Sam’s Social Studies blog

“The whole is only as strong as the sum of its parts”, this is very true when you are talking about the U.N. This is true because the U.N sort of works like a body, if all of the organs don’t work together the body can’t stay alive. For example if the U.N didn’t have it’s Trusteeship it just wouldn’t work because the Trusteeship is a major organ of the U.N, it makes connections and agreements. All of the organs of the U.N help keep the U.N alive and make it a majestic organization greater than any others.

What would you change about the final product (the wiki you created) if you were to do the assignment again?

If I could do this assignment again, the thing I would change is nothing really. I like how the wiki turned out. The tiniest thing I would change is making sure I made goals for when I am going to have a certain task finished, this will make me not so stressed. I am pretty happy because Ankita was able to join in our group when Mei Huii changed blocks.

I think that group E ‘s wikispace was done well because I really liked the music they played on their movie, I also like how the people who were reading the information spoke very clearly. The thing I liked most and kept my attention was the changing and colourful pictures and writing in the movie.  That is a presentation that caught my eye a lot.

1. What did you learn from this task?

At the start of the year I didn’t know very much about the ancient civilizations Africa, I only knew what I had learnt in 5th grade. After doing this project on wiki, I have learnt so much about the Kongo Kingdom from all of the research I have done, now I know so much about Ancient Africa! This my knowledge comes what food they had available, what they did in their everyday life, where they were located, how they lived together, what clothing they wore and many more exiting things.

2. Did you find this difficult or easy? Why?

In this project I did have my easy points which were adding pictures and making the webpage look abit better. What I found extremely difficult about this project was researching and finding the information that I needed for this project. I got so annoyed because they would keep on giving me web pages that I didn’t need, so I would press the –thing and then the word and it would still show the same results. (1000000000000000000 results found in 0.1 seconds.) The Boolean operators did help me a bit. I did enjoy the project when all I had to do was add some pictures.

3. What would you change about the process you went through to complete the wiki if you were to do the assignment again?

Even though I did get my work finished on-time I think the project would’ve been easier if I had done a little bit of research on the holiday even though I didn’t have a computer. I really enjoyed doing the last touch-ups of the wiki because it wasn’t hard.

This project was pretty fun!

Citation to news article:

Author: not specified

Title of Article: “Fiji military chief stages coup”

Website Title: BBC

Date Published: Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Website Address: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6208758.stm

Date you looked at this site: 17 December, 2006
Picture of the event:

Map of Fiji.

1. Some new information I have found on this topic is troops were not ordered to go and coup. Meanwhile Prime Minister Qarase told Reuters news agency: “The deadline has now passed. I have been informed that the new deadline is Monday midday.” However, there has been no word from Commander Bainimarama on a new deadline.

2. What I found really interesting about this topic was finding out what a coup. I have never heard of this word until now. What I also found interesting was a commander is going against the Prime Minister, that truly is interesting to me.

3.What I liked about the initial blog posting was how Joe clearly spread out the citation of the news article, this made it a lot easier for me to see where he got his information from. I also really liked his picture, it clearly shows that they are against each other because it has that line separating them.

During the presentations today, I learned many intresting facts about West Africa. I learned How the Songhai Empire grew to Greatness, The conquest of Songhai by Morocco, The Kingdom of Mansa Musa, and The Kingdom of Gold.

Here is what I learned from the presentations:

The Kingdom of Gold

Indegious Religion

The people in Ghana worship their ancestors and only believe in one major god. They believed that if they treated their gods well, there would be not many disasters (natural disasters).

Sources of Ghana’s Strength

Ghana was a very strong country because of the tax and iron. The King was really good. Everyone was treated equal. The country overall was well run because of the King.

Trans-Sahara saving

Ghana was a safe place because there were a lot of military and soldiers. You couldn’t avoid paying tax because of the soldiers. If people couldn’t afford to pay money as tax, they could give food instead.

Islam

Islams were very religious people. They built a lot of mosques. The Islams were kept away from Ghana so Ghana wouldn’t become Islam and Islam wouldn’t become Ghana.

The Kingdom of Mansa Musa

Mali at it’s Height

Mali was remained powerful for almost about 200 years. Mali’s empire was twice the size of Ghana’s empire

Mansa Musa’s Pilgrimage

Mansa Musa’s Pilgrimage was bigger than the others. 500 slaves carried a bar of gold that weighed about 4 pounds. The gold was from Mansa Musa, he was a very generous man

Impact of Pilgrimage

Europeans put Mali on the map because of such great wealth Mali had. Prices went up because people were more rich in Mali now.

The fight

The fight of control was at Kirina. The fight was really bad. Both leaders used magic on the battlefield.

How the Songhai Empire grew to Greatness

Songhai Gains Independence from Mali

In the 15th century (1400’s), a person called Sunni Ali Ber helped gain independence from Mali.

The Empire under Askia Muhammad

Askia raised power and complete control and stated Islam as the state religion.

Songhai Empire at its Height

Songhai’s empire grew to be larger than Mali and Ghana’s empires combined! This was because of the Union that brought the two empires together. Songhai’s empire grew from fishermen and farmer (ancestors). Songhai was the last of the largest trading empires in Western Africa

What happened to Sunni Ali?

Sunni Ali had died but his son was still alive at that time. The people who didn’t like Sunni Ali’s son’s policies, they turned against him. So then Askia Muhammad ruled the country and ruled other countries also and thats the second reason why the empire became so big.

Conquest of Songhai by Morocco

At 1580 a morracon man wanted to conquer Songhai. He made a very expensive army with high classed shields, armour, and very good weapons. He wanted to also get the salt and gold resources. He sent out musketeers to see the salt and gold mines. When they went it was deserted. So they went to Gau (the major city in Songhai) to conquer Songhai. Songhai surrendered to Morocco for an offer to pay tribute to slaves. The Morrocan rulers remained in Songhai.

    On Friday the 6th of October, I found out about lots of interesting facts about what challenges countries face.  There are very big differences in some countries such as the percentage of cell phone users in Colombia and Taiwan. Colombia’s percentage of cell phone users is 23% when Taiwan’s percentage of cell phone users is 109%! For Taiwan, this means that 9% of the people have more than one cell phone! Not even half of the population in Colombia has cell phones! That fact was interesting, surprising and yet I learned from it! Another big difference I found in GDP rate was with one country and another country. One country had a GDP per capita of only 400 dollars when another country had a GDP per capita of 4,900 dollars! This is an extremely big difference and I think that these types of differences are not good at all. Overall I learned lots of facts about different countries and I’m glad to have had this opportunity.

The challenges that Albania face is their literacy rate, it is JUST above average by one country. Literacy rate is very good because it means how “smart” the country is and how likely it is to become a first world country. It is also good to have a medium of a literacy rate because then you are still most likely to get up to that point. The fertility rate is 2.03 children per children. The halfway line in the graph is number 106, Albania is number 133, that is very low compared to the halfway line. That shows that women don’t give birth to children a lot. The infant mortality rate is 20.75/1000 live births. This means that they’re in 110^th place again and that is also JUST above the average of countries. That is not very good to be in that place because it means that a lot of infants are still dying. A way that they could improve this is by the country trying to prevent natural disasters such as destructive earthquakes; tsunamis occur along southwestern coast; floods; droughts.

Step 1. 

Country Name: Albania

Type Of Government: Emerging Democracy

Political Leader: Annex Kosovo

Population: 3,581,655

Age Structure: 0-14 years: 24.8% (male 464,954/female 423,003)
15-64 years: 66.3% (male 1,214,942/female 1,158,562)
65 years and over: 8.9% (male 148,028/female 172,166)

Ethnic Groups: Albanian 95%, Greek 3%, other 2% (Vlach, Roma (Gypsy), Serb, Macedonian, Bulgarian) (1989 est.)
note: in 1989, other estimates of the Greek population ranged from 1% (official Albanian statistics) to 12% (from a Greek organization)

Religions: Muslim 70%, Albanian Orthodox 20%, Roman Catholic 10%

Languages: Albanian (official - derived from Tosk dialect), Greek, Vlach, Romani, Slavic dialects

Literacy Rates: age 9 and over can read and write
total population: 86.5%
male: 93.3%
female: 79.5%

Fertillity Rates: 2.03 Children per Woman

Life Expectancy: total population: 77.43 years
male: 74.78 years
female: 80.34 years

Infant Mortality Rates: 20.75/1000 live births

Step 3.

After the nation of Albania had been created, they have various problems, their Infant Mortality Rate is towering, their fertility rate is low and their debt total is up to a sum of about $45million. First of all, Albania’s Infant Mortality rate is relatively high. The exact rate is 20.75/1000 live births. This means that they are the 110^th country on the chart for Infant Mortality rate. That is just above average. It is not sufficient enough to be in that position because this means that countless children are dying. One way that they can fix this devastating problem is by trying to prevent the natural disasters that they face such as destructive earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and droughts. The next problem that Albania faces is their fertility rate is shockingly low. Their fertility rate is 2.03 babies are born per woman giving birth. Definition Fertility rate: How many babies are born per woman in 1000 women. In the country chart that shows the ranking from top to bottom of fertility rate, the top being the worst and the bottom being the best, Albania is a lot higher than average, they are ranked 106 in the world and the average rank is 133, this means that women don’t give birth to children frequently. A way that they can fix this is by telling people that they should get married, this should be presented in the newspaper. Finally, Albania’s last problem that is listed is their debt. They owe $45million. Most people do not make this much money in a year combined in Albania so how can they in such debt? I believe they should really try to find a way to pay back at least half of that money in a couple years time. If they can’t find a way to pay back their enormous debt then Albania will start owing so much money that they will never be able to get rid of it . Debt rate Definition: The amount of money that someone or a group/community of people owe. All in all Albania does truly have some challenges and will continue to confront difficulties in the future. Some of them can be changed really quickly but they just don’t put the time and effort into it. Hopefully in a couple years they will have solved most of the challenges that they face today.

Economy: GDP Per Capita: $4,900

% Living Under Poverty Line: 25%

% Internet Users: 2.1%

% Cell Phone Users: 30%

What I learned From this Task:

From  this task  I  learned  that google earth isn’t just about looking at places around the world but for putting information on it about that country. I learned that google earth is a very good source to use as a globe if your globe at home isn’t available. I learnt how to use html which is a very good skill to use when making a website sometimes. I found this task medium difficulty because the html was hard to remember and finding the information and calculating the % of cell phone users etc.. on cia.com was pretty difficult. I would like to learn how to find a country on google earth and make it so that it isn’t a fuzzy view from the satellite. I am thinking about starting up a country information chart on google earth. It will go on every country.