Demographics, Day 4 - Class Recap

The pathway along a Shinto shrine in Toyko, Japan. Today, we learned about the demographic pressures on Japan's population - especially when it comes to a very elderly population. Photo taken in 2014.

Hi everyone,

It is always nice to see you all in the morning! Today, we watched a documentary about population and demographics. Here's what we did today in class:

Learning Targets: 
Knowledge LT 9: I can explain demographic changes in the world and their effects.
Critical Thinking LT 2: I can explain connections between events, issues, problems and concepts.

Soundtrack: "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Tomoyasu Hotei. Selected for today because we learned more about Japan's battle against demographic trends in their population, and because it was Election Day yesterday, and because you are battling towards the end of the year!

AGENDA 5/18/16:

Election Night News Brief – Isaac
World in the Balance
Review
Demographics Work

Homework: Read the blog! Finish your demographic unit work (see below for links). The last day I will accept any late/missing/revised work for the semester is next Thursday. Next news brief: Trevor.

---

Election Night News Brief: Isaac had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: BBC.com - Sri Lanka mudslide leaves scores missing. We found Sri Lanka in the world map packet and talked about this story, as well as saw an update about it on BBC World News.

We also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):

BBCNews.com - One-minute World News

The next news brief was assigned to Trevor.

We also talked about the election results from the entire state of Oregon, which can be found here :

OregonVotes.gov - Election Results

Here is the link for Multnomah County election results. My mom, Amanda Fritz, has won re-election to her job as Portland City Commissioner. Yay!

MultCo.us - Election Results

In the primary for local positions (like my mom's), a candidate needs over 50% of the vote in order to be declared the overall winner (no further election needed). If no candidate gets to 50%, then the top two candidates face off in the general election in November.

World in the Balance: This was a NOVA documentary that we watched together in class. I was asking students to write about the three countries in the film: India, Japan, and Kenya, and what their population/demographics is like. Here is the assignment that goes with this:

Google Drive - World in the Balance Part I Assignment

And here is the video we watched in class:

Thank you for your focus and interest in this! As I said before watching it, I think the issues are really interesting and worth our time to learn about.

Review/Demographics Work: We did not have much time at the end of class today, but I did want to link to the assignments in the demographics unit, which are as follows:

Google Drive: Demographics Development Indicators

Students needed to find the statistics for countries on the CIA World Factbook (some of the statistics might be found from other sources, too).

The next assignment was related to the Children of Syria documentary in class.

Here is the assignment that I passed out with the movie:

Google Drive - Children of Syria Documentary Questions

Here is a link to watch the documentary, if you missed class, or wanted to watch it again at home with your family. An hour really well spent:

PBS.org - Frontline: Children of Syria

Next, we did the End of Poverty reading and assignment last class:

Google Drive - The End of Poverty Assignment

Here is the reading that goes along with the assignment:

Google Drive - The End of Poverty Reading

Please have all of your demographics work ready to turn in at the end of next class, as I will give work time and also check in about everyone's grades! Thank you!