essay day

Okay so finally after days of prepping for the exam essay we finally did. it. He gave us pretty much the entire time to do it like before the bell for class even rung he said we could start. I  was really stressed about this essay, clearly due to my last blog, but I got help from my friends and they helped me and gave me good notes to have on the notecard Mr. Schick provided for us. As writing I did get stuck a couple times, but in the end I was able to organize most of my thoughts on the paper and I think I didn't completely fail it.

essay prep

Today in human geo Mr. Schick decided that he would let us have a note card with only bullet points on it with the notes we collected on whatever essay option we chose. In class he just gave us the whole time to research and stuff. The thing is, I re -read every single essay option like a million times and I still am struggling to figure out which one I can write about and thoroughly understand and not fail. So as i'm writing this, I literally have no idea how my essay is going to turn out or what I'm gonna do. Pretty stressed about it, considering I have one night to get all my notes gathered and stuff. It was very nice of him to give us the notecard so we have some help on the test, it's just when you basically have no clue what to write about, it's reallyyy kind of useless to me at the moment. Anyway you're. welcome for the rant session.

demographic transition quiz

So today in human geo we took the demographic transition quiz, based off of the article he gave us like last week. In the beginning of class Mr. Schick gave us 10 minutes to study and review everything. To study I made a quizlet last Friday and studied a little bit over the weekend. I know I usually say this, but I think I did a pretty decent job on the quiz like the lowest I could get would probably an 80 or something. Anyways there was one question on there that had me absolutely stumped, like I looked at it and reread it like ten times and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the statement. So, I just left it blank lol. After I was done with the quiz i took my glasses off and Mr. Schick came over and put them on and proceeded to call me legally blind, which is VERY accurate. Then when everybody was done taking the quiz, we learned that it was Mr. Schick's birthday and he talked about exams week.

quiz talk

Today in human geo Mr. Schick just asked a bunch of questions about what's gonna be on the quiz next Monday. He asked questions about the four/five stages and what they did and how they applied to different countries. The demographic transition chart we drew yesterday, I'll probably be using that to study and the article he gave us in the beginning of the week because I still don't really understand which stages are what except for the fifth one because it's like the all time lowest. But technically the fifth stage is just theoretical so I don't really know.

discussing the demographic transition

Today in human geo, we went over the demographic transition article and we talked about what the 4/5 stages were about. I put 4/5 because technically the paper only went into detail about the four, but at the very end of it, it mentioned a fifth stage. Anyway so we went around the class and one of us would describe what the stage was and how it impacted the population and when that person was done they would get to pick another person. I raised my hand for the first stage and I wasn't really aware we had to go into that much detail so i just stated the three general bullet points that were listed above the paragraph about stage 1. It's fine though because we went into more detail. Stage one is just when people had to hunt for their food and both their CBR and their CDR were high. IN stage two thats when the industrial and medical revolution happened, which impacted the world a great deal. In stage 3, the birth rate starts to decline and people have fewer kids. Lastly stage 4, the birth rate is very low and the death rate is increasing. This condition is called zero population and also the lack of change in the population.

the demographic transition

So today in human geo Mr. Schick basically just talked about ho exams are really soon and how they're gonna work and stuff like that. Then he gave us this article on the demographic transition and told us to read it and highlight/ underline information we think seems important. As I was reading and highlighting important stuff, I came across a lot of the same stuff we did in our last unit with population and settlement stuff. Like it pretty much just talked about how the CDR, the CBR, and the NIR, affect countries and their growth. Im not really sure if that's exactly right, but that's what I got from it.

looking over test

Today in human geo we looked over the five major religions test , but for like the first fifteen minutes one student had to take the test so Mr. Schick let us do whatever. I tried to watch Netflix, but the connection was really bad so I tried to link the wifi to my phone and it worked a little bit better but was still really slow, so I just watched youtube. After the kid who didn't take his test finished, that's when we started to look over the actual test. I got a 38/50. I did a lot worse than I thought I did. I kept mixing up Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. I did pretty well with the Judaism and Christianity questions though. For the rest of class Mr. Schick just talked and that's why i'm doing my blog while he talks about random things till class ends.

5 religions quiz

Today in human geo we took the five major religions quiz that we've been working on for three days. Before the actual test Mr. Schick gave us ten minutes to review our notes and stuff. He also walked around with a basket filled with candy and stuff and he let us pick something out which was nice. I got one of those jolly rancher lollipops, it was pink lemonade flavored. Anyway, we also went over the slides about the religions as a class one more time as review. T study for this quiz I used Ryleigh's quizlet that she made and it kinda sort of helped. I definitely got the basic stuff covered on the test, but I'm almost positive I continually mixed up Hinduism and Buddhism. Luckily, it was all multiple choice and there were no writing portions of it.

5 major religions pt 2

So yesterday we talked about Christianity and Islam. Today we talked about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Hinduism is the third largest practiced religion in the world, 1.1 billion. adherents. Tjey are referred as Hindus. They are mostly located in India and Nepal. Their holy book is called the vedas. Eternal truths revealed to ancient sages; composed in verse form (meant to be sung and easily memorized). Buddhism had 500 million - 1.5 billion adherents. They are called buddhist and a majority of them are located in southeast Asia, China, Nepal and Japan. The amount of buddhist in the US is 1.2 million. The founder is Siddahara Guantama. Judaism has 14-18 million adherents. They're called Jews. They're located in Israel and the US. The founder was Abraham. Their holy book is the Torah.

start of 5 major religions

In human geo today we started to talk about the five major religions. The most practice religion in the world is Christianity. The second most practiced is Islam. Around 2.2 billion people in the world are christians. They are located in Europe, the Americas, and southern Africa. The denominations of Christianity are: Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, Protestants (Lutherans, Methodists, Baptist, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and many more. The founder of Christianity was Jesus Christ and Christianity is Abrahamic in origin). The holy book of the religion is called the Bible , especially the New Testament (gospels). Some of the beliefs are that Jesus is both human and divine- son of God; he led a virtuous life; was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected; he ascended into heaven where he reigns with God the Father. We also talked about the Islam religion, but I have enough words from just talking about the christianity one lol.

test day :))

So test day is here and we finally took the population pyramid/settlement test. All the questions on the test were multiple choice, which was nice because I don't like having to write short answers. Mr. Schick gave us ten minutes in the beginning of class to study which was also very nice of him. I just looked over my notes in my composition and re watched the population pyramid video. When I got the test I was able to answer most questions without any doubt, but for sure on some of them their was hesitation. I did my best to make good guesses though, if I really had no idea on one, which was only on like three problems. Overall I think I probably got a high B on that test and I feel pretty good about it.

test review pt 2

Today in human geo we finished doing the second half of reviewing for the test on Monday. We re watched the Ted-ed video on population pyramids as a class. I pretty much understand most of the population pyramid stuff and I think i'll do okay on the test. Mr. Schick let us watch jeopardy again, which was really fun.

Test Review pt 1

Today in human geo Mr. Schick was talking about the parent teacher conferences and how he would talk to the parents and stuff. My mom asked me if I wanted her to come and talk to any of my teachers and I told her not really and surprisingly she agreed. I think it was because she was approving of my grades for the first quarter so she didn't really care as much. Anyway for test reviewing, Mr. Schick pulled up the one google slide presentation with all of the population and settlement information that we first started with in the beginning of this unit. We just went through each one and told us what we would have to know for the test. We're also gonna review the population pyramid stuff tomorrow, but Mr. Schick wanted to give us blog time.

Presentations feedback

Yesterday in class we presented our country slides talking about their society issues. My group (Ryleigh, Alex, and Lauren) did the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lauren was the team leader and she was in charge of the agriculture and stuff of Congo. Ryleigh researched the economy and their issues. Alex talked about the energy of the country which is basically just electricity, oil production and gas. I contributed to the project the people and society part of it. I talked about how the population pyramid was set up and stuff. We presented third and I think we did a decent job, but personally there was some distractions in the classroom, but other than that I think we did okay.

exam questions class

Today in human geo Mr. Schick went around to different people in the class and asked different questions from an exam he gave his class a couple years ago and they were on Population and Settlement. He was thinking about giving us a pop quiz on this so that's why we did that. He asked us 37 questions. If that were an actual quiz or test, I think I most likely wouldn't have done well. I like know the basic stuff and the population terms but when the questions started to get more specific and based off of the CIA gov website. It was just a bunch of statistics I think would be kind of difficult to remember. I had a headache in class today so I tried my best to listen to the feedback he was giving while asking us questions, but it was kind of hard.

summary of in class assignment

Yesterday in human geo, Mr. Schick assigned to us this thing where we had to look up five facts on the world CIA fact book and write mini paragraphs about how we found them interesting and how they related to what we have been learning in class. Since Mr. Schick wasn't here yesterday, we had his class in Mrs. Gauthier's classroom. It was kind of nice being able to work on human geo stuff in a different environment. I had to re read the directions on his website a couple times to fully understand what we need to do because his instructions were kinda vague, but I eventually got it. It was pretty easy to write why I found my facts interesting. After the fact assignment he had us look up five different countries and predict what we think their population pyramids would like in the future and whether they would rise slowly, rapidly, or just decline.

in class population assignment

Fact 1: The entire worlds population is 7,503,828,180. I found this fact interesting because you don't really realize how big something is until you see it in numbers and it doesn't really feel like there is that many people so it was cool to have the exact number of our entire world population.

Fact 2: Most spoken language in the world is English. I didn't really expect it to be anything else, but what did come as a surprise to me was the fact that the second most spoken language is Mandarin Chinese. I feel like the second most spoken language would be Spanish because it's taught in school and it seems like Spanish people are more common.

Fact 3 Religions: 31.4% of the worlds population practices the Christian religion. I found this interesting because I figured more people would be in that range.

Fact 4: Birth rate and death rate: 18.2 births/1,000 population , 7.7 deaths/1,000 population. 

Fact 5: infant mortality rate: This was probably the saddest fact but it was interesting because i didn't know that before.

1. United States- I think it will rise rapidly

2. Brazil- rise slowly

3. Honduras- rise rapidly

4. Germany- decline

5. Chad- rise rapidly

10/31

Today in human geo we watched another video called 'Hans Rosling : 200 years in 4 min'. It was a guy talking about how different nations/countries have grown industrial wise throughout the years.
-he teaches global health
-animating the data in real space
-in 1810 life expectancy was below 40
-china and the south African nations struggled to join the industrial revolution for a while
we drew a chart that showed life expectancy and the GDP

population pyramid discussion

Today in human geo we watched the population pyramid video again but as a class. We pretty much just talked about how the population pyramids are set up and how the different countries pyramids will increase or decrease over time. The population pyramids are set up by gender. Men are located on the left and women are on the right. Young people are located on the bottom of the population pyramid and older people are located on the top.

population test review

So today in human geo since two other students hadn't taken the population and settlement test we had to wait for them to take them so we could review the test as a class. In the meantime, Mr. Schick had us watch one of those TED- ED videos and it was on population pyramids. After we watched the video, there was website called PopulationPyramid.net and on it was basically just a bunch of statistics of different countries in different years populations and their growth or decrease throughout time. He said we could just mess around with it and look at different things so i did that for a little while and then I picked Germany because why not, and i wanted to see how their population would be in a couple years and i kid you not every single year as it increased Germay's population dropped like a million per year. Mr. Schick said it was like that because not many people over there are having babies. Anyway after everyone had taken the test we finally could review them. I did pretty well and got a 90.

test dayy

So today in human geo we took our population and settlement test. To be honest I think I did pretty okay and I was stressing a lot while studying, but the test wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The world fact boom portion of the test was really easy and I was able to find information a lot quicker than before. I finished all twelve of the questions before the twenty minutes was up. As I said before I made a quizlet for the vocabulary terms and I think I got a majority of those right, maybe I mixed up one or two. On the very last page of the test there were two bonus questions and I had absolutely no idea what they were so I just didn't do them, but they were bonus so it's okay. So yeah I think I did okay on it but I guess i'll just have to wait and see when Mr. Schick finishes grading them and hands them back.

review for test

Today in human geo we pretty much just reviewed everything that we're gonna have to know for the test tomorrow. I think that if I study well enough tonight that  i'll be okay because I feel like I know most of the material, but I got to get better at using the CIA world fact book site because it took me a little bit too long when we were doing those questions in class the other day. Also, since the first part of the test were pretty much just doing that  and only being given twenty minutes, i'm definitely gonna work on finding my way around it a lot better tonight. For the vocabulary part I'll probably just make a quizlet because those help me out a lot especially for memorization and things like that.

going over world fact book questions/ random

Today in human geo class we reviewed the world fact book questions that we did in class yesterday. We didn't get through all of them but we went all the way up to number 18.  Mr. Schick had us read the answers aloud and then we discussed them. As I was answering the questions yesterday in class, it was pretty easy to find the answers, but some took more searching for than others. We really only did this in class today so I'm just gonna talk about my day. So today was Wednesday and the letter day was 'A' and I hate a days because I have patriot transitions and no offs which is especially annoying because I didn't get an off on the day before which was an h day. Luckily I have a good off tomorrow.  I feel like this week has been going by super slowly and i don't really know why. Halloween's coming up and it honestly doesn't feel like halloween at all like it has just felt like a really long September. We moved seats in my math class and I definitely feel like I can focus more.

CIA world fact book questions

1. China's population is 1,384,688,986. And India's population is 1,296,834,042.

2. Japan's total fertility rate is 1.42 children born/woman.

3. The death rate of El Salvador is 5.8 deaths/1,000 population.

4. The percentage of France that identify their religion as none is 23-28%. It is not verifiable and the government doesn't ask which one you are.

5. The percentage of Mexicans that identify themselves as Roman Catholic is 82.7%.

6. the GDP - per capita (PPP) in the United States is $59,800 (2017 est.)

$58,900 (2016 est.)

$58,400 (2015 est.)

7.  the GDP - per capita (PPP) in Nigeria is $5,900 (2017 est.)

$6,100 (2016 est.)

$6,300 (2015 est.)

8. the GDP - per capita (PPP) in Luxembourg is $105,100 (2017 est.)

$105,400 (2016 est.)

$104,600 (2015 est.)

9.The percentage of the United States’ population that are Internet users is 76.2%

10.  the number of airports in Russia is 1,218. The number of airports in the untied states is 13,513.

11. The amount of people who don't have electricity in the world is 1.201 billion.

12. the Infant Mortality Rate in Canada is 4.5 deaths/1,000 live births.  In Cuba it is 4.4 deaths/1,000 live births. In the United States it is  5.7 deaths/1,000 live births. 

13. The literacy rate for men is in Afghanistan is 52%. For women it is 24.2%. The total is 38.2% .

14. The three countries that have the highest life expectancy are Monaco, Singapore, and Japan.

15. The three countries that have the lowest life expectancy are Afghanistan, Zambia, and Lesotho. 

16. Monaco  has the sixteenth highest Net Migration Rate.
17. the unemployment rate in Vietnam is 7.3%. For South Korea it is 10.4%. In the united states it's 8.6%. India's is 10.1%. and lastly Kenya's is 40%.
18. The percentage spent by: Germany is 1.24.                                      For China it is 1.87.                                       And for United States: 3.16.
19. The three countries that produce the most crude oil are Untied states, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. 10,962,000 US, 10,759,000 Russia, 10,425,000 SA.

20. The three countries that import the most crude oil are US, China, India. Us imports 7,969,000. China imports 6,710,000. India imports 4,057,000.

21. Spanish- 6 percent
Chinese- 12.3 percent
English- 5.1 percent

blog for 10/18 (late)

People migrate because of push forces and pull forces. Push forces would be considered civil war, environmental degradation, unemployment or underemployment, and religious or ethnic persecution. Some pull forces are a better economic opportunity, better health services, religious and political freedom. We learned about this thing called TFR which is just an acronym for total fertility rate. The total fertility rate is the average number of children born per woman. For a population to remain the same, the total fertility rate must be 2.1. If it is lower than 2.1 the population would rise, but if it is higher than 2.1, the population falls. The world total fertility rate is 2.42 (it was 2.54 two years ago, and 2.47 last year). I don't really know if those are recent statistics or not because Mr. Schick said that he updates the powerpoint every year.

terms - blog for 10/17 (late)

Crude Death Rate- # of deaths per 1000 of the population

  
Crude Birth Rate- # of births per 1000 of the population

Net Migration Rate- the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country is net immigration

Rate of Natural Increase- produced by the death rate from the birth rate the gives the 

gives us the annual natural growth rate- in % FORM FOR A COUNTRY

Life Expectancy- average # of years to be lived by by a group of people born in the same year

going over test

Today in human geo we went over our map tests and I got a fifty- nine out of one-hundred. Our average score as a class was 75%. Even with us being able to use our blog notes, the honors classes still got a higher average. I definitely think I could've scored way higher, but maybe I just need to start making these blogs more information filled instead of trying to meet the word limit. As we were looking over the tests, Mr. Schick had suggested to us that we write the letter answer next to the question so later when we have to take finals and other big tests like that, we could easily just cover up the answers and try to  answer them again as a study tool. We didn't really do anything else so i'll just talk about what my favorite part of today was, which is when I went to math because we got to work in groups and the people in my class are funny.

discussion about population

Today in human geo we started the topic of Population and Settlement on Earth. There is over 7.6 billion people on Earth right now. The people keep increasing by over 73 million per year. 90% of our population growth happens in East Asia and Latin America. In class today we also talked about how in China you can only have one child to a family to prevent overpopulation and if you have any more than that, then you have to pay extra money for it. The average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year is called the life expectancy.

map test

Today in human geo we took our map quizzes. Like seven people left for sports and stuff so classroom felt kinda empty. I studied a lot for this test using a quizlet and I felt pretty prepared. Unexpectedly, Mr. Schick said he would let us use our own blogs on the test. Since we were now able to use our blogs I felt a little bit more ready for it. When he handed out the tests he handed out a scantron sheet with them as well, which I wasn't expecting because I haven't used one in a while. The test itself wasn't really too difficult for me and I think I got a decent grade on it. I definitely don't think I aced it but I'm pretty sure I scored okay. I put a good amount of the material in my quizlet and studied it, but I missed a few little things which I kinda just had to guess on the test with.

pop quiz!

Today in class Mr. Schick read us back some of the questions we put on our made up quizzes from yesterday. I feel like I was able to answer most of them. Then after we were done answering the questions from the quizzes that we made, Mr. Schick gave us a pop quiz. My friend Sierra Simmons in Mr. Schick's honors 2 class told me yesterday that she had a pop quiz and she said that it would be pretty easy so I kind of assumed that I would be able to do well, but boy was I wrong. Im like almost 100% sure I bombed that pop quiz and got only like four  right. I just checked veracross and I was right I got a 4/10 so looks like I got some studying to do. To be honest I'm just glad I didn't get a zero. I'm probably gonna make a quizlet using all my notes and some of the blogs to help me study because the learn button on it really helps me for some reason.

made up quiz

1. Site is the physical _________ of a place.

1. Ability
2. Importance
3. Character
4. location

    2) ____ have the ability to modify the characteristics of a site.

1. Animals 
2. Humans
3. Robots
4. vegetables

  3) the location of a place relative to other places (def.)

              a. Situation

              b. Site

              c. longitude

              d. latitude

4) What is the absolute location of latitude?

1. East / West 

   Or

      b. North / South

5) Which one of the following parallels are incorrect? 

       a. Antarctic Circle

       b. Tropic of Cancer

       c. Equator

       d. Tropic of Taurus

6) Who created the first world map? 

     a. Cleisthenes

     b. Rowan

     c. Eratosthenes

     d. Spongebob

7) Geography is the study of ____ things are found on Earth’s surface & the reasons for their locations.

1. Where
2. When
3. What
4. how

8) What is the art and science of mapmaking called? 

      a. Mapology

      b. Biology

      c. physiology

      d. Cartography

9) What are longitude lines called?

    a. Meridians

          or

    B. parallels 

10) Time zone is the region of ____ that observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. 

1. Saturn
2. Earth
3. Jupiter
4. Uranus

Time zone stuff

In class today we took the North and Central America and South America mapping quiz and we did notes and talked about time zones. I studied for the quiz by doing the map games online which really helped me out a lot, but when it came time to take the quiz i had some doubts about where I put Venezuela and Colombia and it turns out I had it right the first time but then I changed it and ended up getting it both wrong which kinda sucks. But for the most part I think I did pretty well with the rest of the quiz, I haven't checked Vera-cross yet so I don't know yet. Anyway we discussed time zones after the quiz. A time zone is a region of Earth that observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. UTC stands for coordinated universal time which was confusing at first cuz it didn't really match the letters, but then Mr. Schick further explained that it's universal. It's coordinated universal time, primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time.

Longitude

Today in class we continued our notes on longitude and latitude, focusing more on the longitude portion of it. Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east- west position of a point on the Earth's surface. The Prime Meridian passes through Greenwich, England, and is given the position of 0 degrees longitude. Longitude Lines are known as Meridians, just like latitude lines are known as parallel. They run in North and South direction. Latitude lines run in east- west directions. Longitude lines are farthest apart at the equator and meet at the poles. They're equal in length and are halves of great circles.During class today we were taking notes and we always take notes in the dark and when we walk through the classroom it's always dark and today Mr. Schick finally told someone to turn them on and it was such a weird feeling like it felt unnatural for the lights to be on, but it was kinda cool.

Grids and Time zones (ways of describing where things are)

In class today, we continued working with maps and focused more on the longitude latitude part of them. Geography is the study of where things are found on the Earth's surface and the reason for there locations. Two important questions about this were: Where are people and activities found on Earth? and Why are they found there. The definition of a map is basically a two dimensional or flat-scale model of the Earth's surface (or a portion of it). Maps are made by cartographers. Cartography is the art and science of mapmaking. Maps serve two purposes. As a reference tool to identify an objects absolute and relative location , or it can be used as a communications tool to convey the distribution of human activities or physical features. Absolute location as expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude (north or south of the equator) and longitude (east or west Prime Meridian). Relative location is the regional position or situation of a place relative to the position other places. Latitude is measured by imaginary lines running parallel to the equator.

situation- notes

Today in human geo we talked about how situation is the location of a place relative to other places. When it comes to situation on a map finding an unfamiliar place and understanding its importance should be what you look for. Some places are important because they are accessible to other places due to their location. Mr. Schick went around and asked some of us where our copybooks came from and most people said from Vietnam. We were discussing how a lot of US merchandise and such are designed here but sent over to Asia for manufactory because the labor laws and pay are less expensive and strict. We learned from one of the exchange students from Beijing, China, Tom, that kids over there could honestly get away with working underage as young as like sixteen years old. The health benefits are also really bad over there and they don't really see it as their problem.

Site- notes

Today in human geo we discussed how there are physical characteristics of places such as (climate, water sources, topography, soil, and vegetation), this is called site. The factors of a site where some settle can also depend on their culture. This method of observation was probably often used when people first started to settle in new places. Humans have the ability to modify the characteristics of a site. Some people when they are settling, choose places with a body of water nearby because for some it’s an easy food source. We also talked about how certain foods cannot grow in the environment of the US. For example, bananas, coffee beans, avocados, and a few more. Where you decide to settle usually benefits your living styles in a way. So if you were a farmer you would try to pick a place with good soil and lots of open space for crops. If the climate in the area you chose to grow stuff is always cold and bad weather for ur plants, then it would impact your living situation in a way.

Map game screenshots

Getting our tests back !!

Today in human geo we got our Message to Garcia and excellence tests back and reviewed them. I actually did really good on it and got a 102 overall because of the bonus question. I also got 20/20 on both of my essays and I was really proud of them. As I was taking the test the multiple choice was super easy so i'm glad I got them all right. I made a quizlet to help me remember most of the info on the test and it was really easy to recall all of it. I like how on the test Mr. Schick put facebook like icon stamps on mine. Rachel put me in her blog today about how I did really good on my test and that was really sweet of her. I also found out from Mr. Schick that I was the only one in the superhuman geo class to get over 100 which was exciting.

Mercator Projection v. Gall-Peters Projection Maps

The most popular version is the Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It's been widely used for centuries, including today in various forms by Google Maps and many other online services. This map has imaginary lines that cut all meridians at the same angle, that makes it a useful tool for navigation. Because the Earth is roughly spherical, every flat map distorts our planet one way or another. Despite its benefits, the Mercator projection drastically distorts the size and shape of objects approaching the poles. A few things wrong with this map is the fact that it shows that Greenland is roughly the same size of Africa, but in reality can fit inside Africa about 14 times. Another misconception of the mercator is that it makes Antartica look like it dwarfs all the continents. In reality it looks like the second - smallest continent. The Gall-Peters Projection map makes seeing the relative size of places much easier.  this version comes closer to showing that what we percieve as land mass in the "South" is nearly twice as big as the "North"— 38.6 million square miles compared to 18.9 million square miles. The Mercator, however, makes the North look much larger. 

Map tingz

Today in human geo we talked about the differences in three different maps on board and described details we noticed about them. So there was three different maps hanging up on the white board and Mr. Schick had us go up to them and write down in our notebooks what we saw on them. On map A, the colors were a little bit more dull then the other two, there were route signs all over, the light water represented the shallow end of the deeper parts of the bodies of water, and it showed topography- which just means the map showed the ridges of the mountain ranges. On map B there was a compass, all of the oceans and seas were labeled, the continents were labeled, countries were different colors, and both map A and B were mercator maps. Map C had bold letters and the colors were more bright and bold.

Test day !!

Today we took the test covering all the info we learned on "A message to Garcia" and Excellence. Last night I created a quizlet with most of the information I thought we would have to know for the test. I practiced reviewing all the info by doing the "learn" part of the quizlet. I think it really helped me a lot because when I got the test i felt pretty prepared and like I would have a chance of doing pretty good on it. I answered all the multiple choice questions pretty easily, but I wasn't expecting to have to write two big essay's. My hand hurt after the first essay we had to write. I felt that I put a lot of thought into the first one. The second one didn't take me too much time because it was more of an opinionated question, so it was a little bit easier to get my thoughts out onto the page.

Finishing "Excellence" slides & 9/11 disscussion

Today in class we got new seats and I really like where I sit now. After we got new seats, we talked about how in 508 BC democracy was introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes and its importance. We also had a thorough discussion about the impact of Socrates and his method. Socrates worked as a stonemason as a young man and also fought heroically in the Peloponnesian War. Due to his background, it shaped the way he saw the world. Since he saw nothing wrong with him giving kids a chance to think for themselves  and thinking about the other possibilities of things, he was charged withe the crimes of corruption of the Athen youth, and impiety. When he was put on trial with 500 people in the jury, he blatantly admitted to his "crimes", but didn't see the fault in them, he was put on death sentence. It was interesting though because he literally admitted to what they considered was a crime and 221 of the 500 still pleaded him not guilty. Anyway he later had the opportunity to get out of his death sentence by escaping but refused, proving his loyalty to Athenian democracy. Poisoned hemlock was what caused his death.

On this day 18 years ago, the tragic event that affected the whole world happened: 9/11.  Mr. Schick discussed his experience on this day.

Agora- a central public space in ancient Greek city-states. The literal meaning of the word is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center of the athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life in the city.

Polis- a city state in ancient Greece, especially as considered in its ideal form for philosophical purposes.

The importance of the year 508 BC to the ancient Greeks- Democracy is introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes. (1st time in history rose up against leaders and over threw them) He establishes a constitution and is often called the "Father of Athenian Democracy". This is one of the great accomplishments of the Greek culture.

Socrates- was a classical Greek philosopher who is credited with laying the fundamentals of modern Western philosophy. He is known for creating Socratic irony and the Socratic method. He has had a profound influence on Western philosophy, along with his students Plato and Aristotle.

The death of Socrates- The Suicide of Socrates, 399 BC. On a day in 399 BC the philosopher Socrates stood before a jury of 500 of his fellow Athenians accused of "refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state" and of "corrupting the youth." If found guilty; his penalty could be death. poisoned

The Socratic Method- a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions. It is a dialectical method, involving a discussion in which the defense of one point of view is questioned; one participant may lead another to contradict

more on the letter to Garcia

In the beginning of class we talked about how back in the day the teachers were allowed to hit the students with no consequences taken and how it was a very normal system. Personally I couldn't imagine going to school and the teachers being allowed to hit you, like that's terrible. Anyway after that little discussion, we continued working with the A message from Garcia letter. Today instead or reading the actual letter, we went more into the backstory and the specifics of everything. I learned a couple of new things today that I found pretty interesting. For example the fact that apparently Alaska and Hawaii weren't always states and there were 48 at one time. I also learned that the tallest mountain in North America was Mount McKinley, which was changed back to its original name, Mount Denali. The A Message from Garcia letter was so liked by the people who had read it, that it was created into a movie twice! One time in 1916 and another in 1936. When the letter was reprinted as a pamphlet, it sold over 40 million copies. It was also translated into 37 languages. "Take a message to Garcia became an expression for taking initiative. It is sometimes used in the Military.

A Message To Garcia

In today's Human Geo class Mr. Schick reinforced the rule that any day we have class, we have to blog which I wasn't aware of until today, but i'll try to stay on top of these.  After that we read an essay called "A Message to Garcia", written in 1899 by Elbert Hubbard. I was one of the first people to have to get up to read and surprisingly I really wasn't that nervous about it. Anyway the essay was about the Spanish-American War and the president needed this guy Rowan to deliver a very important letter to someone of the name Garcia. In the story it seemed like Rowan was a very get the job done kinda guy because as soon as McKinley gave him the duty to do that he delivered the letter right away, even though he had to go through a lot to complete the task, he got it done. Now when there was another thing needed to be done- this time much more simple, the clerk that was asked to do it refused and questioned them instead of just following through with it. After reading Hubbard's essay, the connections with the story and our discussion of the difficulties of high school are kinda similar. Like in the Hubbard story there was a guy who was willing to do his work no questions asked , but there was also a guy who was kind of trying to get out of it or half do it. So maybe that the hardworking guy represents a student who tries to be on top of all their work and the other guy is like a student who can't really stay on top of their work and other things. To be honest I kinda just took a wild guess on this so sorry if it doesn't make sense.