Movie Part 2

    Today we got deeper into our movie about the Sudanese Civil War. The movie is about 3 people that moved to America. Their names are John, Panther, and Daniel. John was moved to Syracuse, New York by himself while Panther and Daniel were sent to Pittsburgh to live together. None of these guys have seen a lot of things that we find normal like showers, lamps, light switches, refrigerators etc. And they don't understand many things about food. For example they were eating butter and mayonnaise out of the package and obviously that wouldn't taste very good, so they didn't like the food. Now they have to focus on how to get jobs and continue living where they are and possibly help their family come there too. I'm looking forward to finishing the movie tomorrow to see how they adapt to all these new things coming at them.

Test Review and Movie!

           Today in class we got our tests handed back to us and reviewed them, and if you received an A on the test, the bell was rung for you. Then we went over answers, and the question I got wrong was about who had the most immigrants between Canada, US, and Mexico. I chose US but the answer was Canada. After we went over our test, we began watching a movie about the Sudan Civil War. The movie talked about how the north Sudan government tried to kill all male children no matter what age. This caused all the children to flee to a refugee camp in Kenya. They had to survive off of very scarce food and water for weeks. Most of them formed make-shift families and took care for one another. I assume we are watching the rest of the movie next class and it looks like it will lead to an intriguing discussion.

First test and Sudanese Civil War

       Today we had our first test and I thought it was SUPER easy. I think I did exceptionally well on it. Now we are moving on to our second unit. Our first assignment is to get facst on the Sudanese Civil War.

• Lasted from 1983-2005.
• Millions of people died from famine, disease, and the war.
• Caused partly from racial a religious differences.
• Another cause is because southern Sudan was not included in important negotiations.
• In 1972 Christian missionaries were expelled and christian schools were closed.    
• Southern protester were attacked by the government which lead to fights and grew to a full scale civil war.
• Southern Sudan has more access to water because of the Nile river, and it has more resources of oil and is much more fertile than the north where most of their border is the Sahara desert.
• The south decided to maintain the resources where they live and not share with the north and. contributed to war.
• Sudanese refugees also wanted revenge on the government fro being kicked out of their own country. 

TEST ON MONDAY!

     So Monday is our first test of the year for human geography. In class on Friday we reviewed a lot of material from all our previous classes and talked about what kind of questions were going to be on the test. The test is going to include just about everything we have talked about in class, like The Message to Garcia, the CIA world factbook, population statistics like growth rate, total fertility rate, rate of natural increase gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita. Also, I am going to have to know all of the terms we had from ancient Greece, Socrates, The Socratic method, arete, polis, 508 b.c, and agora. Plus, we are going to have to know some stuff about our classmates' presentations on their assigned country, so it seems like I have a good amount of studying to do, but I think I'm going to do well on the test.

Presentation Day

      Today we started off class by finishing our google presentations even though we were supposed to have it it done by today, but Mr. Schick let it slide because when he left to get his cart we all willingly moved the desks into our group formations. So after we worked for about 15 minutes we began sharing. The first group did their presentation on Thailand. I learned that it has a fairly well life expectancy at around 70-75 years. The next group to go up did their presentation on Nigeria. They said Nigeria was a developing country because it has a very high unemployment rate, a low life expectancy, and it has a fast growing population. Then my group performed. We had Stoots go up and present our assignment to the class while I searched up answer for question Mr. Schick asked and Stoots didn't know the answer to, which I was extremely good at. Sometimes i would answer his question before he asked it. But beside the fact, I think we did a very good job on our presentation and I fell confident we will receive a good grade on it.

Google Presentation

    Today in class we finally didn't really have a discussion which is a little different from previous classes. Instead, today we began a project telling whether some countries around the world were developed or not. My group and I, chose the country Italy. To tell whether a country is developing or not, you have to find certain facts about the country like what type of government it has, its'  population, and what its' medical care is like. So, our group got together and worked on the project for the entire class.

Populatoin

    Today our discussion was all about population and what things change population, what things effect population of certain areas, and many more things. Something else we talked about was crude birth and death rate and how the difference between them make up the rate of natural increase. We also talked about how the population of the world has sky rocketed exponentially. For example, in the early 1800's there was about 1 billion people in the world and that took 10,000 years to happen. Then 100+ years later that 1 billion doubled. Then, 100 years later, that 2 billion becomes 7 billion. Plus we discussed push and pull factors of countries, the difference between immigrants and emigrants, and the difference between developed nations and developing nations. Developed naion are nation like the US, we have good health care and government and things are mutual. Whereas countries like India and China are developing countries because they still have changes to be made. Developing countries are also where a majority of our population. The two largest countries in the world by population are both developing countries.

Interesting Fact Discussion

      Friday in class we shared our two most interesting topics from the "Did You Know 3.0" video. We talked about how some of these facts show how fast the world is growing in many ways. For example, Apple is now the largest company in all of history and its hasn't even been invented for 10 years. Things like technology are such a major part of how the world functions today, and without it, we would not have grown nearly as much. We use technology to communicate to people all the way across the world. Another fact we talked about was the size of Facebook and how if it were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world with about 845 million users. This is very amazing because it's so many people from all around the world on ONE social network. Many other facts from the video just all show how the world is growing and what seems like the best new thing today is going to be forgotten about tomorrow because of new inventions and such great technological growth.

Did You Know 3.0

        Thursday in class we were told to watch the video "Did You Know 3.0" and everybody was told to pick out two facts from the video and explain why it was interesting to them. One thing I thought was interesting was how we are preparing for jobs that haven't been invented yet. This is interesting to me because this demonstrates how fast things are moving in the world today. For example, Apple is the largest company in all of history and wasn't even a company a decade ago. Another fact that surprised was was that a weeks worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in the 18th century. This is interesting because it shows how information back then did not get spread very far or very quickly and now, when something happens, people know about it (depending on the importance) within the next few hours or days. Whereas back then, by the time someone received the information about something it has probably became false. So these facts show how change is over time and how technology is a big part of the world today.

The 21st Century

     Today in class we reviewed our CIA Factbook questions from yesterday. History is changing every instant. Someone is being born, someone is dying, the population is constantly changing, countries are growing, and history is almost instantly outdated. Technology is rapidly growing in many countries, but some other countries that is not the case. Also, many countries depend on one another for the transporting of goods like oil and many, many other things that we get from China. We learned that the reason we buy good from China is because it is a lot more cheaper if we were to make them nd sell them. That is because the minimum that someone can be paid in the US is 7.50$ an hour. So if we were to have people make the goods they would be sold at a lot higher price because some of the price is based off of the payment of the workers. But in China, there is no legal payment amount. This means they can do the job for a much more cheaper price.

CIA World Factbook

1. What is the population of the United States? 313,847,456

2. What are the five largest countries in the world, by population? China, India, US, Indonesia, Brazil.

3. What is the population of Pakistan? 190,291,129

4. What kind of government does the United States have? Democracy

5. What is the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe? 80%

6. What is the largest country in the world by area? Russia

7. What country has the third greatest number of airports? Mexico

8. What country has the greatest number of exports? China
9. What country exports more oil than any other? Saudi Arabia
10. What country imports more oil than any other? United States
11. What country consumes more oil than any other? United States
12. Can women serve in combat roles in China’s military? Yes
13. What is GDP? Gross Domestic Product.
14. What country has the highest GDP per capita in the world, and how much is it? Liechtenstein, $141,100.
15. Is the US in the top ten for GDP per capita? No
16. Most of the countries with the highest birth rates can be found in what continent? Asia
17. 11 of the top 12 countries with the highest number of deaths from HIV/AIDS can be found in which continent? Africa
18. What other country is in the top ten? India
19. Where does the US rank in HIV/AIDS deaths? 18th
20. Is the US #1 in number of cellular phones? No
21. What percentage of the US is Roman Catholic? 23.9%
22. What percentage of Mexico is Roman Catholic? 76.5%
23. What is Net Migration Rate? A rate of the difference of the number of people entering and leaving a country.
24. Does the US have the highest Net Migration Rate in the world? No
25. What is the current population of the entire planet? 7,021,836,029 

Evaluating Websites

1. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html. This is a reliable site because it had accurate information and it is also updated weekly.
2. http://www.pbs.org/wned/elbert-hubbard/message-garcia.php This site is reliable because Mr. Schick used it to read us a passage and I don't think he would use an unreliable site.
3. http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/cfr_and_trilateral_commission.htm This site is not reliable at all because America is not ran by these two groups of people.
4. http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/flash/nowinspace/Crew_32_on_ISS.html This site is not reliable because there has not been 32 expeditions to space so the info is false.
5. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/04/opinion/schlossberg-young-voters-obama/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 This site is reliable because it obtained info from primary quotes and sources.
6. http://www.nytimes.com/ This site is reliable because it references it's information to other sites and have direct quotes from primary sources.
7. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/07/10/dont-be-fooled-by-usa-today-good-news-for-obama/ This site is reliable because it is a website made by a new station.
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#Notable_current_and_former_writers. This is a reliable site because it cites many references and sources from where they got their info and it includes many alternate links to related topics.
9. http://schickhumangeo.blogspot.com/ Is this a trick question? For other people coming upon this site for research I think they would believe it is not reliable because they could think it was someone just posting random information because there is no cited sources. But it is reliable for me because I know it is not false info. Plus I need to use it for homework.

Wikipedia

          Today in class we talked about Wikipedia and we learned Mr. Schick is in love with it. Some pros that we learned about Wikipedia, is that it is a lot more convenient than a world book encyclopedia. This is because world books are not constantly updated, so there could be information that was true but something happened to make it false. Whereas Wikipedia constantly updates and gives current information. The one con about Wikipedia is that people can change and edit the information and make it false, but there are people that are on look out for false info like that constantly and some pages are even blocked for anyone to edit. Also, Wikipedia site it's sources, so you can check out those sites and maybe check if its true or learn more about your topic.It also puts footnotes and keywords to help clear things up and allow you to learn more. So we learned Wikipedia is a very good place to research online.

Essay Three

     My five point action plan for my upcoming school years is;
1. Try my hardest on everything I do whether it be something like schoolwork, tests, homework, classwork, and all those types of things, or sports related things and extra curricular activities. I am also going to try my hardest to not procrastinate because it is not a healthy habit for school at all.
2.Stay out of trouble. Making one big mistake could impact my future for college and might make me not get into a certain school of my choice. Following the rules will benefit me more than not.
3. Get involved in outside school activities like sports and clubs. This could also help me with my future education and have a good influence on colleges and could possibly lead to scholarships.
4.Be myself. I'm not going to let other's bad decisions influence me to make a bad decision and ruin my potential. So I am going to
5. Be a good person. What could be bad about being nice to people? It will only help me in the long  run and its the right thing to do school or not.
  With this plan, I think it will lead me to a successful high school experience and I am really looking forward to it.

Relaxing Friday Class

    Friday was kind of a chilled out class. We touched up and reviewed our discussion on Wednesday about Socrates, excellence, and ancient Greece and we reviewed all of our terms that we had to define like arete, polis, city-state, the Socratic method, agora, and how democracy was started for the first time ever 508 b.c. After that, we all just talked about things going on in the school, well that's what I think was being talked about, I wasn't paying too much attention because I was busy beginning my assignment and getting other work done so I didn't have to do it later in that day. So today was basically just a review and relaxed day. Untill we were introduced to our weekend assignment which was to write three mini essays about the things we discussed for the past few days.

Essay Two

       If Elbert Hubbard and Socrates were to travel in time to come to the present I think They would Have mixed emotions about society in America today. I think Socrates would be glad democracy was being used as our government because he was a strong believer in democracy and died because of that strong belief. And of course both of them would be amazed at the new technology. I think Elbert Hubbard would think technology is a great improvement on people's laziness. I say this because if someone were to get told to send "A Message to Garcia", they could just simply call them or shoot them a text, but if they both fail, then he'd better have someone trustworthy to send out that message. But if he did have to rely on someone actually find where he was and physically hand him or tell him the message, It would be easier to find him because of technology and GPS, so if "Garcia" had a phone of something on him, he could be tracked down.

Essay One

        My definition of arete is basically excellence, and being the best you can possibly be. The ancient Greeks demonstrated arete because in 508 b.c. democracy was introduced into the world for the first time ever. Introducing democracy changed government. It allowed the people to have a say on major decisions that affected them rather than having one person with all the power decide. Basically the people had the power and they ruled themselves.The Greeks used democracy on mostly everything they did. The voted on things as little as the price of goods and as big and important as war decisions.  This type of government worked so well that we still use it today in the United States. Socrates also demonstrated arete. He demonstrated arete because he always spoke his mind and didn't tell any other people how to think when they had questions for him. He would just help them find the answer by asking them question and begin big discussions among lots of people. Plus, Socrates was a large believer on democracy, and when he was sentenced the death penalty he could of gotten out if it. But since he was voted to die, he did. This shows that he did not change his beliefs even when facing death, and that demonstrates arete.