Thursday, December 20, 2012

Day 4 blog post what I've been learning

Today on day four in History class our class was divided into two groups. One group learned about The Battle of Vicksburg the other learned about The Battle of Gettysburg. My group learned about The Battle of Gettysburg, during which General Lee of the Confederacy fought General George Meade of the Union. The Union lost 23,000 soldiers and the Confederacy lost 28,000 soldiers, which was 1/3 of General Lee's army. The Union ended up winning this battle and halted the Confederacy's movement and plans to make Lincoln surrender with a victory in Union territory. This was a turning point because it allowed the Union to go back on the offensive in the east against the Confederacy.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Day 2 what I learned

Today we learned about the writ of Habeas Corpus or the writ of Liberty. It was originally mentioned in the Constitution. Which suggests that it holds greater importance than all of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, or that the The Habeas Corpus was created to branch the amendments off of it. A person in prison may ask the judge for a writ of Habeas Corpus which may or may not allow him to get out of jail if he is imprisoned wrongfully or without legitimate evidence. However Lincoln suspended all writs of Habeas Corpus so as to stop Confederate uprisings in the Union and to improve public safety.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Learning day 7

Today we had an ed-cafe where we debated about whether our person that we researched in the voicethread we did was the most important person in the whole class. I did not believe John Calhoun ( my historical figure) was the most important. I believed that Abe Lincoln was the most important figure because he made a lot of tough decisions, and handled them nicely. He also of course was the president of the United States.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

11-29-12 Learned

Today I learned that the first bomb dropped in World War Two killed the only elephant in the Berlin zoo. It was dropped by the Allies o November 26, 1943. The bombing destroyed the supposedly beautiful zoo as well.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

John Calhoun Voicethread

What I learned today 11-28-12

Today I learned that penguins can change saltwater to freshwater. This can occur because of a gland near the penguin's beak that filters saltwater. Once the gland is full, the penguin will then smash his beak on a rock to empty it out. I found this fact to be interesting because I had no idea that any mammals could create freshwater from saltwater. This would be a very useful ability to us humans.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

11-27-12 Learned Today

Today I learned that if you put your foot in between your wrist and elbow it will fit perfectly. Thus, your forearm is the same size as your foot. I tried it out, and it worked. Also, your thumb is the same size as your nose, and your two arms outstretched are as tall as your height. The branch of science that covers this subject is called anthropology.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Day 7 Class Summary

On Day five as well as day six we didn't have class. However on day seven we did have class. Today, we learned about the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Stephen Douglass proposed that the territories Kansas and Nebraska would decide the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty. The southerners agreed with this act, because it would give them a chance to even up representatives in the senate. The Northerners disagreed though because it went against the Missouri Compromise. At this pointy proslavery and antislavery settlers were angry at each other and were trying to win over Kansas. Border Ruffians (proslavery) caused quite a ruckus themselves. They actually illegally voted and helped Kansas become proslavery. Immediately thereafter this was announced many laws were made that concerned proslavery. The antislavery settlers wouldn't stand for it and killed five proslavery people in Pottawatomie Creek. By the mid 1850s more than 200 people had been killed in Kansas. Soon after, Charles Sumner, an abolitionist senator called out Andrew Butler of South carolina. He insulted him in a crude fashion. Several days later, Preston Brooks, Andrew Butler's relative went into Sumner's office and beat him with his cane. Sumner would not return to the senate for three years.

11-26-12 Learning

Today I learned that Americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate every second. The average person in America will eat about 12 pounds of chocolate, if you multiply that number by the average life expectancy for a United States citizen (78.2) it comes out to around 938 pounds of chocolate that a human will consume in his/her lifetime.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

11-25-12 Learn

Today I learned about how most people have lost 50% of their taste buds by the time they reach the age of sixty. This is because  of either disorders or rare diseases. Of course the loss or distortion of taste and smell can be also be a factor, which is more common. This fact also explains older peoples poor eating habits, mainly consisting of simple tea or bread.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

11-24-12 Learning

Toda I learned a little about the sun, for example it contains 99.85% of the mass in the solar system. Hopefully this can give you perspective on how big the sun is. The mass of the sun is equivalent to 332,900 Earth masses. The total mass of the sun is 1.9891x10to the 30th power kilograms. So, the sun is huge.

Friday, November 23, 2012

11-23-12 Learning

Today I learned about how one billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. Today many people are raising funds to provide these people with water filters and water bottles. The U.N recently gave out statistics showing that more than 2 billion people have gained safe water fixtures between 1990 and 2010. So, the situation is improving but still has a long way to go until everyone has drinking water.

Monday, November 19, 2012

11-19-12 Learning still...

Today I learned about Mark Twain mainly because he is prominent to our next reading in English. Mark Twain was born in 1835, and died at age 74 in 1910.  His most accomplished works are Tom Sawyer and The adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Many new him as the greatest American humorist of all time because of his early short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. A fun fact about Mark Twain is that he never finished Elementary school. Surprising since he is such an impressive author.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

11-18-12 What I learned about today

Today I learned about the Jimmy Fund, it was created after The Boston Braves (now the Boston Red Sox) recorded their visit to a child with cancer on national radio broadcasts. Today The Jimmy Fund donates millions of dollars to cancer research primarily at the Dana Farber Institute per year. A fun fact is that Jimmy of The Jimmy Funds' real name was actually Einar Gustafson.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

11-17-12 What I've learned

Today I learned that Napoleon made his battle plans in a sandbox. People believe that he did this so that he could get rid of the plans without anyone knowing about them, such as spies. This is surprising because Napoleon was a great leader of France, and you wouldn't suspect someone such as him to construct battle plans in a sandbox especially since he was very self centered.

Friday, November 16, 2012

11-16-12 What I've learned today

Today i learned that the Hershey Bar was used overseas in World War Two in some cases as currency. The US government actually asked the Hershey company to create a chocolate bar to have the soldiers carry as rations. This is a coo, fact because I never would have guessed that the Hershey Bar was used as a currency.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

11-15-12 What I learned Today

Today I learned that during a Mars winter 20% of the air on Mars freezes. The reasons for this are because of the fact that Mars is farther from the Sun then Earth. The winter on Mars is also a total of 146 days long which is 59 days longer then we have. That fact might contribute to the frozen air as it has more time to freeze compared to the air on Earth.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

What I learned on 11-14-12

Today I learned about the shortest war on record. It was fought between England and Zanzibar in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered within thirty eight minutes. It is known as the Anglo-Zanzibr war. During the battle a total of one British soldier was wounded, while Zanzibar suffered 500 casualties as The Zanzibar palace was bombarded by a British fleet.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

11-13-12 What I learned today

Toda I learned that in the morning you are one centimeter taller than you are in the evening. After learning this I decided to test this fact. It turns out hat I was about one centimeter taller in the morning then the evening. That's pretty cool!

11-13-12 What I did today

Today in history class we learned about the Missouri Compromise. We also reviewed the stats of the north and south, including total square miles, population density, amount of african americans in each region, and male to female ratios in the regions. The south had more square miles in terms of area and the north had a higher population density. The south had more african-americans, while the north had some states with more females then males. We recorded all these facts while using an interactive map of the time period with detailed analysis of the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise, made it so that no slaves were allowed in the unorganized territories, however there could be slaves in Missouri and Arkansas. The Missouri Compromise was positive for the abolition of slavery as it stopped westward expansion of slavery.

Monday, November 12, 2012

11-12-12 What I've learned

Today I learned that the average heart beats 100,000 times per day, pumping over 2,000 gallons of blood throughout the body. If a human lives to be 70-ish then their heart will beat at least 2.5 billion times. I found this to be an amazing fun fact.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

What I learned on 11-10-12

 I learned about an easy strategy to find the sum of the  numbers 1 through 10. First visualize the numbers as stones and line them up in a column like this 1
                                                                                          12
                                                                                          123
and so on until you get to ten. Once that is done visualize that figure upside down attached to the first figure you've created, it should form a rectangle. The rectangle has 10x11 dimensions. Now multiply the dimensions to find the area, which is 110. After that is done, cut the area in half leaving you with 55. 55 is the answer to the sum of the numbers from 1 to 10. This can be done with any group of numbers.

Friday, November 9, 2012

30 Day Project 11-9-12

Today I learned about slaves trying to escape from slavery and become free men and women. The main passage for them was called the "Underground Railroad". One women Harriet Tubman otherwise known as "Black Moses", she helped over 300 slaves become free men in Canada and Northern North America. Over time over 1000 slaves were being freed per year. The slaves were helped along the way by white and black slavery abolitionists. The most famous of these was William Lloyd Garrison, who is from Newburyport. Slavery is a terrible thing and it is amazing how some slaves were able to escape it.

Monday, November 5, 2012

30 Day Project

 For thirty days, on each day I will learn something new. This will help me broaden my knowledge of the world. It will also allow me to to spread my knowledge to others. This is what I will do every day for thirty days. On November 1st I learned more about the electoral colleges and how they vote. I looked at some of the pols and made my own electoral college map. The way that the electoral colleges work, is that each state has their election, the polls get tallied and sent to electoral representatives for each state for example California has fifty five and Iowa has six. The electoral college reps will view the polls and make a decision for the whole state on who to send the state's electoral votes to. The candidate that gets 270 electoral votes or more is guaranteed a win.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

My Time Toast Timeline

My time toast link..  http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/american-revolution-history--2

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

10-26-12

On day six we learned about Washington and how he retreated from New York to New Jersey. He noticed how the Continental Army had lost all hope in their cause and won the battle of Trenton and Princeton to put them back in the war. On day seven we did a scavenger hunt that was a quiz grade on the battles of the Revolution. We used our known information and newly known information to solve the questions asked.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Blog Day 4 10/18/12

On Day three of the the week we worked on our sections of The Declaration of the Independence. We all got in a group and gave each of us info on what our sections meant. We then had a heated discussion about whether our words are worth anything. I would say no. On Day 4 we had a substitute teacher she had us read "Crisis" By Thomas Paine. After that we wrote an essay about whether today's times were tough as the American Revolution time's I said yes. Over the past two days we learned about the Declaration of Independence and wrote an essay.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Blog Post Day 2

On day one we learned about every one's History project subject replica. My history project's subject was Frederich Wilhelm Von Steuben. He was a Prussian drill master that came over to America upon Benjamin Franklin's request to be Inspector General. I was told to draw a replica size image of my person for the project. Then I had to find eight to ten facts about my person. For example Baron Von Steuben was the one to teach the Americans how to use the bayonet, he also was General Washington's chief of staff. I also had to put an object in the pocket on my replica, it was a will because he gave his estate to General Benjamin Walker and Captain William North. On day two we analyzed the declaration of independence. My group had to analyze the introduction and put it into our own words. We then made a twitter post from Ben Franklin giving the meaning of the part of the declaration we had to analyze. Over the past to days we have learned a lot.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Last two days of school 10-12-12

During the last two days of school we have learned about the Revolutionary war battles starting at Concord and Lexington and ending right after Bunker Hill. We watched a sort of animated slideshow that showed the class all the battles in between Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill. We also learned that during all of these battles there were a lot more British casualties then American casualties and wounded. We saw how the American's took Breeds Hill and Bunker Hill and fought off the British multiple times before finally falling to the advancing British army. On friday we learned about The Common Sense articles, The Olive Branch Petition, and The Plain Truth. The Common Sense was a loyalist response to the Plain Truth and about why we should stay attached to England. The Plain Truth was a article about why we should gain independence from England. The Olive Branch Petition was a petition against the English telling them that if we got basic rights then we would stop fighting, however the English didn't agree to it. This was what we have learned in class.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Last Two Days of School 10/9/12

 On friday, day one, we learned about Paul Revere's ride. We learned the complete story and began to learn some of the key moments of the Revolutionary War time period. We read "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem began to show us that some sources aren't exactly accurate. Such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, which puts across the idea that only one rider (Paul Revere) rode to warn Massachusetts of the impending attack; it also made us believe that Paul Revere's ride was glorious and perfect in every way without fault. However, we were then given a sheet of paper giving us the true facts of Paul Reveres's ride in which his horse was slashed by his spurs and he was caught after a slightly successful night to say the least. Today in History we learned about how eyewitness accounts were not at all reliable sources. We watched a thought provoking video about the prior statement I made that proves it's point using a crime scene as an example. Then we read some articles from different soldiers' (both British and American) accounts of the shot heard around the world in Lexington and Concord, and had to decide if they were accurate or not. In most cases the eyewitness reports proved to be inaccurate. That was the summary of two days of school in Mr.Boyle's E period class.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Spreaker Podcast Link

http://www.spreaker.com/user/bruinfan17/friends_and_their_values_1

My Spreaker podcast on friends and their values.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Last Two Days of School

                Hey, I've bee having quite a past two days in Mr.Boyle's American History 1 class. Yesterday we learned about the preamble of the Constitution. Which is goes as stated "We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America. Each of these parts of the preamble holds its own independent purpose. For example when in the preamble "And secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." is stated it means that the Constitution was righten to ensure that we will always have our rights to liberty, and also so that the rights established here are forever passed on. During class we went around the room and in our own words told what each one of the phrases of the preamble meant and also how it worked or didn't work. I found this exercise to be quite demanding and challenging mentally, it also got me thinking about our preamble a little bit more.
          Today in class we talked about "The Question of Representation" During this class we read passages from the Constitutional Convention. After reading the passages we had to take information from the reading and transfer it into which politician favors Proportional representation and which politician does not. After this part of the lesson we used a fake tweet builder to converse in the voices of the politicians we were pretending to be. In my case I was David Brearly he wanted to keep the equality of votes and was against propositional representation. So I then had to argue with James Wilson(Sam Ross) in 140 characters or less about our differing sides of propositional representation. Today's class helped us with with advancing our argument skills with only limited space to write. Our last two day's in Mr.Boyle's class have been educational and helpful to our class and study skills.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Family Values

http://private.rewindy.com/story/67hWrfa6/view/1

My Family Values project URL.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

If high schoolers were researched in the future

         In the future a group of people are studying high school students. One of the names of the high school students is Matthew McParland a high school student that graduated in 2015. The students must come up with three things to describe the high school student they are assigned to.

         The first item that is chosen to describe me is a Boston Bruins hockey puck. I started playing hockey as a freshman in high school. I love the sport and is by far my favorite sport to play and watch. The puck would have a Boston Bruins logo on t because the bruins are my favorite sports team of all time, and you will never find a more avid fan then me. Nearly everything I own has something to do with hockey. Hockey alone takes up a large chunk of my life. This is why the student researching me would pick a Boston Bruins' hockey puck as their first item.


        The second item that would be chosen to describe me as a person would be a Xbox 360. I'm a extreme gamer and video games tend to take up all of my spare time. I have been a gamer since a young age, I was influenced by Grandmother who passed away when I was four. All my friends know that i'm the biggest gamer around. Based on that video games have probably taken up the largest portion of my life. Video games are something I can't live without much like other people can't live without water.

       The final item that would be chosen to describe me would be a radio. Music is one of the most influential things in my life. I love listening to music, and love relaxing and listening to it alone in my room. Music plays a important role in my life because all of my emotions are in the music I listen to. Like video games music itself is something I can't live without and hope I will never have to let go of. Thus this why a radio would be a sensible item to describe myself.