Geography Assignment - 1 in 7 Billion

Last week someone asked me how many people were there are the world. I thought that this was a great question, that you had read something and wanted to know more – this is one of the things that rocks about being a teacher.

I knew that I had read somewhere that we had just reached the 7 billion mark, but I wanted to research it just in case. Check out this world population chart, it is really interesting. When I was catching up on the blogs that I follow I came across this cool new series on National Geographic's website called 7 Billion.

Since we just started Geography, and because I think that it's pretty interesting I would like you to watch this video. There is audio, but it is only music so it isn't necessary if you don't have your own pair of headphones (I watched it twice, first just to soak all of the information up, and the second time to really think about everything that was presented).

I pulled these words below from the video. Read them again.

“But we don't take up as much space as you'd think.
Standing shoulder to shoulder all 7 billion of us would fill the city of Los Angeles.
So it's not space we need – it's balance.”

Assignment Part 1: What do these words mean to you? Please post on your blog, I want to hear your thoughts. Please come back and read what other students have posted, feel free to respond to their thoughts and opinions.

Get out your calculators and calculate the percentages based on the world population of 7 billion. Think about how do you feel about these statistics?

13% of us don't have clean drinking water
38% of us lack adequate sanitation

Calculate each percentage out of 7 billion-7, 000, 000, 000 and record your answer on your blog.

_____________________ people in our world don't have clean drinking water.

_____________________ people in our world lack adequate sanitation.

Describe in a post on your blog how you would feel if you were one of those people who didn't have access to clean drinking water or adequate sanitation.

Do you think that you are a typical citizen on earth? Do you represent the average person? Watch this video on the typical person and see if anything surprised you.

Check out this video, : Are You Typical?