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Period 5. Conclusion

 The course is almost at the end and it is time for the conclusion. I have to say I really liked the course and learned a lot new from it. To be honest, I think this course should be mandatory to all the biology students who will teach geography as a second subject because this course deals with topics that are present in school. Doing this course will definitely make me a better teacher. 

I must admit that I suffered from the ignorance as Hans Rosling calls it. I think this is a big problem with many ecology students like myself who have used to the fact that humans are ruining our ecosystem and causing extinction of many species. After doing this course my world view is now more positive. I still acknowledge that we as humans have huge problems to solve in the future but I now have more faith in succeeding in solving problems like climate change, plastic and the loss of biodiversity. I have understood that we have already done a lot of things right and many things are going to the better. 

 Group of children holding planet earth over defocused nature background Group of children holding planet earth over defocused nature background with copy space. Element of this image furnished by NASA ( https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/elegantfigures/2011/10/06/crafting-the-blue-marble/ ) world stock pictures, royalty-free photos & images

My wish is that the world is heading to better times but things like conflicts between many countries are raising my concerns as well as the ongoing corona virus situation which takes away the attention from all the other big problems. Only the time will tell how we as humans are going to survive in the future.

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

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Period 1. Introduction: Gapminder's Ignorance Project and Dollar Street

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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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