Devyani’s Social Studies Blog

This is the URL to my homework:

http://ssmeetsit.edublogs.org/2006/11/30/homework-for-block-e-and-h-thursday-30-november/

From these presentations, I learned a lot! Before learning about Africa, I thought it was just about symbols like: ∏, §, ±, ζ, λ, Ω, ≡, Θ and δ. Now I know that there’s a lot more to Africa than meets the eye. For example, they used to have to use rocks as spearheads but after discovering iron, their lives became a lot easier. They had more meat since iron killed animals better and farming was easily done. Though their life may have seemed like no problem after the finding of iron, it wasn’t. They had to go through a whole deal of difficulty. When they wanted to trade, they would have to cross deserts and mountains! Once they reached the Niger River they would have to pay a toll to the warriors from Ghana. If they had no money, they would have to pay food. The negative side was that if the other people, who they were trading to, didn’t accept the trade, they would have crossed the deserts and mountains just to lose money/food!

What I found very, very interesting was their religion. Every religion was really, really religious. They were so religious that the Islam had to keep away from the Indigenous Religion so that they wouldn’t believe what one-another believe. The Indigenous Religion believed that there was 1 main god and other less powerful gods. There’d be a god for love, a god for money, a god for happiness and so on.

In Africa, I noticed, that there was many conquering and people fighting for power. For instance, the Moroccans tried to conquer Songhai and they won. Songhai surrendered for an offer to pay tribute to the slaves. I never thought that in Africa, people would surrender. I always thought that they were really tough.

Not only did I learn about the facts, but I also learned about presentation skills. From looking at and doing the presentations, I noticed I few mistakes that my group and a few other groups made. Firstly, we should definitely face the audience. When you’re not facing the audience people can’t hear you very well because your voice isn’t going towards the crowd. Secondly, when you go up to present, you should know what you’re going to say. If you don’t know, you won’t be able to answer a few of the questions that people may ask you. Also, you should speak loudly and clearly. A few people can’t hear you so they’ll have to keep saying, “What…what?” It sometimes starts to get annoying. The biggest mistake that people make is to kiss the paper. (I’m exaggerating) Don’t put your face into the paper because then your voice doesn’t project.

These presentations were really fun to do and to listen to. Everyone had something to say and something to ask!