3º British: Designing a Sustainable City

In your group of four, each group member will become one of the four Sustainability Experts:

Renewable Energy Consultant

Public Transportation Manager

Pollution Control Supervisor

Waste Management Officer

As a group, you must determine the route your community will take in becoming the most environmentally friendly and sustainable it can be!

The group as a whole must research and decide what you want your town to have in the four sustainability requirements: renewable energy sources, public transportation options, pollution control tactics, and waste management facilities. Then, each of you must research the specific sustainability criteria for your town that your expertise is in. For example, your group decides and researches that solar and wind energy are the best energy sources for your town. Then the group member who is the Renewable Energy Consultant will research the best ways to incorporate those energy sources into the town.

Communication, cooperation, collaboration and a bit of creativy are vital to making this research process a success!  

Fill this document with the info of your design (of course, you MUST include some pictures or plans) and them, as usual, send it to blogeducativo08@gmail.com when finish. This work will be part of the score at the end of the NEXT term. If you fail to finish them or you give it out of date (11 March), the mark will be a 0 for this work.

Here are some additional documents and links that can help you get started with your project design:

Transforming cities (several tips from Siemens)

What's a Sustainable City, Anyway? Article by James Elsen CEO of Sustain Lane

My Virtual City and Electro City 
If your group wants to design your sustainable community virtually, this website can help! But be careful! this are a real-time games, so you probably won’t have time to developed your city before the deadline...

Enjoy it! And... good luck!

4º British: Some Primary Sources for the Great War

Have you decided the historical character you will turn into for the twitter-activity? The war has just started! As a starting point, you can find many primary sources in the following webpages:

The Woodrow Wilson library (Speeches from the USA President for joining the war, and the resolution in the Peace Treaty)

The Churchill Centre (selected speechees and writings)

FourMinute Men: Volunteer Speeches During World War I

WWIDocument Archive (conventions, treaties, officials paper, Press notes, diaries and memorials). Here you can find, for example, extracts from Kaiser Wilhem II’s speeches...

A multimedia History of the IWW (choose the year in the small column on the right side, and them scroll the bar to see the list of documents avaible...)

Selectedwritings (in Spanish): speeches, treaties and analysis

FordhamUniversity

And, of course, remember the British National Archives.

4º British: The Great War in 140 characters strings

Today you will start a new historical activity, an experiment in History... twitter in class! Yes, you have read correctly: you will use Twitter with educational purposes.

You must create a twitter account (please do NOT use your personal one) as you were one of the participants in the Great War (a militar commander? A politician? A soldier? A war journalist?... there are many possibilities, remember to review the Tag: World War in this blog). With this “historical account” you become follower of @auladeadriana

During the next two weeks you have to create a minimum of 18 tweets (10 of them base on real primary sources) in the name of your chosen character. Try not to be independent, but “talk” with the others (a soldier complaining to his superiors? Soldiers talking about their life in the trenches? Politicians exchanging messages and speeches?...)

The deadline is Monday 10 March. This work is individual and mandatory and will be part of the score at the end of the term. If you fail to finish it, do it out of date, or just copy from a webpage, the mark will be a 0 for this work.

Be creative and enjoy it! J

4º British: Main characters of the Great War

We have talked about some individual characters (e.g. King Albert of Belgium), some war journalist (e.g. Sofía Casanova), and several less-known soldiers (e.g. Sidney Lewis). But, in case you want more ideas for the new activity, here you have a short list of other importants names of the IWW.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand: heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the event that triggered I World War.

The German side:

Kaiser Wilhelm II: Emperor of Germany. Supporting the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Russia and France at same time.

Alexander Von Kluck: a major general in the German army. He led the attack on the Western Front and was particularly cruel to the Belgian civilians in retaliation for its resistance. As punishment for delaying the German advance, Von Kluck found necessary "the mass shooting of civilians and burning their homes".

The British side:

Lloyd George: British Prime Minister

Winston Churchill: He implemented emergency measures throughout the country, even though these actions were forbidden by the Cabinet. He was determined to maintain the balance of powers iin Europe, even if that means war. In fact, he finally informed that Britain would not allow German ships through the English Channel or the North Sea in order to attack France. 

Douglas Haig: Field Marshal, commander of the British forces on the Western Front since 1915. For some appeared to be insensitive to low, for others it was a dedicated professional soldier who insisted doggedly to the task of beating Germany in a war of annihilation.

The French side:

Raymond Poincaré: French President and Prime Minister

J. J. Joffre: French general who held the French at the Battle of Marné.

Ferdinand Foch: French general who defeated the Germans at the Battle of Somme.

The U.S.A.

Wondrow Wilson: U.S. President. Intervened in the war in support of Britain and France and led the subsequent peace process (proposed the famous "14 points of Wilson" and the creation of the League of Nations).

John Pershing: General who led the U.S. troops landed in Europe to fight in Great War.

4º British: Dorothy Lawrence, a woman in the trenches!

We have recently talked about a boy soldier, today we have another peculiar example of courage: Dorothy Lawrence was a British woman that decided to take active part in the war. She cut her hair, got male clothes, learned to walk and talk as a man, and joined (with the name of Tommy) the army.

She stayed several weeks in a trech during the Battle of the Somme, but she was forced to revealed her identity after a severe illness. 

Back to Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Suffragettes, invited Dorothy to lecture the growing ranks of women desperate to contribute to Britain’s war effort. But Dorothy was banned by the War Office from telling her inspirational story either through newspaper articles or talks until after the Armistice in 1918. You can read her full story in the Daily Mail.

4º British: Life in the trenches

How was daily life inside a war trench? What were the problems? How often were soldiers in the hiring line? Could things has been different? If you want to know those (and more) things, visit the special BBC web about the Myth of trench warfare.

You can scroll through great graphics like the one below which explain different aspects of trench warfare from a typical day, to how often soldiers were in the firing line, to how the trenches kept men safe, to life behind the lines, and much more. 

This guide on trench warfare is part of  a BBC series of awesome guides on WWI called I Wonder Guides. All are interactive like this trench warfare guide.

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4º British: the youngest soldier of the British Army

A schoolboy, aged 12, who fought on the Battle of the Somme after lying about his age has been declared the youngest authenticated combatant of the First World War.

Private Sidney Lewis joined the East Surreys at Kingston in August 1915, with only 12 years old, and fought on the front for six weeks. He was sent home in August 1916 after his mother contacted the War Office in London.

“His story is quite phenomenal – not only did he enlist at the age of 12 and fight on the Somme at the age of 13, but he returned to service at the end of the Great War and worked in bomb disposal during the Second World War”. 

4º British: The defense of Belgium

In 1914 the political situation in Europe was very delicate. Due to different political and military alliances, any small incident between two countries would support their respective allies, causing a " dominoes effect" and large-scale conflict.

One of those incidents was Belgium, a "young" (It was independent since 1830) and neutral country. The Germans wanted to cross Belgium in order to invade France. The Belgians, led by their King Albert I, offered a harsh and unexpected resistance. The German army used Zeppelin LZ to bomb the city of Liege, decisive city to their plans of conquest (besides this bombing was the beginning of the air war in military history) .

Still, Belgium resisted and became a symbol of "honor and courage", receiving praise (and military support) of France and England.

Precisely the British were reluctant to officially enter the war. And that is reflected in these verses of the famous satirical magazine Punch:

Why should I follow your fighting line

For a matter that’s no concern of mine?

[...]

I shall be asked to a general scrap

All over the European map,

Dragged into somebody else’s war.

After the Belgian example, the English opinion changed and the Goverment took active part in organizing the offensive with their continental allies. You can see this change of opinion through "The Gutemberg Project - Punch", a good collection of their cartoons.

Los guerreros de terracota de Xian

Bienvenidos a la antigua China! La actividad de hoy consiste en explicar a los lectores de este blog los Guerreros de terracota ...

Lo primero que tienes que hacer investigar para responder, de la forma más completa posible, las preguntas que aparecen a continuación.

¿Quién mandó hacer los Guerreros de terracota? ¿Cuándo? ¿Por qué?

¿Qué sabes acerca de ese emperador?

¿De qué material estaban hechos?

¿Qué pasó con sus colores?

¿Cuál es la historia detrás de los Guerreros de terracota?

¿Quién las descubrió y cuándo?

Describir el lugar donde se encuentran los Guerreros de Terracota (tamaño, ubicación, etc )

Tras la investigación, haz un pequeño archivo multimedia (que puede ser un vídeo, un power point, un libro de fotos ... ) explicando todo lo que has aprendido acerca de los Guerreros de Terracota. Cuando hayas terminado, enviar el archivo a blogeducativo08@gmail.com. Recordad que esta es una actividad obligatoria, y recibiréis una nota por ella. 

Disfrutad del trabajo y buena suerte!

Puede encontrar información adicional en los siguientes enlaces:

Qin Dinasty 

Xian exhibition and Imperial tours 

chinavista and Travel guide

wright photos 

4º British: Road to war: UK vs Germany

The European situation in those previous years was not easy. In fact, there were deep and dangerous contradictions between countries and politicians... Here you have an example:

Sir Ralph Norman Angell (1872–1967) was an English lecturer, journalist and Member of Parliament for the Labour Party. In 1913 he wrote a very influential book, “The Great Illusion”. The thesis of the book was that, in the new 20th century, a war in Europe would be impossible. Why? According to Angell, because the integration of the economies of European countries had grown to such a degree that war between them would be entirely futile, making militarism obsolete. 

Meanwhile that book become a best-seller in UK, the German militarist Friedrich Adolf Julius von Bernhardi (1849–1930) wrote a bellicose book “Germany and the Next War”, printed in 1911. He advocated a policy of ruthless aggression and complete disregard of treaties and regarded war as a "divine business" and a “necessity” for his country.

Everybody know how this theoretical/editorial controversy finished...

4º British: Sofía Casanova, a Spaniard journalist in the Great War

Sofía Casanova, born in Galicia, was the first woman working as a war journalist. Hired by the newspaper "ABC", she wrote about the War of Morocco, the Great War, the Russian Revolution... and even the Nazi period. 

During the Great War, she joined as a volunteer nurse the Red Cross hospital in Warsaw, taking care of wounded soldiers from the front. She visited the trenches of the allied troops, claiming against the new weapons. 

She died in 1958 in Poznan (Poland). Now you can discover more things about her intense and controversial life.

El mapa de los Balcanes

La clave para resolver el mapa, y fecharlo en el año adecuado, es Albania: ¿Aparece en vuestro mapa? ¿O no? En 1912 los albaneses reclamaron su independencia frente a turcos y griegos, y fueron legalmente reconocidos como país en 1913. Pero muy poco después, con el estallido de la I Guerra Mundial, Albania volvería a ser invadida...