1. How might consideration of resource scarcity and utilization fit into your courses? Is access to clean water a challenge in your area? Who is responsible for managing water ( both providing it and controlling it?) 

Teaching children the importance of water is imperative because access to clean and safe water is a basic human need. We rely on water for our food, our health, our livelihood and for fun and leisure. Water scarcity can have multiple repercussions. We teach our children that water scarcity can have a direct impact on peoples lives, agriculture, livestocks and food processing industries. It can lead to food shortages and famine, and then eventually famine can cause death to people and livestocks. The implications of water scarcity in economic development can increase the risk of conflict between people, neighboring areas or even countries.  Here in Los Angeles California where I live, we do have substantial supply of water except during occassional peak of summer when we experience drought in the neighboring counties, and the city government encourages people to ration water by decreasing watering lawns to few times a week instead of daily. The water system of Los Angeles comes from three main sources: Owens River, Northern California and Colorado River, and groundwater. 

2. When the share of older people grows in a society, we describe it as an aging society. How can you help students understand what drives this and potential consequences  for such a society? Are there challenges? Are there advantages?

There are several factors causing aging population. The two main factors are: continued decline in fertility and increased life expectancy. Ageing population can cause many challenges including enormous impact on shortage in labor supply leading to shrinking working population who are taxpayers, increasing government expenditures for aged related programs particularly health care and many others. On the other hand, ageing population also has its advantages. Older and Adult people can be experiencing more opportunities over their personal lives and leisure activities. 

3. How might you use the household expenditure charts with your students? What do they reveal about economies? About family priorities? 

Teaching our children the importance of household expenditure chart basically provide a comparative idea of the priorities and needs of the people living in other countries. Children learn what its like living in other countries. Looking at the charts, obviously, each picture varies depending mainly on economic status and lifestyle of the people. However, both food and housing constitute greater percentage in each country. I think that developing countries have a much different household expenditure chart compared to wealthier nations. Expenditure charts play an important role in determining the changes in a counrty's income and fiscal budget. 

4. China was the largest empire in 1800 and had the largest economy,by far. How might you use this data with students in order to help them understand what industrial revolution brought about? What opportunities did it create? Who did it disadvantage? Over the sweep of history, what will the impact of the transportation and information revolutions be? 

Teaching our children that all sorts of economic, industrial and cultural revolution always bring development and improvement in the community, as well as social concerns. Children should understand and learn to accept them, participate to become a part of any revolution. During the industrial revolution, economies that had been based on agriculture and livestocks were transformed to become large scale industry, mechanized manufacturing and building of new factories. It changed how people work. New technology, new power sources, and new and better ways of production made industries more productive and efficient. 

The benefits of industrial revolution were numerous including development of new inventions, new businesses, improved transportation and communicaton systems helping people to commute easier from home to workplace, better work wages and increase in employment opportunities. 

The disadvantages of industrial revolution can also be numerous such as environmental pollution caused by increasing number of factories, people migrate to the cities to find jobs and this can be overwhelming to the available housing resources, food supply can also be depleted in the urban areas due to increasing population. 

5. Based only on this text, what impression do you have of the Qing's dynasty's attitude toward Britain?

I think that the Qing dynasty's attitude toward Britain was primarily based on their belief and understanding that the economic exchange between China and Britain is unfair and unacceptable. I think that the Chinese people felt deceived or fooled by Britain. We learned that in those days, there was a high demand of tea, silk and porcelain in the British market. However, Britain did not have enough supply of silver to trade with the Qing dynasty. So, to solve their problem on how to pay the Chinese people, Britain created  a new system of barter trading by transporting opium from India to China. The increase of opium created a generation of addicts and social instability. There were clashes escalating between the Qing government and the British merchants leading to a war they called Opium War. 

Teaching Japanese Language and Culture Levels 1 and 2 online for middle and high school students, I really liked the visuals Professor Dube showed us to outline the geography of East Asia. I use the comparison of Japan with the state of California, as well as the comparison of the latitudes of different islands of Japan to show the different climates. I would also love to use a map of the population density that was mentioned to show that so many people in Japan live in cities, like Tokyo and Osaka that Professor Dube mentioned.

I learned a bit about the rice issue that Japan is dealing with from the 2015 article that was attached. Rice is such a staple in Japanese cuisine, but the article showed that there is a decline in demand for rice (either as a food itself or a material for other products such as sake (fermented rice wine beverage)). I also wonder if the water shortage Professor Dube mentioned in video 1 around 15 minutes, since the farms need water to grow rice. I hope to add this topic to my unit on Japanese foods as a current event and issue, and then tie this in with the unit on weather as well to show the climates of Japan and how climate change is affecting the country.

Love your idea about discussing rice and the changing demand for rice. This would be a great way to discuss water usage and the changing climate! California has our fair share of issues regarding the agricultural demands of water. There are so many similarities between China and California.

I really was blown away by the graph shown on 4:14 of the second part of the lecture. There are two ways I would love to use this graph, to first use it as a stepping point to show the differences of the countires during the early 1800s and that their economies were like. Japan and China, as Professor Dube mentioned, were old civilizations with large populations and economies. Meanwhile, the America that we recognize in the early 1800s was not the size it is today (geography wise) and was largely a place with many rural towns and farms. 

Second, you can use that graph to show both American history as well, by moving the focus to comparing 1880s or 1900s to show the rise of America's economy and shift of China's and Japan's too. This can be used as a way to show other countries' power and historical growth in both World History and American History classes. 

I wish I had seen a chart like this in my high school classes, because I was never really struck by how young American history (colonialist history) is compared to other countries in Asian like China, India, and Japan. It was not until I went to Japan and stood in temples older than the American constitution that the arc of time for all these countries really sank in.

Kayla Kolean