Western Civilization

Today we started out by completing the class survey for Mr. Schick's class. I have done this survey for many other teachers and they have all been the same. Then we continued to watch the video with the Swedish man, Hans Rosling, from the other day. We saw the change in people from 1948 to 2009. Everybody seemed to move up the chart which is good! The world is becoming wealthier and less folks are living in poverty. The class went into a long debate which Mr. Schick initiated. His question was: Should the government increase or decrease spending for the U.S. Military? I answered by saying yes because much of the weaponry the military currently uses is outdated and needs to be replaced. Some replacement parts needed for planes are not even produced anymore. The debate later went into what we should do with North Korea. This was a previously debated topic in our class. Nothing much has changed other than the fact that now, North Korea has an ICBM that is capable of reaching U.S. mai

Today we furthered our discussion on population pyramids following up on the last chapter. Mr. Schick told us that today would be a video day and he was correct. We spent the entire class going through two videos which dealt with population pyramids. The first was about five minutes long and came from a group called TedEd. The other video was with a Swedish man named Hans Rosling who cast a projection of a population graph through the last century. The title of our notes today was 'Demographic Transition.' A few key notes I took down were: A pre-industrialized society turns into an industrial society and, then to a post industrial society. Industrialization is simply the process of becoming industrial. In this case, life expectancy goes up and the child mortality rate goes down. This is logical because if your technology is better, in s community, for example then you will be able to take better care of your people. We ended by looking at Hans's projection of a population

Today Mr. Schick handed back the tests from last week. There were many A's in the class and many more one hundred percents and beyond. The highest possible grade you could earn was one hundred and four points. The two extra credit questions I mentioned in the blog from test day were worth two points each evidently. The second question, the one I was unsure about, turned out to be correct. The replacement rate indeed needs to be two point one in order for a population to increase. As mentioned in a previous post, this fact is in some cases, the only thing that some of Mr. Schick's students learned in his class. Overall the test was fair. We then went around in the same fashion as previous tests and read the answers aloud. I am very gratutious for the extra credit points and possible points from the Kiva activity. Mr. Schick then scolded us for not donating to Kiva in the extra credit opportunity.  Our semester exams are coming up in two and half weeks. We will have one more tes

Kiva is an organization which asks donors for amounts in twenty five dollar increments. These sums of money, coined as micro loans, go to budding entrepreneurs, which help them alleviate poverty in some cases. In other cases, they help them realize their potential, by starting a business or or fulfill a life long ambition. Kiva claims to be an international nonprofit which was founded in 2005 and based in San Fransisco. Their mission is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Taken directly from their website under the 'About' section, "We celebrate and support people looking to create a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities. From this you can take away that they are a helpful organization with the goal of helping people who want to make their life better and the people around them. I did some additional research in trying to figure out the meaning of the word Kiva. the closest I could come to was meaning 'nice' in Fin

Today, as a way to show love across the world before Thanksgiving, Mr. Schick introduced us to this charity called Kiva. Their website is right here: kiva.org. This is an organization that gets entrepreneurs to rally money for themselves in the form of micro loans. The main outline of it is this; you pitch in some money to someone in need of it to start their own business and then you most likely will have your micro loan repaid to you. This is different than how some charities like the ones we researched for the project, including Feeding America, UNICEF, and others, where they just take your money and then help the people. This was a real eye-opener, as Madison stated in class. prior to class today, I did not know that an organization like this existed. There will be extra credit opportunities offered to us by Mr. Schick which will be mentioned in the next post. 

To finish off our week, we took the test on population and settlement. As Mr. Schick had said yesterday, he would not be here today and we would have a sub who turned out to be Mrs. Collins. We started with the timed section of the test with the fifteen questions we were to answer using the CIA World Factbook. These turned out to be very easy just like the practice ones from yesterday. The test was six pages just like Mr. Schick had promised. The extra credit was my favorite part of the test. Mr. Schick asked what is the net migration rate of the world, which as we all know is zero. There are no aliens on Earth who have migrated here from another planet. The other one I believe I did not get. The question asked something about a replacement rate but the closed I could configure was the 2.1 Total Fertility rate a country needed in order for its population to grow. The rest of the test was simple. The section that was the most thought provoking for me was the one dealing with push and p

Today was all about review for the test. But first, Mr. Schick started out by scolding all of his other sections because he wrote four detentions in the last one and a half days. All of those were written to people outside our class. We should keep this up. Next, Mr. Schick gave us a preview of the test. The test will be six single sided pages. On the first page we will have fifteen minutes to navigate the CIA World Fact Book and answer fifteen questions. We should average about one question per minute. Later when we practiced, the class figured at we average anywhere between ten and fifteen seconds with practice questions from Mr. Schick. The questions were rather easy, the trick is to know under which category search for each question. For example, if you are looking for literacy rate, you would need to look under communication not people and society. There will be no multiple choice on the test.

Today we continued with the group projects from last week. The first group that went was comparing the population pyramids of Haiti and Qatar. The population pyramid of Qatar is not one of the three major shapes we discussed in class, but I would classify it as a genie lamp. Haiti on the other hand is in the shape of a Christmas tree. Haiti, in fact, was almost actually a perfect Christmas tree and we found this unusual because they are a developing nation which has suffered many natural disasters including the recent earthquake. Next the group discussed sustainable progress or also known as sustainable farming. This was defined as farming without industrializing it by Mr. Schick. The second group touched on food security. Food security is knowing that you will have a next meal and knowing where it is coming from. We will be continuing with projects next class.

The first thing we did today was start out by giving a chance to the people who did not take the pop quiz a second time, to take it a second time. As Mr. Schick was going through the quiz I recalled the answers for the third time. The question which I had missed the second time around, I was able to answer this time. The next thing we did was go into the projects from last week. My group with Aiden S. and Michael G.R. scored a fifty out of the possible fifty. The first group to present today was Ben and Chase. Mr. Schick gave them a hard time about not having a few things capitalized. During their presentation we took a side trip to a website called charitynavigator.org. This website rates all charities based on their accountability and what percent they actually donate to aid relief causes in their radar of places they help. In the next presentation, Mr. Schick took a side trip and mentioned John Bul Dau of Sudan. I watched the short movie he mentioned last year, in eighth grade. We w

After many complaints about having F's and low grades, Mr. Schick let us take the test again. This was very beneficial to me and probably to everyone since it was the exact same questions. I scored an eighteen out of twenty compared to a fourteen out of twenty the first time around. This was very helpful, thank you Mr. Schick for allowing us to do this. After we went through the test answers just like last time, but this time around Mr. Schick had changed the pictures at the end to two happy babies instead of one sad one and one crying one. I have a strange feeling the plan all along was to take it twice since these questions seem to be vital and will be on our exam. Next we went into our fifty point project, which Mr. Schick almost wanted to slice the total points possible in half. Our group presented and we ended up with a fifty out of fifty. Mr. Schick questioned us, in particular, about the UNICEF organization. More groups will present next class.

Here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10pBdS8m8sF_9yjXnm8k6mDQLSYbhspJd7G11cjrU6bc/edit

We were surprised with a pop quiz, first thing, mod one. Mr. Schick passed out a Scantron and the instructions were: ten questions, two points, each, ten seconds for each question and no going back. This turned out to be a little tricky for me and from what I can gather for quite a lot of other folks too. Not only was this a pop quiz but also a timed one, first thing in the morning. Afterwards we went over the answers and I am hoping for somewhere between a fourteen to sixteen out of twenty. Next up, we were assigned our first project in this class. We were to choose our own groups and the task is simple. there are two columns to choose form: one that earns you an A if you do all the work, and one that earns you a B. Of course the work for the A is more complicated than that for a B. I chose to work with Aiden and Michael and it is due the next morning.

Today was an easier day than what we had been doing the past few days. Mr. Schick continued with the presentation on population pyramids. The main focus of this class was different types of shapes of population pyramids. There are three basic shapes of population pyramids. They are the Christmas tree, the box, and the cup. Knowing this information, the first population pyramid we looked at was that of the United States of America. We all concluded that the United States' population pyramid was a box, meaning that all age categories are about the same in percentage, male and female. The Christmas tree is most commonly found in pyramids of developing nations. The growth rates are slow and the birth rates are high. These populations also have short life expectancy. Examples of these countries Namibia and Bangladesh. The box represents developing nations or slow growth. They have low infant mortality rate and slow population growth. The people in this population have long life expectan

To start off the new week, Mr. Schick took the liberty of going through his entire presentation from the beginning once more. There is not much too write about here without repeating much of previous posts. A few key points that he made this time around were that, the fact "There are 7.5 billion people on Earth right now" will be a test question. In my opinion this will be one of the easiest questions on this test, which Mr. Schick hinted will be coming before the ned of the week. Another fact he pointed out which will be a test question is that "In order for a population rate to grow the TFR must be at least 2.1, or higher." After this we went into something new to most of us, but not so much for me. On my shadow day at John Carroll back last year, in my shadow host, Ian Baier's human geography class, they were covering the exact same thing with Mr. Fendryk. The only statement I copied down today was, "We use population to analyze growth (or decline) of fe

The next slide in Mr. Schick's presentation was all about a little acronym, TFR. TFR stands for the total fertility rate of newborn children. As proclaimed by Mr. Schick, this is in the department one of the saddest statistics out there, baby deaths and illnesses. The Toal fertility rate is the average number of children born per woman. Here is a key fact that Mr. Schick says his former students remember from taking his class: In order for a country's population to grow the total fertility rate(TFR) must be at least 2.1 or higher.  He even mentioned that this may be the only thing that some of his students learned, meaning that we must remember it, and that it is key. In the United States of America the total fertility rate is 2.01 and decreasing. The highest in the world is Nigeria with 6.89, which is substantially high. The lowest is Japan with 1.40, also substantially far from 2.1 as well. Japan has an aging population, and if I can recall correctly has the oldest population