Becoming a Museum Curator

In order to be a curator, you need to first understand the curating process in order to get the correct information and have it displayed in a way that will make it easier for readers to understand.  It is very important that as a curator you can be able to arrange the content in a layout that is understandable, and it is also very important that you have correct and authentic sources that you gathered your information from.  This analysis process is very important, because it includes a catchy title that makes readers want to continue, and also it makes sure that all information is correct and reliable.  Our museum curator project was on the textile industry, and how its advancements affected families.  We began our poster with the spinning wheel, the first producer in the textile industry. The spinning wheel was used in homes and could be operated by women, children, and elderly, and it provided families with a source of income.  After the spinning wheel was the Hand loom, or Almond loom, which increased the speed of weaving, and it was still powered by people in their homes.  However, the big changes came when the spinning jenny and power looms became prominent. These rapid producing machines were found in factories, and since families could not keep up with them, people had to move to cities to work in them in order to get money.  We came up with the title "Tearing Down Families" in order to show that while the Industrial Revolution helped advance life, it also destroyed the lives of families by preventing them from selling their own textiles, causing poverty.  We hope that viewers will be able to learn that while the Industrial Revolution was a major improvement to the lives of many, it also tore down lives with it, and forced even more industrialization.

Not only did we teach people about the textile industry, but we also learned about other parts of the Industrial Revolution, such as transportation,pollution, child labor,and cotton slavery.   Transportation was revolutionized by the creation of the steam engine, which allowed electricity and power to be created.  it also allowed the railroad to be developed, along with steam boats, which made transportation of goods and people a lot faster.  Pollution lead to many impurities in things such as water, and it also lead to very poor living conditions. The steam engine also caused black smoke to fill the skies, polluting the air and environment.   Child labor was also a huge part of the Industrial Revolution.  With the development of factories, more workers were needed, and parents sent their children to work in mills to earn money for the family. Children were also able to be paid less, so factories could end up making more money the less they paid their laborers.  Lastly, cotton slavery allowed factories to force people to work for them, and this gave them an even larger amount of money than having children work.  The cotton slaves were kept in very poor conditions, with illness constantly around. Cotton slaves worked in the cotton mills, and also harvested cotton in order to fuel the mills with material.  Becoming a museum curator for a day requires a lot of hard work, and the Industrial Revolution was an entire plethora of hard work and sacrifices by all people.

This is a picture of our project on industrialization.

Learning to Find Information

Today in class, we did an activity that taught us how to properly determine whether or not a website was good for researching, and we learned to measure its accuracy, authenticity, and reliability.  We also learned how to discover a specific answer to a question while only being able to search for certain terms on A Google a Day, and it taught us to be better researchers for topics.

Google a Day was an online research guide to help us to find the answer to a question we were given.  Google a Day prompted us with a question and then limited our searches, which made it challenging to find the answer to the question.  What i found the most frustrating about it was how we could not just Google the answer, but we had to search for keywords and dig deeper into the articles we uncovered to find it. However,  it was fun when you found the answer or got a lead that brought you to somewhere where the answer may be.  While doing this, i learned how to use a few quick shortcuts in Google to search for keywords or eliminate possible searches, so i could focus more on the topic I am researching and less on ads or unrelated websites.

Not only did we use Google a Day, but we also went over accuracy, authenticity, and reliability when it comes to finding these searches, and we learned what they are while researching the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  Accuracy is how correct the facts are, authenticity is how original the facts are and that they are not stolen from other sources, and reliability is how dependable the facts are.  We tested these on the website for the tree octopus, and we determined that it could not be used as a source in school, as it was not an accurate source of data and it wasn't reliable at all.  Yes, the facts were original, but whether or not the facts were accurate or reliable is a no.  It does not give enough information about it, and it appears as though the information is made up. By learning how to determine whether or not a website is a good website to use, we can now know if the source the facts are being taken from is trustworthy or not.


Google A Day Link:
http://www.agoogleaday.com/#game=started

Tree Octopus link:
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/


"The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus"
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/treeocto.jpg

The Industrial Revolution and What Made it Revolutionary

This Friday in class, we learned a lot about the Industrial Revolution, and how it changed the lives of people across the globe. What was revolutionary about it was that technology became more advanced, such as in the textile industry, and also that resources were more abundant, allowing people to go to school and get an education to help fuel the Industrial Revolution even more.

Technology was a major reason for the Industrial Revolution because it allowed things to be done faster and more efficiently.  The creation of steam engines allowed electricity to be made, which powered machines and automated processes in things such as the textile industry.  Some of the things that made the textile industry better was the invention of the power loom, which dramatically increased the speed of weaving and allowed for factories to be made.  The steam engine also allowed water to be pumped out of mines, which meant more resources such as coal, iron, sulfur, and other ores could be gathered more from the previously underwater nodes.  However, technology was not the only reason for the industrial revolution, but so were the available resources.  

Resources also helped to fuel the industrial revolution because it allowed more products to be made that made things go faster.  For example, the creation of bleach from sulfuric acid and lead mines allowed the textile industry to make clothes faster and cheaper by bleaching them instead of soaking them in stale urine.  This made forced people to move to cities and work in factories because they could not keep up with the rate of production. With more people working in factories, production scaled, and with more resources from these factories, people kept moving to cities and coal was continuously dug p for power, and more coal allowed them to increase production even more.  Coal especially allowed the Industrial Revolution to unravel because it fueled steam engines which allowed for more coal to be mined which made railroads and other processes possible.  Steam engines ran off of coal, and were used to factorize things, such as the digging up more coal.  The Industrial revolution revolutionized the production of resources and technology, both of which helped to make the lives of people across the world easier

The Beggining of a New Year

Hello there! My name is Evan and this is my History blog for my 10th grade History class. I am writing this post in order to inform everyone about what some of my goals and expectations are for this year, both in me and my teachers.

Have you ever wondered why you might like some teachers better than others?  There are a few key qualities that teachers need to have in order to be effective at teaching students. One of the most important thing that a teacher needs to have in my opinion is approach ability. This allows students to be able to know that when they are struggling, they can ask that teacher for help and that they will help in any way possible. It allows students to not feel afraid of approaching a teacher, which makes them feel more comfortable round them.  In the past, I've had a few teachers that had this quality, and were also very nice people, which helped to make them even better.  They could constantly be asked questions and give a straight answer instead of ending up confusing most students more.  One specific thing that my teacher can do this year to help me is be clear in class.  Nothing is more frustrating than a teacher who leaves a student confused at the end of the class and leaves them with this confusion while they are doing the assigned homework on that topic.  It isn't just the teachers responsibility to make us bright children, but it is also our own responsibility.

John Green said that it is our duty to do great things with our education, and i strongly agree with him on that.  What is the point of going to school for many years of your life if you don't plan on using that acquired knowledge to do things that help to advance and aid the human race?  For me, i plan on doing great things with my education, but that all starts with doing well in school.  One of my major academic goals this year is to achieve High Honors on my report card, a very difficult task when you are taking all honors level classes.  I hope to reach this goal by studying far more than i did last year and also by making sure i understand the material and asking questions if i do not understand it.  I hope this this year will be greater than the last year, and that i will be even more successful with all of my classes.



Educational Quotes
http://inspirefree.com/education-quotes/


Video by John Green