THE IRISH ARE COMING TODAY!

We are all very excited because our Irish friends are coming over to spend five days with us. The weather is going to be very good, so we are going to do many things with them so they can make the mos of their stay.
I'll upload some photos these days!

TRIP TO BILBAO!

The 8 of May we went on a trip to Bilbao to a conference about the importance of languages in our future professions. It was very interesting, as the experiences of the for proffesionals who spoke were great. Although we were in the middle of our exams, it was a great trip. From now on, every time I have an opportunity I will learn another language! You should do the same, It's never to late!

IT'S TIME TO SAY GOODBYE!

After a short but good school year, we finished our exams yesterday. We have worked on many different things during the whole year but I'd like to explain something about the project we have been working hard on these last months.

Firstly,we had to focus on a target group and explain how the economical recession affects them. We thought that it would be interesting to do research about young people like us and we've learnt a lot. It is quite shocking to see how different our life is to others.

Secondly, we needed to think about a slogan to involve everyone in our project. We thought that FEEL,THINK,ACT! was a good one. The message is very clear and it's short. First, you need to feel when something is not going on well, then you have to think what is the best thing to do and lastly It's your time to act!

Moreover, we had three volunteer girls with us one day to talk about different activities we could do as a volunteer. I told you about it in a post.

We also created a poster , where you can see a tree with hands. We tried to sinbolise that if everyone does something little we will do something really big together.

Finally, came the most important and difficult job: THE CAMPAIGN. We needed to find a way to involve the whole school and make them realise what's happening in our world. So we thought of two different activities to do with them:

• A gymkhana that simulated our world and they had to try and survive. (click here for further information).
• A quiz on Europe's day. (click here for further information)

We've had to work very hard to finish this project and we have had many problems as we were under pressure but we finished it today and the result is fantastic! If we win this competition we will get to go to Brussels to visit the European parliament. Lets see if we are lucky!

TO GO TO THE BLOG OF OUR PROJECT CLICK HERE.

OUR AD IS FINISHED!

Here's the ad we have been working on this term. The people that appear on the video are some of the students of our year. Thanks a lot for participating! As it says in the video, we can all do something to change the world, BE A VOLUNTEER!

FEEL, THINK, ACT!

DO YOU WANT TO HELP?

As you know this term we have been working about volunteering work. Before the holidays a man from Hezkide came to talk to us about how we could be volunteers and what we could do in our city. Today, some people came from different associatons to explain how they work and to make us interested. I'm going to talk to you about Atzegi as I thought it was the most interesting.

Atzegi works with people whose intelectual coefficient is under the average. They´ve got two groups under 16 and over 16. They started in 1960 when some families got together as they saw that these people needed some kind of support in our society. They've got three main aims:

•  To avoid these people feeling lonely.
• To help them develop their autonomy.
• To make the society have sensibility towards them.

Atzegi organizes different activities during the week, weekends and they go on holiday. All of these are done by volunteers starting from the age of 17. During the week they have cultural or sport activities, at the weekend they sometimes go on a trip for the day or just meet to go to cinema and on holiday they go to different places three times a year to places like Mallorca, Salou, Logroño, Salamanca... (it depends on their autonomy).

They also do a campaign every year, here´s the poster of this years and click here to watch videos of different experiences of the volunteers.

It looks very interesting and It´s a big opportunity to meet new people. If you´re interested, here´s the website for further information.

NEW DRAFT FOR THE AD!

Here's another draft for the ad we are making this term!

CLICK HERE

HERE'S THE IDEA OF OUR POSTER!

As you might have realised, this term we are woking on a project to enter a competition and if we are lucky we might go to Brussels! To start with, we are working in little groups and then we have to chose the best projects. Andoitz, Ainhoa, June and I are working together and we have made an idea of how our poster is going to look like. Here's a photo of the draft:

FEEL, THINK, ACT!

FIRST IDEAS FOR OUR AD!

Lately, Ainhoa, Andoitz, June  and I have been thinking of different ways to manage to get people involved in the project of the crisis we're doing this term. Our idea for the advertisement is simple but yet complicated to organize and put it into a draft as a video and in fact, we need a slogan. Our ad is based on a UEFA's new one because we think it's a good and an adequate method to achieve what we want. To explain our intention, it's better to watch the UEFA ad to see what we mean:

NEWS ABOUT THE CRISIS IN SPAIN

Mariano Rajoy the president of Spain believes his country has turned the corner and can hope for better things in 2014.  He said in an interview with the british newspaper ,the guardian, that the number of unemployed people  in October last year was less than a year ago. And in November, the figures got even better with around 2,500 fewer people registered as unemployed.

However, not everyone is as hopeful as the prime minister. Some people say that Spain's economy will not recover for two decades, and will continue to experience high levels of unemployment throughout that time.

What do you think about this?

Click here to read the article.

PAGES USED FOR OUR BRIEF PRESENTATION ABOUT CRISIS

These are the links in case more information is wanted:

Eurostat

By clicking here you'll have direct acces to our presentation.

PLANNING SUMMER!

June and I found a website which offers different kind of jobs you can do abroad to mostly help with the water animals conservation. The offer we really liked the look of was one in Madagascar. You go there for three weeks and you have two choices, you either work with water animals in the see or with land animals in the forest. It looks great but it's quite expensive as Madagascar is far from here. Well, we'll try to convince our parents as impossible is nothing! Click here if you are interested.

TRIP TO IRELAND!

The second week of April, we're going to Ireland on an exchange for five days. We're going to stay in a little village that is an hour from Dublin. I can't wait to go there because i'm sure it's going to be a great experience and we're going to have a great time. When the irish come here we'll do many different things so they enjoy themselves as much as posible!

COMICS ABOUT THE ECONOMICAL RECESSION

Here are two comics about the economical recession situation nowadays:

BUILDING A FUTURE IN WHICH HUMANS LIVE IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

Over the last weeks we have been writing articles about different NGOs. Ainhoa and I wrote about BRAC (one of the worlds biggest non-governamental organisations) but I have never given any money to them because I just discovered them for the article.

Since I was a kid, I have loved animals so I asked my parents if we could join WFF (World Wildlife Fund) that fight the extinction of animals and pollution of our planet. Every month I receive a magazine with all the information about their new projects and it's very interesting! If you like animals and want to help them it's a great idea to join it!

The species they mainly focuse on are: tigers,elephants,rhinos,gorillas,giant pandas and marine turtles.

Here's also a video:

       

                                     

GREAT FILM TO WATCH

Ainhoa and I worked on a project about immigration and to understand more about the situation, we watched a film. It's a french film called Welcome that was criticised when it first came out but I thought it was very interesting as it shows two different points of view about the issue. If you decide to watch it, there is a complete analysis in our webpage for further information about the film.
For the analysis click here .

Here's the trailer:

SPREADING A DIFFERENT KIND OF AWARENESS

The last two weeks, we've been working on an article about NGOs. Ainhoa and I we've chosen a NGO which we think works different to others we know: BRAC; it's the largest non-governamental organization in the world.

<<What makes the difference between other organizations , then?>> you would ask; well, let us tell you that what makes BRAC unique and famous is the method chosen to face poverty. BRAC’s idea has always been simple yet radical: they've tried to bring together the poorest people in the poorest countries and teach them to read, think for themselves, pool their

resources, and start their own businesses.

If you want to know some more about BRAC, read the article by clicking  here

GLOBALIZATION II

Your shirt was made in Mexico and your shoes in China. Your CD player comes from Japan. You can travel to Moscow and eat a Big Mac there and you can watch an American film in Rome. Today goods are made and sold all over the world, thanks to globalization.

This short second term, we've also been talking about globalization as it can be seen in the blog: we've been debating on it and we've found its good and not that good sides.

Good sides

• Globalization gives you a larger market. You can sell more goodsand make more money. You can createmore jobs. 

•  Products become cheaper and you can get new goods more quickly.

 

Bad sides

• Globalization causes unemployment in industrialized countries because firms move their factories to places where they can get cheaper workers.  
• Globalization may lead to more environmental problems.  

•  Globalization can lead to financial problems .

• Some of the poorest countries in the world, especially in Africa, may get even poorer. 
• Human, animal and plant diseases can spread more quickly through globalization.

 
In conclusion, it can be appreciated that globalization's drawbacks are more than the benefits. However, we should try to fix the problems for a better life!

P.S:.: Don't you know what globalization is? Here's the big problem explained in 4 minutes!

HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH

This term, we've talked about the population of the world in class. So our teacher asked us to do a graph so that we could have a look at the growth and predict about how much it is going to grow in the future. As we can see, it's growing very quickly and that means that in a future, we might be so many that there aren't going to be enough sources for all of us. What is the solution?

Time on the horizontal acces and number of people in billions on the vertical access.

MULTINATIONALS

If we look at our clothes, food, gadgets... we'll be able to see that there are not made in the same place that the company comes from. Here are some examples:

• SHOES:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
               
  
  

 

• GADGETS:

• FOOD:

                 

GLOBALIZATION

This second term we have started to work about globalisation. Coca Cola is one of the first things that comes up to me with this word. It's an american company who created this drink. Nowadays, everybody over the world knows about it.