Blog #18- No Schick

A day without Schick was kind of weird. He had to go on a short field trip, right before our class. The teacher who substituted ( I can’t remember her name) did some differently, than what we were used to.  We started off where she made us review for her since she has never seen the movie. Then when we were reviewing and we got to the refugee camp she had us take down some notes about that. Then we couldn’t find the movie and we took around ten minutes until we finally found it, then we continued on the movie. When finally got to a new part in the movie, now they are no longer living for free. They had to get jobs and be self-sufficient. All of them were happy to find jobs. Some of them started to work on getting a better education, while John had some different ideas. He was going to go to community college until he found out that his family was alive, so he took on a third job and started to send them money. They are starting to because full citizens in the US now. 

Blog #17- Eating Butter

Well today in class we started to watch the rest of the video. In the video a few of them started on the trip to America. On the plane ride they were amazed to fly and I'm pretty sure they spend the entire the first plane ride. Then they got to their first stop in Kenya, they were starting to see technology and they were very confused. Then on the second plane ride they got their food. They weren’t sure if/ how you eat each food. One of them ate butter, and another one tried to eat a wet wipe. Then when they finally got to America they were taught how to operate all the new technology. Then they were given 3 months to adjust, and then they had to get a job. Then they have to re pay their air fare cost. Over all right now in the story, they are just about to be fully ready for American life.

Blog #16- Da test answers

Well today in class we went over the answers for the test. I really didn’t have to play attention during the answers for the test because I had a 100 on the test, and the one I got wrong I knew the answer. So we went over the test, I was surprised that only a few people got an A on the test.  I thought that more people would have gotten a better grade. Then we watched a little more of the video from yesterday. We got to the part when they started to leave for America. We watched a little part that we watched yesterday. The part that we re-watched watched was when he was saying goodbye to his village, and gave all the kids candy. They said how they are not sure how life would be. Most of them didn’t know how to use stuff with electricity.  Well I think that America would be a new experience for them. So over all I was surprised that I had a 100 on the test.

Blog #15- Da test

Today in class we had the dreaded Human Geo test. The test was not as bad as I thought it would be. I was expecting Mr. Schick to be as evil as he could be, and make the test really hard and almost impossible. Though he didn’t so I was a bit surprised, the test was pretty straight forward and I really only had problems on a few different problems but overall it wasn’t as bad. The only questions that really stumped me were the ones on the country power points. For those I guess on like two but for the other ones I used process of elimination to figure out the states. I also made extra effort to remember 2.1 for the population because Mr. Schick made a special note about it. Then we watched a video about the boys who made the trip. It’s very sad that some parts of the world people have to watch over 15,000 people die on a trip for safety. Well over all the class was very different from the other classes we have had. 

Blog #14- Even More countries

Today in Human geo we covered even more counties. We cover India, Indonesia, and like 2 minutes of America. We learned how India has a high Population, around 1.2 billion for their population. They have a low infant Mortality rate so it’s not the best. There aren’t a lot of pull forces for India because it's hard to find a job. Only 2.7 Percent of the population is Christian compared to the 80% of Hindu's. The Next country was Indonesia. Indonesia isn’t a developed Country. They have a bunch of problems. They have a lot aids in their country. They also are having a hard time attracting people to come to the country. They are having a hard time feeding people to. Then after that we talked briefly about The United States Of America. We talked about how America is in the top 10 for Obesity compared to other countries like France who have little to none obese people. This isn’t good we need to change that fact. That is all we did in class. We also went over how the test in move to Monday, thanks Schick.

Blog #13- Devoloping Country

We started to go over our powerpoints in class today. The first powerpoint that was up was Italy. Italy is a developed country that has it pretty good. They have a positive migration rate, so their population is going up. They have a low birth rate so they are not having a large amount of children. The next country that was on was our country Nigeria. Nigeria is a country in Africa doesn’t have it the best. They have a bunch of problems, and as you could guess they are still a developing country. They don’t have enough food and water. They have to deal with a lot pollution that they need to deal with. People are leaving the country because they don’t have it the best. The only reason people are entering the country is because they have oil. The people who live there have a life expectancy of around 52 years which is really low. They also have an infant mortality rate of 73 which means 70 kids die per thousand. Over all they don’t have the best life and they need help. It’s just not fair for them

Blog #12- The test is coming

The text is coming ever closer. Today is class we did some different stuff. The first thing we went over was how some people can’t get on their blogger. After that Mr. Schick assigned us a project that we have to research a country of his choosing. My group got Nigeria. Nigeria is a developing country and it is not a very nice place to live it. They have a bunch of natural and environmental problems. They have oil pollution everywhere, deforestation, urbanization, and air pollution. It is not the best place to live in. They have some said facts also. Their infant mortality rate is 74% that means that 3/4 of the children die. They are also number two for HIV and they are also number two for HIV related deaths. It’s really bad that they have so many problems to deal with and they die so young from all the different causes. It’s just a sad fact that so many people have to die young in other countries, it’s just not fair

Blog #11- Notes and Rates

We are starting to prepare for a test. One thing that Schick emphasized was rate and more rates. He talked about the migration rate. How many people are entering the country is shown is by the immigration rate. Then to see how many people are leaving a country you use the emigration rate to see these rates. Then we talked about the fertility ratio which means how many children a family will have in their life time. To keep a constant population the ratio has be 2.1. If it is any higher the population will grow. If it is any lower the population will decrease over time. This is important because if the fertility rate for all the countries was above 2.1 the world would start to become really over populated and the world may not be able to sustain a population that large. So all the rates all over the world helps us keep track of many different and important facts.

Blog #10- The Future is Bright

We really covered nothing in class for Human Geo. The first part of class we went over the plan for an evacuation. It seemed that when we went over it one question lead to an answer which then in turn led to more questions. We spent around 20 min, so half of the class just explaining what the different plans or the stupid questions. Then we went over the “Did You Know” and explained what we thought was interesting. We talked about the online dating one first. We said that it is kind of creepy when you think about it because not everyone is who they said they are. Then we talked about how if Facebook was a country, it would be ranked number 3 for highest population. Finally we went over about the technology. How in the old days for Mr. Schick, he didn’t have any of the stuff we have now. It’s kind of weird to think about how fast technology is growing. That in 1 year they will have a computer smarter than a human. Then in a couple of years they will have one smarter than a town and so on. Its’ really weird seeing how fast technology is progressing. Times will be really different when we are older. 

Blog #9- Diverse Topics

We had one interesting class discussion is class today. The First part of the class we went over the world fact book questions. Then we talked about HIV is a problem all over the world but mostly is Africa and India. Now for the part that Mr. Schick probably wouldn’t want us to talk about but we had a mini sex Ed. class. It’s sad how America is 18^th on the list out of 200 some countries. Then we talked about how we are only 29% catholic and Mexico is like 79%. I fact I found interesting about the “Did you know” video, was the part about the computers being smarter than a human in a couple of years. Then it will be smarter than all the humans on earth combined by 2060. That’s kind of a scary thought. I also found interesting that the top 10 jobs didn’t even exist 5 years ago. That shows how our society is changing.

Blog #8- CIA Facts

The world fact book is still very reliable source for us to use in our learning. We learned how to use the fact book. We also talked about 9/11. 9/11 is a very bad thing. Mr. Schick told us what he was doing when it happened. We were told by all the teachers that if they were here at John Carroll. They were all in the gym for mass when they got the word. We were told that at first they thought it was an accident but when the second plane hit, they knew what happened. I was 3 years old when it happened. I don’t remember much but I do remember sitting there watching the tower fall on repeat on the news. The other thing we covered was just review of the work. Everyone got smarties and that was the end of class. We never really did that much but otherwise it was a learning experience.  

Class Blog #7- THE CIA

The World Fact Book is a very reliable source. I have learned many things from it. First of all the US’s population is 313,847,465. The five largest populations in the world are China, India, USA, Indonesia and Brazil. Number 6^th is Pakistan with 190,291,129. The USA has a Constitution-based federal republic, with strong democratic tradition. Unemployment is a problem but in Zimbabwe its 95%. Russia is the largest country land wise. China also has the third highest amount of airports. China Exports the most, while Saudi Arabia exports the most oil. The USA imports the most oil. In China woman can serve in the military. GPD is the gross domestic products and Liechtenstein has the highest GDP per capita. The USA is 11^th for the GPD. Africa has the highest birth rate and it has the highest HIV related Deaths. The USA is only 18^th for HIV related death. America is also 23.9% Roman Catholic while Mexico is 76.5% Roman Catholic. Net Migration is the amount of people coming or leaving from a country, the USA doesn’t have the highest Net Migration rate. The world’s population is 7,021,836,029. I think knowing the populations are are important and knowing how much oil is used. The CIA fact book is the a reliable source if not the most reliable source.

Blog #6 Notes on Taking Notes

Notes on notes, confuse you yet? When taking notes never right everything down, only right what you either need or you summarize. So say if a teacher had a whole slide for of info only parts of it will most likely be used. The teacher might use hints such as pointing at the screen or actually telling you to write it down. We were shown that a class of 300 students in Harvard has 150 of them plagiarize. So taking good notes will prevent you from having to deal with that problem. Then we used a 4^th grade EXAMPLE, and we still couldn’t do it. So the example was a little thing for Illinois. It talked about how Illinois is mostly prairie hence the nickname the prairie state. Then we learned that most of the people live in cities like Detroit or Springfield, though some people live in the plains. Taking notes is one of the most important skills that you will learn and I suggest that you learn it well.

Blog #5 The Man in the Basement

Today’s class in human geography was a pretty interesting one. We talked about how to tell if a website’s information is legit.  We learned that we should never use encyclopedias and opinions. Then he showed us some ways to tell just by looking at the website. After looking on one page we went on a little thing about a guy living in his mom’s basement. Then we looked at the CIA website, and then we were shown how to save a link to it on our blog. After that we made a little joke about how the guy in the basement had a design guy chained in the basement. The New York Times or a news website like CNN can be used as long as it isn’t the opinion page. Finally we were shown not to trust blogs of any sort. I especially don’t trust that SchickHumanGeo Blog, I don’t just it one bit, who is this Schick guy anyway. Otherwise it was a pretty fun class and we started to learn a bit.

Essay 3- The Five point plan

            Everything you work at you should do your best. While I’m at John Carroll I will try to do my best, I can achieve this through a five step plan. The first way I'm going to approach this plan is that I need to study a lot more. When I was at my old school I never had to study but at John Carroll I know this will change. Part 2 of the plan is that I will try to get more involved with school. I never got involved with anything at my old school, nothing. Number three is to be more social, I didn’t talk to anyone other than my friends who I knew. I hope to change this by talking to people and branching out. Fourth is of course not bullying people. When I was at my old school I didn’t really bully I was just mean to some kids, but now I'm friends with those kids. I hope I don’t make the same mistakes twice. Last but no least is helping other people succeed. If someone is having trouble on say work or computer problems. I will help them by teaching them how to do it. This is how I plan to make myself better during my time at john Carroll.

Essay 2- Hubbard and Socrates

       Socrates and Hubbard were to very wise men. Socrates was an Ancient Greek Philosopher. Times were very different for him then they are for us. If he came to our time he would probably we surprised. I think he would be happy to see that democracy survived, and he probably he happy that his theories were correct since he spent his life working on them. One thing that I know he would like how we have developed religion and that we have solved most of the things that he wondered in his life.  Then you could bring Elbert Hubbard our time but I don’t think he would be as happy. He would look and see how our lives have become lazy. That most of the time we don’t even do the work ourselves, we have developed technology that does the work for us. Though he may be happy about how far we have come with our new advances through hard work. Both of these men would like some of our life but other things they would dislike.

Essay 1- Arête

Arête is one of the best words to describe Ancient Greece. Arête means a sense of what is right, knowing what the right direction is and not straying from what you think it right.  Socrates is a prime example when it comes to this subject. Socrates was a philosopher who thought of many different theories. One of his theories is that the sun is its own separate body. It isn’t Apollo on his chariot riding across the sky. So he taught people this and the government wasn’t happy about this so they issued a trail. Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death. Socrates could of escaped and have been done with it. But he decided that he would stay and except his fate. He died for what he believed in. He could’ve run but he chose not to, he stood up for what he thought was right. The Greeks themselves also demonstrated Arête. They set up democracy because they believed that having a ruler was wrong. So they set up their own way of doing things. Which till this day most of the world this that is right. Arête is something we still need today.

Class Blog # 4 Bit More Progress

Today is class we made some more progress. We went over our Greek word work. Though some of the people didn’t do it, a good majority did do it. The first word was Arete which meant one with a sense of character and such. The second word was polis which was like the first democracy which would change time forever. We also talked about a man named Socrates, he was a very-well known philosopher. He came up with different theories like the sun was a body in the sky not apollo on his cherriot. For his theories he was put to death for his theories. His death was caused by a poison called Hemlock. The next topic was the year 508 BC, this time was when all the revolutions started. Another word was agora, it was where people voted and did anything for the government. Last but not least was that Idiot in ancient greece meant people who didn't take advantage of their democratic system, they thought they were too good for it. So class today was a giant review for our other homework on the weekend.