MOSI Google Hangout

Hi!

In our class, we are continuing to learn about the industrial revolution, a very intriguing time in history. To help us get more of an insight on what times were like for factory workers during the industrialization, our class decided to host a google hangout with Jamie, a museum curator at the museum of science and industry. In order to prepare for this meeting, We watched a brief previously recorded video of Jamie to get a quick look at what we would be seeing later. In that video, we witnessed all of the machines that factory workers had to use to make pieces of cloth. After the short video, we collaborated with our groups and came up with a few questions to ask Jamie regarding his job or any other questions about the MOSI.

This machine on the screen is the power loom, which was a mechanized loom used for spinning together separate pieces of fabric

Overall, I learned that the general textile manufacturing process was a very dangerous job that had many young children and women employed. It was the farthest thing from an ideal lifestyle, but since the children were orphans, they had no other option than to work in the dangerous factories. Over time, the machines began to develop into more mechanized and safe machines which granted fewer injuries in the work place. Prior to the safer machines, many men, women, and children would get caught in the rotating leather belts and were either mangled in a machine or had their arm torn off. There was a balance between positive and negative impacts the industrial revolution had on textile production for families. For one, the machines made the cloth making process much faster; what would've originally taken three weeks would now take around a day or so. During the time, the salary varied depending on how many pieces of cloth you produced. With the faster production, families were payed much more than they were previously.

This Google Hangout was one of the more interesting activities we had done in class and I enjoyed doing something outside of the box. Jamie was very friendly and insightful and helped me learn a lot more about the MOSI than I was expecting. I would enjoy hosting more hangouts with other experts on the topic! 

Broken Children - Life prior to the Industrial Revolution

The title "Broken Children" signifies the pain and struggle many young children had to persevere through before and during the Industrial Revolution. The problem represented is the child labor that was present during the Industrial Revolution. Many small children were used in the coal mines as adults were not small enough to fit in the shafts. Children were required to pull good sized carts full of coal and other heavy material which resulted in stunted growth and horrible back problems for the young children. They faced many dangers and many of them faced serious injuries and illnesses while working in the mines. To the misfortune of many, no one realized just how cruel and inhumane it was to send the young children into their mines, and sent many of them to their inevitable doom. Despite the Factory Act, child labor still persisted through the time, as it only put minimal restrictions on when the children could work. Eventually, child labor rates dropped, yet still remained.

Group C: Living in Filth
In this exhibit, I witnessed the extreme pollution levels that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. Even though Coal was a great source for power, it raised the pollution to an unimaginable level.

Group E: More Cotton, More Slaves, Less Freedom
The title that group E presented showed the oppression that many families faced. Children had little to no time with their family and were stuck in mills, mines, and factories. Cotton was so valuable yet so short in stock that as many children as possible had to be employed in order to increase production.

Group A: From Spinning Wheels to Power Looms
In exhibit A, the title showed just how powerful the inventions of the Spinning Wheels and Power Looms where. They helped make cotton making a much more efficient process for the workers and helped people more easily provide for their families

Group B: Thomas Takes Great Britain
The title that group B chose shows the great innovation of the steam engine and how it greatly benefited Great Britain. It could help people traverse easier and ship more items with ease across long spans of land.

DBQ America vs Great Britain - Which worked more efficiently?

Benjamin Lynch

Honors History 10

Mrs. Gallagher

A Block

History DBQ

Charles Dickens, a famous author in Great Britain and the United States, saw the terrible living conditions that many young children had to live through while working in the mills in England. The children had to work non-stop under the supervision of very abrasive overlookers. Seeing this, Dickens travelled to the United States in hopes to find a new system of work that could be implemented into the English system to relieve the children of their misery in the mills. During the February of 1842, Dickens visited Lowell as he had heard that there were ideal working conditions for the young children in the mills and factories. Compared to the English system, he loved what he saw as there were children that seemed content with what they were doing and not one face showed an expression of misery or freight. Lowell made a great impression on Dickens, and he knew immediately that there was a more efficient way of working in the factories

While at Lowell, Dickens visited multiple factories. Some of the factories included woolen, carpet, and cotton factories. He analyzed them in a very similar fashion compared the way he analyzed factories in England. As soon as he arrived, he knew he saw what he liked. “These girls we all well dressed. They had serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks, and shawls” [Doc. A.] Compared to the english system, where the girls had poorly woven clothing and little to know wearable protection, the American system had a clear advantage. “They were healthy in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the manners of young women” [Doc A.] The young girls showed no signs of misery or despair. In England, many of the girls seemed very rude and had a lack of manners, mainly due to the poor conditions they were living in. Without sufficient living conditions, the young girls in england had little to no motivation to act properly in the factory. The rooms in which the young american girls were working in were in much better shape compared to those in England. There was circulating fresh air, natural lights, cleanliness, and overall comfort. All of the faces that Dickens saw were very happy with what they were doing, and felt very safe and cared for in the environment they were working in.

Mary Paul, one of the many workers in Lowell, wrote several letters going back and forth with her father about her content in the factories. She was extremely satisfied with her living quarters and pay, and guaranteed her father at least another year there if not more. “We found a place in a spinning room and the next morning I went to work. I like very well have 50 cts first payment increasing every payment as I get along in work have a first rate overseer and a very good boarding place.” [Doc C]  However, the next letter to her father expressed some concerns and dangers that she had witnessed in the factories. Many deaths and fatal accidents had occurred but did not change her perspective on how she saw lowell as a whole. “One girl fell down and broke her neck... the same day a man was killed by the cars… another was nearly killed by falling down and having a bale of cotton fall on him.” [Doc C.] In her final letter to her father, she confessed that she had been out of work for four days and insisted that her health was in good shape. In reality, she was not well at all. In 1849, she travelled back to Vermont where she worked as seamstress. Eventually, she returned to Lowell to commit to marriage. Despite some inevitable dangers in the Lowell factories, a life as a worker in America still tops a life as a worker in Great Britain.

Hannah Goode was a young girl working in the factories of England. At the age of sixteen, she was sent to the factories unwillingly by her parents in order for her to make a living. In her testimonial, she expressed nothing but discomfort and showed that she was far from content with her workplace. “It is about half past five by our clock at home when we go in...the youngest child is about seven...we never stop to take our meals, except at dinner. It has gone on this six years and more…” [Doc. D] In her letter, she also showed her freight of the overlooker in her room. “William Crookes is overlooker in our room; he is cross-tempered sometimes. He does not beat me; he beats the little children if they do not do their work right… I have sometimes seen the little children drop asleep or so, but not lately. If they are catched asleep, they get the strap.”[Doc. D] The quote shows that despite the efforts the young children put into their work, the overlooker does not tolerate exhaustion and sleep. In these working conditions, no child was satisfied and nearly all were living in misery and pain.

The days between a worker in Lowell and a worker in Great Britain varied greatly. Both started and ended at the same time, yet the American schedule was hundreds of times more efficient than the British schedule. For example, the American workers had an hour to eat their meals away from the machines and at least two hours at the end of the day to have time for themselves. For those in Great Britain, they worked non stop from 4 am in the morning, to 11pm at night. “One such girl sets these bobbins all in motion by turning a wheel at the end of the beam, a wire then catches up a flake of Wool, spins it, and gather it upon each bobbin...This is done every minute without intermission.” [Doc B.] This shows just how sharp and consistent a worker must be in England in order to keep up with the intensity of production. The British system was simply so far behind the American system that it seemed impossible to recover.

In conclusion, Dickens observed that the Americans had an exponentially greater system of work compared to England. In his writings, he took down a myriad of notes in order to show exactly how poor the English system was. Dickens was surprised to see how efficient and content the American workers were at the factories and knew that the system must be implemented immediately into Great Britain in order for the children to be happy with the work they were provided with.

How Industrialization Changed the World

Hi!

Our class assignment for this blog was to research and uncover ways that the industrial revolution changed the world. There were four "ingredients" that contributed to the revolution, those ingredients being:

• People
• Technology
• Resources 
• Transportation

We broke up into groups and took detailed notes on each of these ingredients. Today, I'll be breaking down two of the four ingredients into why they were important contributors to the industrial revolution.

I'll start with the ingredient that our group worked on, which was Technology. The main reason that technology was important to the revolution was due to the creation of the Steam Engine by James Watt. The steam engine was powered by coal, a mined mineral, and was used to pump water out of mines. Also, it helped power boats, trains, and other locomotives. Prior to the steam engine, people relied on raw man power with the addition of a few windmills and watermills for extra power. Darby was the first to come up with the idea to smelt iron with coal. Smelting is the process of melting iron away from it's ore. Using this iron, workers had cheaper, stronger, and more efficient railroad manufacturing. Some downsides to using this new technology would be having an increased risk of an accident or malfunctioning of the machines.

Transportation nicely complemented the use of technology with the addition of the steam locomotive to the world. The steam locomotive, powered by the steam engine, would help pull carriages along tracks and assist in moving goods across long stretches of land. The major benefit of the steam locomotive was the idea that the locomotive could quickly reach places on land that boats simply could not get to. Other benefits include faster shipping, allowance of people to have access to other goods unattainable from inside their region, and the providing of more jobs. However, some downsides include pollution from coal, and ruined habitats due to the increase of railroad production. 

 This is a sample picture of James Watt's steam engine 

http://270c81.medialib.glogster.com/media/a1/a1ff681343dccc27561004957199e469d408f443435dadef951e97909645a3b9/v310052-steam-engine-designed-by-james-watt-spl-jpg.jpg

BEST way to use Google

Hi! During our Honors History 10 Class today, we divided into groups and took on the task of using "A Google A Day". Using this tool, we learned as a class how to filter our google search results so we could find more authentic and reliable sources.

"A Google A Day" is a website which asks you to answer certain questions using the proper google functions as opposed to simply writing out the question in the Google search bar. Using these specific tools, we were able to narrow down our results into something more accurate and precise, rather than skimming through endless Google pages searching for something we weren't likely to find. I found this activity pretty amusing, as it challenged us and made us think outside of the box. We were so used to simply typing in the question to the Google search bar that we were shocked at how easy it was to slim down our question and find exactly what we were searching. It was a much more efficient way of using google! There was no real "frustrating" side to using this method, besides going out of our comfort zone using the proper Google search functions. In the end, this activity taught us a very efficient way of using Google to help us find our answers.

Accuracy, Authenticity, and Reliability. Those are the three standards our answer must live up to in order for it to be a trusted source! Accuracy is defined as precision and exactness. We want our answers to be on point, and more specifically, TO the point. If our answer contains more than a few topics outside of our desired search, then we most likely wouldn't use it as a source. Having an authentic source is extremely important, as if our source is not based on facts or is not accurate, why would we consider using it anyway? If there is no evidence to back up our answer, then it shouldn't be considered a source. Having a reliable, genuine, or trustworthy answer is just as important as the other words. If our answer sounds like pure fiction and has no evidence to back it up, it should not be considered a valid source. When looking up the Pacific Northeast Tree Octopus, the site definitely appeared authentic. It provided book names, images, videos, and sources that state the creature was real, and looked like a credible wiki page as well. However, the page was just used as an example of a seemingly reliable source which, in reality, was not reliable at all. The link to the site is attached below!

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Link

What Students Really Deserve

Hi, I'm Ben Lynch, and in this blog I'll be talking about what students deserve in a teacher to raise their level of academic success

I believe that the qualities of a great teacher include being understanding and willing to listen. When a student struggles to understand a certain topic, the teacher should be able to provide them with several other approaches to the topic in order to reach one of their strongest learning methods. In the past, many of my favorite teachers were student friendly and determined. The teachers never gave anything less than 100% into what they were doing, whether it was assigning a project, helping me understand a topic, or giving out homework. They made sure that every student in the classroom understood exactly what they were saying and answered every question to make sure they were confident in what they were doing as well. Over the course of the year, I would benefit from having extra help available through multiple forms - email, text, or before and after school assistance.

John Green’s opinion on education was on point for me, as I do believe that the soul purpose in receiving an education from school is to give something - anything - back to the world using what you’ve learned from your hours upon hours in the classroom. The purpose of school is to help you help the rest of the world. My academic goals for this year include making the honor role for all courses, and making the National Honors Society with a GPA higher than 3.5. My athletic goals include pursuing my love for basketball in hopes of getting more looks from desired college basketball teams. Artistically, I plan on giving 100% effort into art in order to raise my GPA. In terms of the social aspect of school, making new friends is always an awesome thing. I plan on doing my best to extend my boundaries and meet some new faces around the school in an attempt to make closer friends. In order to reach these goals, I have to reach out to make new friends and have a strong work ethic on and off the court.

John Green Video