What is Power?

Power is the strength of something. Some one or something that has power is having the ability and the strength to do something that other people cannot accomplish. By dictionary definition, power is the ability to do or act by political or national strength. All through out the year, we have experienced power. In animal farm, there was power. In animal farm Napoleon has power. He controlled everyone else that was apart of animal farm, he changed the way they thought, and he changed all the rules about animal farm. Napoleon was the only one that had the power to do that. He had other pigs that he would order, and they would put napoleon’s decisions to actions. Secondly, there was power also seen in Julius Caesar. The power was in the hands of Julius Caesar so every wanted to destroy him. There were many people that were on the side of Julius, but also there were people on the opposing too. Julius had some strength that others did not. There was also power in Industrial Revolution. However at one point, the stages of power changes. At first England had the power and they were the ones that could do everything. People wanted to come into England to work, because England first created factories. They started industries, and then competition began and brought in America. Power then changed to America that took the ideas of England and went beyond with England’s ideas. There is also Power in American industrial revolution. Also in the American Revolution, England had the power because the king of England was forcing unfair laws upon the communist, and getting everything to himself. He has the strength to keep the taxes because he said so.

Thinking about Globalization

This cartoon's main visual elements is the girl, and her dad saying "No, you may not outsource your homework to india." The girl seems to disagree with her dad, and you can tell from her facial expression and the scratch above her head, a way a cartoonist shows a character is mad. This cartoon is about one of the ten flatteners and definatly about globalization. The cartoonist's oppinion on this topic is negative. This is becuase globalization has gone very far and is getting better. In the cartoon, the father says to his daughter that her homework should not be outsource. In school, we get homework everyday, and everyday a piece of homework is due. It is apart of our everday schedule to do homework to be turned in the next day. The cartoonist's point in the topic is all said in the most important part of the cartoon, the speech bubble. The artists could have made this cartoon better by He could have added more items in the girls enviornment, as the topic is showing the rise in globalization, maybe adding more gadgets in the enviornment will highlight and strenghten the point more to make it more clear.

Population project importance

The three most valuable things that I learnt from the population project process were MLA citation, time management, and the ability to organize. To cite after visiting each website to get information came more into practice. Time management, because we were only given a few due dates and at the end, turning in the portfolio is what counted. And Organization, because if you couldn’t organize all the materials that we were given, we would not be able to put every material into a portfolio to turn in. You would need to organize all the facts from our research, into index cards, and putting them into a 5 paragraph research paper.

It will help us more in the future, because every time we get something from another site, we need to cite our sources. Otherwise it is known as plagiarism, which is being academically dishonest, which can lead to getting expelled from school. The skill to cite would be used a countless number of times in our future. Time management is also a skill that would help us in the future because as we grow into the future we are not going to be given due dates for every piece, or be told when we should have something done. We would only be given a date to turn in our work, and in the end turning it in is the only thing that counts.

Sameness and Equality

There are many differences in the two words, sameness and equality. Sameness is being the same, like everyone is exactly the same, in looks, what they wear, everything. Where as equality is more regarding equal rights. Having the right and to be able to do what everyone else does. A problem in equality is when one person has more rights than the other. But sameness can be similarity or likeness. Equality is an equal opportunity to everything. Lois Lowry uses the word sameness in her books alot becuase the book mainly heads towards appeareance, what they all do the same, they all have the same emotions and the same feelings. In Animal Farm, the author uses the word equality alot becuase it is more about race. The difference between the pigs and the dogs, and ducks and horses. It is about the pigs being more equal than the rest.
In conclusion equality and sameness are the different that may seem like they have the same meaning but they regard different issues.

Giver feedback

Being an adult has many start off points. One becomes an adult when you can support yourself, and take care of everything you do, by yourself. It means, the problems that happen to you, you fix them. Responsibility in ones actions, and the ability to own up to what you did.

The meaning of being an adult means to leave your childhood behind, and become apart of many things. That includes a family, and a job. Also it means responsibility, and the burden of many things. It means importance to take care of your family.

At one point in ones years, they become useless. As people grow in their ages, they are unable to help anyone else in the world anymore. They are not working, and their no help to the family. This is around the age of 70, when one is no more help to the rest of the people.

Priorities

M- Put data together for data analysis

T-follow up on data analysis

W-finish first draft

TH- get peer edited, and finish the final

F- Finish interview for independent investigation.

Blog cartoon

The main visual element in this cartoon is that there is the kid at the dinner table telling his parents about his Blogger from school and his parents saying “Well, yes, we could read your Blog…or you could just TELL us about your school day. This cartoon is an issue about all the kids that come home from school and not wanting to talk to their parents about the school day, so they just tell the parents to pop up the Blogger and read it. The cartoonist’s opinion is that a lot of the kids nowadays don’t want to chat about their school day at the dinner table. Simply, the quote is the evidence that tells me about what the cartoonist feels. Also the parents’ emotion seems pretty disappointed with the kid, probably because he never talks about school. But if the parents would like to know what we are learning at school, it is better that they go to Blogger and read what we wrote that we spent work time in class working on. This is ironic because this cartoon is showing how sites like Blogger and other newly created sites are decreasing talk about family, and we are writing on a Blog and all the readers are reading from Blogs. The cartoonist could have made this cartoon more persuasive by having the kid using technology, maybe texting on his phone.

Technology

I agree with what Kurt Vonnegut has said about Technology. He says that technology does everything for us. This is true because now all of us rely on spell check, and online dictionaries instead of turning the pages by ourselves. Now we rely on calculators to do our math homework instead of manually calculating the work. The other day in humanities, we had to read the story “Euphio Question”, and in this story most of the characters used a lot of technology, and they are using technology to get themselves happiness. The moral “money doesn’t always buy happiness” is true because you need more than just money that will buy you new machines that make life much easier. Ever since we grew up, we have been living on technology. We are so used to communicating through phones, traveling on cars, and finding information on the computer. If we were asked to let all of these technologies go, we would not succeed. Even though technology spoils us and lets the machines do the hard work, technology helps are in many ways than one. Technology by definition is a new creation. And at one point, walking sticks, wheel chairs, and hearing aids were technologies. Some of us need these today and without it, we would fail more than not being able to use our cell phones.

Technology

In my own words, technology is an invention of something new that is useful to everyone in one way or another. It is the development of new ideas that make life easier for many of us. Something created that was once new to everyone.

I think that day by day technology is being included in many of the schools. Every international school has many computers and laptops that help the teachers educate the students to do research and use Microsoft word document to write stories. AES alone uses more than 100 computers and laptops. Even though we use a lot of technology, it serves the purpose to learn. Many of the technology we use at school are used for a reason, and it is for education. It saves a lot of paper, even though you need to print. It is a good use for presentations also.

The 5 most important are…
Laptop/Computer
iPod
Air conditioning
Television
Cell phone

5 least important are…
· Led
· Weapons
· Roomba
· Line paper
· Manuel print cameras

End of 3rd quater feedback

Some of the goals from quarter two that I have found most challenging are my discussion skills, participation in class discussions, and my writing skills. I believe that I have improved a great amount in my writing pieces compared to the beginning of the year. Now as we move into the year, there have been more reading involved and I have gotten many great ideas of writing from all these books. My discussion skills have improved because I am much more into the talks in the Socratic seminar; however I don’t talk that much about the discussions that happen during class.

Something that I would like to improve on for next quarter is…
To get better marks on my tests and quizzes by looking over my notes. Another one of my goals is to depend on myself more in the class and try to work alone more other than asking someone else for help. My last goal is my class discussion skill that I would like to keep working on till the end of the grade.

Holy War

The phrase “Holy war” is an oxymoron because Holy is a religious word, and religion is completely against war. They believe that violence won’t solve many things. And Holy war is saying religious violence, another two words that don’t go with each other. The reason the phrase “Holy War” is now used is because many of the religions want everyone to follow their, and to get everyone to follow their religion, they kill. One religion will want another religion to follow them, and if they don’t, it means war. Also religions are very holy to their own god and other religions that are against it will say something bad about their god. The followers of that religion get angry and are willing to sacrifice the ones that are going against their god.

cold war debrief

For the Cold War simulation, I was in a team with Lucas, and Nafeesa. We played the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. We being one of the weaker parts of this game had one most important goal to gain as much points as possible. We had gone to the USA and the USSR, presenting them some of the very strong countries we had at a very high price. China for example we sold for 35 points. Other groups that had Africa sold 3 countries for 35 points, when we sold just one. Both the USSR and the USA wanted China and they both bid for it and USA with the biggest bid, won. The winners we knew from the start were going to be either the USA or the USSR considering that fact that they started with around 75 points when the rest of us started at 0. And because of that we did not have many strategies to win, but we competed with other continents that also started with 0 points, like Africa.

The winners of this simulation were the USA and the USSR. The fact that both of the countries started with many points were a huge advantage that allowed them to buy land from the rest of us that sold everything just for some money. There were many risks in this because both the USA and the USSR wanted only to attack each other so whenever they sent nuclear weapons the other needed to be ready to wipe that out. The two countries both lost a few points trying to attack each other. I did not think that the winners were very clear because USA and USSR ended up with many land but ended up with the least number of points. The non-aligned countries ended up with MORE than what they started with. If we would have gone on with the game, USA and USSR will have no points left and us non-aligned countries would be able to attack them. However we ran out of time and at the point which we ended, the winners were USA and USSR.

Visual Communicator

We used something called a Visual Communicator to video tape our research conflict, the “holocaust.” After you have a conflict, you research that. You have to research some of the affects, and causes, some interesting facts, and maybe even of a famous person that was related in that conflict. The main point of using the Visual Communicator is to make it seem like a news cast, and telling everyone out there a lot about it. So once you get all the information you have, you put in into a script and make it seem like your casting news on that conflict. You need your name, background, and pictures from the conflict on the screen so you need to find all the backgrounds if you chose to, and pictures to add more to the cast. After you have the script for word to word of what you’re going to say, you copy paste that into the visual communicator, and they will scroll down with the speed you want it to go so you don’t have to be reading of from the paper and constantly looking down instead of the camera. After, you rehearse it once or twice and when you feel more comfortable you record it and then save it. All your team mates will do this and after that, you put all your mini clips together to make one big news cast.

Using this visual communicator helps in many ways and it’s actually a pretty cool software because its like you’re a news caster! But you need a while to get used to it and know a little on how to use it. Some tips are to make sure you save everyone once in a while. It can be really frustrating to have to record it all over again, and especially if your previous recording was perfect. Another is to practice. Practice over and over again before you record so that you don’t mess up your words, and get tongue tied. The last tip is to speak into the mike, and make sure when you’re doing that you don’t have loud people in the room. You might think the room is not that loud but when you review the recording, you might be hearing your classmates more than yourself. Over all, this is really cool software, just watch out and follow the tips.

Script

Thanks Asim, this is Sabei Aung reporting from Germany about some of the causes and effects of the holocaust. Adolf Hitler strongly believed that Germans were superior in many ways to every other race. Hitler’s principle, he believed all Germans should control the Europeans. Many say that Hitler had a disease of paranoia that possibly led to his actions. Anti-Semitism, one of the causes, is a prejudice to Jews religiously, racially, and ethnically. This led to six million deaths of European Jews; The German Nazi’s killed the Jews. This conflict, which lasted from 1939 -1945, also killed Romans, Soviets, Prisoners of war, priests, and Gays. Many of the Jews were also taken to into Extermination camps, also known as slaughter camps. Concentration camps, and forced labor camps were also created. CNN news, back to you Asim.

Thanks Lucas, Now let’s relate the holocaust to some of the conflicts we have learnt in M1. Clearly, Racism is one of the main topics of conflicts. The German Nazi’s were racist to everyone that was not superior to them. Another one is Nationalism, for believing that the Germans were more superior to the Germans. Religion is also another important topic because they wanted to wipe out all the Jews because they believed that they were useless. Thank you, and take it away Lucas.

CLOVER

The character i am most like from the Animal Farm, is Clover. One reason I think i am most like Clover because there is in the book, she seems like someone caring to her friends. In the book, when Mollie goes to the other farm to get her nose stroked, sugar, and ribbons by the farmer, she constantly denies the fact. I like to know the truth from the start. Clover goes to Mollie's farm to find a bit of sugar and ribbons hidden under a pile of hay(pg.30). Another reason was when boxer got sick, and split his hoof, Clover was the one that gave medicines to Boxer. I'm usually the one that take cares of my family members when their sick, like clover is to Boxer. One more reason i think i am like Clover is because when clover found out about Mollie hiding lumps of sugar under the hay, she did not mention that to anyone else. I don't tell other people things that they don't need to know, or facts that could just cause more problems, than there are.

Burma military service

My country is Burma, and it allows voluntary military service, and i think thats good for the country because it gives choice to the country. Everyone is equal and everyone should be given a choice of whether they want to be part of the military or not. It is true that military service helps the country but if some one doesn't want to --- they shouldn't have to. Its good of Burma to make military service, voluntary.

The King is dead!!

The past week in M.1 has defiantly been harder than usual. So now everyone cheers, because the king is dead. There were many similarities between the way King Coyle handled things in M1 and the way the 13 colonies were ruled. The first similarity was that both were ruled…and they were both ruled by kings that did not care about what everyone else wanted, but more on what he wanted. The 13 colonies were taxed for practically everything that they needed or wanted. Ex; tea, stamp act. Similarly, we were taxed for denim, braces, and even using our agenda! We were taxed for things that we should not have been taxed on and that is called injustice. King Coyle acted like a tyrant because he had power over us, and simply because he handled out grades and because he was able to hand out detention slips. King Coyle ran a tyranny. He treated us unfairly, and he took away our rights, like King George III. They were both also very capable of threatening us. Clearly, we did not like this, and we wanted to be treated much fairly, and that is self-determination. No more worries! The king is dead!!

43rd war feedback

The absolute location that the 43rd war takes place in is the El Salvador. One piece of evidence is that that Atlacatl was the last ruler of El Salvador (wikipedia), and I figured that this could be a fact because in the book, it was mentioned that there is a volcano called the Atlacatl volcano. Also, the country had very bad civil war difficulties in the nineties (wikipedia). Another reason I think that the 43rd war was based in Salvador is because the main language spoken there is Spanish, which is also the main language spoken in the 43rd war. Also, the main religion in El Salvador is Roman Catholic and in the book, they used two twigs to form a cross for the dead. It appears to be that there was a lot of guerilla conflict in the country, and in the book they mentioned that a lot. Moeri probably did not mention the name of the country because she probably wanted to add some kind of friction to the book, and also because the government might not be happy about it because it is not all accurate.

Declaration of Independence.

It is a necessity that you explain when you are going to break away. It is obvious that all men were born equal and right full rights that should be our rights. That includes life, liberty, and happiness. Governments get their powers from the people. When any part of the government start to take over in ways that aren’t approved by the people, the people have a say in changing a few things, or creating a new government. When people have the rights to alter things about the government, it is because the people feel the government is not doing what they are supposed to be doing. All our colonies have suffered because of what the government is doing and now we are going to make sure that it does not go on any longer. King George the third has damaged our colonies in many ways.

King George has damaged the colonies by keeping trade from all the rest of the world. He has taken away our seas, destroyed our coasts, burnt our towns, and shattered the lives of our people. He sent us beyond seas so we were tricked for things they made up about us. He also deprived us, in many ways, of the benefits of trial by jury. And last he has kept us away from each other, in times of peace, standing armies without our permission of our legislatures.

Each time he acted on one of those horrible things, we asked for him to stop. We ask him only when what he does hurts us. He should not be the king. He is not fit for it. The king is an oppressor. We also talked about this to the British legislature and we told them why we came in the first place. Whatever we say does not matter. No changes were made. Everyone here is saying that freedom is upon us. We, whom represent our United States of America, will make this work by working together.

J O I N, or D I E

This political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin is showing that if all the colonies don’t join as one, they will die.

Note; the ‘JOIN, or DIE.’

Each of the pieces of the snake are the eight colonies that should put together to make one. If these colonies just want to stay single, and decide not to join to each other, there might be wars against one another and other colonies from other continents. Then, these colonies would have to fight back alone unless they made allies. But if they all stay as one, America, it is much harder for any of the other colonies to attack and if they were to fight back, they would be able to fight back as a one, whole, strong army. The cartoonist, Benjamin Franklin, made this to show everyone that if they want to win whatever happens to them, they need to stay as one. Benjamin Franklin was one of the founding fathers of America, so he is the one who put all of America together, and he wanted to show the people with this cartoon. His opinion in this cartoon is that they should be strong and all join as one. The evidence for this is the slogan. It says in the slogan ‘JOIN, or DIE’ which shows that he thinks that they should all just…JOIN. Benjamin could have made this better by turning the face of the snake towards the audience so they can see the snakes’ facial expression more and show more visual effects. Having the snakes face sideways doesn’t show much about how the snake is feeling or how vicious the snake may look, if it does.

Can we trust the "truthfulness"

We can trust the truthfulness of this book because everything in the book is directly taking quoted sayings from those who were once slaves. Also, most of the quotes were taken from sources like the library of congress, which is a huge library in the states that is much known. They have a reputation about history facts plus the library of congress would not have fake quotes from the slave trade years. Also, Julius Lester is a professor of black studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A professor that experts in black studies, would not lie about what he learned…the truth. Another reason is that, the American Embassy School of Delhi is not going to spend money on a bunch of books that say anything but the truth. Also, many of us knew general facts about the slave trade before we read the book “to be a slave” and the book just restates the facts that we were already aware of from common sense. Everything that we read just tells us what it is like to be a slave, how they felt about it, and how badly their masters treated them. Lastly, the dedication clearly stated that this was to the memory of his great grandparents that were slaves too. Though he never knew them, there is absolutely no reason to why he would spend his time to publish a book that is not trustworthy.

citation;

Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. New York: Scholastic, 1968.

GP

My partner, Asim and I played Germany in the GP. There were many tough decisions that were to be made at the start and to the end of the game. First choosing allies, was a hard decision to make because you had to make sure you aren't being allies with one of your other allies enemies. USA and France were the countries with the most advantage at the start of the game, probably becuase of the economic units they recieved to start with. They were strong countries but during the game, other colonies, like russia were able to catch up by planning, and choosing what to buy with their economic units. France's idea of waiting the first year and not making any allies was very smart because they then had the advantage to see which empire they want to join. Germany started out with a good number of economic points but during the middle of the game,we made many wrong decisions like helping out during a war and loosing more than getting back though we won the war.
At the start of the game, we bought alot of armies. That helped other empires defend and fight wars. But towards the end we wished we bought more industries and colonies becuase they add on extra econimic points. Industries dont seem important becuase they dont help you fight wars when it comes to seeing who has more becuase the amount of navy and army that an empire has is whats counted. But the reason an empire will have thier armies or navies at all is depended upon the amount of colonies and the amount of industries that you have. Navies are completely useless. You can fight with them in a war but they are only worth half of armies. Germany kept a very strong army in the begginning and many empires came to us to become allies. Even in wars, we saved them from loosing to other very strong empires like USA and France. If we were to play this game again, buying colonies and industries in the start of the game would help us a great amount for the long run.
Germany had many allies, all except for USA. We were allies with Japan but we broke off the treaties because they had joined the USA too. However, we were allies with France , who too were allies with USA but it needed to be made sure the France would not attack us. Japan did not have a very strong army and it did not matter if they were to attack us becuase Russia or great britan would help us, and Russia espeically had a strong army, and us put toghether is even stronger. During the game, i learnt you can't trust any of your allies becuase they might have made allies with your enemy too and they can always back out on helping you in a war. Also its a right that they help the other empire because they made allies with both sides.
During this game, i learnt that before getting straight to building an army, you should start with colonies and industries that will help you on the longer run. Another fact that i learnt is that you have to make sure you don't double cross your allies becuase they are all greedy just like your own empire. They want to take whenever they have that chance to take, and so they will just join these wars that started out small which became a "great war". I also learnt that conflicts dont always profit your empire becuase even when you win, you don't always get more than what you provided for the war.