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My earliest recollection of learning something on my own was the summer before my freshman year of high school when I created a Codecademy account and started coding. My first class was in HTML, and I completed the course in a few days. Being able to create something as simple as a page of headers, paragraphs and links was rewarding. I soon learned CSS, JavaScript and jQuery. With that functionality, I created a blackjack computer game for my own personal use. Building a game motivated me more, and I then created a basic 2-dimensional shooter game using Java. Free YouTube videos provided me with the sufficient foundation.
When my freshman year of high school began, I became too caught up with extracurricular activities to code. My knowledge of programming languages slowly declined, and when my desktop stopped working, I permanently lost the small projects I had created.
High school led me in new directions. I moved away from computer science and towards international relations and politics. I participated in Model United Nations and read The Economist regularly. My curiosity and pursuit of personal projects, though, hadn’t faded. I switched from coding languages to foreign languages, teaching myself Spanish beyond my course level. I was even able to skip a year of formal Spanish instruction
The following summer, I self-studied French vocabulary and grammar intensively. My independent French learning continued throughout my junior year. Having exhausted my school’s Spanish offerings, I took a French placement test and the AP French Language and Culture course as a senior. My language learning drive persisted, and I can now read and write in Arabic.
Always searching for new personal projects, I decided during the second semester of my senior year of high school that I would give independent research a try. Never having been exposed to formal research, I worked with a research mentor and produced an international relations research paper which analyzed both English and Arabic news sources. I had no background in research, and I was surprised to find myself more than capable of writing a paper. I’ve since realized that independent research is very popular among high school students, and the major barrier is finding support.
I highly recommend that high school students produce research papers, using Jinso to find a research mentor. Jinso is a social networking site for researchers, connecting anybody interested in writing a paper with a professor as an advisor. Research can be done in any field that interests a student, and Jinso connects students with mentors who share similar interests.
I found all of my personal projects rewarding, but research tops my list. Computer science has an appeal to some students, and foreign languages have an appeal to another subset. Research is applicable to everyone because it can be done in any field. Research is also the most likely personal project to have a tangible output that can be shared and read. While personal projects are worth pursuing for their own sake, the validation received for research in the college applications process is an added benefit.
If I were back in high school, I would join Jinso and dive into a research project with a mentor. There are so many many academic paths to explore, and infinitely many ideas that can form the basis of a paper’s argument. Jinso is the most accessible and relevant way to pursue a personal project meaningful to both you and the world.
High school is supposed to provide a foundation for further education and the real world. I’ve just discovered that real growth and preparation comes through one’s own pursuits, not the classroom.
GitHub is a popular platform used by computer scientists to manage their collaborative projects, but a similar program does not exist for academic work. There is no standard platform to create work, connect with others, and share work in one place. Most platforms only fall into one or two of these categories.The Jinso collaboration tool is a better way for groups to work on projects. By bringing the entire academic collaboration process onto one tool, it simplifies workflows and communication.The first steps for using the Jinso platform are:
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects. Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time.
Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects.
Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time. Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
When a new Project is created, an initial revision must be shared. This can either be plain text or a PDF.
The Project will be immediately visible to all Group members with the first revision shown. Group members can comment on the revision with questions or feedback, and others can reply to comments.When another revision of the paper has been completed, the Group admin can add a new revision to the same Project.
The revision will become visible above the prior revision, and it will have a new comment box associated with it. Projects make it simple to keep track of a paper’s entire revision history and discussions at each stage.
For each revision, Group admins can also create subtasks. Arrows allow Group members to view all of the different subtasks and comment on them individually. Subtasks allow a paper to be analyzed in unique components. For example, a research paper can have a unique subtask for each of its sections, and collaborators can discuss them all separately in the comment boxes. Jinso is a quicker way to collaborate on long-term projects. It makes it easier to connect, share, and manage the development of ideas and papers. You can create a Jinso account and start using the platform today for your research and academic needs at jinso.io.
My earliest recollection of learning something on my own was the summer before my freshman year of high school when I created a Codecademy account and started coding. My first class was in HTML, and I completed the course in a few days. Being able to create something as simple as a page of headers, paragraphs and links was rewarding. I soon learned CSS, JavaScript and jQuery. With that functionality, I created a blackjack computer game for my own personal use. Building a game motivated me more, and I then created a basic 2-dimensional shooter game using Java. Free YouTube videos provided me with the sufficient foundation.
When my freshman year of high school began, I became too caught up with extracurricular activities to code. My knowledge of programming languages slowly declined, and when my desktop stopped working, I permanently lost the small projects I had created.
High school led me in new directions. I moved away from computer science and towards international relations and politics. I participated in Model United Nations and read The Economist regularly. My curiosity and pursuit of personal projects, though, hadn’t faded. I switched from coding languages to foreign languages, teaching myself Spanish beyond my course level. I was even able to skip a year of formal Spanish instruction
The following summer, I self-studied French vocabulary and grammar intensively. My independent French learning continued throughout my junior year. Having exhausted my school’s Spanish offerings, I took a French placement test and the AP French Language and Culture course as a senior. My language learning drive persisted, and I can now read and write in Arabic.
Always searching for new personal projects, I decided during the second semester of my senior year of high school that I would give independent research a try. Never having been exposed to formal research, I worked with a research mentor and produced an international relations research paper which analyzed both English and Arabic news sources. I had no background in research, and I was surprised to find myself more than capable of writing a paper. I’ve since realized that independent research is very popular among high school students, and the major barrier is finding support.
I highly recommend that high school students produce research papers, using Jinso to find a research mentor. Jinso is a social networking site for researchers, connecting anybody interested in writing a paper with a professor as an advisor. Research can be done in any field that interests a student, and Jinso connects students with mentors who share similar interests.
I found all of my personal projects rewarding, but research tops my list. Computer science has an appeal to some students, and foreign languages have an appeal to another subset. Research is applicable to everyone because it can be done in any field. Research is also the most likely personal project to have a tangible output that can be shared and read. While personal projects are worth pursuing for their own sake, the validation received for research in the college applications process is an added benefit.
If I were back in high school, I would join Jinso and dive into a research project with a mentor. There are so many many academic paths to explore, and infinitely many ideas that can form the basis of a paper’s argument. Jinso is the most accessible and relevant way to pursue a personal project meaningful to both you and the world.
High school is supposed to provide a foundation for further education and the real world. I’ve just discovered that real growth and preparation comes through one’s own pursuits, not the classroom.
