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Period 1. Thoughts about video by Michael Green and SDGs

I watched Michael Green's TED Talk about the SDGs yesterday. The SDGs are already familiar to me because they have been discussed about in teacher studies last year. I must admit though, I can't remember all of the 17 goals. However,  we never thought about how it is currently going or is it even possible to achieve the goals or how do we measure the progress. That's why the video was interesting and I learned a lot.

 UN SDG Support

I'm sad but not surprised to hear that the 2030 goals will be achieved in 2094 with the current phase. Especially now with the ongoing Corona situation, I think we are even further away from the goal.

However, I was glad to see that many countries are making progress in many things. I learned that SDG 6: Water and sanitation is sadly not one of them. I personally think this is one of the most important goals because it affects both humans and nature. If we know that some countries are left far behind from the goal, the rich countries should act now and do something about it. For example, help countries like Nigeria build sanitation systems and clean water pipes. By helping people getting access to clean water and sanitation, we also help women and children. When time is saved from carrying water from far away women and children have a better chance to go to school and get an education.

COVID-19 Recedes Across Europe, But Leaves Pressing Questions Over Water in Its Wake    Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Programs as a Strategy to Advance Maternal Health

The thing that really surprised me was that personal rights have gone backwards in the world. I wonder why?  Maybe because of the politics? And to be honest, I think personal rights will maybe never be achieved in all of the countries because of the corruption and power seeking people with their own agenda and also because of some cultures that oppress women or religions that are misogynistic. I hope I am wrong.

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Period 3. Changes in land cover: The other inconvenient truth

 This week the topic is changes in land cover. When I think about the subject the first thing that comes to my mind is deforestation, especially cutting down the rainforests for farming and for cattle. In Brazil the problem is meat and soy bean production, in Indonesia it's the palm oil industry, or at least that's what I think I started by watching Jonathan Foley's TED Talk about agriculture. I already knew that a huge area of the world is used for food production but it still came to me as a bit of a shock that the area used for agriculture is 60 times bigger than urban areas. The thing that really surprised me and what I learnt most new about was the water aspect of agriculture as well as it's affects to climate change.  The fact that agriculture spends so much water that it could fill up 7305 Empire State buildings every day sounded unbelievable.    I wonder why these things aren't really talked about in media or at school. It's probably - as Foley said - be
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Period 1. Introduction: Gapminder's Ignorance Project and Dollar Street

  I went to the Gapminder website and did the Gapminder test. The test was about how well you know or think you have an idea of how the people of the world are doing on average considering things like schooling, healthcare and access to electricity and also about how the world has or is changing considering population growth and endangered species. All of the questions were about topics studied in human geography and topics that have been discussed already in high school. My score was 4/13. I couldn’t believe it and am totally surprised. How did I do so badly? As a future geography teacher I thought I had a clue about these topics. I was thinking too negatively about most of the things. Turns out, the world population in total is doing far better than I thought.    After doing the test I watched the Ignorance Project TED Talk. I did worse than chimpanzees! Turned out, I was not the only one. Majority of the people in Western countries have no idea how the world is doing today, no
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Period 2. Population Growth

 This week's topic is population growth. For me the subject is pretty familiar and I actually kept a lesson about population growth in Finland to a class of 9th graders a couple weeks ago. I still learned a lot from the listed videos and websites. Especially the video explaining population growth with toilet paper rolls was very clever and is something I could copy into a classroom from Hans Rosling. It clearly shows why the population growth won't stop in a long time even though the fertility rate is getting smaller and smaller: because there will be a lot more adults in the future than now and they will have children of their own.   I personally find the subject pretty fascinating since the population has grown so much even in my lifetime but also a bit controversial, since the world can't take anymore people and it would be necessary for the population to stop growing but at the same time Finland is having huge problems because the fertility rate is too low and there are
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