Rome movie

Today’s Western, civilization class brought us another video to watch. This video I am guessing Mr. Schick is showing us because not only is it accurate and related to what we are learning, but it backed up what we read in the book. The movie starts by talking about the events of Tiberius Gracchus’s father’s death. In this we learn that he was an outstanding person. We were also educated on their “funeral” traditions for important people. In this tradition, they put the person on a throne in a sitting position and wax the eyes open to make it look as if the person can still see. Of course, they set up this display in a public area, so people can easily come by and pay their respects. It then moves on to cover the 3^rd Punic War. This illustrates how difficult it was for the Romans to scale the wall of Carthage and burn the city.

Study lecture

Today’s class was not all smiles for some us especially, since Mr. Schick lectured us about how the test was easier than last years and was meant to be a grade booster for those that were not doing well in the class. This speech did not entirely apply to me since I do well in school in general. Also, there are probably a number of students in the class (or even the school) that probably are or could be straight A/B students if they paid attention in class and learned to apply themselves. I am willing to bet that a majority of the students at John Carroll are hoping to get a well-paying job when they get older. To that I say “HA!” Everyone knows that you’ll only get hired to a job like that if you can manage decent grades. Though I really only got to stay for his lecture to us since I had to leave at 2:20 to go to North Hartford for a track meet.  

Rome test 1

Today we took our test, or “quest” as it has been called, on Rome. Going back to Mr. Schick’s squirrel analogy, I think I was the squirrel that leapt across the road safely rather than the squirrel that had no idea what was going on and got ran over. I also like Mr. Schick’s prediction of the totally obvious future, “Everyone will get an A, except those who don’t.” I know that I was one of these people, because there was only one question that I was unsure about. That question asked “How many people were in the Roman Senate?” I honestly had no idea, so I guessed 50, which seemed like a reasonable number. I know now that I got it wrong too, because after the test, I asked one of my friends in one of the other sections, and he told me that it was 300. Other than that the test was easy…I mean incredibly difficult. No, it actually wasn’t to terribly difficult If you paid any attention in class and to the song, since most of the questions came either directly from the song itself, or from notes that we took on the song.

Squirrels

Today in another exciting edition of Mr. Schick’s Western Civilization class, we finished going over “Rome” though I did not take notes on part of it since we would not be needing it for our test on Friday. Though, to be a bit more accurate, I think Mr. Schick said it would be more like half quiz/half test, which Nicolette called a quest (personally I like “quest” better than “tiz”). I also decided to stop putting information for the upcoming “quest” on my BLOG since we were informed that we will be unable to use our BLOGs as an aid on the “quest.” In order to try to encourage us to prepare for the “quest,” Mr. Schick told us that we could either be the squirrel that leaps across the road and up the tree and makes squirrel noises; or we can be squirrel that goes “What Punic Wars?” and gets run over. Also, Victoria mentioned that chipmunks are cute. Well, I would like to beg to disagree!!! They may be cute and cuddly on the outside, but in fact, they are horrible monsters if you have ever gone camping, since they try to take your food away from you. I have witnessed this with my own 2 eyes. On my trip to Maine this past summer, I saw one kid’s candy get broken into by those little rascals (which can be referred to as mini-bears).

Video Sharing

We started today’s class by sharing some of the video that we all made. To be honest, I think we all can agree that Victoria’s was by far the best that we saw today. In fact, after she went, nobody wanted to volunteer because they all knew that they could not top her performance. Thanks to mine, Mr. Schick will be calling Mr. Powell “Octavian” from now on. After we were tired of hearing “Rome,” we continued with our note taking. Today’s note’s included crucifixions (I just wrote down these notes even though we formally discussed this yesterday) and the wars that were Punic. We also talked about how the cavalry was more of a police force and the legion was more for fighting wars. The Punic Wars were fought between the Romans and the Phoenicians. In case you did not know the word Punic is an adjective for Phoenician. The Punic Army was led by Hannibal. His plan for attacking Rome would have been BRILLIANT, if they hadn’t insisted on using elephants as there means of transportation. I mean really, who actually thought that the elephants would actually have made it through the MOUNTAINS when they are something that you would see on a safari through the Sahara Desert!    

Rome notes

In today’s Western Civilization class, we still did work with Mr. Schick’s song “Rome,” but it was not focused on our movies. However we did watch Nicolette’s movie, and she did an OUTSTANDING job. In fact, Mr. Schick said that he was going to post it on his Facebook and tell people to like it and comment on it. Nicolette will become famous. Then after we had some time to work quietly for a few minutes, we took notes on Mr. Schick’s lesson based off of his song. We learned that our alphabet (including English, French etc.) came from the Latin alphabet. Rome was strategically located by the Tiber River and on top of a hill. However, the land was swampy so they had to drain the swamp in order to be able to build stuff on it. Also, Washington D.C. was built in these same kind of circumstances. Tarquin was a jerk of a ruler but they did not overthrow him because they were not habituated to this type of action. Though after his son raped the most respected woman in town, they were put over the edge and literally drove him out of town. This triggered the formation of the republic (Democracy + Aristocracy + Monarchy).

Rome video

Today’s Western Civilization class was fun but not as eventful as yesterday’s class since there was no fire drill. However we did have a birthday today, therefore Victoria had the privilege of wearing the Birthday Hat during class (happy birthday Victoria). After we sang “Happy Birthday” to Victoria, we all got to work on our movies that we are making with One Note, Movie Maker, etc. Mr. Schick also said that he may not make the movie graded since there are people who are having difficulties with the program (Joseph). I actually got work on my movie some since I came to class with Movie Maker downloaded. The program itself is really, very easy to use. This is because all you have to do is drag the pictures and music into the movie in the order that you want. Though the hard part is the timing. I realized after playing what I had completed of my video, is that the song played, but the pictures changed faster than the song played. In any case I found a simple solution for it and am moving on to victory.