Back To Business

Today in western civ., we went back to our usual routine. This time, Mr.Schick was here and not ditching class. We first began class with a couple students taking the pop quiz that we had last week. After those students finished and Mr. Schick collected their quizzes, we actually went over the quizzes. He put the question up on the projection screen and asked us what we picked as the answer. When we would say our answer, Mr. Schick would either look at us like we were dumb and it was the most pathetic answer in the world, or he would yell loudly that was obviously not the answer. With that kind of response, us students felt intimidated and changed our answer. Mr. Schick didn't like that. He made us stand our ground and commit to our answer even if he made it feel like it was wrong. In the end, our original answers were actually the correct ones. After the test, we broke out the notebooks and began taking notes from a power point about Ancient Egypt. And with that is how we ended class.

Mr. Schick-Marked Absent!?

For western civ. today, all of us students went to our usual room where we have class (127), but before the bell rang, Mr. Schick's daughter came in our class and said that today we would be in a different room. I was certainly surprised because I wasn't expecting that. As we left the classroom, I saw on the door that it said we would be in room 114 with a substitute because Mr. Schick was out. When I read it, I felt kind of dumb for not seeing it. Anyway, we went to room 114 and we picked random seats, mine, in the back room in the back with Kate, Ali, and Rachel. After we got situated, our substitute called roll, with every student present and replying "here." After that, she told us that Mr. Schick left us an assignment to do in class on his blog. We all went to the blog and saw that the assignment was to read LO³ and take notes. Also if we didn't finish in class, we had to do the rest for homework. I finished on pg.25 so I only have 4 more pages to read. Hurray!

The First Pop Quiz

For western civ. today, we were caught of guard. Mr. Schick asked us if we understood everything that we learned from the past few days, and me, with my razor sharp sense of reading people, I got the hint that he was trying to warn us about some type of quiz coming up. Little did I know that I was actually right. Mr. Schick surprised us with a pop quiz. The quiz consisted of 5 rather easy questions about LO-1. After we turned in our quizzes, we took notes on  LO-2 from the power point. We later reached the question on how the people from 14,000 years ago developed a speaking language. We wondered if they made various noises or had some actual speaking tongue. Mr. Schick later told us about what he thinks a dog is saying when it barks. He went on a short rant about when a dog barks it is just saying "hey." After his little speech, Mrs. Ball came on the announcements and told the whole school that because of the imminent blizzard, we would be getting out of school 2 hours early. at the sound of this, our whole class cheered, and secretly inside, Mr. Schick was crushed (probably not). After this announcement, we went back to note taking and ended class on a happy note.

On The Third Day...

Today in western civ., we began our third class. It wasn't that different from yesterday's class, really. In the beginning, it was a frantic and unexplainable battle with Mr. Schick and a couple students on allowing them to get their jackets to protect themselves against the some-what blistering cold. Mr. Schick pondered the thought, "Should I? Should I not?", but eventually he gave in. After the students were blessed with the warmth of their jackets, we continued taking some notes while following the video with John Green. At one point, we paused and had an interesting talk about, dare I say, chickens. We were talking about how they were genetically altered so that they could be bigger breasted and have skinnier legs and feet, when in the past, chickens actually did not look like how they look now. They use to have slender bodies and their bodies were evenly proportioned. After that little talk, we continued with more notes from the video and then, even though i forget how we even came to the topic, we began to talk about school and what it would be like if we had 3 to 3 weeks or 10 to 3 weeks on and off of school. After we began to really get into this topic, the bell rang and that was the end of class.

Officially Starting

Today in class, we officially started Western Civ. We began by assigning permanent seats. I now sit on the opposite side of where I use to sit. After we settled down into our new seats, we began to talk about the homework that was due from last week. We talked about our different views and opinions and whether or not we thought Jared Diamond was on track with his theory. Next, we opened up our marble notebooks that we should have for class and began to take some brief notes on the slideshow we went over that basically summarized everything that we read in the textbook over the weekend. After the note taking, Mr. Schick should us a video from YouTube. The video was with a man named John Green and it was called Crash Course In World History. I thought that this video was very funny but very educational at the same time. John Green was very good at showing both of these because you used aspects that kids of the modern day can relate to but still manages to make it funny and get the gist of educational facts in there. After watching that video once, we went back in for a second time and began to take little notes from time to time. And that was Western Civ. today.

Was Jared Diamond On Track: LO 1

After reading the Learning Objective 1, I can say that Jared Diamond’s theory of “geographic luck” is completely true. In the text, it says that civilization ultimately began with the transition from the hunting and gathering way of life to the settled farming life. The book says that the earliest people began to settle in the area of the Fertile Crescent, which is where Diamond says civilized life originated from.

Diamond said in Guns, Germs & Steel that to be geographically lucky you needed to have an organized workforce, a large population, and advanced technology. Well, in the text, The Fertile Crescent is where all of these began. 

By the words of the text, those that lived in the Fertile Crescent had an organized workforce because instead of being like their ancestors, a people of hunting and gathering, they began to herd large amounts of animals, some that could be used for food, and some that could be used for labor or supplies. Also, instead of going out and looking for plants and berries they could eat, they planted and harvested them so that they would have an over abundant amount. And because they began to plant and harvest crops, they also began building permanent homes for families.

Now since they figured out a more organized workforce system, it actually gave the women of the villages more free time, which they used to get pregnant and have more children. This, over time, created a larger population, which from Diamond’s point of view, is a necessity of being geographically lucky.

Finally, the newly civilized people had advanced technology. By this, I don’t mean iPhones and tablets; I mean advanced weaponry and new ideas to get crops harvested faster, like using an animal to plow the soil. The civilized people had advanced weaponry because they went from the Paleolithic Age all the way to the Bronze Age, which eventually led to the Iron Age as the civilized way began to spread out East and West.

Now, there ultimately was one more way that you could be “geographically lucky,” and that was if you were relatively on the same line of latitude as the Fertile Crescent. This was because the way of life from here was spreading East to Southern and the Tropics of Asia and West to Northern Africa and Europe and then later, the Americas. Now that the new way of life was out, the rest of the world became civil.

All of these facts from the text book do prove that Jared Diamond’s theory of “geographic luck” was true and correct.

Today In Class...

Today we began Western Civilization with Mr. Schick. When we started, we picked seats for class. Then, we received our Western Civilization text book, which is quite big and heavy. Also, we learned to create a new blog and what we have to post on it and when. So every day when we have a class, we have to post a blog on what happened in class. We also found out that Mr. Schick is a cool dude and is also very funny. He puts everything in a funny way. We also found out that if we do our blogs every day, we will most likely pass the class. Also, we got an assignment that we had to do about “Guns, Germs, & Steel” through our new text book. That is just our first day of Western Civilization…