes Ola Gonzalez she is a woman who is a chemical engineer who researched in energy storage at Nasa she worked to improve hydrogen fuel cells for better powering of spacecraft Puerto Rican artists both past and present past Puerto Ricans includes Jose Kache who was born into slavery but freed by his father through his father he learned how to paint and followed his Father's Footsteps by painting more religious artworks and restoration Franchesco oler was born by two wealthy parents and he studied movement since he was young he went

012on to paint more scenery traveling from places like Spain to Paris painting the scenery that he saw including paintings of slaves working on plantations Yami Suarez is a man who was incredibly influential in the Ceramics movement in Puerto Rico his artwork is incredibly diverse having something having artwork that is very public and large or a smaller P um artworks like deas Deo and other artists include daraa her artwork consists of her using the environment around her with her sort of extreme artwor she brings awareness to the environmental threats of Puerto Rico an arted artist like L Manuel moranda he has won a total of five Grammys three Tony Awards One pullit surprise two prime time Emmy Awards One Oliver award has been nominated for two Academy Awards you probably know him best for his lead

013role in the play Hamilton and other music artists include Bad Bunny who is doing a residency important Rico to bring awareness to the island and Ricky Martin who you might know for his hit song Liv in la loca and Daddy Yankee who did a collaboration with Louise fony on the song despasito which won song and record of the year in 2017 Grammy Awards all these artists bring awareness to Puerto Rico and show the rich culture of Puerto Rico Puerto Ricans are incredibly proud of their heritage and lineage as am I I wanted to do this Ted talk to bring awareness to a group that has always seems to be overlooked Puerto Rico and its people are important because we are researchers Freedom Fighters artists and engineers and this is my key to unlocking A New

014Perspective thank you Emma that was wonderful of you to share your Puerto Rican Heritage with us our second presenter for first period for tedex DHS 2025 is Tabitha K Elliott Tabitha is a junior who plans to study psychology and hopes to become an attorney in the future Tabitha is also a member of the DHS TV media and reads our morning announcements Tabitha has been a member of the DHS tedex DHS Club since her freshman year and has presented a talk each year with us Tabitha has chosen her topic this year due to her volunteering at the South Coast youth courts and because of her work helping rehabilitate juvenile offenders please welcome Tabitha cabal Elliot as she presents another chance juvenile Rehabilitation versus punishment [Applause] let me start us all off with a surprising or notable

015statistic that over two million Americans currently are incarcerated as of 2025 and prisons across the Across the Nation are over Capa are overcrowded often at 119% capacity so that begs the question of where this starts well obviously it starts in the youth and that's where we should focus on juvenile offenders and how whether or not to rehabilitate them or punish them for their actions so first let me start off by defining what a juvenile offender is a juvenile offender is an individual under the statutory age of adulthood so usually under the age of 18 who engages in criminal activities and the term juvenile offender is relatively new only rising in popularity in the late 18 1800s to 1900s due to the societal realization that they're more able to be rehabilitated and more apt to change

016than their adult criminal counterparts now the focus in terms of juvenile offenders is more that of Rehabilitation and I will show you why and why they are indeed classified differently they are classified so differently than adult offenders because as a quote from Brooke Hartley from the Boston Bar Association the system is built upon the principle that children who commit crimes have diminished culpability essentially responsibility and a greater capacity for change than adults and the reason that this is so major is that one in seven of crimes committed in the US from 2016 to 2022 involved at least one participating juvenile this issue is rampant and it leads to over incarceration in adulthood so again it begs the question do we punish these offenders or do we rehabilitate them to integrate them back into society there's

017a lot of conflicting evidence however one method notably comes out on top and before we begin discussing those two methods I want to take a moment to address the Adolescent brain as you see the prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain responsible for judgment decision-making and overall impulse control that part of the brain is not developed until the age of at least 25 Additionally the amydala which is responsible for emotional regulation and further impulse control is not developed into until the early to mid 20s that means adolescents or juveniles don't have a fully developed brain in terms of decision-making and executive function their judgment biologically is not fully developed therefore they should not be treated as the fully developed adult counterparts now let's compare the overall consensus between the two in a poll done

018in 2021 by the Connecticut Justice Alliance they surveyed general population Americans over whether or not they preferred punishment for juvenile offenders an incarceration or prevention and Rehabilitation and the results are pretty shocking that 75% support Rehabilitation and reintegration back into society 24% prefer punishment of course one 1% were undecided however the stats do not lie let's take take a deeper dive into what I specifically mean by punishment punishment such as fines community service detention and even incarceration for juveniles doesn't address the true cause of these criminal offenses which could be anything from lack of community involvement to substance abuse to Poverty it's higher cost and has a higher chance of reoffence essentially it's ineffective Rehabilitation on the other hand gives more opportunities for Education job training and employment for these youths and has a lower

019chance of re offense it is arguably the more effective option in fact 38% of juvenile offenders sorry messed up that quote juvenile offenders are 38% less likely to participate in criminal activity when in a rehabilitation program outside of a correctional facility in the United States over a third less likely to reoffend when they're placed in a rehabilitation program and that brings me to local programs known as youth courts in which they're basically a juvenile redirection it's a start contrast from the traditional Juvenile justice system in which they're evaluated by their peers peer volunteers pure jury members who hope to instill these three main pillars into these offenders so that they may get a second chance with no criminal record and be reintroduced back into society as productive and helpful Citizens First education on everything from

020addiction to job training addiction information about nicotine addiction drug addiction in general so they're more aware of the risks information about vocational training or higher education opportunities so that they may further their careers accountability whether it be through restitution AKA paying the victims for damages public apologies research projects on how to not commit the crime again accountability is one of the most important pillars just because this is a second chance does not mean that the offender gets off scoff free that's a common misconception accountability and responsibility still need to be taken and that leads into success where those two first pillars build up this offender in order to be a successful educated and informed citizen who has another chance at educating themselves at being productive and at being an important part of their local community

021that brings us to a little more of a local level South Coast youth courts I myself have volunteered there for over a year and I've worked with hundreds of juvenile offenders and hundreds of different cases and let me introduce you to some of the programs that they offer that really illustrate my points about education for example The Vape program which is substance abuse education especially in terms of nicotine but in all substance generally it educates the local youths about the dangers of addiction the dangers of certain drugs and how to get help and resources to quit these addictions itions Drive smart which is mostly geared towards youths who have driving related offenses especially distracted driving it basically encourages them and educates them on how to be more safe drivers and how to transport themselves and

022their peers effectively and safely and of course the traditional Youth Court sanctions which could range from anything from an apology to a research project to community service to peer jury duty which instills a sense of community in these offenders and reintroduces them back with their peers as productive reformed citizens because Rehabilitation IT addresses the root cause of offense not just the behavior it breaks the overall cycle of of offense punishment and reoffence it breaks the cycle of crime stopping juvenile offenders in the CLE to becoming adult offenders and therefore adding to our mass incarceration problem and that is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank thank you Tabitha for enlightening us on the criminal justice system our third and last presenter for period one is Emma Emma Terk Emma is currently a sophomore here

023at Dartmouth High School and would like to become an orthodontist running her own practice in the future Emma loves to sing and often sings the national anthem at many of Dartmouth High School sporting events Emma chose her topic for her tedex DHS talk because she loves to sing and wanted to understand more about the impact of singing on emotions and how it brings meaning to our lives please welcome Emma trik as she presents the power of [Applause] song can you guess this song I was a girl in the village doing all right then I became a princess overnight does anyone know what this song could be for anyone who said Sophia the First you would be correct try this one the snow glows white on the mountain tonight not a footprint to be seen if

024you said Frozen you are partially correct but the song is called Let It Go try this one I've been staring at the edge of the water long as I can remember never really knowing why I wish I could be the perfect daughter but I come back to the water no matter how hard I try whoever just said how far I'll go is correct it's from Moana and finally guess this song all those days watching from the windows all those years outside looking in all that time never even knowing just how blind I've been now I'm I'm here blinking in the Starlight now I'm here Suddenly I See standing here it's all so clear I'm where I meant to be does anyone know what this song is called you guys are pretty close I see the

025light from Tangled now many of you may remember these songs because they were a crucial part in your child in your childhood like they were mine this brings me to my first topic music and memory music and memory a harmonious connection of those who reported often being exposed to music as a child 68% rated their ability to learn new things as excellent or very good compared to 50% of those who were not exposed to music this shows that music has such a big impact on our memory that we are able to learn more challenging Concepts faster if we listen to music as a child as you can see on this photo music tends to light up the brain oh music tends to light up the brain in multiple different areas I'm only going to mention

026a few the visual cortex the motor cortex and the sensory cortex music and memory a helpful tool for Alzheimer's music can help many people with Alzheimer's by decreasing their agitation it can also help them communicate with their caregiver well how much improvement can this really make it can help with their memory if you're playing an old song and they might remember it that's a really good thing it can help with their expression and communication if they start dancing to that song they're showing their expression it can help with their Stress Management along with pain relief since the music is music can be very calming it can help them be less stressed out and then that can help them uh relieve their pain and it can help with their physical rehabilitation music and emotion how can

027music affect your emotions this was something that I struggled to come up with an answer to for a very long time and then I watched two really good movies and thought back to these characters Joy sadness fear and and anxiety Now can anyone think of a song that could represent Joy because I'm happy that's what I thought as well I also thought Happy by farell Williams this song is about someone who's being happy and living um and living by the saying sky the limit so I think it accurately represents Joy anyone know a song that can represent sadness I didn't think of that I thought of Traer VI Olivia Rodrigo because the song is about heartbreak does anyone know a song that can represent fear how about somebody's watching me from walk Rockwell this song

028is about someone who's worried that they're being stocked and what about a song that can represent anxiety I didn't think of that one I thought of breathing by AR ana Grande which is about when you're having an anxiety attack and you're told to Just Breathe music affecting your emotions music just affects people's feelings it brings out emotions in you and it can make you happy and sad that was according to Selena Gomez music in the classroom music as a helpful teaching tool many teachers use music to help students understand new and challenging Concepts now raise your hand if you've heard any of these songs played in your CL in your classrooms anyone had heard the 50 States Song which can help us learn the 50 states no does can does anyone know the cleanup song

029that we learned when we were probably in preschool that taught us to clean up though some of us might not use it any anymore what about the ABCs I should see everyone's hand up I know people today that don't know how to do their ABCs without singing the song what about the Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes song This taught us our body parts and what about the Hokey pokei anyone do this song okay this song taught us physical movement my personal experience with music as many of you may know I do sing the national anthem for many of our school sporting events but the first time I ever sang it was at a Dartmouth hockey game last year and now whenever I go back to the rink the rink is almost as a comfort because

030it was where it started okay my personal experience I was singing at a smck wathon which really helped me learn how to connect with all of the older Generations which was really really helpful because I was learning to sing older songs this was at a Broadway brunch where I was learning to sing harder songs while also having a pleasant face this was the Portuguese Feast which I saw many of you there this taught me how to connect with all age groups and now not only am I a part of many other clubs but I'm also a part of Dartmouth show choir through Dartmouth show choir we have learned how to tell a story through our facial expressions and through song which is quite difficult not only that but we're learning how to tell it while

031dancing now I've been talking quite a bit about singing but I haven't sang so do you want me to sing okay I'm going to sing something from Hamilton and it's called burn and I'm only going to sing a little bit ready I'm searching and scanning for answers in every line for some kind of sign for when you were mine the world seemed to burn burn and this is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank you Emma anybody want to sing all right this concludes our first period presentations uh teachers you have the option of keeping your classes here if you would like to return back to your classroom that is up to you thank you for top five AR all right we're going to be starting in a few minutes Welcome to our 10th

032tedex DHS event the tedex club is drilled to present to you this exciting event here at Dartmouth High School this is an independently organized event this year we have a live audience and we will also be broadcast via live stream by dhsv media Productions our theme this year is keys to unlocking A New Perspective [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] those have been our themes over the last 10 years it all started going to the zitan theater and looking at a production and from then we have been doing it for 10 years you might be new uh you might be wondering what Ted stands for um and you might be wondering this who this Ted guy is well I'm here to tell you that it isn't a person instead Ted is an acronym for technology entertainment

033and design the Ted organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics being presented to you here today we're going to start at perod two uh presentations our first presenter is Tana the Silva tsana is a sophomore here at darkmouth high school and is currently an assistant teacher at the Learning House Preschool she plans to go to school for elementary education in English language uh Learners degrees and would love to pursue uh Ministry Tana has a photography business called sweet tea photos and photographed her first wedding in senior part portraits this summer by creating content to support her photography business Tana noticed that the algorithm impacts which photos that people will see online additionally she's hoping that everyone understands if the photographs are

034telling the story and wants people to understand the meaning be behind these photos you see please welcome Tana the Silva as she presents Beyond The lenses when you hear my title beyond the lens what's the first thing you think of when you hear the word lens do you ever consider the one that you have in your back pocket for us this is the normal but compared to the early ideas of Photography having that camera is revolutionary so how and when did easy access to photography open up to start we go all the way back to 4th Century BC the first concept of a camera known as the camera obscura this used sunlight and angles to create a projection of an image so how did this become a world where 5.3 billion photos are shared daily

035and 61,500 photos are taken every second to start we're going to go all the way back to history of cave art it's been evident that the use of art to record life has been a part of human history as long as long as humans have been alive we start with cave art ancient writings and paintings especially for the Rich and Famous and paintings is actually what led to the first invention of a camera in the early 1800s painters wanted to have a projection of an image so that they could more easily paint their subject however Joseph nfor neepy decided that he didn't just want a projection of an image he wanted an engraving of that projection so he took bitamin which is hardened petroleum put it in a sheet and left it in the sun

036for 8 hours at at a certain angle with his camera obscura to create this image which became known as the first photograph this definitely is not our conventional photograph however it led to the base of the first photography process known as the dagger type process this was the first publicly available process it wasn't just a science experiment it was a real process that could be used to take photos especially for the rich as you can see the same Camera Obscura was within this camera however instead of using biddy they used silver plates and different chemicals to create a lasting image and many people of royalty and Prestige were able to get their profiles and portraits taken with the dagger types But Not only was it portraits they also started started taking pictures of the events

037happening around them and this led to the birth of photojournalism photojournalism is known as the art or practice of communicating news by photographs especially in magazines this photo was the first photo to be published in a magazine in Paris showing during working strikes the barricades in the street after this picture people started realizing that their Weekly News would be better if accompanied by a photo and photographers started to be hired to go to every big event now this had become an art and as this quote by painter Joan Mio says you can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again you can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life and this is what photographers tried to embody now with photography we could

038fully tell the truth we could send keepsakes to our lovers and detectives could have true criminal evidence not just what they assumed was correct when things arose in society that brought questions it could be documented and that's how we know of these social changes and one of the biggest things that was docum mented was Wars the Mexican-American War being the first war to be documented completely by photographs eventually life especially in Europe and the us became a life documented on film in magazine workers found that not only were they getting the stories they wanted they getting the stories hidden underneath for example in this first Life magazine in 1936 the photographer was hired to go and pictures of the dam being built but instead she captured frontier life in America in some of the most

039iconic pictures that we have from this time period however the creators of cameras didn't want this to just be for magazine makers and photographers they wanted it to be for the general public to use as well and George Eastman came up with the brownie camera this was was one of the first commercial cameras and was relatively affordable and easy to use compared to the dagger type process now they are able to take family photos candids that weren't taking hours of posing wedding photos an amateur photographer was were born this led to a lot more similar pictures to what you might see in your own camera rule children would go around with their cameras pressing taking pictures from their own point of view however this was simply a click and wait process there is no viewfinder

040no way to see what images you had taken simply a button in that little lens and this was the problem with film you needed to have your film developed you couldn't see what pictures you were taking and by the time you got it developed it was too late to retake it if you didn't like how it turned out however a lot of retailers marketed off of this for example Walmart created a drop when shop program so that when you go to the grocery store you you would remember to bring your film with you drop it off and get it developed and Kodak even made a photoart a photo mat kind of like the laundromat except it's in the parking lot and you go to bring your film because of that long process the Polaroid was

041an amazing invention that shocked Americans as you can see by their tagline imagine finish pictures in 1 minute with this new Polaroid Land Camera this is a big thing for all Americans to be able to take the pictures and see them right away if something was wrong that's all right you can retake it however this was an expensive process and led mostly to the development of a Polaroid company and all the different cameras some of which you might still have in your bedrooms today however that was the end of photography of the past the more expensive photography which was reserved mostly for special occasions it was a tedious process in the dark room developing your film and it was limited what you could take pictures of and what would actually turn out however we solely

042transition into a World of Color into photography currently where there's a variety of options not only expensive professional equipment but also cheaper alternatives and it's much e easier to learn and this all started in 1977 with the or 1975 with the first digital camera Kodak created a camera that mixed technology from the movie camera and had 12 different circuits underneath it was one lens very bulky and hard to carry around but it changed America's thoughts of what a camera could be by the time 1994 came around Apple created their own version of the digital camera it might look a little bit more like a set of binoculars but it was revolutionary to the scene of digital cameras and by the time 2004 came around Canon had released their first digital camera leading to an industry

043that is still booming today however the big change that most important to us was the mobile phone 1999 was the first Camera and Video phone it had 1/3 of a megapixel and can only hold 20 images but to Americans during this time this was shocking and by 2007 around the time where some of us were born probably around the same age as most of us the first iPhone was created and as you can see that's a very tiny camera lens but it shocked Americans and since these creations mobile phone ownership has rised to the point where almost 100% of us adults own a phone and with this has come a rise of social media Facebook and Instagram are some of the main sources for getting photos and where photos are posted this has become a

044place not only for you to see photos and share photos with your friends and families but also for photography to grow this summer I shot my first wedding through a chance opportunity and I expected to be getting to be handing out business cards but instead I was met with the question what's your business handle and I realized that we had truly transitioned into a world of social media businesses I didn't think that my middle school Instagram account would cut it so I went and researched what I could do to create a business account Instagram has a very accessible and easy program for creating a business account anyone can sign sign up say what business they they're trying to start and create a business profile now you will get insights when you post and ideas for

045promotions and promoting your work however this isn't the only step of sharing on social media you also have to take into consideration the world that we live in with filters Ai and editing softwares it wouldn't be acceptable to post a photo like this one instead it would go through filters and AI until it got to a photo looking more little more like this one and this is what we have come to in this digital age so I had to learn how we can adjust the things that normally a camera would do on its own but instead now we have the tools to adjust the light adjust the color adjust the Optics and even things like generative AI to remove and add to your photos this is an amazing tool that can make photographers work even

046more detailed and elaborate however it can also be a dangerous tool my reason for sharing this is showing where photojournalism started and the truth that we need to get back to when we see photos it's a responsibility to truly acknowledge what we're seeing and the truth behind it as Henry cardier breast said as photojournalists we Supply information to a world that is overwhelmed with preoccupations and full of people who need the company of images we pass judgment on what we see and this involves an enormous responsibility not only for the photographers but for us viewing it and this is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank you tsana for that wonderful perspective with beyond the lens our next presenters are ree Alves Ford and Basia ravitzky Basia is a junior here at DHS in

047plans to pursue a degree in exercise science basia's goal is to become a sports physical therapist who travels the world with a team R junor DHS who plans to pursue a degree in law and have a career in the legal field they chose their topic because they believe that the world needs to understand there can be multiple opinions for every topic and people need to dig deeper to find quality information so that Society can be more diplomatic and informed please welcome ree Alves Ford and Basia Ovitz as they present blinded by red and the media do you ever catch yourself in an argument or debate and there seems to only be two options of outlook on the issue it's either this or that and there's no in between because both sides are fully narrowed to

048their own opinion this can be known as black and white thinking or more commonly classified as false dilemma in which an issue is misrepresented as mutually exclusive modern day politic ICS are structured on this way of false dilemma and it is where two political parties are acknowledged this is where the term red or blue comes in so where does argumentative polarization happen a major contributor to the polarization of debates is a physiological cognitive bias known as confirmation bias confirmation bias is a tendency to process information by interpreting or looking for information that is consistent with one's existing belief many are unaware of this and are only seeking objective facts people have the tendency to only interpret information to support their own beliefs and completely ignore potential outlooks some examples of this are not seeking out

049objective facts interpreting information to support existing beliefs remembering details that only uphold one's own beliefs or completely ignoring information that challenges your beliefs this is this very process is the leading factor of the growing spread of fake news or misinformation false information has a multitude of different classifications on account of the intent of the information the most common type of false information is known as misinformation it is unintentionally spread and caused by means of confirmation bias another type of false information is disinformation this is more dangerous than misinformation because for the fact that it is purposefully spread rather than spread by accident disinformation is deliberately F fabricated or manipulated to support an argument so someone is intentionally taking certain information and either taking it out of context or rewarding it in a way that upholds

050and advocates for their claim the most dangerous type of false information is Mal information this is sensitive information that can be confidential and is purposefully published in attempt to prove or disprove someone's opinion now we will look at and explore social media's impact on bias and polarization algorithms social media algorithms funnel content to specific audiences audiences this creates content that only reinforces users existing beliefs limiting their perspective on certain topics algorithms encourage the use of echo Chambers which are made to bind and isolate communities with similar views which AIDS the spread of factual Corrections rumors spread by misinformation C can not only impact the reputation of political office officials but also regular citizens or reg or IND individuals no matter who you are misinformation misinformation impacts your life for better or worse so the role

051of social media in stimulating bi also ties in with how the brain processes information there are three major parts of the brain that are associated with bias they're known as the amydala the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex when our brain is presented with information it uses things known as shortcuts to easily classify information as relatable or not we use what we've learned from our environment to make quick assumptions about who to trust and who to agree with these mental shortcuts are what lead to unintentional bias and develop into stereotypes so how can we use our brain to be aware of bias and see other perspectives despite our own opinion these can be done through various Solutions our first solution is seek out diverse perspectives ask questions to your opponents and understand where they're coming from

052and trying to see things through others eyes our second solution is understand that there is more than two sides to any debate neutrality is a position having an opinion does not mean you must narrow it and our final be aware of how SL where you are receiving information research and use reliable sources that can contain accurate information that is not taken out of context this could be done through sources known that have orgs or. edus do not trust sites like Wikipedia bias is something that holds people back from understanding an issue to its full extent it is a lock that holds Society back from the door of realization which contains the ability of seeing other perspectives being able to think this way is not something that everyone can do it is a skill to be

053able to see the world through another's eyes and try to understand an opinion despite the pride of our own the key to unlocking this door is diplomacy in which we can have debates and arguments in a way that respects the view of others and understands why they see things this way many times both sides can be right in certain aspects it is up to us as a society and as students to work together and educate ourselves and learn to see the world in a hue of Many Colors not just red and blue this is our key to unlocking New [Music] Perspectives I can't walk thank you reasia for that wonderful presentation we're moving on to our third presenter our next presenter is Evan Sergeant Evan is a junior here at DHS Evan loves to go

054climbing at the Caribbean he also enjoys long boarding Evan chose his topic because he loves the outdoors and he love going to visit his friends but has found that getting around his driver's license has been a difficult time Gathering going to traveling around the town due to the lack of areas for pedestrians to walk he has had some scary experiences in the past due to not having appropriate areas of for walking please welcome Evan Sergeant as he presents encouraging pedestrian [Applause] infrastructure throughout my childhood I was never really an at dorsy kid that is until about 5 years ago when I was given a longboard for Christmas I spent hours and hours on the road trying to perfect my riding and there is one main thing I took away from this being a pedestrian is

055terrifying you never really know if the person driving past you is paying attention or not I've almost been hit off the side of the road more times than I can count and the pen Aaron Bridge here is an example of an unsafe road I don't know about you but I would not want to ride a bike on the bike path here it's literally a part of the side it's a part of the road the ridiculous nature of this is what inspired me to present my T talk now what does it mean to encourage pedestrian infrastructure well if you've ever tried to walk or bike somewhere in our area you will find it's hard to go anywhere you normally travel to by car some might say this is obvious because cars go faster however that isn't

056the only great Advantage cars have to the tried andrue method of walking it's a well-known fact that the roads are catered to cars this makes sense because traveling by car is easily the most popular mode of transportation for us however that does not mean that the option of walking or biking has be thrown out the window while in many cases that appears to be just what happens our area in darmouth definitely has its fair share of safe and unsafe roads for example Elm Street in darmouth has a long stretch of sidewalk along the entire Road and for good reason it's a highly walked road while right next to Elm Street slokum Road the road you guys likely took in order to get here is a long windy road and a significant portion of the road

057has absolutely no sidewalks how can we fix this I bet you wouldn't guess this but in order to fix this issue we could Implement more sidewalks bike paths and traffic lights however this is a lot easier said than done in the perfect world we would just throw down some sidewalks alongside these busy roads and call it a day however it doesn't work like that unfortunately there are some important factors to think about like price how much do you think a single mile of sidewalk cost to implement $485,500 th000 per mile of bike path that isn't the only issue either finding space for these sidewalks going back to slm Road in particular where a sidewalk would be ideal is uneven grass long and windy terrain which poses issues and risks for construction workers okay all this

058seems like quite the bother you might okay all this seems like quite the hassle so why bother you might ask well many kids and teenagers rely on their bikes in order to get around and these long windy roads with little to no sidewalks or safety measures for pedestrians poses a massive risk to the people trying to get around this idea of safety concerns is not just an idea either it's proven to be an issue 7,255 people were struck and killed by automobiles in the year 2022 in the us alone that is almost 20 people a day a staggering number that can be avoided by implementing more safety measures into our roads and sidewalks you might have heard of this little thing called global warming and there's no doubt that it's having a great impact on

059our planet the summer of 2024 was the fourth hottest summer on record for the United States a root cause of this is the Greenhouse Effect and it is no doubt that the cars you and I use every day have a massive impact on our environment now if you had to guess what percentage of carbon emissions was accounted for by automobiles what would you say if you happen to guess 22% you would be correct almost a quarter of all carbon emissions in the United States so how is all this talk about global warming relevant at all well you see if we were to establish proper sidewalks along these roads that are often traveled it encourages people to use them and this will no doubt have a positive impact on our carbon footprint there are over 347

060public bike trails in the state of Massachusetts however most of them have one thing in common there are woodsy trails in outer parts of town mainly focused on hobbyists like mountain bikers and people who go out of their way to bike ride for exercise our town hall actually has a department dedicated to energy and sustainability and they have passed Green grants like in 2021 which funded the implementation of electric vehicle charging stations and upgrades to the outdoor park lighting at a ponet UMass Dartmouth launched their one-year-long Bike Share program partnered with a company similar to Lime or bird V Ride in 2017 and saw great success they received 150 bikes and saw usage from over 1,700 students with over 177,000 rides all together over a 10-month period of time this raises hope for possible long-term

061Partnerships in the future for students on campus to lowerer um's carbon footprint as you may have guessed why aren't there more projects like this here in darmouth as you may have guessed the implementation of these Bike Share companies can be quite the pricey Endeavor a single bike can cost up to $5,000 meaning a small Fleet of 200 bikes can cost up to $1 million this is a lot to ask for but the benefits of these Bike Share programs do show one of these success stories is blue bikes you may have seen them in a day trip to Boston or in passing around local cities blue bikes is a bike Shear company owned by Somerville Boston Cambridge and the town of Brooklyn in New York City Blue bikes have seen 7 million rides since their launch

062in 2011 and the implementation of them has had a proven decrease in traffic congestion Harlem is a town in the Netherlands and is a prime example of a walkable Community unlike most areas in the United States the sidewalks and bike trails are almost endless and citizens are encouraged to commute day-to-day via bike the Netherlands is praised for the green lifestyles of their country and this can be seen in their statistics only 177% of the Netherlands carbon emissions are from automobiles compared to the 22% from the United States the this is a 5% difference how did the town of Harlem become such a Haven for walkability well Harlem is actually a very old town and was established in 1245 Back Then There Were obviously no automobiles meaning the only reasonable mode of transportation was walking so

063most of the important buildings are very close by making them easily accessible by walking or biking this is a photo of the city center of Harlem what do you notice in the picture it might be hard to see but there are rows and rows of bikes while there's not a single car in sight you can even see people walking around these statistics and proven facts about the Netherlands being a Green Country prove that the ideas of walkability and providing safe accessible sidewalks and bike paths leads to not only the decrease of a carbon footprint but also a significant decrease in traffic ingestion and this is my key to unlocking New Perspectives [Applause] thank you aan for providing us with A New Perspective are encouraging pedestrian infrastructure our fourth presenter a perod to is Savannah Riley

064Savannah is a senior here at Dartmouth High School she plans to attend Howard University in the fall her major will be political science with the go goal of attending law school and becoming a lawyer she would like to be involved in politics in the future savenna chose her topic for this presentation after listening to the song aleda by Solange lyrics from this song had her thinking about the impact African-Americans have on culture please welcome Savannah Riley as she presents African American presence in pop culture in the year 2025 almost everyone contributes in some way to pop culture whether it's participating in Trends or starting them themselves but what exactly is pop culture well Webster dictionary defines pop culture as a collection of widely accepted ideas beliefs and Trends it includes a variety of media such

065as film television and music for this generation one of the most ways that facilitates the spread of pop culture is through Tik Tok tick Tok oh so actually okay that's not my fault any day now would be great hold Tick [Applause] Tock do the use of Tik Tok and the functionality of Tik talk with its rapid Pace consumption of media trends are spread and brought upon even faster but what do your favorite Trends come from well a lot of them are derived from Black Culture pop culture involves many different art mediums and through the forceful migration of Africans through slavery Africans in America found ways to bond with each with each other even in the face of Oppression combined with segregation and the Civil Rights Movement these events are responsible for influencing a lot of

066Black Culture by destroying our roots in Africa and our connections with each other Black Culture needed to flourish to give African-Americans a slice for themselves and the worldwind that is American society although pop culture is a very vast topic it's easy to come ize it into three basic topics music fashion and language or a and today we will be starting with music music is a higher Revelation than all wisdom and philosophy this quotes by lck Van bethoven to quote Maya Angelou because slaves could not read or write because it was illegal his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing black Americans have sung for their freedom for literally centuries but one specific genre of music that is consistently left out of the conversation when it has anything

067to do with wisdom or philosophical meaning is rap music rap comes from um chatting or talking or conversating spawning a music genre that was composed of celebrating and con conversing through beats leading to the acony RP which stands for rhythm and poetry rap music and African-Americans stood started to come from in proveris black neighborhoods and was able to talk about the struggles in prized black neighborhoods such as gang violence guns and drugs African-Americans use rap as a platform to stalk and Show underrepresented voices because of the push of rap music a lot of record labels pushed African-Americans to only produce Rat music because of the thought process that leaning into African-American series types was the only way for us to get records and to sell records now rap has a really bad stigma Street rat

068ghetto hoodlum ghetto trash but that cannot be further from the truth rap music is used to highlight African-American experiences just like it has been for centuries it's used to bring joy and bring communities together it's art and we're using it to tell a story now love and hadam 20time Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar tackles a lot of multitude of problems that occurs in the music genre and is the only classical the only non-classical or jazz artist to win a polter prize for music growing up from compson California where he has the history of gang violence Lamar was exposed to many things that rap genre was originally created and emphasized last year Lamar was a big part in pop culture and stayed in the public eye when he won five Grammys and performed at the Super Bowl

069especially in the last year Lamar highlighted the fall The Faults through the music industry stealing he criticizes the music industry for perpetrating a caricature of the African American experience without ever having lived it while African-Americans live this experience and are belittled oppressed and deemed a ghetto toot Krick Lamar himself 40 acres in a mual this is bigger than the music and although you may not like rap music another music genre that is very popular is country music in light of the winning album of the year with the album Cal Carter Beyonce SE faced severe backlash for people thinking she's undeserving of this award now Everyone's entitled to their own opinion but people fail to recognize that this album is actually a concept album it's telling a story and once again it's bigger than the music

070Cowboy Carter is a stepping stone to make space for African-Americans in a country music and highlighting black country artists such as Tanner Adell Bernie Spencer tiar Kennedy and Raina Roberts and regained the recognition for starting a music genre that is now predominantly white while once again black people have been washed out and our culture is watered down now rap and Country Music are not the only music that was derived from Black Culture the blues Jazz rock and roll Funk Soul hipop disco house techno jungle jum and base garage Grime dubstep and punk are all derived from Black Culture fashion should be a form of escapism and not a form of imprisonment Alexander mqueen similar to music fashion is another medium for black people to be expressive and escape from the pressur surround them to quote

071Bill Cunningham fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life black people have been foundations for many fashion trends such as Nails wearing a variation of fake nails has been around for thousands of years since around 3,000 BC Egyptian women were thought to make nails out of bone and Ivory but in 1966 Donna Yuna was the first black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue combined with other stars such as Diana Ross who also wore brightly colored nails this created a chent and acrylic nails started to appear in nail Sals hoop earrings have been around since Sudan and the Bronze Age in the 4th Century they were made out of gold silver and of course Bronze in the 1920s the jazz performer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker wore her iconic large

072hoop earrings while rap and hip-hop culture in the 80s hips began to get bigger and thicker and had different variations such as bamboo style gemstones and phasin on the hoops this is popular uh popularized even further by artists like Missy Alia Lil Kim aana Lauren Hill and Erica B St jewelies such as chunky bracelets Rings grills and names and necklaces have been influenced by hip-hop but have also been meanings of cultural expression and being able to show black wealth sneaker culture started in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop culture in basketball and the emergence of the Michael Jordan and a Jordan This helped produce Moder D sneaker culture the explosion of the signature basketball sneakers as a collection item while the hip-hop scene elevated their credibility as a symbol of status born from New

073York City's Harlem and Brooklyn streetwear is categorized as casual comfortable style and it has its roots in Hip Hop and skate culture from baggy jeans and graphic teas to sneakers and hoodies Street Wear has become popular all over the world being showcased on runways and everyday attire braids are derived from Africa and 3,500 BC Africans wear different braids patterns depending on different things like tribe age wealth marital status or even religion meaning behind braid shifted throughout the course of slavery in America now slaves were able to bring maps to freedom in their hair over the last couple years braids have made have been made in the heat of recent discussion on whether or not it's fair to gatekeep braiding styles such as box braids knots knotless or cornrows the truth is type braids can be

074suitable for are not suitable for most hair types and can tend to uh get people ATT traction alopecia or hair loss additionally braids are a important part of Black Culture braids are woven literally and figuratively into Black Culture they show us a map of where we have come and where we are going in conclusion black is the blueprint for many fashion trends in fashion and rap and hip hop are all correlated with each other but the acknowledgement of the African-American presence in pop culture particularly when it comes to Fashion has been overshadowed especially when African-Americans are show are started transs first and they become mainstream and popularized and the history of my people is forgotten a language is not just words it's a culture a tradition a unification of a community a whole history that

075has created what a community is it's all embodied in language n chopski what is a a stands for African-American vernacular English and is often regarded as a dialect than not all but a lot of black people speak due to slavery Africans were purposely separated from others that spoke the same language in order to prevent uprisings a spawn as a result of enslaved Africans learning English from other enslaved Africans due to the fact that slaves were not allowed in education a is a mix of British English and an influence of African and caribbian languages now a lot of a AE is now referred to as Tik Tok language or just sling but it's important to acknowledge certain terminology and use it in the correct context some examples of a sling words are finna Gunna yes and

076so many more certain names over the last couple of years have been stereotyped as black names such as cheniqua the reason behind these unique names has its part in black history due to families being torn apart by family members being sold to other plantations black parents you named their kids unique names so they could be easily identified now you might be wondering what's your point no one is saying to stop wearing Coop earrings no one saying to stop wearing sneakers no one saying to stop listening to music or stop singing period we just want recognition black hist has been overshadowed for far too long and is important to acknowledge us my culture is beautiful and it deserves its flowers I know I've been talking about pop culture but it's important to highlight the Excellence of

077my people from activists to poets from dancing to singing from basketball to gymnastics from Endzone to Stage to helping Implement free breakes in school to create world-renowned inventions and sending the first man to the Moon even in the face of Oppression my people can and will do it all highlighting my culture is my key to to unlocking A New Perspective thank you Savannah for informing us on African-American presence in pop culture this concludes our perod two presentations thank [Applause] you e can't e I don't know can we all take our seats please just waiting for people to take their seats hold on one second just please find a seat anywhere at this point thank you all right here we go ready okay Welcome to our 10th tedex DHS event the tedex ghs club is thrilled

078to present to you this exciting event here at Dartmouth High School the this is an independently organized event this year we have a live audience and will also be broadcast via live stream by DHS TV media Productions [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay as you saw there our theme this year is keys to unlocking A New Perspective you may be new to Ted and may be wondering who this Ted guy is I'm here to tell you that there isn't a person that's named Ted at this point at least for this instead Ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the Ted organization has covered many topics worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics that are being presented to you here today before we begin we would like

079to ask our audience to please be respectful of our presenters by keeping electronic devices silenced and refraining from Talking they have really put in an enormous amount of work and we really hope that you respect that okay our first presenter for period three is Adam Ola Adam is a senior here at Dartmouth High School and is hoping to attend suffk University in the fall his goal is to study law and become a lawyer Adam has been a member of both winter and spring track teams here at Dartmouth High School Adam chose his topic because of his of the pride he has about the accomplishments that have happened here in his home state of Massachusetts please pleas welcome Adam olera as he presents maid in [Music] Massachusetts did you know the most Googled question in Massachusetts

080is actually how to spell Massachusetts what's interesting about this is that throughout this presentation I account for maybe about half of those so as it was just said the T and Ted stands for technology and that's to say that I definitely used technology in my presentation uh as you do I was having a conversation with Chachi BT and I asked it to describe Massachusetts in two words in which it said it was historic and intellectual now throughout this presentation I'm going to try and find my own word to describe Massachusetts so let's start off with the history of Massachusetts which is almost inherently the history of America um all of these events on the screen culminate in the American Revolution um some of the colonial leaders that we uh we know for being American heroes

081like Paul Rivier and John Adams came from Massachusetts that's where they were born um we also have several reformers in Massachusetts the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglas uh made his Mark in New Bedford through his countless speeches as well as creating his newspaper the North Star two of his sons were part of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment which was the first uh all African-American regiment in American history we also have Julia Ward how who um created a union rally cry during the Civil War she um she also is part of the New England suffrage association and um Massachusetts also was the First National Women's Rights Convention we also have several uh famous Educators from uh Massachusetts like Horus man who was a big advocate for public education uh it's because of him that the Massachusetts uh state

082constitution lists education as a right we also have Abigail Adams who um very big advocate for public education more so extending for uh women's education we also have no Webster who created the first American English language dictionary Massachusetts has the guy who uh excuse me can we go back a couple slides it's not working properly thank you uh who created the yes as I was saying the um the American English dictionary so this is to say that we have uh several presidents who came from Massachusetts as well we have um the second and six presidents John and John Quincy Adams and Calvin kulage and John F Kennedy who weren't born in Massachusetts but are heavily tied because Calvin kulage was a governor and John Kennedy was a Senator all four of these men got their

083education in Massachusetts from our exceptional universities and col College um three of them going to Harvard we have uh colleges like MIT and Holy Cross as well uh Harvard actually predates calculus as a concept as it was the first uh public school in America um this is to say that because it is in our constitution as a right we are very uh particular about how our education looks and our governor Mara hey uh is a very big advocate for it as well as fighting for it uh to get Educational Funding uh she even cites it as the incredible students families Educators and school officials is the reason why we have such good education it's also because of the Department of educ uh Elementary and secondary education which focuses on equity which what this means is

084that obviously students who have plenty of opportunities are going to end up succeeding but because we prioritize those who maybe do not have as many opportunities they actually get to do great and find Suess through the education department um datadriven improvements like mcast although it is no longer a uh need to graduate it's still going to be used as Educators can find ways to improve their teaching we also have social and emotional uh help like counselors in schools in case a student might need help um uh solving a troubling problem so what happens after you get your education well you need a job so why not get one at one of the 17 Fortune 500 companies that uh originated in in Massachusetts we have retail and consumer goods like TJX and BJs uh we have

085Financial Services like uh Liberty Mutual we all love that advertisement with the Emu there's Healthcare and pharmaceuticals madna became a very big name after 2021 when they created the covid vaccine there's also energy utilities Technology and Manufacturing like uh General Electric so after you get this money you need a way to spend it so why not come eat at a place found uh that was founded in Massachusetts like Dunkin Donuts which has almost become a culture for people here um a fun fact about friendlies is that after here I'll be getting myself a chocolate chocolate chip ice cream from there there's also uh a very big entertainment uh industry in Massachusetts with our uh exceptional Sports where we have six Stanley Cups nine world series six Super Bowls and 18 NBA championships um the NBA

086Hall of Fame is located in Springfield because basketball is actually invented in Massachusetts if any state knows ball it's us we definitely know it this has led to having uh great Fields uh stadiums that overall make our uh our entertainment look spectacular which also makes our economy look great uh this is to say that our GDP which we uh the GDP is the gross um excuse me it is the gross domestic product or the total value of all goods and services which we rank number eight in um but I'm looking at the at it per capita which takes the GDP and divides it by our population which is about 7.2 million people around there and when we do that you'll see that Massachusetts ranks number three overall which shows that it's really uh exceptional um

087we also have um representation in the big government as all states do and our two senators are Elizabeth Warren and Ed Mary as well as our Representatives we have uh in the first district at uh Richard Neil in the SE uh Second District we have Jim McGovern in the Third District we have Lorie Tran in the fourth district we have Jake aen Claus in the Fifth District we have Katherine Clark in the sixth district we have Seth Molton in the Seventh District we have aanna Presley in the eighth District we have Steven Lynch and in the Ninth District we have Bill keading who is our representative in our area Dartmouth so we've been going over um how we look in the history hist as well as how we look currently but what are we doing

088to impact our future so Massachusetts has a plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 now what this means is that um this plan started in 1990 and since then we've dropped by about 30% we also have the global warmings and solution act which helps regulate different emissions and uh different public transit Investments such as the South Coast rail which plans to be opening uh by March 24th so 17 days away what this does is because we uh no longer would be relying on fals fuels through cars it gives the ability to travel through Railway fun fact it'll be um it'll be free on the weekends in April so watch out for that we're also big for our windro energy which does a really good job at reducing our Reliance on fossil fuels and imported

089energy um we also have a partnership Vineyard winds has a partnership with the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and Dartmouth which it'll take people who are currently getting their education there and teach them how to work with the windmills which creates a really good um relation between the two all for the need of creating clean energy we're also really big in healthcare in Massachusetts um we had Clara Barton who was a big advocate for the um women's education she also started the American Red Cross Association in 2006 our former Governor Mitt Romney made the mass Healthcare reform law which was an act providing access to affordable quality accountable health care for all um we generally call it Romney care as it set the blueprint to what become uh what became the federal law the Affordable

090Care Affordable Care Act also known as the Obamacare Act and this was great it got um Massachusetts citizens all insured well a very good amount of them and it made it a lot to do so this is all to say that Massachusetts is the blueprint it's really great we are the number one state to live in as of 2024 we have top marks in things like education and Healthcare which really show that we are the method of creating a great state to live in every other state looks at us to really see what they should be doing correctly um if I went over all of the things that we were also first and we'd be here for a while but we have things such as like the first call uh the first phone call ever

091made we were the first state to abolish slavery we were the first state to make uh gay marriage legal and all this is to say that my word that I'm choosing is exceptionalism this is a book by Gerald deette that combines a bunch of different stories that show just how strong Massachusetts is as a state uh first in education second in healthare first in quality of life and so much more such a powerful state to begin with and I'm going to quickly go over a quote made by John Fitzgerald Kennedy and so it has been to the enduring credit of Massachusetts its leaders and its people that it has uh continued to be a model for what a free people can do for what a society can be and for what Humanity can achieve that

092is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank you Adam for that thoughtful information about Massachusetts our second presenter for period three is Zachary Beno Zach is a senior here at DHS Zach is unsure of his future plans at this time which yeah he's 18 17 so I can see that Zach is a member of the DHS concert band marching band and indoor percussion Ensemble Zach would like you all to know that his favorite color is red so appropriate uh Zach chose his topic for his talk because he would like to encourage people to play more video games that are story based since the stories of many of the video games that Zach plays have changed his world Outlook please welcome Zachary Zachary Benoit as he presents video games the final frontier of Storytelling [Applause]

093all right today you're going to come with me as I show you how video games are changing how authors and creatives are telling stories now when I say video game there's a lot of things that come to mind maybe maybe highly addictive mobile games like block blast widely popular multiplayer games like fortnite or for the older folks in the audience Tetris or Pac-Man there's a lot of negative connotations associ with the word video game like they are Mindless fun or inherently violent but even the president of the United States believes that violence in video games is a cause for violence in real life but this couldn't be further from the truth a study from the journal Nature has shown that there is no difference in a long-term or short-term aggression in those who play video

094games and those who do not regardless of the aggressive nature of the game now instead video games pose an increased opportunity for storytelling because of these three things starting with interactivity unlike movies or books or music you are able to interact with stories and games like no other uh being able to interact with the games means being able to engage with the story in a new way this leads to increased emotional immersion which basically means that since you are able to affect the story you are more invested in it this is also caused by increased World building since you are able to explore the worlds in the games it is presented in a seamless manner that allows you to be more immersed so let's go over the history of how storytelling has evolved in terms

095of games so early in the life cycle of games um games in their stories were independent some games featured no stories at all and uh as games evolved though stories started to take place and even though they were separate they were still there most vonner games today have interconnected stories where the gameplay you are doing is the story of the game this is the most connected way to tell a story so an example of uh independent storytelling is Space Invaders what you see on screen on the left is just pixels you are aiming for a high score there's not much of substance but if you look in the game's manual there's actually a lot of descriptions of what is happening and what is being presented in the world that takes place an example of a

096uh story that is separate but starting to get more connected is Mario Brothers as you can see the world is much more colorful and you are able to uh take a gander at what is happening in the game that you are playing there's even flashes of narrative in between uh each level an example of a modern game is Halo uh the original Halo Combat evolve on the Xbox featured uh interconnected storytelling seeing as when you are playing the game there is dialogue happening and what you are doing is very relevant to the story so there are just like mus music movies or books there are different genres of games and each of these games presents a different mode of Storytelling and has a different device that they can use to tell that story even better

097so today I'm going to be going over visual novels role playing games campaigns multiplayer games and open World Games starting with visual novels visual novels are games where you are asked to read and uh respond to dialogue based on what is happening on screen great uh example of this is the game Ace Attorney this is Ace Attorney um as you can see you are presented with dialogue and then asked to make a choice this is a lawyer who you need to help solve cases is since you are helping him solve the case it is much more engaging than say a book where you are just told what is happening in the case you since you are engaging with the dialogue it is more interactive so in the visual novel the most important part is the

098dialogue right so the dialogue increases connectivity between the games since the dialogue is the gaml and the story it is what you are doing and what you are experiencing this leads to the increased immersion uh as I went over earlier and since it is a call to action from the player it makes you more likely to be engaged and attentive and appreciate the story being presented so next up is role playing games more commonly RPGs and the point of these games is mostly to level up your characters in order to defeat enemies in battle and these are really great at representing how the Avatar the character you play is really important and a great way for uh games to tell a story different than maybe other mediums so here are the protagonists for a few

099games on your right is the protagonist for Pokemon notice I said protagonists they do not have a name instead they are what is called a self-insert is expected for you to put your personality into this character and then that in influences how you experience the whole story on the left is IAS from Persona 3 the answer she has a name and she's actually a robot which is unlike all the other characters in the story this unique design allows the character to play as um a character in the story which allows them to be more immersed in that character as opposed to the Pokemon protagonists which allowed them to be more immersed in the overall story since they themselves feel as part of it next I'm going to talk about campaigns campaigns can be thought of

100as like TV shows where there isep one episode after the another like TV so TV shows uh campaigns can differ in how connected the episodes are but differently than TV shows campaigns have the opportunity to present multiple endings multiple endings are future narratives are stories that are created in real time based on the decisions you make a great example of this is Call of Duty Black Ops 2 where what you are doing in each Mission how far you explore what dialog decisions you make and what crucial optional objectives you do not only influence the ending of the game but also other story beats as you play along next is multiplayer games where I'm going to take a look at fortnite which many of you may not know has a story so the main ways that

101multiplayers games can tell their stories are either through text or the environment an example would be Rainbow Six Siege where there are descriptions of characters in menus but not much more more this is not very good at way of Storytelling it does nothing to innovate the way that the story is told nobody wants to read these descriptions and nobody will uh this is in stark contrast to fortnite where the story is happening all the time since it is based on the map you are always playing the changes that happen in the map from week to week and season to season and big live events that happen between large groups of players are able to tell a story in quite a unique way next are open World Games branching off and expanding on the environmental storytelling

102of fortnite is uh one of the most acclaimed games of the last decade Zelda breath of the wild this so in the game there was a an apocalyptic event a 100 years ago that left much of the land in Ruins much like these and the story since there are very few people left the story has to be told through the environment when you explore these ruins it can become evident through deep exploration uh what has happened here a 100 years ago what the rubble says what maybe lying weapons or corpses may tell of what happened it is very immersive since it is the ultimate showing not telling and this is what I see as the future of Storytelling in games so now when I say the word game hopefully you don't think of mindless fun

103with your friends or incredibly untrue statements about violence you think about a story waiting to be told this is my key to unlocking A New [Applause] [Music] Perspective thank you Zach different take on video games all right our third pres presenter for period three is another Zach except this time it's Zach Zachary Emeral Zach is a senior here at Dartmouth High School he plans to study architecture upon graduation Zach is a member of the DHS concert band the marching band and the indoor percussion Ensemble and is involved in dartmouth's finest Zach chose this topic because he has found that many students feel overwhelmed in high school as he has many times in his high school career Zach wanted to share that although people feel overwhelmed at times there are ways to cope and move forward

104please welcome Zachary ameral as he presents clearing your [Applause] inbox to live is to suffer this is a quote from Victor Frankle he was a Jew that survived the Holocaust and when documenting his experiences this was one of the first lines he wrote in his Memoir and looking back now it's easy to see where he's coming from across the world there's events such as War poverty and natural disasters that constantly wreak havoc across people's lives whether they are innocent or not in these disasters people's lives can get uprooted and it can affect them greatly however there is still a silver lying to these things things often times there are heroic actions that emerge such as a great example is the LA wildfires currently going on there's many people volunteering to help fight off these fires

105and people volunteering to try and provide uh Aid to those who suffered not all events have this Silver Lining and while this doesn't lessen the impact of them it does make them a little better however there are often smaller things in our lives that often go without any benefit to them things such as parents grades relationships and many more can still affect us greatly yet they're never mentioned they're the things that go under the radar if this is a little hard to understand how can something smaller such a small event be of Greater impact than something like a natural disaster think about it like this imagine you have a suit of armor if this armor is intact you're happy you're able to live your life go on with things however this armor breaks you're upset

106you can't control yourself and you're miserable for a few days so you're living life with your armor and suddenly bam a major stressor comes along this could be anything such as a pet dying or any other major event this crashes right into your armor and breaks it clean and two so for a few days you are overwhelmed you can't think straight it's all you can think about is this major stressor that's happening and you're like that eventually though you realize that you're okay and life goes on so you go to fix your armor and knowing exactly how it broke this time when you repair it it can be a little bit stronger so that next time a major stressor like this happens again you might be able to pre prevent it from doing as much

107damage to you now in the next scenario instead of having one major stressor come at you you're going to have just a minor stressor something small so it comes at you it hits you and nothing happened right so you go on with your life and another major stress minor stressor sorry comes along that hits your armor and again nothing happened but if you notice nothing isn't actually happening your armor is still taking damage except instead of breaking all at once it's just getting a little chip in it and so this adds up over time you keep going and more stressors come at you keep hitting your armor and while on the outside it looks like you're dealing with it just fine getting on through life it's still wearing away at you and So eventually something

108really it doesn't have to be big could be really small can hit you just in the right place and suddenly your armor is broken so just like before you're upset you can't think straight all you can do is think about what just happened happened and you're stuck like that for a few days eventually you go to put back together your armor but instead of having two pieces now you have a million you don't know what broke what you don't know how to fix it and you're stuck like this for a longer period of time you may think oh is this a result of modern society has our quick-paced lives influenced us to be affected by all of these small things more well that's not always the case according to Columbia University humans themselves are actually

109prone to remembering negative things more than positive things so let's say you get a compliment you'll remember that compliment for a few minutes maybe a couple hours at most before you move on to think of more important things whereas if something negative happens to you whether it's an insult or anything else you can think of you can think about that for days up to weeks on end about that and this makes sense in nature if you're out in the wild you're going to want to remember what's going to eat you versus where's your favorite resting spot so what now I just told you that life's suffering everything's miserable the small stuff's going to wear you away and there's nothing you can do about it because you're hardwired to remember it make your bed this may

110seem kind of odd out of the blue your life's crumbling and you want me to I want you guys to make your bed well this advice is from this man this is Jordan B Peterson a Canadian psychologist and author and instead of asking me this question you might be asking him why does he want me to make my bed well if you can't even clean up your own room who the hell are you to give advice to the world this is his reasoning behind it because if there's those little things that are wearing you away then how are you going to fix those little things without addressing them one at a time so maybe that's what you do you start off small you're even though you have so much to deal with you choose one

111thing clean your bed or make your bed so every morning you wake up and you make your bed that's one thing that you fix that's one thing you now have control over in your life but don't just stop there maybe after you start cleaning your bed you set an alarm so that you wake up at the exact time every day maybe now that you're waking up on time you can now have time to make breakfast and now you're making a routine maybe now that you have routine you might want to write stuff down so you know you're getting to everything so you make a list or a calendar maybe you now are starting to go for runs in the morning it's all of these small things that come together that really make an impact but

112even if this seems like too much even if there's just too much going on even making breakfast is just something that's going to take too much effort all you really need to start with is something as simple as clearing your inbox clearing your inbox is an example of just one way you can get rid of a little bit of clutter in your life just take that little bit of control back and so by doing all of these small things you're picking up the pieces of your life picking up the pieces of your armor and eventually now once you've have all this together you can now put it back together stronger than before and so at the beginning I didn't give you this full quote Victor Frankle said to live is to suffer but to survive

113is to find meaning in the suffering Victor Frankle wanted to show us about perseverance on how even though life isn't always fair to us even though we don't always get what we want it doesn't mean that we can't still have fulfilling lives still can't have good lives so we all struggle and I'm no different even doing this Ted Talk I originally thought that I wasn't going to be able to do it I was so wrapped up with other activities I was doing with my classes with extracurriculars that I actually told the advisers that I was not going to do a TED talk because I didn't think I could do it but then I realized it was those exact things those exact small things that added up and it broke my armor so to fix it

114I did one thing at a time maybe just one thing of homework maybe just plan out my day beforehand maybe just have it so that it's that little bit more of sense of control so that when you do get here it's seems like you've done nothing at all after just those incremental steps so it is important to focus on the small things and those small things have given me a key and that's the key to how I unlock A New Perspective thank you Zach very important message to persevere and clear that inbox all right our last presenter for period three is Grace adma Grace is a senior here at Dartmouth High School who plans to major in Psychology on the Premed track this coming fall she is very involved in our DHS Community she is

115a member of the National Honor Society student council Multicultural club dance team Medical Careers Club Christian fellowship and is secretary of the black student union she's also a member of the tedex DHS Club obviously uh this is her second time presenting with us here at tedex DHS and we are so happy she came back Grace chose her topic because she was inspired by a project which you will she'll talk about uh that she had completed in an art class she finds that many girls struggle with with self-image and want to talk about it please welcome welcome Grace admo as she presents beauty is in the eye of the beholder mirror mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all a famous line from Snow White that has echoed throughout Generations but what does it

116really mean to be the fairest in our daily lives we are constantly told what we should look like what we should wear and how we should act act in order to gain acceptance today I'm here to explore where these standards come from and how they impact us around the world beauty is seen through many different lenses shaped by culture history and Society it is not a single Universal idea as what is considered beautiful in one area may be entirely different in another let's take a look at the United States western cultures have long valued features associated with health symmetry in a polished yet natural appearance in the US and Europe tan skin became a status symbol in the 20th century as only the wealthy could afford vacations and travel Western Beauty often highlights strong defined

117facial structures such as high cheekbones and upter noses celebrities promote a sultry contoured look with full lips bold brows and glowing skin the Kardashians popularized exaggerated curves which increased the demand for procedures like bbls and lipos suction more recently the rise of weight loss shortcuts such as OIC Monaro and movi has sparked speculation about celebrity Transformations reflecting the West's ongoing obsession with the idealized Hollywood figure there's a heavy emphasis on anti-aging with Western Beauty Industries aggressively pushing Botox fillers and various laser treatments to erase signs of it women in Hollywood are pressured to look youthful while men are allowed to age more naturally this reinforces a double standard that extends to the general public additionally Western beauty standards shaped the entertainment industry with Disney favoring eurocentric features for protagonists while exaggerating ethnic traits and villains

118while the West take on beauty may be controversial it is significantly less rigid compared to other regions historic Eastern cultures have emphasized modesty and perfection in China fair skin signified wealth since only those who worked Outdoors had tan skin Korean and Japanese ideals favor delicate youthful features like large eyes and small faces Asian countries prioritize innocence with Korea's ago Japan's Kawaii aesthetic and China's saiao promoting childlike mannerisms and high pitch speech as attractive traits Asian countries heavily stigmatize being on the bigger side the preference for extreme thinness has led to trends like the A4 paper challenge in China where a person's waist should be smaller than the width of an A4 sheet of paper essentially anything above a us- siiz medium is considered plus-size and plus-sized clothing stores in Asia are often marketed with derogatory

119names K-pop Idols set unrealistic beauty standards in Korea their pale and slim appearances dominate the media and fuel public Envy Idol's extreme diets go viral one Idol named Momo from girl group twice said she ate one Ice Cube per day for a week in order to lose 15 PBS and many Koreans try to copy this diet Koreans also seek surgery to resemble Idols commonly requesting double eyelid and Chin procedures for larger eyes and a v-shaped face in addition to these procedures both men and women are introduced to K Beauty at a young age which is the elaborate South Korean skincare approach to achieving Flawless skin unlike the West and East ethnic Beauty focuses on authenticity and cultural heritage in African cultures Beauty has been tied to health fertility and strength body shape is a key

120indicator with curvier and Fuller bodies being celebrated deep melanated skin has historically been admired although some places favor lighter skin due to colonialism glowy skin is preferred throughout and the shea butter Market is thriving to help people accomplish it hair is a defining aspect with braids twists and locks being popular styles with historic Roots natural hairstyles such as afro and coils have also been embraced symbolizing resistance against eurocentric norms Hispanic Beauty ideals also emphasize the hourglass figure which is highlighted by form-fitting clothing their bold and colorful makeup coupled with their confident Nature has fueled the spicy Latina stereotype which portrays Latinas as feisty and leads to unwanted objectification events like the Miss kolita beauty pageant in Bolivia reject this sexualization by placing cultural Pride above sensuality contestants honor their heritage by wearing traditional prera skirts

121Shaws and Bower hats indigenous cultures celebrate long thick hair viewing it as sacred cutting one's hair is typically a sign of mning and transition warm copper and bronze skin tones are a point of Pride and unlike Western beauty standards that promote anti-aging indigenous people show off their wrinkles and gray hair as a sign of wisdom and experience face tattoos piercings and paint are all considered a right of passage and marker of beauty South Asian beauty values big expressive eyes often enhanced with a type of eyeliner called Kel hair is a big indicator of Beauty full eyebrows thick eyelashes and long silky hair are idealized hair oils such as coconut and castor oil are widely used to maintain healthy hair jewelry and other adornments also play a crucial role nose piercings bendies and Bengal are important

122cultural accessories Bridal beauty is particularly elaborate with South Asian weddings featuring intricate HED designs heavily embroidered attire and detailed makeup that highlights the eyes and lips many differences can be seen in the beauty standards of these regions Western beauty is commercialized Eastern Beauty values youth and ethnic Beauty focuses on cultural identity though these areas contrast societal pressures perfectionism and media influence are key similarities several more factors fuel the unrealistic beauty standards of today's society social media is by far the biggest contributor it continuously pushes various Aesthetics for people to follow in order to look good these micr Trends limit individuality as everyone wants to participate much trending right now people feel pressured to keep up and curate themselves to meet expectations social media fuels insecurities by constantly introducing viral Beauty terms that make users fix

123a on perceived flaws and desire Futures they don't have while the terms may seem ridiculous the resulting body dissatisfaction is very real social media also thrives on comparison with Tik Tok comment sections filled with self-deprecating remarks under videos of attractive creators this cycle of negative selft talk is very draining and many fall into this trap big Brands and corporations Fu harmful standards as well Brandy Mel's deceitful one siiz fits-all slogan excludes larger bodies highlighting the gap between inclusive marketing and product reality that other brands partake in too take Mattel's iconic Barbie doll with the message you can be anything Barbie dolls can certainly be doctors and astronauts but for years lacked racial diversity and body variety what example is being set for young girls if only a certain doll can really be anything the beauty

124industry also excludes darker skin tones by offering limited shade ranges often making drastic jumps from light to dark or leaving out deeper Shades altogether despite public criticism Brands rarely make make meaningful changes youth Foria for example face backlash for its lack of inclusivity and responded with a darker shade that looked like this almost as dark as black paint when put side by side completely unrealistic because beyond that the foundation does not have any undertones meaning that no person on earth is this color the foundation quite simply is not a human shade and it is very frustrating for black women to demand inclusivity only to be met with such blatant carelessness Hollywood has a history of ignoring black voices by notoriously casting light skin actors for dark skin roles this racial bias persists and is even

125reflected in Google's algorithms currently over 80% of Google search results for beautiful face or beautiful women feature white women black girls have learned to specify themselves in their searches in order to be reflected in the results by strategically advertising harmful ideals these contributors have reinforced narrow-minded beauty standards here are the effects girls feel immense pressure to change their appearance with 400,000 us teens undergoing cosmetic surgery in 2020 the $8.8 billion skin lightning industry driven largely by women of color reflects Conformity to eurocentric Beauty ideals the average adolescent gets a cell phone at around 12 to 13 which coincidentally is the same age body dysmorphic disorder often begins this disorder causes obsessive focus on appearance children are very impressionable in this stage of life and with such early exposure to social media they are at an

126increased risk of body dissatisfaction a dove study found that most girls have a face editing app by 13 the newer generation is skipping the crucial pre-teen phase of self-expression by appearing older and Desiring high-end products to keep up with current trends Sephora kids refers to young children overspending on skincare and makeup that they ultimately don't need there's a growing pressure to mature quickly and it's impacting Mental Health social media is strongly linked to low self-esteem and eating disorders a study found that 50% of participants changed their diet due to social media and 48% felt judged for their food choices teens with extreme body perceptions are twice as likely to consider or attempt suicide than their quote unquote normal weight peers as you can see beauty standards have caused significant harm but efforts are being made

127to address and change them in response to toxic Beauty ideals Dove's self-esteem project is helping children build a positive self-image Fenty Beauty by Rihanna set a new standard for inclusivity with its diverse shade range especially for darker skin tones the 50 shade foundation lineup promotes Beauty for all inspiring industrywide change the Cosmetic brand Olay has started an initiative called decode the bias to double the number of women in stem with the ultimate goal of eliminating the current racial bias that exists in search engines the social media app be real is encouraging users to share realtime unedited photos efforts to boost self-love online and in real life are increasing some ways you can practice self-love are by engaging with positive content avoiding negative selft talk and treating your body with respect this is the portrait I

128made in art class that shows me in a formal Nigerian dress with braided hair alongside my reflection in school clothes with curly hair the background features pictures of both a Nigerian and African-American headpiece this p portrait represents both sides of my identity showing that neither is more beautiful than the other I embrace my culture and hope you're inspired to see yourself positively as well beauty is in the eye of the beholder and this is my key to unlocking A New [Music] Perspective thank you Grace that is a very important message to send and I'm so glad you did it so this concludes our our period three presentations thank you very much for your kindness have a good day look J can't e e e spe e e good afternoon Welcome to our 10th Ted X

129DHS event the Ted X Club is Trill to present to you this exciting event here at Dartmouth High School this is an independently or organized event this year we have a live audience and will also be broadcast via live stream by the DHS TV media Productions our theme this year is keys to unlocking A New Perspective let's look back of our 10 years with different teams [Music] [Applause] [Music] you may be new to Ted and you may be wondering who is this Ted guy I'm here to tell there isn't a person instead Ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the Ted organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you'll see this the same diversity here in the topics being presented today before we begin we like to ask

130our audience to please be respectful our presenters by keeping electronic devices silenc and refrain from Talking the students have put in a lot of time and effort into their presentations we will start with our first presenter Mikey Burke our first presenter for Pure five is Mike Mikey Burke Mikey is a senior here at Dartmouth High School he is planning to take a gap here to work before attending Johnson New Wales University to study Communications Mikey chose this topic because he researched it for AP research class and he feels very strongly that we should spend more time discussing this issue please welcome Mikey Burke as he presents sexual health literacy good morning bro how many of you remember what you learned in health class I'm put your hand down I'm probably I'm pretty sure the answer

131is not many of you because I know I don't today I'm going to be talking about health literacy um but first I wanted to start with why I'm talking about health literacy I've always had a large interest in human sexuality it is complex and it's nuance and I've always found it so fascinating but my my interest was inspired by Dr Kate Burke who was my mom and her sexuality advocacy and occupational therapy and this interest has led me to my AP research project this year I will also be talking about sex positivity which is a term many of you may not know but the reason why I'm talking about it um is from my time on social media my experience with my peers and the shame that I felt as I've grown up on social

132media I have seen people fighting over different interpretations of their favorite media I've seen younger users shaming adults for being present in online spaces for their favorite media and I've seen these emboldened youth push their righteous opinions onto people growing up in Dartmouth I growing up in Dartmouth I was othered all my life but when I came to Dartmouth High I thought I'd found my people I met people that I thought I would be friends with for the rest of my life but I soon found out that they were just as mean and judgmental as many of my previous peers they made me feel bad about normal feelings that all teenagers experience and this internalized shame led me to project my hurt onto the people I care about so now I wanted to talk about

133health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find understand and use information and services to inform health related decisions and actions for themselves and others health literacy is important because uh low levels of health literacy have been related to poor health outcomes like increased hospitalizations and in incomplete understandings of medical issues a study published in um looked at the health literacy and health empowerment differences between gen Z and older generations and they found that older Generations prefer traditional media like magazines and newspapers interpersonal connections like friends and family and Healthcare Providers as main sources for health information whereas gen Z individuals exclusively preferred online resources barriers to health information include reading level most medical resources are written at a higher reading level than the average American can understand Miss and disinformation

134many Americans have a hard time Discerning Miss and disinformation from the truth and unlike genz many adults lack the computer skills to Access Health Resources but genz individuals have difficulty with media literacy and factchecking abilities other barriers to health information include medical jargon blocks of text lack of visuals and clinical terminology all of which make it difficult to understand health information sexual health education is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality this is the DHS sex head sex ed curriculum day it is it consists of five days day one and two is spent on anatomy and reproductive Health day three goes over gender and sexual orientation day four is spent on reproduction and team pregnancy and day five is the beginning of the sock baby project so these are the mass Massachusetts state standards

135for sexual health and it states that sexual education is not required by schools or schools are not required to instruct about health education like this um and if sex education is offered it must explain the benefits of abstinence it is not required to teach about gender identity or sexual orientation and they are not required to teach about consent there are two main types of sex education absence education focuses on the benefits of abstinence and comprehensive education teaches all aspects of human sexuality such as Anatomy consent sexual orientation gender identity and interpersonal relationships a study done on science direct found that abstinence education does not significantly reduce teen pregnancy or the likelihood of intercourse whereas comprehensive education does reduce both teen pregnancy and the likely of intercourse another study on science direct found that qualities of

136comprehensive sex sex education are sexual diversity intimate partner violence prevention development of healthy relationships prevention of child sex abuse improved social emotional learning and increased media literacy fosy which is an education advocacy group published the national sex education standards in 2020 and this document lays out important education resources like theoretical Frameworks characteristics of effective sex education and standard standards organized by grade level for example these are K through2 Core Concepts laid out in that document and as you can see it is age appropriate and simple language that is easy to understand that lays out the importance of defining consent and personal boundaries as well as being able to name your body parts this is an example of the gr the grade 3 through five Core Concepts and again it's simple but they're very important to

137building long life relation um lifetime relationships sex positivity is having or promoting an open tolerant or Progressive attitude towards sex and sexuality qualities of sex positivity include prioritizing safety setting and respecting boundaries communication and honesty body positivity reducing shame and encouraging enjoyment and these qualities are important because they ensure safety and enjoyment for all parties it reduces shame and anxiety promotes education and knowledge and and generates open-mindedness and how are these how are sex education sex positivity and sexual health literacy all connected this is a map that I made that expresses how Sexual Health touches all aspects of Our Lives it affects our relationships how we interact with others and the importance we bring to education think connection education leads to knowledge which leads to safety and this includes health literacy um building healthy relationships

138and practicing safe sex awareness of ourselves and the issues around us leads to empathy for others which removes removes shame promotes kindness and sex positivity so how did we get here because a lot of gen Z gets our information from the internet online Trends and behaviors have a lot of power over us and over the last 5 to 10 years there has been a rise in ignorance and a lack of curiosity in a world of confirmation bias and belief perseverance we are often not looking for new ideas and we are often only getting our information from sources we know we already agree with not only that but there has been an incre increase of in censorship of uncomfortable ideas so not only are we not always getting the right information but controversial information is often

139hidden from us and we're not allowed to understand the full scope of the world another factor that leads to chaos online is the ability to be completely Anonymous anyone has the ability to say anything often without consequences and this contri Utes to the lack of empathy and misinformation online if we continue on this path of censorship we will lack in-depth and formal instruction that back that sets student back both educationally and socially continued Reliance on internet sources would causes great um causes a lot of error and bias and we will never gain the important qualities of sex education like media literacy violence prevention and a curiosity that fuels life and this is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank you Mikey for informing us on the very important um topic here our second presenter

140for uh this period is Desmond wait Desmond is a junior here at DHS Desi is a member of the forensic and Debate Club he plans to major in political science and minor in economics upon graduation he is very interested in politics and chose his topic Because he believes the misinformation is what is currently causing much of the issues in politics please welcome desm way as he presents how political bias affects interpretation of [Applause] data now when we talk about this subject it's important to talk about the relationship between data and bias you might think that it's a one-way relationship where it's either data just affecting bias or bias just affecting data but in reality it's more of a circular relationship with both bias affecting your interpretation of data and your interpretation of data affecting your

141bias bias can affect your interpretation of data by making you only consume information from something that's either one political Source or it can or it can also cause you to look at that data incorrectly additionally your interpretation of data can reaffirm biases and cause them to be stronger if you are interpreting false information and are becoming less informed now when we talk about bias it's important to talk about how the repetition of information affects this bias a study on prior exposure titled prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news from 2018 by Gordon Penny cook Tyrone Cannon and David ran um took a group of subjects and gave them 12 headline news headlines and then these subjects were familiarized with these headlines and basically just shown these headlines multiple times later they were assessed on

142these headlines but also on 12 headlines they had never seen before and what did showed was that people who had the the St the headlines that people had already seen were much more likely for people to think that they are true than the headlines that they had not seen before and the second part of this study um did the same thing as part one but one week later um assessed these subjects again with those 12 previous headlines as well as 12 new ones what this this showed was that people's belief of headlines they had already seen further increased after this one week now what this kind of shows is how prior exposure and how repeatedly seeing information can affect your view on it if you are continuously shown the information regardless of whether or not

143it's true you going to be far more likely to believe it as true this study in found in fact that prior exposure doubled the perceived accuracy of news headlines compare to headlines never seen before now when we talk about bias it's also important to talk about the effects of social media um social media has done a great job at spreading information um and allowing more people to access information but what it also has done has caused a lot of misinformation to be spread Chen Shing wrote in the spread of misinformation on social media what contributes to it and how to combat it that misinformation from social media was the largest source of misinformation during the 2020 and 2024 elections this information we get through social media is really hard to validate oh sorry is really

144hard to see if it's true or not and it's really important that we are double-checking that information if we look at a variet if we check our information against other sources it becomes a lot easier to see whether or not that information is true or not additionally we want to check the credibility of the sources we are looking at figuring out whether or not they are trustworthy and they can be seen to show continuously show True information um again talking about variety of sources if we look at sources from multiple viewpoints and multiple multiple political stances it is a lot easier to find true information because you can continuously check information from One Source against information from another source and find the most factual information now when we're looking at information it's important to check

145if we are participating in confirmation bias confirmation bias is when you only look for facts and evidence that pertain to your beliefs if you are looking online and you only look at um sources that have the same political leaning as your own as the political leaning that you have yourself you're going to be um confirming your own bias and not really looking for true information but instead looking for information that is again going to confirm your bias a big example of this can be seen in citizenship and the effective political parties if you continuously look for information that is under your political party and you're not looking at any information from the other side you are going to be confirming your own bias you're going to be repeatedly looking at information that already shows you

146that already says that you are true without taking into account whether or not the information you're looking at is in fact true now there is a big difference between how we look at political information and how we look at non-political information a study by Dan cahan titled motivated uh reasoning and enlightened self-government gave um basically tested people on their numeracy so or their ability to look at numbers and compute numbers and gave people a set of non-political information um this was a this was basically just a table saying showing a skin cream and whether or not it is going to be beneficial to improving a rash um and what this and what PE they saw from this was that regardless of political party people were generally pretty able to differentiate whether or not that skin

147creep helped the rash it made it made sense people who had higher numeracy people who are better able to compute with numbers were better able to look at this question regarding numbers but then when they changed this information and made it a little bit more political and instead of talking about skin cream and whether or not it improved a rash they talked about gun control laws and whether or not it increased or decreased crime they actually found that people had a lot harder time of looking at this Democrats often times um would would look at the data and regardless of what it showed would think that it that gun laws decreased crime in an area even if the data showed that gun laws um increased crime in in the area and Republicans would often look

148at the data and think that gun crime increased um sorry gun control inre increased gun crime in a given area even if it in fact decreased gun crime in a given area now what this shows is how partian ship can blind us and cause us to be misinformed if we are consistently looking at information from um a specific political Source we can become biased and when we look at information our bias will spread into that information and change how we look at it think about how people who didn't look at who looked at non-political information were pretty effectively able to do it who were pretty effectively able to figure out whether or not you know it helped the rash while people who looked at the political information of gun control and gun lies were blinded

149by their partisanship and often times just chose the answer that validated their own beliefs now how can misinformation be fixed what can we do to solve this issue now a big thing that helps people a big thing that can cause misinformation to not happen is being open to other points of view making sure that you're looking at a variety of sources making sure that you take into take into account information from the other side of the political Spectrum if you are going to consistently absorb information that only confirms your own biases you're going to have a really hard time figuring out whether or not the information you're getting is true and will therefore become misinformed this is the key to preventing misinformation by making sure you're looking at multiple sources being open to being open

150to other points of view and making sure you keep your biases in check this is my key this is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank [Applause] you thank you thasmin for providing us with good information there on that topic our next presenter is ashon spella Ashton is a junior year at Dartmouth High School and has been involved in tedx the HS Club since her fresh his freshman year we are so happy to have him back with us this year additionally Ashton is also involved in many other activities here at DHS he is the co-president of the robotics Club a member of the math theme a member of the Dartmouth High School Marching Band Ashton chose his topic because he loves to travel and wherever he goes He obtains money from the location for

151his collection Ashton has had extensive collection of currency from around around the world upon graduation Ashton plans to major in Pharmacy please welcome Ashton spella as he presents Money [Applause] Talks money is something we see every day not only that money is something we use almost daily but do we ever stop and wonder what's on our money money is all over the world there are currently 108 different currencies but what makes each of them unique is the way they're designed each currency has its own images on their bills and dollars that make it that are important to their people in the US we use the United States dollar well we do have many different bills and coins the one I'm going to talk about is the $10 bill on the front of the bill is

152Alexander Hamilton he was a founding father who served in the military he was an advocate of the Constitution and helped draft it he was also the first secretary of treasure and created the American Financial system on both sides of Hamilton there are two torches which are meant to be like the one the Statue of Liberty holds it is a symbol of freedom and on the back of the bill you see a building it is the United States Treasury building the next currency I'm going to talk about is the Canadian dollar this first bill is a $2 bill from 1986 on the front is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II the reason Queen Elizabeth II is on a Canadian dollar is because this bill is a part of the Commonwealth to her right is the Parliament

153building and to her left is the cat of arms on the back there's two Robins as this bill is a part of the birds of Canada Series this bill was taken out of circulation and stopped being printed in 1996 as it was replaced with a $2 coin more popularly known as the tuni this is the five Canadian dollar bill on the front is a portrait of s Will William L Laurier who was prime minister from 1896 to 1911 he was a member of parliament for 45 years and was the leader of the liberal party for 32 of those in the clear part to his right is the West block of parliament's original construction its name is the McKenzie Tower after Canada's second prime minister Alexander McKenzie on the back you see the cad arm 2

154which is about 56 ft long it's a robotic arm that was used to build the International Space Station and was Canada's contribution to the project it's astronaut represents all Canadians that contributed to the space program and research done on the International Space Station the only identifying mark on this astronaut is the Canadian flag patch you see there another common currency is the pound it's the official currency of the United Kingdom as well as its territories this is the 10 pound bill a major part of the pound is that the bills Chang with each new queen or King the bill on the bottom has a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II notes with her name came into circulation in 1960 and are still currently in circulation after King Charles II was crowned on June 5th 2024 fils

155with his portrait came into circulation although the front changed the back remained the same the woman you see on the back is Jane Austin she was an English novelist known for her six novels where she criticized and commented on the English land Gentry they were a social class of wealthy land owners that lacked Royal titles these two coins you see here are Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee coin and a half crown these coins are no longer in circulation but I feel as though they're important this coin was made to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II which takes place during the 25th year of her Reign there were 37 m616 of these coins made of which I own two on one side is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II riding horse which as she was

156known for her love of horses made this design a bit more personal on the other side there's a symbol symbolic design that represents the coronation you see the crown and the spoon coming together the half crown on the other hand has a portrait of King George I 6 he is most known for his achievements during the second world war he visited severely bombed areas which caused him to gain popul it on the back of this coin is a shield with crowned Monograms on both sides the euro is a very popular currency used in many of the countries AP part of the European Union these countries include Austria Belgium Croatia Cyprus Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy lva Lithuania Luxembourg Malta the Netherlands Slovakia Slovenia Portugal and Spain the bill you see now is the

15710 euro bill on Euro bank notes you see windows and doorways which symbolize a spirit of openness and cooperation on the back of the notes there are bridges which symbolize communication between Europeans but also Europeans in the rest of the world what makes each build different though is the architectural styles used on the 10 euro note you see a romanes style romanes is known for having thick walls rounded arches pillars decorative arcading and large towers on the 5eo note though you see a change in the architecture this is called classical architecture this style originated in ancient Greece and Rome classical architecture is known for symmetry proportion windows pediments and columns pesos are another important currency primarily seen in South America the pesos I'm going to be look at are from Mexico but other countries use

158pesos as well these countries include Argentina Chile colia Cuba the Dominican Republic the Philippines and Uruguay the first bill is the 5,000 peso bill it is dedicated to the nios Heros who were six teenage military cadetes that died defending Chapel toit Castle from US forces in 1847 those are the six men you see right there the back of the bill there's Chapel to pick Castle as well as a heroic Military Academy badge the next bill is a 100 peso bill and is the 2009 issue on the front you see a portrait of neak Kota who was the 15th century ruler of Texas Coco on the back you see the largest city in pre-colombian Mexican called tenot chitlan the next currency I'm going to talk about is the Frank there are many different kinds of Franks

159these two coins are Swiss Franks the Frank on the left is from 2009 on the back is a wreath with the amount and year inside of it on the front is helvetica a symbol of Switzerland in her left hand is a shield with the Swiss cross in the center and in her right hand is a lance the other coin is a five Frank coin from 1977 on the front is a hooded male figure that represents an Alpine herdsman on the back you see the coat of arms of Switzerland with a shield surrounded by wreaths these two coins are French Franks which are no longer in circulation the coin on the left is a five Frank coin from 1949 on the front you see a lurette head of maranne which is a national symbol of France

160on the other side is a wreath with the value and date in it the other French Frank is from 1975 on the front is a figure scattering seeds and soil and on the back there's a branch dividing the DAT in denomination the next currency is the Zimbabwean dollar this bill is a $50 trillion bill the government had to print bills worth this much due to hyperinflation where prices of food rapidly increaseed and the government had to match market prices on the back of this bill is the Kuba Dam which split its hydroelectric power between the North Zambia power plant and the zth Zimbabwe power plant there's also an elephant which is the largest living land mammal on the planet on the front is the trimba balancing rocks which was a common symbol on Zimbabwean Bank

161notes in 2009 though this currency was B abandoned as an official currency and in 2015 was demonetized for a while Zimbabwe used the United States dollar and others as a currency until in 2019 the reserve BAC of Zimbabwe replaced this multiple currency system with a new Zimbabwean dollar but the United States dollar is still used there and is actually used in many countries the United States dollar is the primary currency in Bonaire St Estus Inaba Ecuador El Salvador Paulo the Marshall Islands the Federate States of Micronesia Panama the British Virgin Islands the Turks and Kos Islands East Tour and Zimbabwe it is also an additional currency in Aruba the Bahamas Barbados biz Bermuda Cambodia Canada the Cayman Islands Costa Rica curau Guatemala Honduras Jamaica Lebanon Liberia Mexico Myanmar Nicaragua St kits and na St Martin

162Martin and Vietnam there are several reasons that countries use the United States dollar one reason is that the US dollar is the primary Reserve currency in the world many central banks across the globe hold portions of their reserves in US dollars International Trade transactions are largely conducted using US Dollars this simplifies transactions and reduces exchange risk key Commodities which are raw materials that are used to manufacture consumer goods like gold and oil are also usually priced in US Dollars when values of the dollar fluctuate it can have an impact on global commodity prices due to its stability it is also often used for international Investments and savings the value of the dollar can also affect global exchange rates affecting global trade investment and economic stability another reason is that International loans and credits are oftentimes

163denominated in US Dollars this can also apply to sovereign debt or national debt well there are mared different currencies each is unique and important to their countries in their own way and this is my key to unlocking A New [Applause] Perspective thank you ashon for ing the different money around the world uh very interesting our last presenter for today is Lea Leila is a junior here at Dartmouth High School and this is her first year as a member of tedex DHS Club additionally she is part of DHS Orchestra and plays the piano Lea chose her topic for her Tad um tedex talk because she remember her mom talking about trauma and the Vegas nerve and didn't know how much she wanted to this led Lea to research more about the topic and to peque her

164interest in learning about trauma and how impacts the way we act please welcome Leila as she presents mind and body the silent [Applause] response okay I am sure that most of you have presented sometime in your life your stomach starts doing flips your hands get sweaty and you can't breathe this physical feeling descri describes the Mind and Body Connection if my body has this reaction to me just presenting imagine what trauma can do to the body before I go into how trauma affects you I have to tell you what trauma is so what is trauma according to the American Psychiatric association trauma is actual or threatened death Serious injury or sexual violence this was the re this was the understanding for so long but does it go further than that the re understanding of trauma

165Bessel Vander a psychiatrist and author defines trauma as not just an event that happened sometime in the past it's the imprint on the Mind Body and brain this imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to live in the present so there are two types of trauma big trauma and litty trauma big trauma can consist of abuse being a victim of natural disaster or being in the war littley trauma can be verbal abuse legal trouble being a victim of divorce or watching somebody else experience trauma just because it is little trauma does not mean it it is any less it just means that is overlooked when talking about trauma so trauma affects trauma affects you in three different ways your brain relationships and body it affects your brain in three ways the brain

166stem which controls survival function is also called The Reptilian Brain the lyic system which controls the emotion part of you and social behaviors and the prefrontal cortex that controls rational thinking and decision-making trauma impacts these big three things and stops you from thinking rationally the second thing is relationships trauma gets in the way of relationships because of its self-destructive behaviors all of their energy goes into suppressing all the trauma that happened and no energy goes into to putting effort into the relationship brain and relationships with trauma have been studied and without this last part the body we miss the whole part of trauma the most important thing about trauma is how it affects you so the studies on the body have been more recent people assume when you talk about trauma it only affects the

167brain but the body is where the trauma takes root it finds your way into every cell and your body responds with symptoms like weight gain knee pain fibromyalgia autoimmune disease and back pain these symptoms can be the after effect of unresolved trauma trauma and physical health many people didn't know how much trauma affect you until the 1990s when the leader of a obesity Clinic Dr Fetti noticed that his patients either regained the weight that they lost or dropped out because it was too hard all of these were connected with childhood trauma so this led him to think is obesity and other physical symptoms a way that trauma takes roote and this led to the launch of the ace study so what does ace stand for adverse child experiences this is a questionnaire that consists of

168questions about abuse neglect and househo dysfunction this these questions indicate if you have disease later in life and it turns out three and four high school students have had an ace in the past and these stats were the leading causes of death like cancer diabetes and heart disease therefore the body keeps a score of trauma leading to these consequences there are many different types of trauma treatment like medication and then top down therapy this is working with the brain to deal with what happened the newer treatment like bottom up works with the biology using sematic treatments we feel emotions through our physical heart our gut and our muscles so with bottom up we can resolve emotions through your body there are two types of your nervous system the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system the

169parasympathetic controls is the break of your body it makes your muscles relax you breathe and your heart starts to slow down the sympathetic nervous system is the body's accelerator fight or flight and your heart starts beating that's why in yoga when you take exhales the teacher tells you to pay attention to it because this calms you down the vegus nerve this is the biggest component of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system it runs through your body taking info from the outside world and putting it to your brain when your body's under stress the vagus nerve sends signals to your organs saying that there is a threat and the way to treat this inflammation is by stimulating the vagus nerve this can be humming breathing and facial expressions EMDR EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization

170reprocessing this replicates what happens in deep Sleep in deep Sleep we have something called REM rapid eye movement this is when we process things throughout the day the creator of RDR figured this out by recalling the pain from memories and moving her eyes back and forth this made these memories less painful and this made makes the patients realize yes this happened a long time ago and it's not happening right now another therapy is EFT emotional Freedom therapies this is also called tapping you tap the side of your hand your eyebrow under your eye your collar bone and the crown of your head EFT is about processing emotions and not suppressing them this is taking control of your body the use of these new practices going back to New York September 2001 911 experts recommended that

171they use cognitive therapies and hospitals set up free therapy for these people but nobody showed up Dr Spencer a therapist asked the people what did they do to cope instead they used acupuncture massage yoga and EMDR so safety and environment this is a big part of healing so imagine a kid gets bit by a dog this is a scary situation but if the parent says I see you're in bad shape let me help you the dog bite is not an issue anymore because the found the foundation of safety is not destroyed if your environment is supportive the trauma if the environment is not supportive the trauma can take root because we didn't get the help that we needed mind and body trauma is not a story that happened back then it's the current imprint of

172pain inside of you the new discovery of trauma of how the trauma affects the body are revolutionizing trauma support and helping people with chronic conditions and this is the first step into knowing your body and this is my key to unlocking A New Perspective thank you Ila that was a wonderful presentation um we would like to uh close our day this concludes our presentations for T xdhs 2025 however there are many people who have assisted with us with this conference that we would like to recognize we would like to thank the following people for their continued support uh of of our efforts principal Ryan Shay assistant principal Mike Martin Graham kouan please hold your applauses DCTV media and especially Mr Peter Chase whose work with the sound has been prival part of T Ted X

173DHS for the past 10 years Mr Rob perard and the DHS TV media student um pery nandu Molly Bell Arie Park Mason Lango and Ben Smith for their help with a filming of the conference and the live streaming of today's presentations our crew that is working hard behind the scenes Emma cavaro Abigail Lima Kevin Oliver and Trinity sington for their help with the tech and lighting our instructional technology specialist Jess brittingham for her help with a bunch of Technology library media specialist Megan Tully for her assistance with posters and for allowing us to use the LMC art teacher Morgan Morgan Boart for her help with one of our presentations as you saw Miss Harmony Pyers and her team in the cafeteria for their help with today's food our custodial staff led by Richie Pereira for

174their help with the a lot of the logistics of today and of course our biggest Thanks goes out to our presenters without their hard work and perseverance this entire conference would not be possible and we are proud of your efforts and we look forward to seeing our underclassman joining tedex DHS 2026 thank you all right for