Friday in Class

We didn't do much today in class. We got in class and tried to claim that Mr. Schick was a murderer  but he claimed that that was not true and I believe him for the most part. So most people did their blogs in class but somehow I forgot to. So I'm doing it on Saturday afternoon and I'm going to write about maps. More specifically the evolution of the Mercator to the Gall-Peters map. The Mercator projection map was made in the late 1500's. While the map had many good things about it and showed people a diagram of the Earth, there were still many errors about it. Many places were too big like Greenland and many places were in the wrong spot like Europe. So, the Gall-Peters map fixed many of those errors and made a much better map.

Map Labeling

Today was Thursday so as always Mr. Schick was singing the Its Thursday song in the morning. I then got to class and we talked about time zones. Each time zone is 15 degrees and there are 24 total time zones. Then we got to labeling things on maps like oceans, continents, and the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. then Olivia said that she made the Earth on an orange and that is genius. we should defenitely have an Earth on an Orange party. We also looked at how oddly shaped the International Date Line is. It isn't like a normal time zone line and instead has a lot of slants and boxes.

The history of Maps

In social studies today we learned that the first map was made by Eratosthenes about 200 years before Christ was born. The map was very inaccurate and put places like Libya huge and there was no New World or North and South America as we now call them. About 300 years later improvements were made to the world map by Ptolemy. It looked a little bit better but was still super inaccurate. Next we learned what contemperary mapping is. Contemperary mapping is a tool that was used by geographers to communicate complex geographical phenomonons. Finally we learned that it is nearly impossible to put the world on a flat square/rectangular map because or projection and distortion. The map will appear slightly off in size or shape no matter what you do to it.

Mercator vs Peters

Mr. Schick was not in class today so we were given the assignment to say if the cartographers made valid points in the episode of the West Wing and I think that they did. The first point they made was the relative size of many countries was incorrect. The bigger a country is shown, the more power people will give it. So Greenland was seen as a huge country when in reality it is actually very small. Also Europe was twice the size that it should be. Europe is actually much smaller than South America. The second point was that some countries were in the wrong location like Germany. This could throw many people off from what they believed the world had actually looked like. Finally, they pointed out that many people take the Northern hemisphere as greater because it is on the top. So, if you flip the map upside down then it will serve you the same purpose.

Human Geo

Today we talked about the key ideas we will be focusing on in social studies. We also focused on what geography is. Geography is the study of the Earth so in this class we will be looking at a lot of maps. We also learned that cartography is the art of drawing maps. Because we will need to know a lot about maps in this class we learned about latitude and longitude. We learned that latitude is the lines that look like a ladder and longitude are the vertical lines. Finally we figured out how Mr. Schick got a gun drawn on him by a cop because he set off the John Carroll alarms while planning for a class.

The Map of The World

In 1569, a rectangular world map was created to represent the different size of the countries. This was used all over the world to find the way around the country and was also used to teach the upcoming generation about where places were and how big they were compared to other places around the planet. But, many things on the map turned out to be incorrect or not proportional. So, in 1855 somebody came out with the Peters map and it was much more accurate. Many places like Greenland and Alaska were smaller and places like Germany were in different locations. It is crazy how we do not use these in school.

Great Day in Class

We got to class today and Mr. Schick told us that we had an oral report to do. I thought it was something we had to plan for and i got very scared. It was okay though because no one knew what to do. Meanwhile Mr. Schick was working with Google and it just was not cooperating. We worked for 15 minutes to get good old Google to work. It never did. So we briefly went over what we learned because we have a test on Monday on Elbert Hubbard and Socrates. After all that we had about 15 minutes to do our blog because there was really nothing else to do. So this may be the only time I am writing my blog in class. I can see everyone while I am doing this blog. This was a great day of learning in Human Geography.

Socrates' Trial

Socrates was charged with two crimes. The first was corrupting the youth of Athens. The second was not believing in the gods of the state. Both of these crimes should result in death. He went to his trial and said two things to defend himself.  The first was that he was only doing his job and the second was that they should be rewarding him instead of killing him. The jury of course found him guilty at a 279-221 difference. I agree with this decision because he committed two crimes that he should be dead for and his defense was that he was supposed to be doing what he did. Socrates was then killed 1-2 days later.

Socrates

Synergy is a type of balance.  For example the balance of democracy and excellence is synergy. Next an agora is a gathering place or the center of all life. Also a polis is another word for city-state. In 508 BCE a democracy was formed. Socrates was a philosipher. When he was younger he worked as a stone mason and fought in the Polynesian war. The socratic method is to ask questions instead of saying if they were right or wrong. The controversy behind this was that Athens was a brilliant city where people from around the world sharing ideas. So many thought that Socrates stole others ideas.

Elbert Hubbard

My interpretation of A Message To Garcia is that people don't do what they are told without asking people questions to figure out if they should really do it. An example of what you should do in the text is when, it described a man who went to Cuba and walked on foot for 3 weeks to find a man named Garcia. He was given this task and did not ask a single question but instead immediately got to work. Although there was a big war going on at the time and the message needed to be delivered, he did not ask for someone else to complete the task or why should I do this. He simply agreed to do it. this is something that would be a great quality to have and we need more of those people in the world today. This speaks to me because I am just starting my high school experience. During this time I am about to drive and get a part time job. While doing these things I will need to learn to just do what my instructors tell me to do without asking questions.

First Day at John Carroll

I got to school this morning at 7:15 thinking that I would be able to get my locker ready and still have time to talk to my friends and get to my Spanish class pretty early. It turned out that I couldn't enter the academic wing for another 30 minutes. So, my first 30 minutes of high school were spent sitting on my phone waiting for other people I knew to arrive. Finally my first period with Sr. Canter went by pretty fast while learning proper Spanish greetings and conversation starters. Next I had my STEAM class and we found patterns on a very fun computer program and talked about the benefits and drawbacks of keeping a scientific notebook. Next I went to Mr. Maynard's advisory in the cafeteria where I saw my HarCo picture and it didn't turn out awful. There wasn't much to talk about so I mainly played games on my computer. Next I went to Human Geography. We got there and went almost immediately down to the gymnasium to take pictures after finding out that we were in lock down mode. Apparently somebody robbed a bank in Bel Air with a "big gun". Then we had our lunch which all students always love. I found a table with my friends very quickly and the chicken salad sandwich I had was delicious. Next I had biology where we had to fit a gummy worm into a life saver using 3 paper clips. My partner and I eventually managed to get it but it was very difficult. Then I had religion where we listened to a video by Mother Teresa talking about Jesus' love for us. It was very interesting. Finally I had English where the entire time we went over about the 5th syllabus. So, it was a lot of syllabus to go over and some fun activities too.