Griffin's Geo Blog

Today in class we had a second day to review and write our essay for the exam. I am feeling much more confident about the exam based off of the review. My essay has been written and I have notes on my note card that Mr.Schick gave us which I am very thankful for. Overall I am feeling nervous for the exam but also pretty confident as Mr. Schick has given us ample time to prepare and do the best that we can.

Today in class Mr. Schick gave us an opportunity to begin prepping for our essay that we will be writing on Friday for the mid-term exams. He gave us three different questions that we could answer and we had to pick one of them. I chose the first option which focuses on three different countries around the world, in three different regions of the world. My job is to give reasoning as to why each country is in the current situation that they are in. As well as to give suggestions to the leader as to what solutions could help the country thrive and become better. Overall I really appreciate Mr. Schick giving us this time.

Today in class we took a quiz on the demographic transition, the five stages of it and what country is in which stage. I thought that some parts of the quiz were pretty difficult and some parts of the quiz were fairly easy. A few questions that I found challenging were asking about which country is in which stage and period of time a certain country was in a certain stage. For example, what years was the United States in stage 1. The questions that i thought were easy were asking about what certain lines meant on the graph and also the questions that asked about which how the demographic transition helps determine a countries economy.

Today in class we rewatched the video from Khan Academy on demographic transition. Mr. Schick would constantly pause the video for us to ask questions or make any comments that we had. Most of the time Mr. Schick would make the comments. He explained to us why he did not like some of the stuff that was in the video as well as some poor grammar that was used. After watching video I now feel more prepared for the quiz on Monday as I now have a better understanding on what the five stages population pyramid looks like as well as why each country is in each stage and what countries are in each stage.

Kim Smith video: 1. The population would grow around 60,000 people er year in the world, now we gain that every 6-7 hours 2. The exponential growth that we are experiencing is not expected to level off until around 2050 3. In the year 2050 we are expected to have a population of around 9-10 billion people Khan Academy video: 1. Right now most countries have a positive growth rate or RNI 2. The larger base of a pyramid means that the population will increase 3. If this trend continues the population will be forced to become stable Why Populations Grow video: 1. The doubling rate can be calculating by dividing 70 by the countries population 2. Industrial Revolution was the key starting point of the population boom 3. When birth and death rates decrease then the population will slowly increase but then stop rising. The video that was most helpful to me was the video from Kim Smith. I got the most out of that video because she used direct examples of countries

Today in class we went over the annotating that we did for the reading that we were given yesterday on the five stages of demographic transition. After that, Mr. Schick showed us two different videos that explained demographic transition pretty nicely. One was by a woman named Kim Smith and she talked about the factors causing these stages and gave examples of some countries in them. The second video was a Khan Academy video and it was by a girl who did prominently drawings to explain what she was trying to say. Overall I think that stages are interesting to learn and I think that I will do well on the quiz coming up.

In today's class we were given a reading from the human geography textbook. It was three pages on the stages of demographic transition and what they mean to different countries as well as history. I learned that each country has pretty much gone through four stages of the transition. The fifth stage occurs when a country has a higher death rate than birth rate. Only a few countries have gone through this like Japan, Italy and other northeastern European countries. In conclusion today was kind of boring class but I understand why it was necessary to do as it was a quick and easy and a good learning tool.