Blog Post #28 -What's the test going to be like next week?-

     Today in class for most of the time we were going over facts of the CIA World Factbook. We did this because on the next test that we take next week, we are going to have questions that we have to answer in less than 15 minutes. Some questions would be "What is the fertility rate in France?" or "What is the population in the United Sates?". We started just going over some random facts after mr schick asked us some questions. Another thing we talked about was the homeless in the worlds and the homeless in the United States. There are also over a billion people in the world that do not have access to electricity. We also talked about the way how we use electricity. After we finished that, we talked more about the test and what is going to be on it. There are sadly going to be math on the test so yay (not really).

Blog Post #27 -World Fact Book-

     Today in class for the first twenty minutes we checked veracross to check our grades. We had to make sure that there is no assignments that we were missing. For the last part of class we went around the room stating some interesting facts about the blogs we did over this past weekend. One of the first facts was about how France has more poverty than us yet they have a lower population. Some classmates were surprised as well because they thought that France was rich. However, smaller countries like Monaco have a way less population but they are one of the richest countries in the world. Population growth and birth rate are a big part of this number. Another fact was on the country Somalia which is probably the biggest un lawful country in the world. Patrick decided to teach a 3 minute lesson on it as well. The lesson was on pirates and how they worked together and how they got places. That was just something extra at the end of class that was kind of fun to listen to.

Blog Post #26 -The World Factbook Assignment-

     On Friday we got the assignment to look at some countries' information and find facts that relate to what we're learning in class. The first fact I found is that France's median age is 41.4 compared to the United States's median age of 38.1. This interested me because I honestly thought that there were way more young people in France so it'd at least be lower than the United States. The second fact I found was that the country Pitcairn Islands has a population of only 54 people...that's so weird to me how it's even a country. This is compared to China having a population of well over 1 billion. That's really crazy. The third fact I found was that Fiji's official language is English and Fijian people live there yet the United States has more English speaking people but the US hasn't made English their official language. That makes so sense which is interesting for me to see. The fourth fact I found was that Japan has the 2nd highest life expectancy at birth, right after Monaco. Japan interests me because they're growing in fast food chains which is unhealthy and will eventually drop, that's one reason why  United States isn't high. Our country is very obese and fast food doesn't really help. The last interesting fact I found was that the first 10 countries that have the highest percentage of HIV/AIDS are located in Africa. I think it's because they are poor countries and don't have access to products that could protect them against those infections. The United States isn't even on the list which is a good thing. It was really cool to see all the information of the countries.

Blog Post #25 - Why do people migrate?-

     Today in class we took more notes on the powerpoint dealing with population. The key question that we took notes on today was "Why do people migrate?". People migrate because of push and pull forces. Push forces make a group of people want to leave a country. Some examples are a civil war, environmental degradation, unemployment or underemployment, and religious or ethnic persecution. Pull forces make a group of people want to enter/live in another country. Some examples of pull forces are better economic opportunity, better health services, religious freedom, and political freedom. The next thing we talked about was Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which is the average number of children born per woman. For the population to remain the same, the TFR must be 2.1. If it's higher than 2.1, the population rises, and if it's lower than 2.1, the population falls.  The world TFR is 2.42, The U.S. TFR is 2.01, Nigeria's TFR is 6.89, and Japan's TFR is 1.40.

Blog Post #24 - RNI and Net Migration Rate-

     Today in class we took more notes. This powerpoint still has to do with population. The crude birth rate is the number of births per 1,000 of the population. The crude death rate is the number of deaths per 1,000 of the population. RNI means rate of natural increase. This is produced by subtracting the death rate from the birth rate. This gives us the annual natural growth rate-in percentage form-for a country or region. The Net Migration Rate is the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during a year. An excess of persons entering the country is net immigration. This is written as a positive number. An example would be Canada having 5.65 migrants per 1,000 population. Next, is net emmigration which is an excess of persons leaving the country. This is written as a negative number. An example would be Mexico having -1.68 migrants per 1,000 population.

Blog Post #23 -Population Growth (start of unit 3)-

     Today we started unit 3. This unit is all on population. The key ideas are: Where is the world's population distributed?, Why is global population increasing?, Why does population growth vary among regions?, and Why do some regions face heath threats?. There are over 7.5 billion people on the planet right now. It increases over 73 million per year. 200,000 people are born per day in the world. 8,377 people are born per day in the United States. 149 people are born per minute and 2.5 are born per second. These are pretty accurate statistics. We then filled out a chart that showed how many years were between the times the world hit another billion people. The year gap has been decreasing. The last thing we did was talk about life expectancy. Life expectancy is the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year. The highest life expectancy is in Monaco. The United States is #42 and the country with the lowest life expectancy is Chad.

Blog Post #22 -Test Day-

     Today in class we took the test. When I was taking the test I had the mindset that I got about three or four wrong. However, when we kind of talked about it after everyone was finished I realized that I actually didn't do that bad. I would talk about the questions I think I got wrong in this blog but I know there are two other classes that have not taken it yet so I'm not going to talk about it. If I'm being completely honest I think I got either two wrong, one wrong, or maybe even a one hundred. I really hope I did well though since I really do need my grade to come up. At the beginning of class before we took the test it was kind of funny though because Mr. Schick was counting down the time for us to be quiet from five and when he said two I started singing the iCarly theme song then the whole class started singing it and it was super funny.

Blog Post #21 -Review Day-

     Today in class we reviewed everything we learned thus unit since we have a test tomorrow. We reviewed time zones, and when we were doing that at the end of class I learned that the South Pole actually has no time zone and if you were to ever visit there you can choose whatever time you want it to be. I thought that was pretty cool. Since tomorrow is the test I'm kind of nervous to be honest, especially since I have 2 other tests I need to study for tonight. I really need an A on this test to bring my grade up to what I want it before the first quarter comes to an end in 2 weeks. Sometimes our class can get a little out of hand so I'm hoping Mr. Schick has been able to teach us everything we need to know for the test tomorrow.

Blog Post #20 - What will the future be like?

    Today in class we talked about religion and culture defined by where you live. We discussed that even though you think your way of living is right, the way of living, culture, or religion could be so much different to someone else. An example would be the Our Father prayer how one religion actually says 20 more words at the end of saying it, however I don't so that was interesting to hear. At the end of class I asked Mr. Schick what he thought the future would be like as his age so in our blogs we're supposed to write what we think the future will be like. Personally, I don't think the climate can get any better. If you think about it though, we can't do anything to change the climate, we can just try to attempt to help with global warming. Hopefully someone figures that out because I have no clue.

Blog Post #19 -Globalization-

     In class on Friday October tenth we took more notes. Olivia decided to teach some of the power point today. We talked about many examples of globalization like amazon, google, Facebook, and fast food restaurants. There are many pros and cons of globalization. A benefit of an example like McDonalds revolutionized the way we eat and what we use to eat and who we eat with. A con would be how now we don't eat with our families as much and we use plastic products that are polluting the Earth. We also talked about how things made in the USA are way more expensive to make then places like China or South America. The last thing we talked about was the recession in 2008. The house prices were always rising until 2008 when it crashed and all the values of houses went down. Since 2008 it's been rising and right now it's starting to get close to its peek again.

Blog Post #18 - Reviewing Ideas

     Today in class we went over everything that we have learned so far starting from everything after the chapter or unit 1 test. We're on unit 2 now I think and we have a test next week so we had to go over everything as a refresher. We reviewed the origins, types, and purposes of ancient maps. Geographic characteristics of places such as toponym, site, and situation. All of the map features as well and some examples are the equator, tropic of Capricorn, prime meridian, longitude, latitude. tropic of cancer, and time zones. Other things located on the map are a scale and sometimes a compass. We also went over GPS and the pros and cons of it. The last thing we reviewed were the types of regions which are formal, functional, and vernacular. Lastly, we had a discussion on tracking devices and whether they are good or bad. However, I saw the argument from both points of view.

Blog #17 -Regions-

     Today in human geography it was laid back yet still educational. It wasn't as fun as it has been before but I guess we have to start learning the curriculum eventually. We learned about the three types of regions. The first one is formal region which is where everyone in an area shares common distinctive traits, but some traits can be predominant, not universal. The second type of region is functional, which is an area organized around focal points. This means characteristics chosen to define a region dominates at a central focus and diminishes when you move outwards. An example would be the New York Times. The last type of region is called Vernacular, which is an area that people believe exist as part of their cultural identity. An example would be where you were born and the influence that place had on you. We also took a pop quiz in class.

Blog #16 - Patrick is our new teacher.

     Today was another super fun class. We started out by doing notes on unique places on Earth. Those notes were, a place is a specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular characteristic. Place names, or a toponym, is the name given to a specific place on Earth. A site is the physical characteristic of a plane. Situation is the location of a place relative to other places. Lastly, region is a unique area somewhere on the globe. While we were taking notes Patrick came up to the front of the class and started teaching and it was so funny. Mr. Schick was at Patrick's desk while Patrick was able to get on to Mr. Schicks chair. The entire class could not stop laughing the whole time. The only issue with this was that we didn't really get to learn that much besides a very detailed description of about 2 slides. However, the class today was so hilarious I'll definitely be remembering it.

Blog #15 - our phones are stalking us.

     Today in class we did notes on the GPS for like five minutes. GPS means global positioning system. After we took some notes we started talking about ancestry.com, Alexa, and privacy. It was probably the most fun class we've had in human geo so far. We started with ancestory.com and how crazy it is that anyone could have you're DNA all because you agreed to terms and conditions to something. Also it was so crazy how people actually pay for it. Secondly, we started talking about the Alexa's and how they are listening/ have to be listening to our conversations or whatever were saying.  We were stating the pros and cons of it as well. Finally we talked about privacy and how everyone deserves to have their own personal rights even if they're not guilty for a crime or something. It was made clear that these aren't going to be problems in the future, these problems are happening now.

Blog Post #14 - Going Over Test

     Today in class we went over our tests that we finally got back. We went over the test for most of the class but at the end we ended up getting an assignment in which we have to label the places he gave us and out them on the maps and in the correct time zones. We had about 10 minutes to do it at the end of class, but since I did not finish it I had to do it for homework. When we went over the test we had some discussions when people would wonder why their answers were wrong. It turned into arguments. When we were going over the essays we started talking about SAT's AND PSAT's and how important they are to do well on, especially the SAT. Apparently no matter how many extra curricular activities you have any college can reject you if your SAT isn't up to their standards.