Mathilde's Grade 7 blog

What do China have to do in order to prepare for the olympics??

2008-06-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

I read an article, and it was talking about the way China has to reduce pollution, because it might offense the athletes.

They talk about the way now there is so much pollution, it has affected in the past an athletes. That athletes couldn't join the race, because the pollution was so big, it made him have asthma. So to me that brought up the fact that wow, if the pollution comes up to this extend!!! That is much more serious than what I expected. It also stated that China send out to the space another satellite that would be able to tell the weather, in order to know if the willing to get less pollution will be able to take place. Since depending on the weather, there will be a stronger or weaker possibility for the pollution to go away.

So yeah, to me it is a big thing because also if the air is not good enough how will athleats that run do to catch good air to breath??

I realy think that it is important for Beijin to have the less pollution in the air in August. And I hope that the way they are doing is efficiant.

How many countries in Europe and the U.S. send plastic and other recyclables to China, and what are the humans and ecological causes?

2008-05-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

In a town called "Guiyu", 3,000 km away from Beijing, there are millions of workers, that work, in conditions close to slavery. They work, burning, and destroying mostly computers, those workers put their whole lives in danger by breathing toxic gases, and are payed only a few dollars per day. "Guiyu", is also know as the rubbish bump of the whole world, or the electronic camitatry.

The conditions of working are terrible, there are peoples who work next to the fire, and flames, swatting, burning the metal, and the plastic. They don't even have makes or any thing to protect them from the toxic gases. While next to them are womans who take out the materials that resisted to the fire, the things that could be reused, and the things that have to be re-burned.

All of the roads are evaded by the toxic products, gas, and other things, that make the life terribly hard for the 500,000 people that leave in "Guiyu". For the workers, the only tools they use are dusty, old, and they have only tools that have for the strongest capacity of cutting copper, and tools for gardening. Not only the air is polluted, but also the gutters... because the acid basins, that are used to separate the gold that come from the telephones, or the chips of computers. The ponds are all the colour of petroleum.

10% of the computers come and die in "Guiyu". Most of the workshops in the city, are working to take down, and get all of the things that might be needed.

The biggest providers of computers, are the Japan, the United States, United Kingdom.

Japan sent to China more than 19 tones of recycling thinks in a year.

Here is the link

CNN Student News (Cyclone in Myanmar )

2008-05-08T02:21:00.000-07:00

In the CNN Student News, they talk about the way the cyclone in Myanmar affected the population. To me it feels very weird, because they say that there is about 22thouthands of people that died, but an US official said that, that number could hand up over 100thouthand people. The militarily that is in charge of taking care of the people and the damages that happened do not allow the different helps that are offered to them.

For example there are some companies around the country of Myanmar that are willing to give food help, and produce the basic every day needs. But the military doesn't allow them, so they are waiting for the time they are going to allow them. A reporter said "They are ready to help but they are stuck while there storms survivors that are going yet another day without the basic needs."
Thailand is waiting for the authorization to go in Myanmar and help. There is also the US that are there with helicopters ready to help. And the UN are here with military boats to help.

THEY ARE JUST WAITING FOR THEM TO BE ALLOWED!!

Student 2.0 Blog reflection

2008-05-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

Our HW was to go on the blog "Student 2.0" And to reflect about what was said, so this is what i did:

I read this article called "The Necessity Family Tree" and those are the ideas and facts that i picked up while reading this article:
We as humans of the 21st century are used to Technology, and a lot of us use it as a leaning tool.
But some people don't use it as leaning tools, they see it as precious things.
They gave the example of the local school in Shanghai, that only used computer to look at and study, but not use it.
In the text they talked to teachers about using laptops in school, and the teachers refused because they knew that there will be kids which will steal laptops so that they could resell it and make money out of it. (A fortune, they said)
They also mentioned that good point were we think of technology as something that we use to solve every day problems. But cave men 2000 years ago didn't use facebook or MSN to communicate.
I think that the blog post was very interesting!!!
Good Job.

Paul Polak's Podcast

2008-05-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

I listened to the podcast of Paul Polak,
talking about poverty and the way, he spend time in Bangladesh, talking to poor people.Trying to see how he could improve farmers living on 1$ per day, compared to people in US living on a lot more money, even the street people.
I like the way he gave those simple explanations, so i decided to list the explanations, so that later on i could come back and see if need any of the ideas to help Liberia grow out of poverty.
Here is what he said:

He helped a farmer grow from $1 per day to $260 per day, just because he had good farming.
The essential thing that he needed for farming was:

Irrigation (by that, Paul through of a way i think to have water poms but very cheep and using only a little bit of electricity.)
This helped the farmer grow 2 times more crop with 1/2 has much water as a big industrial irrigation will have needed.
With that, it made the farmer live on $480 per Year, so he was able to provide school for his grand children as long as they wanted. One of them studied hard and now id working in another country and sends back money.

At one point Paul decides to ask a question to this poor farmer, and the question was strait froward:
- "Why are you poor?"
- "I am poor because i do not have enough money... If there is a way for me to get more money, it will be through my farming."
Or something like that and i think that it is a very reasonable clam, that with better farming he could get more money.

Another way we could do to help farming is: Interview people around Liberia and ask them out of what crop did they make the most money, then make most of the farmers grow those crops. (4-5 different sorts of crops.)

Another thing that would help the people of Liberia is if the farmers saw what were the crops grew the most, and that people made the most money out of, and started to grow that. And maybe concentrates on the basics, Corn, rice, wheat.. so that at the same time the people can grow it and eat it them selfs. (especially the world food price is going up.)

Talking about food production, making sure Liberia's transportation systems are good enough.

Liberia from all the reasherches that i did since the begining

2008-04-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

I went to this site :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6564773.stm

And it is talking about the way the IMF could improve the Liberian economy.
I really like their ideas:

The most important thing that I picked up was that since there is food shortage and that the prices are going up so much they could produce more agriculture. To improve that there could be money going into the improvement of tools (truck farming) and irrigation systems, fertile soil.
Another thing that could be looked at is wheather or not the land is devided equally between the farmers and the rich people. If the rich people own all the land and the poor people just are heired as slaves to work on the farms and are not well payed, then we could make the government tell the rich people to give land to the poor people. For that we might need to hire a consultant from the IMF, to work in the government to make sure that there is no problem with the way the government use the money. For example so that they don’t just give the money out to the rich people’s hands, and that when the members of the IMF ask what they have done with the money, anybody can just pull out the bill of what they used it for.
Another thing that might be good for Liberia’s economy is that Liberia produces iron and different types of metals. So if once again we could have a consultant, the mines will be safe (helmets, protections...) and well payed, people would come to work and so then we could sell that to other countries and make money. For that we will also need good transportation (roads, ports...) This is also another place the money will go.

By Mathilde + Jean

Cause and effect of the rise of price in USA

2008-04-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

I am going to talk about the price rising of the USA.

Cause - There is more people so they are more demanding in food.
ex: wheat, bread, meet, vegetables...

Effect - So the price is going up and up. Stores in USA that didn't sale a lot of things, now are a lot demanded by people that before didn't even know it existed. And because the people's salaries are not going up, then they can't feed there families. But hopefully there is a association that help the people need help to feed there families. But still there might be a famine in some places of the world is the price of food keeps on rising.

Community contributer on Africa Quest

2008-04-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

I do not want to feel offensives to anybody but i think that in the Africa quest, i am doing a lot of work to help my partner and i don't know what else i can do to help her. AFTER IT IS JUST DOING THE WORK FOR HER!!!!

So really i feel that i am doing my best, if she thinks i need to help her more, than she need to tell me to do her work, while she plays around. Thats all i can say.

Sorry if someone feels it is aggressive but that is the truth.

Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels

2008-04-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

Remembering: Remembering works for me in Language Arts, because I need to remember the basics, metaphor, smile, personification... so i can proceed in the rest of the work.

Understanding: I use understanding in all of the classes, even wellness!! I need to use it for two major reasons:
- I need to understand what teachers tell me, to make sure i can proceed in class.
- I need to understand so that i can take further steps in the learning.

Applying: When in math we learn a formula i need to first understand it and after i need to apply all the concepts that i learned to be able to answer a problem.

Analyzing: In humanities when i look at websites and see weather or not it is information that i read is important for my recherches about Liberia's need of now. So analyzing is a big part in the project.

Evaluating: I use evaluating a lot because evaluating is looking at something taking what you need from it and at the end make a full piece out of all the information you gathered all around the websites. For example, in the science project about volcanoes, i had to gather information from all the web and from all the resources i found and then made a big report. (I actually got a 100% on it.)

Creating: Science - When i had to make a project about volcanoes. First i had to find all the informations, then i had to understand it, after that i needed to see what will go were and if it is in the write place. And after create a power point with no words on it, (only on flash cards)

6 Pirates arrested by Fench millitary

2008-04-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

6 pirates were arrested by the French military after having hijacked a French luxury boat on the coasts of Somalia. they are now in court under the french justice and are waiting to be judged. They were arrested by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after chasing them through the Somalia desert. This picture on the right is were the 6 pirates are going to be stored before the interrogations.

Africa Quest

2008-04-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

OK so on my team for the Africa quest, it is going bad. why? because the questions are not always given answers, even if we analise them!!!
So we are trying our best but especially when you are going to meet with us, you will see that we are not so adversed. Mainly that is because this week the French were here and we were going out, showing them around, going to Taipei.. and i didn't always have time to meet with Jean and finalize who is doing what, how is doing who.....
So we will try harder this week.

Egypt and the problem there is with the bread

2008-04-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

I read an article about the Egyptians and the way the food cost is going up especially the big problem is with the bread, since the bread is made out of wheat, and the wheat price just boomed up. So it is a big problem for the Egyptians since I know that the Egyptians main thing to eat id bread (they are poor). I also heard that some people have to wait for about 4 hours before they could get there bread because there is only one shop in the Caire that the bread is cheaper then normally. The problem is that now the Egyptians instead of buying 1k of pasta of 2Libes, they but 0.5k for still 2Libes!!

How to be an active learner in HIS

2008-03-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

There is one thing that you have to do in order to be an active learner in HIS, which is listen carefully to the teachers, ask questions when you don't understand some thing or even do some extra researcher about a topic that interests you. To say the truth only in certain classes i am an active learner!!

Rules for blogging

2008-03-17T01:12:00.000-07:00

-No personal information (no last name or contact information).
-Write in ENGLISH.
-Don’t write inappropriate stuff in your blog.
-Don't insult others. Be constructive in your commenting.
-Don't plagiarize other peoples' ideas.
-Cite your sources for images and ideas.

Ideas for hums

2008-03-13T02:42:00.000-07:00

I think that this class could be more interesting if only we started to study real history, for example if we started to do exactly the same things as we are doing with Kebrena but instead with Africa. We could go one internet and search the actual names of the tribes that existed in the old days. I am telling you this because the class and I talked about this, and i need to tell you that I am talking for the class since no one else is wanting to do it. I am almost 100% sure that if it is changed than every body will enjoy way more this class.

Kenbrena, Critical Thinker

2008-03-10T17:48:00.001-07:00

I am a critical thinker in Humanities when i solve the Kabrena division of continents.