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Friday, June 22, 2012

Topic Reflection : A Fair World?

  • What was the key question of this topic?
    I think the key question is whether the world is fair is not.
  • In one paragraph write an answer to the question, thinking about what you have learned.
    I think the world isn't fair as there are some countries known as MEDC, LEDC and NIC. In LEDC, a lot of people don't have proper sanitation. The development gap is big.
  • Why do you think this topic is important?
    I think this topic is important so that we know how development affect countries like Africa and shows how people have to make the world more fair.
  • Which learning opportunities did I most enjoy doing?  Why?
    I enjoyed most are the things that we learned in this topic as it was fun and understandable. There were a lot of group work so that's one thing that I enjoyed.
  • Which learning opportunities did I least enjoy doing?  Why?
    I don't think there are things that I didn't enjoy because all the stuff that we learned
  • What skills have I used? Teamwork, Organisation, Empathy, and Have confidence in my judgements
- ELP
- Debate
- Working with different people for the Video work.
  • What IDEALS level do you think you achieved in this topic?  Why?  Quote evidence from the progress mountain. From doing the ELP and the Aid essay, I think I'm between Explain and Analyse as I was able to analyse the evidence in the essay. I also able to explain the facts in my ELP.
  • How can the learning in this topic help me in the ‘real world’? It helps me to understand how people think of helping the world fair and know more about development.
  • What key idea do you think people should be aware of about this topic?
    The key idea is that the world is unfair because of us.

Level of knowledge & understanding: :D
Progress: :D
Enjoyment: :D 

What targets could I set to help make progress in my learning?
Try to link them to your humanities learning and the key skills you want to develop.  Use the IDEALS mountain to think about how you will make progress in the next topic.
E.g. Try to use key terms in my answers, try to ask my own questions.

1. Try to concentrate more analysis, not to explain.

2. To be more organised.

3. To be able to make notes about the topic.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Starter activity: Reflection

From looking at the work of aid, I have achieved the success criteria of advantages and disadvantages of aid. I really understand it as the resource I had is simple and easy. I think the success criteria: "to understand aid is" and "to consider why people have different perspectives"- I kind of achieved it, but I don't fully understand what aid is and I understand why people have different perspectives, but I don't really know how to explain it.

So this is my new learning intention and success criteria.

LI To consider whether aid is always approprite
SC: - To be able to explain why people have different perspectives about aid
       - To be able to understand fully about aid
       - To be able to PEE.

Ranking Ladder: How can we close the development gap?


Aid is it always the answer?

From my understanding of aid, aid is another word for 'help'. A quote from Oxfam GB, UK leading charity fighting global poverty: "Richer countries give poorer countries aid to help them to make a better future for themselves." It is needed because according to Oxfam GB, it provides facilities, like hospitals and schools and the more aid there is, it would mean that every child in the world can go to school. According to 2011 estimates from UNAIDS, WHO and UNICEF, there are around 30.6 million people have HIV/AIDS. They need money for buying medicines to heal them.

Aid is the answer because emergency aid in times of disaster saves lives. There was a tsunami called 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. It was a tsunami happened in the Indian Ocean. It killed lots of people in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. So, an organization called Christian Aid spent 45 millions pounds in order to help hundreds of thousands of people to rebuild the their lives there. This shows that without aid, people will be dying. Another reason is that the main part of aid is donation. From the quotes: "For just one penny, we can provide clean drinking water for a family of six." This shows that with aid, people can have a healthier lifestyle. Instead of drinking dirty water and having food that don't contain enough protein for them, aid can help them. According to the United Nations Human Rights, one of the rights is children are supposed to have an education. "For a monthly cost of cable television ($40) we can educate a child in the developing world for one year." This shows that even though aid help people to have a healthier lifestyle, they also can get education so that in the future, they can get a better job instead of working under the hot sun.

In the other hand, sometimes, aid is not always the answer. Sometimes, aid is misused or wasted. "Even if the rich countries fulfil their pledges to increase aid, the total amount will still be inadequate to finance all the health, education, nutrition, water and sanitation that people living on the edge of survival need. Above all, they [the poor countries] need economic growth to boost their incomes". This shows that people think that aid is not really helping them, they think that eonomic is the 'main point' to help people to live better. Another reason is that it causes problems for people who are transporting the aid items. Some aid items don't get to its destination due to the bad weather and the bad terrain. The people who are being aided will be angry because they have to wait and wait. This shows that some people are also not really patient and they are really depend on aid. Another problem will be that the prices of food will increased due to the competition with the farmers. This will be a problem for organizations and the government. This means that they have to spend a lot of money just to buy the food. As more people buy the same products, the more competition is going to be built between the manufacturers. In Haiti, there was a riot about the price of the food. A 16 year old Jean said that "Yes, it was very scary at the time. They shut our school because prices are going up all the time. Then someone started firing shots...People are just tired of not being able to afford things like rice, beans or fruit...it's mad, no one can afford these prices any more." This shows that with aid, it's just causing more problems for the government, which people hate it.

From considering the evidence I think aid is sometimes the answer and sometimes not the answer because aid helps people's lives. They need food, fresh water and proper shelter and this shows that they need money and aid is one of the solutions. Aid can increase the dependency of LEDCS on donor countries, Sometimes aid is not a gift, but a loan and the country may struggle to repay. Different people have different perspectives, so there's no final answer.



Thursday, May 31, 2012

Aid Work

Getting Started: 

Imagine...your friend comes to school without their lunch.
  1. How do you help them? Give them some of my food.
  2. The same thing happens the next day, and the next day? What do you do? Still give them food.
  3. How long can you continue this for?  What future action do you need to take? Only for 1 week. I need to ask him/her to get some food, or else I would like to hide myself, or I eat quickly so that my friend won't ask me food. Compare your answers with your peers. 
    What is similar or different?  Between mine, Adam's and Ishtiaq's, the similar is that we can't share our food forever. The difference is that the first question: How do you help them? , my answer and Ishtiaq's answer is to share them food, but for Adam's is don't care about it.


    With reflection, would you change any of your responses?  Why? No. This is because our answers are the same, which is to share our food and if they continue doing this, we would ask them to stop and settle the problem.

                                                                                                                                                                               Developing your Learning:
  1. Watch the video
    (a) What does it mean to give 'aid' to a country? From the movie, it tells that if you give 'aid' to a country, the country could get out of poverty. For example, if you give $10 to a person, they could use the money to get seeds and tools to grow rice and they could survive for a long time.
    (b) Why would one country give aid to another? In order to help the other country so that they can get out of poverty and to support them.
  2. Write your own definition of 'aid'. I think 'aid' means that instead of giving sources to a country, you give money to them so that they could get good sources and with them, they can survive for a long time. 
  3. Should we give aid?
    (a) Look at the people choice. Done :)
    (b) Can you categorise the opinions? Add them to a mind map:
    (c) What do you think? Which opinion most mirrors on your own? Why? PEE your response.
  4. So what are the different types of acid?
    (a) Use the link to make notes about the 3 different types of aid on your mind map.
    (b) Add notes to show the advantages and the disadvantages.