Saeri’s blog

Medieval Reflection

1. What did I feel successful doing during the process of the project? What am I proud of?

I felt successful during this process of the project when I finished my research. I used EBSCO for my whole research and I could find my information about monks and monasteries easily. EBSCO had lots of good sources that were easy to understand and were organized. I felt successful because I knew I had collected enough of information to write paragraphs just from my research records and I realized I had chosen a right topic for myself. The last time we did research, my first topic was trading in Ancient Rome. Most of the articles I found were too hard for me and I couldn’t find much information that I had to change my topic.

Something I’m very proud of about this project is my model of the monastery. It took me about 2 weeks to plan out, cut out the pieces (which I had about 50), paint them, and glue them together. Although it didn’t turn out exactly the same as I planned, when I finished the whole thing, it was pretty satisfying.

2. What new skills did I value learning?

The new skill I obtained from this project was the organization skill and skill to adjust the level depending on the adience’s age. From this project, there were no deadlines in particular part but had only deadline for the whole completed project. At the beginning, I finished my research and games on time so I thought I was doing good on my planning. When I started on my model, it was more complicated than I thought and it took me longer than I expected. And since I was rushing too much and didn’t measure properly, I had to edit my model so many times. This took me even more longer. Although I finished it before the fair, I think I could have done much better if I started it earlier.

Th skill to adjust the level for younger kids was very interesting to me. The medieval fair was meant for younger elementary kids. I had been writing and reading the articles in my level so when I first typed out my first speech for the fair, I realized that small kids such as 2nd graders wouldn’t be able to understand it. So what I had to do was to make my paragraphs easier for little ones using the same information. Another thing I did was to make my speech more interesting. I realized when I went to other class’s fair that audience would be bored and would want to leave the booth if your speech was boring. I added more active things such as asking them to raise their hand or take a guess at some of my questions. I think this was one of the important skill I learned from this project.

3. What was challenging during the process of completing the project? With what did I struggle?

The challenging part of the project was the making of the model. I used one picture of monastery I got from EBSCO. It was also hard because I had to do lots of maths. I measured each side of the building in the picture and multiplied by 4 so it would be bigger. Then one my challenge was here because on the picture, the building it 2-D not 3-D so I had to think logically and guess how long it would be. Then I had to cut out the piece from soft cardboard and see if it worked. I also had to make roofs and I even had to measure the angles. The painting part was not as challenging but the last part where I had to put all the pieces together was very challenging because I had to find the right pieces (many pieces were similar with their shapes or the shapes of the windows) then I had to hold them together until I was sure the pieces were strongly sticked together with the white glue. It took me long time and I think that was the most challenging thing I’ve done from this medieval project.

4. How could I have improved my process so that I would have been more effective?

I think I could have finished everything and had them all ready earlier by planning everything right. Just like what I said in previous questions, I did plan things but when I was doing my model, I realized I had more works to do than I thought so I ended it upworking on it later than what I planned. I could have also did parts of the project in order. When I started on my 3nd part: the game, I realized I should have written more information in the oral presentation for my questions on the game. So I had to edit those speech and had to restart on my game. I think I could have thought more about each part so I’d have it perfect and wouldn’t make the other parts of the project confusing.

5. Did I effectively create an age-appropriate presentation and game for the elementary students? (please explain how you know it was appropriate or how you could have changed it to be more appropriate)

I think I created an age-appropriate presentation, but I think I could have done little better on the game. For my visual presentation, I put some labels on my visual presentation (model) so my audience would know each parts of the monastery I’m talking about. For my oral presentation, I used lots of simple and easy words that 2nd graders would know. Then I organized all my information so each time I start talking about different things, the audience would know that I’m talking about different category and wouldn’t get confused. I think my game’s concept was simple enough for little kids to understand. It was my questions cards that I had problems with.  I think my questions were bit confusing and were little too hard. Also, for some of the questions, I used hard words for the small kids. But one thing that I think I could have thought about it was the size of the cards. My cards were quite small so the words printed were also small. I didn’t realize how most of the elementary kids liked to read the sentences aloud. Since my letters were small, they had a hard time reading it aloud and when I tried to read it aloud to them, they didn’t understand. I thinkmy game would have been more interesting and fun to them if I edited that particular cards.

United Nations World Issues Reflection

#1 Think about the presentations and reflect on the projects your classmates presented and the information you listened to. Explain with details and specific information what you learned, what you found interesting, surprising, or shocking about the presentations you heard in class.

From this presentations, I realized that there were so many things happening in the world. Our topic was Preventing Conflicts and from this, I learned that this was quite a big issues and I think it was very good to know about it. It was surprising that there were lots of wars and that UN had been doing some good works too because I thought it was doing nothing successful. It was also shocking because people have to get injured, killed, or sent out of the country because of these conflicts. The most important thing that I learned from our topic was that it’s very important to prevent them. They can get worse easily and very hard to do it. I think it’s very important to at least think about it.

From other groups’ presentations, I learned about other issues that have been occurring around the world. Something that was very shocking and sad to me was about refugees. In their iMovie presentations, it showed about lots of refugees been sent out of the country and what other countries had done about it. I think it was nice and kind that United States Presidents let some of the refugees to let them come to their country. From all of their pictures, I thought it was such a horrible thing. I didn’t really know about these people so I learned a lot from this.

Another one I learned a lot was about HIV and AID. It was a serious topic which they can’t really prevent the diseases. They come from monkeys or apes and most people from Africa gets them. No curing methods were invented yet and it can slow down but once you get it, you know you’ll have to die one day soon.

The last topic I learned was about Child Soldiers. It’s related to our topic about preventing conflicts. From their presentation, I learned that there are lots of child soldiers around the world, but especially in Africa. One thing that was shocking to me was that dangerous weapons have developed. Lots of child soldiers are been sent because lots of weapons have been easy to carry and use o it’s also possible for small kids (from 7 to 18 years old) to use and have them. They are also forced top buy weapons on their own.

#2 What would you change to improve your project/presentation if you were to do the assignment again?

I would try to organize myself little more and think more carefully. We first decided to do Power Point Presentations because it was the easiest. But at last, we thought we should have done iMovie. I would organize myself more because our Power Point Presentation was so long that people were getting tired and no long paying attention to the presentations. Next time I do these kind of presentations, I would also try to make things more clear so it easy for the audience to understand. I think I was supposed to explain things more ti my group mates because I just gave them a piece of paper and when we were actually presenting, we didn’t know who was really supposed to present the clip. I cared too much only about myself so next time I’d be careful to do things fair in the group.

Famous Egyptians Reflection (Part II)

Today, we had our speeches presented and I learned lots of things and found lots of things very interesting.

Everyone was doing different people so I learned lots of thing about Ancient Egyptians, although I don’t remember everything. I learned the most in how to give a speech and how we should present it. Some people have just read their speech paper for most of their speech and some people didn’t look at the audience that much. Or other people spoke too quickly and not clear that audience couldn’t understand what they were saying. I was being careful with those but I didn’t think that I put enough expression in my speech. Lots of people put expression in their speech and I have missed that so that one thing I want to be careful next time.

From all the speeches, I thought the costumes everyone was wearing were interesting and I think it made their speeches more interesting and also funny. The thing that I liked and thought interesting was that lots of people were related to each other and that they had a different point of view. For example, Daryl was Horus and Nick was being Seth. Seth is Horus’s uncle. Daryl (Horus) said Seth was evil and mean, but then Nick (Seth) said he was little evil but not as bad as Horus. Same things kept happening and I thought it was very interesting because when you are giving speech, you are trying to tell people that you are a good person and nobody wouldn’t want to tell the audience that he/she was being evil all the time. Lots of people said that we had to worship them (as a god) and some people even said you’ll die without me and I think that’s because everyone is forcing you to think that they are the important and famous people. I thought everything was interesting though.

Famous Egyptians Speech (Part I)

What do you imagine if you think of Isis? I am Isis and I’m Egyptian god. My life was very interesting, exciting, and very nice. I was very popular in lots of people in Ancient Egypt.

I am sister and wife of Osiris and Hours is my son. My parents are Geb and Nut. I also have another brother called Seth and he was mean to us all the time. In one myth, Seth killed my brother Osiris and I had collected all his body parts to make him alive again. Since then, I became a protector of living and dead. The reason I live in Ancient Egypt near Nile River was that Osiris and I came down from heavens for human with gifts. I wasn’t very special and I was just like other god that time.

After I came from heavens, I helped people in many ways because that was our gifts for human. First, I showed them how to harvest and process grains. Then I showed them the laws, institution of marriage, and institution of how to worship the gods. I have also taught lots of women how to tame a man so those women can live with them. Since then, many people started to worship me.

From all of the thing I had showed to human, I became very popular. People said that I brought happiness to them and they started to worship me not just as a god, but as a godmother. I was invited to lots of garden parties and I became one of the important sources for Pharaoh, the ruler of Ancient Egypt’s power. I have even traveled to Rome. I also got some temples of me in Egypt and Nubia. Then I became most popular god and also a popular goddess from ancient Egyptian Mythology.

Since I helped lots of people on Earth and brought happiness to them, I became very famous and popular. Although I’m a god, I am still treated like real person and was very important to Ancient Egyptians. From all the mythologies and ledgens, I am worshiped by many people from Ancient time to today.

Isis:

Picture from: http://grenier2clio.free.fr/egypte/pic/isis.jpg

Current Event Posting #3

Author: Not shown on the page

Title of Article: “Investigation into US shooting”

Website Title: CBBC Newsround

Date Published: Tuesday April 17 2007

Website address: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6560000/newsid_6562300/6562325.stm>

Date you looked at the site: Tuesday April 17 2007

Picture from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6560000/newsid_6562300/6562325.stm

1. What is the issue?

The issue is that a man shooted at Virginia Tech (university) and killed 32 people. This happened in Virginia, US. The suspected man killed himself after he shot the gun. There were 2 accident on shooting gun and first one happened where students sleep and second one where they study. First one happened at 7.15am on Monday and 2 people were killed. In second one, 31 people died including the suspected man. 15 people got injured and escaped from class room windows. There were 2 hours between first and second shooting and people are wonering why the university didn’t close after having first accident and why people didn’t let the student know about shooting after the first one. Police and investigaters are still trying to find out who gunman was and why this happened. This shooting accident was the worst shooting in history of US and President George W Bush was shocked and saddened abou this.

2. Who is involved

People who were involved are:

-All the students at Virginia Tech University

-The suspected gun shooter

-All the teacher at Virginia Tech University

3. Who is affected and how?

-Families and friends of the students and teachers at Virginia Tech University because some people were killed and all the families and friends will be sad since they lost their friends and family members.

-Police and investigaters because they need to find out the real situations.

-President George W Bush because he is responsible of his own country.

4. What would you do if you were directly involved?

I would first hire lots of good investigaters all around the world so we can get lots of informtaions about this gun shooting as fast as possible, because we need informations to think about the accident and we can’t just leave it. The reason I would hire lots of people to solve the accident is because the suspected gun shooter is already dead so it might be hard to find informations. Then I would try to organize the situations and discuss with lots of people about how we can not make these thing happen in the future, such as how we can make school security, how we should act if something happened at some place, and the way of contacting people.

Picture from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6560000/newsid_6562300/6562325.stm

Current Event Posting #2

Author: Not shown on the page
Title of the article: “Heavy flooding strikes Bolivia”
Website title: CBBC Newsround
Date Published: Friday February 23 2007
Website address:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6390000/newsid_6390000/6390041.stm>
Date I looked at the site: Saturday February 24 2007

Picture from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6390000/newsid_6390000/6390041.stm

1. What is the issue?
The issue is that there was nearly 3 months of heavy rain in Bolivia. From this, 35 people have already killed and thousands of homes were destroyed. Lots of people were forced to leave their homes and people are worried that rain could get worse. The storms were probably caused by a weather system called El Nino. El Nino is caused by warm and stormy whether. This happens every few years and this year’s El Nino got worse by global warming.

Many countries, such as United States, Italy, Venezuela, Peru and Argentina are sending aid to Bolivia but lots of the roads in Bolivia are damaged and it is hard to reach people in Bolivia who need some support.

2. Who is involved?
People who are involved are:

-People in Bolivia (Including the people who dies and people Who got injured)
-Government of Bolivia
3. Who is affected and how?
People who were affected are:

-Family of people who was killed and got injured, because they missed important family members.

-Other country which sent aid to Bolivia, because the country sent aid for this storm.

-Police of Bolivia, because they need to organize the country and take care of people.

4. What would you do if you were directly involved?

I would ask the Bolivia government to organize this disaster and I would ask people from other country to volunteer the people in Bolivia to get enough food, water, and shelter for all the people. After the disater is calmed down, I would also ask to get people’s house fixed and make it stronger so the next time when the same kind of storm comes, it won’t affect people that much than this time.

Then I would ask to have a meeting about global warming and how to stop it if possible, because it is causing lots of natural disasters that can affect many people.

Picture from:
http://www.europe-map.org/south-america/maps/bolivia.gif

Click here for the link to the new article

Current Events Responce

Responce to Daryl’s article:

Proper citation for news article:

Author: Ryan Lucas

Title of Article: “Current Events Posting”
Website Title: Death toll hits 23 in Poland mine blast

Date published: November 23, 2006
Website address

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061123/ap_on_re_eu/poland_mine_accident>

Date I looked at the site: December 1, 2006
1.What new informations has emerged?

The new informations I found about mine explortion in Poland are that there were 17 man trapped in the underground after explortion and that this is one of the worst mine explortion disaster that ever happened before in Poland. People who were killed are between 21 to 59.

2. What did you find interesting about this topic?

I thought it is intersting that mines can affect people so much. They were in the underground so people can’t figure out about it. In the presentation, Daryl said that those mines were old so it must have been hard to check the mines and I was also surprised to hear that old mines can still explorde really badly and still affect to a lot of people. I think it is going to be really intersting to see many details about explored mines because that would make people easier to figure out about when the mines were setted, who did it, and why.

3.What did you like about the initial posting?

I liked how Daryl summarized the answer to each question because it makes reader easy to understand. I also liked the map he put because it has a country near Poland and each part of Poland. (That the map is clear)

Picture is from(From Daryl’s blog):http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20061123/160_ap_poland_061123.jpg

This map is from(From Daryl’s blog):http://www.bized.co.uk/images/pol_map.gif

Reflections for presentations about Ancient Africa

Today, we presented about what was happening in ancient Africa

What I learned:

I learned discovery of iron, how the country in Africa turned into bigger country, and how Morocco attacked Songhai.

At first in West Africa, there were no such a thing called Iron so people used, harpoon, arrow, and spire for hunting and fishing. But after discovering iron, fishers, farmers, and population increased. And sometimes, they traded foods because they gets too much foods by iron.

In the country Ghana, the king of Ghana contorlled the trade religion. North Africa had salt and Waragans (I’m not sure if I spelled it correctly) had gold so they traded.

After Ghana, the country called Mali was made. It was twice as big as Ghana and had strong power of nearly 200 years. They paid gold because people wanted this Mali to be on the map.

After Mali, the new country called Songhai was maded. The capital was Gao. Songhai took control of Niger river.

In Morocco, Al-Mansur the sultan of Morocco really wanted money. In 1580, he planed to attack Songhai so he can get money. Songhai’s government didn’t allow to trade. So then Al-Mansur decided to attack Gao. The country Songhai was destroyed and salt&gold trade stopped. Morroco ruled when Songhai was and they are still there.

That’s what I learned from this presenation.

What I found intersting:

I thought it is intersting that you don’t know what was actually going on in the whole Africa but your part. When we presented, I finally figured out about the movment in ancient Africa. (We presented in the order of what happened in Ancient Africa)

The Current Events

Proper Citation Format:

Auther: Not shown on the page

Title of Article: “Four British troops dead in Iraq”

Website Title: CBBC Newsround

Date Published: Sunday November 12 2006

Website address: (link to the news article)

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6140000/newsid_6141800/6141852.stm>

Date I looked at the site: Monday Nobember 13 2006

1. What is the issue?

My article is about 4 members of British military who were killed and 3 members who were injured very badly in Iraq. They were a member of boat patrol on Shatt al-Arab waterway in southern Iraq. An explosive device was setted on the boat and was used to attack it. British military has been using boat to patrol since 2003 but they don’t know the specific details about this. The total number of British soldiers killed in Iraq became 125.

2. Who is involved?

People who were involved were:

-All the members of British soldiers who were taking part in the boat patrol

-Person (or people) who setted the explosive device, which we still don’t know

3.Who is affected and how?

People who were affected are:

-British soldiers

-families and friends of British soldiers who were taking part in the boat patrol because they are sad (of course)

4. What would you do if you are directly involved?

I would first solve this problem like when did this happen, who setted the explosive device, or what caused this problem becasue if this didn’t get solved no one can do to stop these kinds of problems and people would just keep doinig same thing. Then I would try to make Iraq calm down first because it has been causing all the problems and making citizens get mixed up. So now, I make citizens discuss about what they want their country to be like and come up with one idea so no more problems would happen.

This picture is from:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6140000/newsid_6141800/6141852.stm

This picture is from:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/default.stm

Google Earth Project

Part I. Social and Economic Indicators:

Nation (green):

Country name:Tunisia
Type of government: republic
Political leader: Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi

People (red):

Population: 10,175,014 (Population growth 0.99%)
Age structure 0-14years=24.6%,15-64years=68.6%,65 and over=6.7%
Ethnic group(s): Arab-98%, Europian-1%, Jewish and other-1%
Religion(s): Muslim-98%, Christian-1%, Jewish and other-1%
Language(s): Arabic, French (In different parts)
Literacy rates: 74.3%(Total)
Fertility rates: 15.52Birth/1000Popualtion Total=1.74children born/women
Life expectancy: Total Population-75.12%, Male-73.4years, Female-76.96years
Infant mortality rates: Total-23.84death/1000 livebirth

Economy (blue):

GDP per capita: $8,300
% Living under Poverty:
% of Internet Users: 835,000
% of cell phone users: 50,000

Part II. Google Earth Map:

Part III.Preliminary Data:
My country is Tunisia, which is in the Northern part of Africa, and problems they need to challenge are GDP per capita, number of Internet users, and the Infant mortality rates. The ranking of Tunisia’s GDP per capita is 95th in the whole world and we can’t say that this country is rich. One person in Tunisia owns about $8,300 in US dollars and the average in the world is $9,500. I think the country can make more money by selling something that original that comes from Tunisia so they can make money and reach the average.

Number of Internet users is also one of the problem that they need to improve on because Internet can help people get current information that is happening in the world. Internet users in Tunisia are 835,000 people in 2005 and in the world ranking, it is 71st which is still not good enough. If they could make more money then it is possible to increase a number of Internet users.

One more problem that Tunisia needs to face on is the Infant Mortality rates. Tunisia’s rate is 23.84% out of 100%, which is really bad. The ranking is 99th out of 225. What I think is they need to get more medicines and more technologies about.

So these were problems that Tunisia needs to improve on and the one big idea is that they need to get money. They need money for using Internet if they would be lots of Internet users and for madicines to prove high passentages of Infant Mortality rates. If they forcused on these 3 problems, the country Tunisia woul be a better place.

IV. Reflection:

What did you learn from this task?:

I learned a quick way of collecting information, how to organize them and the way of presenting. When I had to collect information, I only used the links from Ms.C and Ms.N’s blogs because I can save time. Most of the time, I used CIA facts book and inforplease.com for my Tunisia information. To organize them, I first put the definition for each word in Then I put the information in the computer and printed out by Microsoft Word. I learned that we could use Google Earth when we present. By using Google Earth, I also learned about Html. I used Html color chart for the color.

Did you find this difficult or easy? Why?:

All of them were difficult for me because all these stuffs were first time for me and they were bit challenging for me. Using Google Earth was first time for me to use and I didn’t save so I had to repeat my work again and again until Ms.C find out what I was doing wrong.

What else would you like to learn about creating Google Earth maps?:

I would like to know what we could do in Google Earth maps and I want to learn about them. I would also like to learn more about Html we could use in Google Earth maps because it was just so cool!

Add anything else you are thinking about in relation to this project:

I think next time, we can all put our country information into one Google Earth map. Using Bold and Italics would help the map looks better. I think Google Earth is a good way of presenting when you are presenting about Country or the City.

Group Current Event Posting #1

This is the link to the article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_5330000/newsid_5333700/5333700.stm

Picture below is the map of location. The picture is from:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_1610000/newsid_1612600/1612612.stm

Here is the answer to the questions:

1. What is the issue?

Our article is about anniversary of what had happened on September 11th 2001. It is one of the most sad day for most American in United States. It is the day when four planes were taken by armed people and two planes crashed into twin towers of the World Trade Center. Four minute-long silences were held where the World Trade Center used to stand, marking the times the planes hit the buildings and when they collapsed on September 11th in 2006.

This picture is from:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2001-09/633810.jpg

2. Who is involved?

The people who was involved about this events are the terrorists,People who was working in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center or people who was living near the Twin Tower because the dust thrown covered most of New York for days.

3. Who is affected and how?

This event affects to lots of people for example, after plane had crashed the Twin Tower, many people were busy taking care of themselves, other people or bulding such as fire fighter, hospital,etc. It also affect to the family or friends of people who was killed by this event. (Some even travelled to New York to mark the anniversary.) This affect to almost whole Americans and other people.

4. What would you do if you are directly involved?

I think the best solution to this event is to figure out why did this happen.(People don’t know exactly why did this happen) Then you’ll be able to see what people can do to make the situation better and how should people try to never have these kinds of terrible events again. If I was involved, I would discuss about how can people live safly without having a disaster and how to bring people together.I would work with many other people to come up with good ideas.