Class 11/30, Hans Rosling and North Korea

Today in class we finished the video with Hans Rosling and his method of comparing countries'. wealth and life expectancy. The video got interrupted quite often because different points were being brought up. For example, in the video Hans talks about the effects of the World Wars on countries across the world. This then brought up the Vietnam War and allies of the U.S. and North Korea. The whole time we were talking about the nuclear missile launches, I honestly was just fearing for my life. Even though Harford County probably wouldn't be North Korea's target, we aren't that far away from Washington D.C. which could be a target which is very scary to think about. Also we discussed how fighting for our allies even if we have to do basically all the fighting due the size of the country, it is beneficiary to us. We also talked about how it wouldn't be wise if we attacked North Korea first because that would cause problems with Russia and China. Plus North Korea would probably attack South Korea. Mr. Schick thinks that North Korea is flaunting their nuclear weapons and having so many missile launches so that other countries take them seriously and acknowledge that they have power and the ability to destroy parts of countries.

Class 11/28, Population Pyramids Recap

Today in class we watched two videos talking about population pyramids. The first one was a TED.ed   video that talked about the different things you can gather from population pyramids and how events taking place in the world can change the growth of population. Also that these events can change the shape of the pyramid. The second video we watched was about a guy that Mr. Schick thinks is really great named Hans Rosling. He created a diagram that demonstrates the correlation between life expectancy and the GDP per capita of country.

Notes:

• Countries go through phases of development 
• Demographic Transition- starts as a pre-industrial economy and then moves into an industrial economy and then a postindustrial economy
• Industrialization- countries that have just begun to build factories and make products in large quantities and doing more work faster and employing more 
• when a society becomes industrialized, there is a rush of people moving into urban areas where the jobs are, this lowers the total fertility rate because it isn't practical for there to be large families in such cramped areas and women started to pursue professions 

Class 11/27, Going Over Test

Today in class we got our tests back and we started to go over them. We all did pretty good as a class. I think our class average was like 98%. It was so high because we had the opportunity to get 104% because there were extra credit questions at the end of the test. I did really good on the test actually. Sydney actually made a "correction" to the test. She wrote that the answer to a question was Nigeria when it wasn't an option. The actual answer to the question was Niger which she thought was a typo. It wasn't. Mr. Schick did not agree with her answer. He also told the whole class about her answer. She was a little embarrassed and then she had to explain to us all that she had never even heard of the country before but apparently we talked about it before in class. Also, I finally brought in food but all I had was goldfish so I brought in goldfish for everyone.

Extra Credit, Kiva.org

The Kiva Organization:

       The Kiva Organization is a non-profit organization that helps people worldwide by using micro-loans. The organization was founded in 2005 and is based in San Fransisco, California. The goal of the organization is to "connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.". Their mission is completed by thousands of people across the planet people donating amounts of money as small as 25 dollars to those living in poverty and help giving them the opportunity to start a business, go to school, and much more. Borrowers have managed to make so much out of these loans and have been able to return them to the lenders (97% return rate within the entire organization). In the twelve years that Kiva has been an organization 2.4 million impoverished groups and individuals have been assisted by 1.7 million lenders from all across the world. Kiva is rated four stars on the Charity Navigator site and has an overall rating of 97% based off financials, accountability, and transparency. This organization is very proficient and their method of helping people is very effective. Kiva as an organization has been able to loan 1.07 billion dollars to people in 84 different countries.                                 Two borrowers that are on that I looked into are Salina Jepkemoi from Kenya and Shahbaz from Pakistan. Salina is looking to get a loan of 300 dollars so that she can purchase quality feed for her cows to boost her milk collection and provide better services to her costumers. This is her second loan on Kiva and she pays back on time. She is married and her goal is to make a comfortable living situation for her family. In Kenya, the GDP per capita is only $3,400 which is quite low. Based off the  GDP per capita, it is understandably why is it hard to live comfortably (financially speaking) and why she is asking for a loan to help her business. While Shahbaz is looking for a loan of 2,875 dollars to help pay for the building of classrooms in a school. Shahbaz is 42 and he runs a school with 162 students enrolled, 49% of which happen to be female. He is very invested in creating a quality education for the youth in his community. His biggest issue is that he has a shortage of space within the school to teach the students. The literacy rate in Pakistan is 58% which means that a little more than half the population of people who are fourteen years and older can read at an efficient level. This  is major concern as time goes on and the youth begins to take positions of authority in society. 

Class 10/21, No Food and Baby Cows

Today started out kind of rough because apparently it was my day to bring in food and I got ridiculed for not bringing any in even though I wasn't aware I was supposed to. After we went through the fuss of me not bringing in food we moved on. The people who were not in class last Friday had the opportunity to take their test during class. Mr. Schick put the timer for the online part of the test on the board and it kind of gave me anxiety because I felt like I was in a rush for no reason. Finally the timer went off while Mr. Schick we introducing his extra credit project. I almost couldn't focus on what he was talking about because I was watching the seconds tick by on the board. Anyways, our extra credit project is actually really cool. I also discovered my new found love for fluffy baby cows. They are actually so cute. Here are some pictures of them:

Class 11/17, Test

Today in class we took our test for our unit. We had a time portion of the test along with fill in the blank and questions based off population pyramids. I did not think that the test was too overwhelmingly difficult. I didn't struggle with the CIA World Factbook as much as I thought I would. I actually finished it with enough time to go back and check all of answers before the fifteen minutes were up. I wish he would have put the questions about the United States together though. There were a couple questions about it and they weren't together so it would have been nice if they were together so I could have just stayed on the United States page instead of flipping back to it. Also I didn't like how the countries weren't labeled on the population pyramids because they really could have been any country in the world.

Class 11/16, Test Overview

Today in class we started to go over what is going to be on the test tomorrow. Mr. Schick gave us examples of what is going to be on the test.
Notes:

• Navigating the CIA World Facebook, 15 minutes to answer 15 questions based off information that can be found on the website, ex: what a country's population, net migration is?, etc. 
• Using word bank, match terms with the definition, there are more words than definitions, study the vocabulary Mr. Schick send outs and on his blog
• Using your knowledge to answer questions based off statistics, know the formulas for net migration, rate of natural increase, etc. 
• Know push forces and pulls
• Example: pull force- USA, religious freedom 
• Example: push force- Syria, war
• Example: pull force- Qatar, job opportunities 
• Example: push force- Greece, failing economy
• Example: push force- Nigeria, poor health services
• Example: push force- Egypt, poor women's rights
• Example: pull force- Canada, health care
• Population Pyramids, use them to answer questions, there will be one of each, x-mas tree, cup, and box, countries will not be named, know which side of the pyramid represents men and which is women 
• Example: Which country will experiences an increase in population? The x-mas tree
• There will be extra credit questions 

Class 11/15, Our Presentation

Today we Ellis brought food in. She brought in cookies, clementines, and bagels with cream cheese. It was very nice and appetizing. Then we started presenting the rest of the projects. My group presented first today. Our presenting started out a little rough because we pulled up the wrong document that didn't have the complete answers on it. So we had to stop and get the correct document   and then I forgot to share it with him and then we had to wait some more for my email to go through to him. Then we finally had the correct document pulled up and we were able to start to present. We started to go over our first question and answer and Mr. Schick wanted us to elaborate more on our answers. Then he started arguing with us on our definition with of "sustainable progress" and then we finished the rest of presentation while also getting some input from the rest of the class. Then Kelsie and Maddy presented and did a very good job. We also already got our grade for our presentation and we got 100%!!!!

Class 11/13, Presenting Continued

Today in class we actually had food. Thank you Faith, you're very appreciated. Then the people who hadn't taken that the pop quiz for the second time, took it. The first group to present was Ben and Chasey. Mr. Schick ridiculed their questions and answers for a bit. Then they started to share their longer responses that explained why certain things were prevalent in the population pyramids. For example, why is there more men in a certain country than women? First, you would have to use the population pyramid to state which country had more men than women. Then you would explain what is going on in that country that made that a statistic. After they finished presenting, Frankie was picked to present next. Mainly because he fell asleep. He worked alone and did a really good job on his project. His answers were really long, detailed, and explanatory. After he presented, Owen went. His project was really good and his questions were very specific. He sparked a lot of questions out of ranking of organizations.

Class 11/10, Pop Quiz Retake and Presenting

Today in class we started off by realizing that NO ONE BROUGHT IN FOOD!!!!! This was a tragedy. That pretty much ruined my mood for this rest of the day but oh well. Then Mr. Schick gave us a chance to retake the pop quiz we took yesterday that the majority of the class failed. I mean we only had ten seconds to answer each question which personally I believe is unfair.  I didn't even have enough time to process the questions and the graphs. It was nice of him though to let us retake it even though he is still counting the first one as a grade. After we took the quiz for the second time we started presenting our group projects. Everyone went for the A on the project. Sydney's group presented their project first and Sydney wrote a book for her one answer. Then Vlad's group went and they sounded very educated while presenting their project.

Class 11/9, Group Project

Group Project:
Madison Remeto, Valerie Friar, and Faith Hess

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cbtrZjSCXU6gPk2mlDTXQkMSqyY5dYHL9-cukxJBF-8/edit?ts=5a0458e3

Class 11/7, Population Pyramids

Today in class we focused on population pyramids. We talked about the three different shapes most pyramids possess. The three types are the Christmas Tree, the Box, and the Cup. They each represent different conditions within countries. For example, whether the country is developing, developed, or impoverished, has a high or low birth rate, short or long life expectancy, and other different growth rate statistics. We compared different countries and their different growth rates. We were able to also to make connections to events that were taking place in the world at the times where there were lots of babies being born compared to when there were not. For example, in the United States the largest percent of people were people younger than four years in the 1960s because it was after World War II so people were optimistic and were willing to start to families. Here are some examples of these pyramids.

Class 11/6, Chocolate Cake

Today in class we reviewed a lot of the PowerPoint. We went over certain topics in more depth like the different rates of growth. We also had chocolate cake that Owen made which was very nice and it was very good. Although it was a bit of a struggle to get the cake out of the pan. It kind of collapsed as soon as you went to pick it up. But it was really good so it doesn't matter. We also now have water bottles in class waiting for us. Mr. Schick pointed out to us what may be some good test questions that we should take note of.
Notes:

• Life expectancy for men is almost always lower than women
• Population Pyramids- we use population pyramids to analyze  growth (or decline) of fertility, mortality, and migration in cities, gives you the ability to measure two different things at the same time
• 2.1 being the Total Fertility Rate is very important, we covered to reasoning behind the one tenth in the number 

Class 11/1, Birth Rates

Today in class we focused on different statistics found on the CIA website. The highlight of the class though was that Ben brought in cases of water bottles. It was really refreshing to have in there as most of us get rather dehydrated in this class.

Notes:

• Infant Mortality Rate: babies who die before their first birthday 
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR): average number of children born per woman
• For a population to remain the same, the TFR must be 2.1
• Higher than 2.1: population rises
• Lower than 2.1: population falls
• World TFR: 2.42 (it was 2.54 two years ago, 2.47 last year) 
• U.S. TFR: 2.01 (it was 2.06 last year)
• Nigeria TFR: 6.89 (developing nation)
• Japan TFR: 1.40 (developed nation, aging population)
• The population of the U.S.- 326,625,791 people
• U.S. Infant Mortality Rate and Worldwide Ranking: 5.8 deaths/ 1000 births, ranked 169th in the world
• Country with the highest percentage of Catholics: 1. Mexico (83%) 2. Canada (39%) 3. United States (20%)
• Country with largest population in Africa: Nigeria (190,632, 261 people)