Give Your Health, and You Can Take Away a Living

Recently in History class we did a live chat with a person in Manchester England, who showed us around the Museum of Science & Industry. With this we could get a better understanding of how people lived during the industrial revolution. To prepare for this we had to do some research; we found out about Sir Richard Arkwright; the man who developed a spinning frame, and the improvements that were made upon this invention. Before we did the live chat with Jamie, our explainer, we also watched a video introduction, while doing this we took down all the vocab terms on the machines. Afterwards, as groups, we found the definitions of these words and this way we would be able to understand what Jamie was talking about if he used these vocab terms in the live chat. Next we drafted some questions that we might get a chance to ask Jamie, things like; How long would the whole process take overall to create a huge reem of cloth? and What motivated Jamie to become a museum curator?

There are many dangerous and interesting parts to the textile process. Kids and families played a big part in it too. If you were a parent who worked in a factory, you were expected to bring in your kids to work to do all the things that you were too large to do. The catch with this is that the jobs kids were doing were much more dangerous, because they were smaller it was easier for them to get in between the machines and clean them. Which then presents a bigger chance of getting caught in the machines. Most parents did not want their kids working with these dangerous machines so believe it or not they would buy orphans to fill in for their child in the workplace.

This is one of the machines that children would have cleaned. They would stick their hands in between the spinning bobbins to clean out the dust.

Not only was working in the mills a danger to children but everyone else as well. From just being in the mill you could lose your hearing, the machines were so loud people went deaf. For ladies working in the mills if you had long hair, you were sure to pull it back, because if you did not there was a risk of being completely scalped. Your hair could get caught in a machine and once that happened there isn’t much you can do. Cotton Fibers filled the air of the the mills, so naturally breathing this in for a long period of time could cause a lot of damage to someone’s lungs, it may even have costed people their lives. Also on a machine like a Hand Loom, you were doing a lot of physical labor, this means using your muscles for the entire day. All of this work would cause people to get stronger, but at the same time develop conditions like Arthritis. Families working in mills during the industrial revolution may have kept them afloat, but it was costing them a lot more than they probably would have hoped.

Doing this Live Google Hangout benefited me very much to understand the risks and health problems working in the mills caused. Having someone explain all of the machinery processes also gave me a better understanding of the types of work people could be doing. I also think that the way we prepared for this was very helpful towards the discussion we had with Jamie. It gave us somewhat of an understanding of what he would be talking about without us knowing more about the machines than the conditions we are studying. Hearing all of this from an expert most definitely impacted the way I look at curating as well, Jamie gets to be an expert on something as interesting as all of these machines and at the same time teach people about them. I think the curating process is very interesting and I am very glad that we got a taste of this in class.

The Big Picture

"Making Money Destroying Neighborhoods"

Recently in History class we, as groups, became experts on a certain topic of the Industrial Revolution and created our own museum exhibit to teach everyone about our subject. There are many pieces to putting together your own exhibit. First we all had to become experts on the topic we would be presenting, for us this consisted of analyzing documents to find information, but also analyzing the documents to find out about the author, and the time period. This then helped us to lead into what people would want to get out of our exhibit, so we then created captions for our documents to summarize the documents information. My group’s topic was the negative effects on the people and environment during the industrial revolution. This picture does not give a clear picture of my groups exhibit but I will explain the sources here. The first picture in the top left corner is called “View of Manchester” this picture gives us a visual of the polluted river, the document in our exhibit that goes hand in hand with this picture is “Observations on the Filth of the Thames” this letter was written by Professor Michael Faraday to the editor of the times of London. Professor Faraday told the times about the smell and discoloration of the liquid that was supposedly a river. The two documents outlined in purple both show how in certain years of the revolution the amount that most people were earning was not enough to keep up proper living conditions, in other words “Dudley Street” and “Evidence on the Standard of Living Debate in Great Britain” showed us how common poverty was. The last two documents in our exhibit “Differing Views of English Industrialization in the 1830s” and “Industry 1715-1815” show the two sides of the industrial revolution; they demonstrate the revolutionary inventions and amazing technological advances, but also show us the effect it is taking on the people and environment. Our title “Making Money, Destroying Neighborhoods” was created to really give the visitor an idea of what the exhibit is about, how the industrial revolution was hurting many people in order for success.

Besides my groups exhibit, I learned a lot about the other parts of the Industrial Revolution. “America Runs on the Steam Engine” was a very creative title that caught my eye. This title contributed to my understanding of the exhibit because it very clearly demonstrates that without the steam engine industrialization would have been much more difficult, with it trading with other places was made much more convenient. This exhibit shows the importance of metals and coals and without these, so many of our technological advances would have been impossible. The exhibit that was all about the different looms, I also found to be very interesting. The title “Just Keep Spinning” I thought was very clever and fitting to the exhibit. When reading this groups poster I learned that even when all these new technology pieces were being made and they were making life easier, some people saw them differently, for example one man was upset because these machines were doing human work, and then his wife and kids were being put out of work. Not to be forgotten though, the advances to the loom were very revolutionary. The loom went from being inefficient to becoming a very fast machine that could get work done. The exhibit on Slaves and mill owners I thought was very interesting, the title “Prosperity at the Cost of People” aids in my understanding because it shows how many people were being put to work just so one overarching power can make more money for himself. while reading this exhibit I learned that slaves were in very high command during the time period of the Industrial Revolution, they would pick cotton and because cotton was in such high demand that’s why slaves were. The last exhibit in my class is called “Is the Pain Worth the Gain” this title is asking us if putting your small children to work in terrible conditions really worth just getting the work done? In this exhibit I learned how terrible the working conditions were for the small children, they were as young as 10 when they were put to work.  

All Wrapped Up Into One Revoltuion

The Industrial Revolution was very important in the making of new machines and substances that made life easier and more enjoyable. In class we watched a video by John Green describing a few of the things that were invented during this time. The video also showed us that without the industrial revolution we would have so much less than what we do now. The real question here though is, What makes this so Revolutionary? There are many things that play into it, them being Technology, People, Resources, and Transportation. Today I will only be talking about Technology and Transportation.

"Spinning Jenny"
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Antisell-HandbookOfTheUsefulArts/pages/109-Spinning-Jenny/ 

First, Technology played a very big part in the Industrial revolution. There were many discoveries that made a huge impact on peoples lives and the world in general. There was the Steam Engine invented in 1712 by Thomas Newcomen. This was very important, it pumped water out of mines which improved coal production, which led to more iron to make more machines etc. Then in 1769 James Watt improved on Newcomen's design of the steam engine. Iron was also improved during the Industrial revolution. Abraham Darby used coal to smelt iron. Darby conducted more experiments and this led him to find a way to remove the impurities from iron. Now the iron was better quality, and was used more widely around the world in the production of steam engines and other pieces of technology. Also the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, and water frame were used to speed up the production times of weaving and spinning. Technology was depended on so heavily that this by itself could have made the Industrial revolution revolutionary. Now, amount of time spent on production was decreased giving us more products and more free time.

Steam Boat
http://steamboats.com/museum/davet-photos5.html 

During the industrial revolution transportation also played a large roll. Steam boats were invented which allowed faster overseas shipment and a lot of new trade. Later on instead of using steam boats to transport goods people used them more often, because they required so much coal to transport all the products. Next the steam locomotive was invented for land travel. This helped people transfer things much more efficiently. Turnpikes were also built to transport goods but a small fee would have to be paid in order to use this. More railroads were also built to let people transport more widely. With all of these new innovations people had more access to newer and farther away things. These new inventions were so revolutionary because they helped people see new things that would further their education and improve their lifestyles.  

Accurate and Precise is all you Could Ask For

This year in history we will be using a lot of online resources and websites to complete our work. Because of this it is very important that our resources are good, and that we will know how to find the right information. To do this we did some activities in class called a google a day and we also answered questions based on a website on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Here is a link to A Google a Day. http://www.agoogleaday.com/#game=started

A Google a Day is a program where you are asked a set of questions and you have to find the answers; it seems simple enough. When doing this challenge the program has blocked all pages where the answers are just given to you, so naturally this makes it a little bit harder. The key to this program is to find the words that are most relevant and important, and then to search those instead of searching the whole question. Considering that the site was blocking us from some of the information that we wanted it can be kind of frustrating. At the same time you are learning how to break down a question and find the answer logically, so I think that I really benefitted from this activity.

In the same day we also learned about online source reliability, accuracy, and authenticity. A site that demonstrated what all of these were was the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus website. Accuracy is how true or correct something is, the website explaining the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is not very accurate. The site tells us that the octopuses do not like the trees. This should indicate that this website is probably not accurate. Reliability is how honest or dependable something is. At the bottom of the tree octopus site it says that it should not be associated with any university or school. This should let us know that it can not be trusted and it is not reliable. Authenticity is related to accuracy it means how real or genuine a site is, the tree octopus website stated that one of the reasons why it was endangered is because of the Sasquatch with that said we can definitely conclude that this site is not any of the above.

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ This is the website for the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Who Needs Paper

Hi, my name is Hannah and I am a sophmore here at Reading Memorial High School. My history class is totally paper free this year. We will be working with all kinds of technology; in class we use all of the devices we have access to. This blog was created to be a showcase of the kinds of things we are learning about in our Honors History class. This is my first blog post to kick off the year.

Today we were asked what makes a teacher great. There are many things that make up some of the best teachers I have had. Overall though, I think that when a teacher has a previous knowledge of what is going to be hard and then focuses on that with the whole class; it helps everyone out not just myself. Also when teachers make an effort to get to know their students, and make everyone comfortable it makes the classroom feel more warm and fuzzy versus awkward and tense. I think when the teacher knows how students like to do things, it will make it easier for us to complete projects and class work. BYOD (bring your own device) is something that is in effect here at RMHS and this helps us out in doing things online and with doing things in class. Also when we get to use our phones and learn about new programs it will keep us interested at all times.

I agree with John Green about my mission as a student. I think that going to a public school where education is brought to me without my asking; I at least owe it to myself and everyone else to try my hardest to do things that will better the world. This year I am taking 2 math classes and I am very nervous to see how that is going to turn out. Needless to say one of my goals for this year references back to that situation. Therefore my academic goal for right now is to obtain at least a B+ at all times in both classes. Some other goals I might have this year are to make new friends and do well in all of my other classes not just math. To reach these goals this year I may have to study more than I have in the past.

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