The Movie Continues

We are still watching the film "God Grew Tired of Us" in class. The movie began with a very depressing beginning, but as the movie progressed, the lost boys that were sent to America and found hope. The lost boys, Daniel, Panther, and John, are very unselfish and giving people. These boys work hard just so they can  send money and support the boys in the refugee camp in Kenya. They work for others, not for themselves. When Daniel, John, and Panther were all experiencing Christmas in New York and in Pennsylvania, they seemed over whelmed by all the lights and different ways of celebrating Christmas. I thought that the way Christmas was celebrated in the refugee camp in Kenya was very fun and interesting. I feel like we don't celebrate the true meaning of Christmas in America. In Kenya's refugee camp they celebrate the true, real meaning of Christmas, which is birth of Jesus Christ. I was so happy when one of the lost boys got a letter form his parents saying that they are alive and that his brothers and sisters are alive as well. It was depressing watching him read the letter when the letter stated that some of his aunts, uncles, and cousins were killed.

God Grew Tired of US

The movie we are watching in Human Geography class is called "God Grew Tired of Us". This movie is a very emotional and touching movie that covers an impact that Northern Sudan caused. Because of Northern Sudan's greed for the oil fields in Southern Sudan. This civil war caused kayos throughout all of Southern Sudan. People were scared, raped, and even killed. The young boys of Southern Sudan knew they had to leave their country behind. These boys, called the lost boys, had to endure a very painful journey to get to a safer place. The lost boys even had to survive bombings and wild animal attacks. Once the lost boys got to a refugee camp in Kenya, they knew that their life would still be full of misery and sadness. The film focuses on three main lost boys, Daniel, Panther, and John. These men were chosen to go to America and make a living there. My favorite part of the whole movie so far, was watching these men figure out what normal American lives are like. The look on their faces when they saw a lamp light up was so cute. I can't wait to watch the rest of the movie!

Test Taken

I was really excited to get my test back. I knew I would do well because I studied all the information and I even made a study guide. The only part of the test I thought I would get wrong was the section about the presentations given but I got that section all right. I was nervous when Mr. Schick called my name to get my to go get my test, but when I heard the ding of the bell which signifies an A on a test, I knew I was fine. I was actually pretty mad at myself for getting some of the questions wrong. One of the questions that I got wrong was just so stupid. I knew the correct answer but circled a wrong answer. Anyways, today's class was fairly odd and interesting. Mr. Schick left the class room because the class was talking so much. I do agree that we were chatty today but it really scared me when he left the class room. It felt like Mr. Schick was gone for about five minutes. I felt really bad for Mr. Schick because he is such a nice guy and is a great teacher. He deserves all of our undivided attention the whole entire class. For future classes, I will try to refrain from talking during class.

Taking the Test

The test was not that challenging at all. There were only a few questions that I might have doubted myself on but other than that, everything was easy. I was surprised when Schick put questions on the test about the countries that were presented because I just thought that Mr. Schick just assigned us that project as an exercise to use the CIA World Fact Book. I am so glad that more than half of the questions revolved around my country that I presented or at least i hope they were about that country. I thought we would have longer answer questions like essays but the longest answer I had to write on the test was to define the acronym TFR (total fertility rate) and RNI (Rate of Natural Increase) which wasn't hard. I don't actually know if I am suppose to blog tonight but just to be save, I did. Anyways, I have a shadow tomorrow so she is very lucky to experience the wonderful class that is Human Geography.

First Test!

On Friday, we finished presenting all the projects and discussed what was going to be on the test Monday. I checked Power School and was thrilled to find out that I got 100% on all my essays. I am a little upset to discover that I forgot to blog about Friday's class on Saturday. I was planning to do it today but I just realized that the blog about Friday's class is due on Saturday at 11:59 P.M. I am not that stressed out about it because I know what there will be plenty of opportunities to earn more points. I didn't see a grade for my Nigeria presentation on Power School yet but I am sure that our group did fine and achieved a good grade on our presentation. On the other hand, I don't think that some groups did as well as my group did. Some of the information about their country was wrong! I double checked my information because I knew that if my information was wrong, my grade would suffer. I really like how we could have discussions during our presentation about out power point. Anyways, we are having our first test soon. I typed up a study guide and I think I will do fine because I usually pay attention to Mr. Schick. Wish me good luck on my test! I made this study guide for the test.

Human Geo. Notes

A Message to Garcia

·         By: Elbert Hubert

·         In Cuba, Garcia was in the mountains of Cuba

·         Rowan was sent to deliver a message to Garcia

·         deliver a message to General Garcia who was hiding in an unknown location in the Cuban mountain

·         Rowan asked no questions and just did his duty

·         Written in 1899

·         In 1998- war between Spain and US, fought in Cuba

·         Theme of Article: People are lazy and won’t do what you ask without asking questions or getting help

·         “It is the survival of the fittest”

·         People who can do work and are not lazy will always have work

Ancient Greece

·         Arete- a term described a maximum of ability and potency for action; a man's effectiveness and skill in goodness.

·         Polis- was the ancient Greek city-state. 

·         Socrates- was a classic Greek Athenian philosopher. 

·         The Death of Socrates- was sentenced to death by poison (hemlock).

·         The Socratic Method- clarified the concepts of God and Justice.

·         The Date 508 BC- The Romans rose up against their leader. Cleisthenes grants full rights to all free men in Athens. 

·         Agora- was the center of Athenian democracy. It was a gathering place for the lawmakers and citizens. 

·         What the ancient Greeks meant if they called you an idiot- In ancient Greece, the inventors of democracy set up a law that required every person to vote, regardless of who they voted for. If anyone was found not voting, then you are considered an idiot.

·         Socrates: persuaded the people of Athens to think deeply and to think for themselves, didn’t look like a very intelligent man

·         Socrates was put on trial for telling the people of Athens information that the Greeks didn’t want him to say.

·         At Socrates’s trial, he stated that the people of Athens were like a lazy horse and he was a horse fly that was trying to keep the sluggish horse alert. 

Did You Know 3.0 Video

·         Over 7 billion people on planet

·         Increasing by over 77 million per year

·         208,800 per day

·         90% of population growth in Africa, South and East Asia, and Latin America (developing countries)

·         1804-1^st billion people-12 years-7 billion people

·         Life Expectancy: the average number of years to be lived by a group of pope born in the same year (women longer life expectancy because men typically have more dangerous jobs)

·         Crude Birth Rate: number of births per 1000 of population

·         Crude Death Rate: number of deaths per 100 of population

·         Rate of Natural Increase (RNI): produced by subtracting the death rate from the birth rate (this gives us the annual natural growth rate- in % form for a country or region

·         Net Migration Rate: the difference between the number of people entering and leaving the country during a year

o   An excess of people entering the country is net immigration= positive number

o   An excess of people leaving the country is net emigration= negative number

·         Why Do People Migrate?

o   Push Forces: forces that make you want to leave the country (Ex: civil war, environmental degradation, and unemployment)

o   Pull Forces: forces that make you want to live in the country (Ex: freedom)

·         Total Fertility Rate (TFR): Average number of children born per women, for the population to stay the same the TFR has to be 2.1 (replacement rate)

-higher than 2.1=population increases

-lower than 2.1=population decreases

World TFR: 2.47=population is increasing

·         Infant Mortality Rate: infants that die before they reach the age of 1

·         GDP: Gross Domestic Product: the value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year

Nigeria Presentation

I wasn't that excited to do my presentation today which was about Nigeria. The facts that I remember about my group presentation were that Nigeria is second in the world for the most number of people living with HIV or AIDS out of all the countries in the world. Nigeria has 3.3 million people living with HIV or AIDS. The net migration rate (NMR) is -0.22 and because the NMR is a negative number, the amount of people leaving the country is greater than the amount of people coming into the country. My presentation was pretty easy. I just summarized the information I put on my slides and read. I think our group did a great job. I am very proud of myself for knowing information about Nigeria's flag. Overall, the class was fun and it was fun to learn about other countries as well as present my country to the class.

Presentation

Mr. Schick gave us groups today and we had to write up a presentation power point using Google.

Power Point

Mr. Schick made us a power point today that we had to take notes from. We had to write down our notes in our composition book, which i dislike doing. My notes in my composition book are always so sloppy because I have horrible handwriting and that bothers me extremely. I am a neat freak and I have to have everything organized and because my notes are not organized, I type them up. I wish I could just always type my notes up because it would be much easier for me and it would also help save the environment by not wasting a composition book. I would also have to not worry about taking my composition book home everyday to study the notes; the notes would already be on my computer which I always make sure I take home. Taking notes in my composition book may be a good thing though. I wouldn't get distracted on my computer and when I type up the information, I am reviewing the notes and going over the information in my head again. Anyways, I hope the next power point will have a little more color and more pizzazz than the last one.

The World

We discussed the video from You Tube that Mr. Schick showed us in class. Some of the information presented in that video scared me. I thought it was scary when the video stated that our country is currently preparing students of jobs that don't even exist yet. I also thought that it was a little frightening when the video showed all the facts about how many people live on the Earth. If the Earth's population keeps on climbing up and even doubles in the next 20 years, I'm afraid that there will be no room anywhere and they will not be enough food or clean water. As technology and science progress, hopefully we can make and find more valuable technology and information such as the cure to cancer. In the future, the world may or may not be a kayos. I guess we will just have to wait and find out.

Bloggin

I have no idea what is wrong with some people's blogs but I am so glad that my blog works, kind of. When ever I go on blogger.com and long in to my account, my human geography blog was deleted off the my blogs page. I can still access my blog through Mr. Schick's website. I am so lucky that my blog works because I would have lost my precious blog and the essays that I wrote on my blog too. We finished going over the rest of the CIA World Fact Book questions. I really did love this CIA World Fact Book exercise because I got to learn about numerous differences of each country. I realized that the Unites States in as bad as I thought it was. The thought that the United States had a porr economy and was in a real state of chaos but it turns out that the Unites States of America is a pretty rich country and a great place to live. We also had to watch a video that was very interesting. The facts that the video presented astounded me. the two most interesting facts were how 600 tweets are sent in one second and how 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally during the video clip.

9-12-12

Today's class was pretty nice. We went over the questions Mr. Schick gave us to complete on Wednesday, which was not stressful at all. It was really cool how I learned about so many different countries in just a small amount of time. For example, I learned that Mexico has the world's third largest amount of airports in one country. I liked using the CIA World Fact Book to retrieve information about certain topics. I think I will use the CIA World Fact Book if I need to do research on a certain country because that fact book has a lot of important information about all the countries in the world. It is impossible to know every single little detain about every country in the whole world, but the authors of the CIA World Fact Book did a wonderful job of gathering an immense amount of information about each country. The CIA World Fact Book is an amazingly useful tool that will absolutely help me later on in life with project about the world and about the countries of the world.

CIA World Factbook

1.         What is the population of the United States?

313,847,465

2.         What are the five largest countries in the world, by population?

             1. China

              2. India

              3. United States

              4. Indonesia

              5. Brazil          

3.                  What is the population of Pakistan?

190,291,129

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

Constitution-based federal republic
Republic- vote for people to represent us

5.                  What is the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe?

24.9%

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- everything that you make and sell

14.       What country has the highest GDP per capital in the world, and how much is it?

Liechtenstein: $141,100

15.       Is the US in the top ten for GDP per capita? Per capita- per person per year

No

16.       Most of the countries with the highest birth rates can be found in what continent?

Africa

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?

18^th

20.       Is the US #1 in number of cellular phones?

No

21.       What percentage of the US is Roman Catholic?

Roman Catholic 23.9%

22.       What percentage of Mexico is Roman Catholic?

Roman Catholic 76.5%,

23.       What is Net Migration Rate?

This entry includes the figure for the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during the year per 1,000 persons (based on midyear population). An excess of persons entering the country is referred to as net immigration (e.g., 3.56 migrants/1,000 population); an excess of persons leaving the country as net emigration (e.g., -9.26 migrants/1,000 population). The net migration rate indicates the contribution of migration to the overall level of population change. The net migration rate does not distinguish between economic migrants, refugees, and other types of migrants nor does it distinguish between lawful migrants and undocumented migrants.

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

The questions that are most important to me include "What is the current population of the entire planet?" and "What is the largest country in the world be area?".

Note Taking and Illinois

       Note taking seemed very easy to me at first, but it is pretty hard to take notes when the teacher talks fast. It is hard to write fast and make my handwriting legible at the same time. I am a horrible speller so I don't worry about spelling my notes words right. I take my notes by doing bullets. We also did an exercise on note taking that dealt with Illinois. I learned that Illinois has more people than any other state in the mid west region and is the fifth most populated state out of all the fifty states. Illinois is nicknamed The Prairie State because it is flat and has many plains. A lot of people live in and around the city Chicago in Illinois. Illinois also leads in industry and has many farms. We also learned that Mr. Schick was born in Chicago in December. Today's class was fun but I can't wait till we start to really learn about Human Geography.

Today's Class

     It was basically a normal class today. We sat in our seats, took out our notebooks, and learned. We learned how to put inks on our blogs, which I will do in the future. Before class, I checked on my blog stats. It turns out that I had people from Russia, Germany, France, and even the Ukraine look at my blog. I thought that was so cool that people from a different continent looked at my blog even thought they probably didn't understand my blog because it was in English. Today, we also discussed how to tell if websites are legit or fake. I thought that exercise was really cool and fun. Our class also talked about Wikipedia and how useful it is. Mr. Schick told us that Wikipedia is a very reliable source to get information. I never use to use Wikipedia because i thought that nearly anybody could post things on there even if the information was not true. It turns out that you have to go though this process with Wikipedia to be allowed to put information on the website. Now I will definitely use Wikipedia in the future.

Essay #3

       Over the next four years at John Carroll, I want to become a successful student who tries to live up to my fullest potential. My career at John Carroll should be very successful and positive if I implement and utilize my five point actions correctly. First off, I must always be prepared. I need to bring all my supplies to class and try to never forget anything such as my homework. Second, I must be responsible. I have to be responsible for doing my homework and making sure I am never late to a class. Third, I need to make sure my grades are acceptable and continuously apply myself to my school work as well as all my assignments.  Fourth, I need to continuously challenge myself and set the expectations high.  Lastly, I need to learn. I need to pay attention in school, to absorb the information. I also need to learn from my mistakes. I believe that if I carry out all of these actions, my career at John Carroll will be very successful and I will achieve many great things. 

Essay #2

       If Socrates and Elbert Huber time traveled to the present they wouldn’t be very happy with society today. Socrates would be furious by the way people are thinking because they are not thinking for themselves. Socrates spent his life trying to get people to think for themselves. Most people today just go with what everybody else is doing. They are giving into peer pressure and not giving their actions any real thought. Socrates died because of what he believed. He must feel like his death is insignificant because people aren’t learning from it. They are still not thinking for themselves.

            Elbert Huber must also be annoyed at society today. Elbert Huber wanted everybody to be avid, hard workers who are inspired to do their very best, but that’s not what society is like today. Some people are avid, hard workers but these people are rarely found in humanity today. Elbert Huber wouldn’t trust anybody to deliver a message to Garcia. Overall, Socrates and Elbert Huber would be dissatisfied with America in 2012. 

Essay #1

       The ancient Greeks used the term arête to describe one’s full potential. To reach your full potential you have to be inspired to do good works. Arête is also relative to the word virtue which is being the best that you can be. Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, reached his arête. Socrates tried to get people to think for themselves and even died for that. That was a brave thing to do and I believe that arête also deals with being valiant and brave. Socrates was certainly courageous.  I believe the bravest thing he did was announcing to the people of Athens, who were part of the jury at his trial, that they are like a lazy horse and he was a horse fly that buzzed around just to keep the sluggish horse alert. Socrates was also a deep thinker that dove into the thought of new discovery. Socrates was inspired to do his best and even exceed some people’s expectations. His full potential was immense and Socrates absolutely demonstrated his full arête.

Today's Class

Today’s class was mainly about reviewing the terms that were given to us on Wednesday. We had to define the terms and relate them to ancient Greece. We also had to describe what the ancient Greeks meant if they called you an idiot. To me that was the most interesting topic to research. I think it’s pretty cool how we say words that were used hundreds of years ago. Even though we don’t use the word idiot the same way the Greeks used it, it is still neat how it was adopted into our language today. We also discussed an ancient Greek philosopher named Socrates. In my mind, Socrates was a very wise man, who persuaded the people of Athens to think deeply and to think for themselves. Even though Socrates didn’t look like a very intelligent man, he was certainly a clever, brainy person. Socrates was put on trial for telling the people of Athens information that the Greeks didn’t want him to say. At Socrates’s trial, he stated that the people of Athens were like a lazy horse and he was a horse fly that was trying to keep the sluggish horse alert. He announced that to the five hundred people at his trial and that was a very valiant thing to do. I would have never done that if I was in that situation. He could have even gotten out of his punishment it he said he was sorry. The death that Socrates had to endure seemed immensely painful. Socrates died by a poison called hemlock. The hemlock caused Socrates to suffocate and suffer massive pain. Overall, Socrates endured a painful and unjust death that was put upon him because he was telling the people to think for themselves, which is what we need to do today.