Travelling and Transport

Go through the worksheets and do the tasks:
http://uloz.to/xKW3njEG/travelling-and-means-of-transport-doc
http://uloz.to/xeuH7JKp/prepositions-of-place-directions-doc

Education - Listening, reading and video

Rap video exhorts Roma parents not to send children to special school

Answer the questions:

Why was the rap video created? What is it about?

How popular is it today?

What is its Czech name and its English translation?

What are remedial schools?

Why do Roma parents send their children to special schools?

Explain the following words:

prone to mental disability

special school

end up on the dole

segregation

Answer the questions:

Why do Roma people have problems with education?

How does our school help to Roma children?

How can pre-school education help them?

Would you like to work with Roma children? Why? How?

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/rap-video-exhorts-roma-parents-not-to-send-children-to-special-school

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2pHBMm444w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLW8L6NnHM

Water Closet

Describe in 10 sentences.

The Story of the Water Closet

A very brief, entertaining, and very English perspective on

the history of the toilet

Here is a bold statement. The WC has been described as “one of the most important inventions of the last 1000 years.” None other than the London Times newspaper said this in its Millenium Edition. It compared the invention of the toilet with, amongst others, the development of the Gutenberg printing press in 1400s, the atomic bomb, and the moon landing of 1969. Here’s another bold statement. “One of the most successful designs ever. It doesn’t only improve lives, it saves them.” None other than the Independent newspaper said that in a recent morning edition. And finally, one more bold statement. “It has done more to improve the health of the people of the world than any pills or potions.” The origin of this statement is due entirely to the author of this piece. It is true that the toilet is an important invention. But in the whole history of mankind it is relatively recent and as we shall see we had to wait for the great entrepreneurs of the Victorian times for it to be developed into what we know and love today.

Primitive Sanitation

Early primitives were, of course, the first sanitarians. They knew the rules – and learned them the hard way. They knew that they must keep their sewage away from their cooking. They knew that they had to keep their kitchen upstream and their toilet downstream. If they reversed this layout there would be terrible consequences. Death would follow. Typhoid, cholera and dysentery were just a few of the terrible diseases which thrive on poor sanitation. It is this fundamental principle that we work with today. The toilet is part of the process of separating excreta from drinking water.

Roman Latrines

The Romans were excellent sanitarians. They regarded ablutions as extremely important and built elaborate latrines in their towns and forts. Evidence remains of bath houses and toilet blocks. Here communal latrines had been built. Users sat on marble slabs. Each slab, with its hole, was supported above gushing water to take away excreta. Fresh water channels in front of the slabs allowed users to wash themselves using a natural sponge tied to the end of a twig or stick. Of course the invention of toilet tissue was years ahead and was not available to the Romans. The Romans left Britain in 450AD and their civilisation and legacy of sanitary science went with them. Their heritage disappeared and Britain plunged into the dark ages. 1000 years unwashed.

The First WC

We had to wait till 1592 before the next milestone in sanitary science was achieved. This is when the rather well-to-do godson of Queen Elizabeth 1^st  got terribly bored with his lifestyle (he was a poet) and set about designing what we now know to be the first ever, fully functioning and self contained Water Closet. His invention was something we can now all recognise but not many people of his time did. It was a major breakthrough in sanitary science and toilet design. It was an efficient and reasonably hygienic means of disposal of human waste. It had a cistern containing water. It had a seat and a bowl to receive the deposit. It had a means of flushing away that deposit using a sudden rush of the water. It was a genuine WC. A brilliant invention. Years ahead of its time. And, like all great new products, devices and gizmos, it was very expensive. It came in at £1 10s 8d, around £1000 in today’s money. Regrettably, it didn’t catch on. No-one could afford it, and only two were ever constructed. Harington made one for himself for use at his home in Kelston Manor in Bath, Somerset, England and the other for use by his godmother, Queen Elizabeth 1st at Richmond Palace, on the River Thames. (Actually, a third WC was actually constructed in 2001 and is now on display in the magnificent sanitaryware gallery at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton, Stoke on Trent.) Harington was ahead of his time and we had to wait another 200 years before the next glimpse of the sanitary future came along.

The Arrival of the Modern Toilet

The middle of the 1800s was the time of the ‘Great Stink’ when The Thames was an open sewer and people like George Jennings, Edward Johns, and Thomas Twyford started the race to develop the ‘modern’ toilet. What was needed was a freestanding, ceramic affair which required no mechanism and was relatively cheap. Many designs were produced and the bathroom industry was born.

Television

Describe the text in 10 sentences. Write 5 sentences about new possibilities which TV companies offer today.

The History Of Television

The television has become such an integral part of homes in the modern world that it is hard to imagine life without television. The boob tube, as television is also referred to, provides entertainment to people of all ages. Not just for entertainment value, but TV is also a valuable resource for advertising and different kinds of programming. The television as we see it and know it today was not always this way. Let’s take a brief look at the history of television and how it came into being.

Timeline of TV History

Different experiments by various people, in the field of electricity and radio, led to the development of basic technologies and ideas that laid the foundation for the invention of television. In the late 1800s, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a student in Germany, developed the first ever mechanical module of television. He succeeded in sending images through wires with the help of a rotating metal disk. This technology was called the ‘electric telescope’ that had 18 lines of resolution. Around 1907, two separate inventors, A.A. Campbell-Swinton from England and Russian scientist Boris Rosing, used the cathode ray tube in addition to the mechanical scanner system, to create a new television system. From the experiments of Nipkow and Rosing, two types of television systems came into existence: mechanical television and electronic television.

Mechanical Television History

In 1923, an American inventor called Charles Jenkins used the disk idea of Nipkow to invent the first ever practical mechanical television system. By 1931, his Radiovisor Model 100 was being sold in a complete kit as a mechanical television. In 1926, just a little after Jenkins, a British inventor known as John Logie Baird, was the first person to have succeeded in transmitting moving pictures through the mechanical disk system started by Nipkow. He also started the first ever TV studio. From 1926 till 1931, the mechanical television system saw many innovations. Although the discoveries of these men in the department of mechanical television were very innovative, by 1934, all television systems had converted into the electronic system, which is what is being used even today.

Electronic Television History

The experiments of Swinton in 1907, with the cathode ray tube for electronic television held great potential but were not converted into reality. Finally, in 1927, Philo Taylor Farnsworth was able to invent a working model of electronic television that was based on Swinton’s ideas. His experiments had started when he was just a little boy of 14 years. By the time he became 21, Philo had created the first electronic television system, which did away with the rotating disks and other mechanical aspects of mechanical television. Thus was born the television system which is the basis of all modern TVs. All the early television systems were black and white, with color television being invented much later on. Since the early invention of television in the beginning of the 1900s, history has seen many firsts in the area of television.

Mobile Phone

Write in 10 sentences what the article is about. Write in 5 sentences how you use a mobile phone every day.

Mobile Phone

Mobile Phones have proved themselves to be one of the greatest gifts to the mankind. They have become an indispensible part of our lives. But going back in time, owning a mobile phone was confined to members of affluent class. All thanks to cost cutting techniques and innovations over a period of time; mobile phones are now affordable for everyone.

Origin of this gadget is quite interesting. Starting from bulky mobiles phones which were as long and heavy as one’s forearms, to ultra thin and techno savvy handsets, mobiles phones have covered a long way so far. It all started with the basic telephony. Alexander Graham Bell was the first one to patent telephone in the year 1876. This technology was developed using the equipment designed for telegraph. Calls were connected with the help of operators. And a pillar of the mobile telephony came into existence when Charles Stevenson invented radio communication in early 1890s for keeping contacts with the offshore lighthouses. Marconi transmitted signals over the distance of 2 kms in year 1894. And Fessenden capably broadcasted music through radio by 1906.

And the following development was merger of radio telephone technology. In 1926, first class passenger trains, running from Berlin to Hamburg used the technology. These radio telephones were also used for air traffic safety as well as in the passenger airplanes. At the time of Second World War, German tanks made great use of these radio telephones too.

Two way radios was an ancestor of the mobiles phones. These radios also known as the mobile rigs, were fixed police cruisers, ambulances, taxicabs before advent of handheld mobile phones. Since the mobile radios were given connection to telephone network, one could not dial these from the home phones. And slowly this technology gained popularity among the mobile radio users.

Later versions of these radio phones incorporated cigarette lighter plugs and were called bag phones. Fixed in the vehicles, these gadgets were either used as portable two way radios or mobile phones. And then in 1940s, Motorola came with new developments in mobile phones. And this is how Walkie Talkie was born. Large, bulky and battery operated, this Handie Talkie soon found a way to US military.

Another turning point came in the history of mobile phones when the base station for mobile phones came into being. Engineers from Bell Labs developed the base stations in 1947. The same year, W. Rae Philip and Douglas H. Ring developed hexagonal cells for these mobile phones. But an engineer, Porter from Bell Labs, suggested positioning of the cell towers at corners of hexagons instead of center. He also argued for the directional antennas, for transmitting or receiving the signals in the three directions, into adjacent hexagon cells.

In 1956, Ericsson Company released the earliest full automatic cellular phone system called MTA in Sweden. Though this gadget was operated automatically but due to its bulkiness, could not really hold the users interest for long. It is surprising to hear that this mobile phone weighed around 40 kgs back then. And then improved and lighter version of the same phone was introduced in 1965. This was known as MTB and used the DTMF signaling.

Soon in 1957, Leonid Kupriyanovich developed experimental model of wearable mobile phones in Moscow, operating with the help of base station. This young engineer had earlier developed the radio phone known as LK-1. The battery life of the wearable mobile phone by the young inventor lasted for around 20-30 hours. Weighing 3 kg, it worked within the distance of 20 to 30 km from the station. Later he patented the mobile phones and also came up with a version of pocket mobile phone that was just of 0.5 Kgs in the same year.

Then again automatic pocket mobile phone was developed in 1966 at Bulgaria. Called RAT-0.5, phone coordinated with the base station known as RATZ-10. And further developments in the field of the cellular phones were witnessed in 1967. It was decided that every mobile phone would be catered to a base station throughout its life. Though this was not that novel concept, need of one base station at least broke continuity of the automatic services to the mobile phones. After three years, in 1970, another engineer Ames E. Joel invented automatically operated call handoff technology. This system allowed the mobile phones to pass through cell areas while making a phone call without any loss of conversation. This was the time when the mobile user could use the gadget without any disturbance.

Further in year 1971, AT&T Incorporation projected mobile phone service that was approved by FCC later. Another development in the history of mobile phones was registered with ARP network’s success launched in Finland. It was the earliest commercial cellular phones and was known as Zero Generation mobile network.

Invention of mobile phones that closely resembles today’s mobile phones is credited to Martin Cooper, employer and researcher of Motorola.  He initially developed cellular phone named Motorola Dynatac in 1973. With 5 inches width and 9 inches length, this 2.5 pounds weighing phone carried around 30 circuit boards in it. With recharge time of around 10 hours, talk time of 35 minutes, this phone gave comfortable talking experience to the users. One could listen, dial and talk on this mobile phone but what was missing was display screen. With passing time, refinements were made and these mobile phones improved by leaps and bounds.

With introduction of Global System for the mobile communications, radio spectrum could be used effectively. The technology gave great voice quality, international roaming facilities along with compatibility with ISDN systems. And further for providing coverage to the remote areas that ISDN, GSM and cellular phones could not offer, satellite phones came into being. Base station for the satellite phones were built in the geostationary satellites. And now there is no place on the planet that is untouched by the mobile phones.

Education in the Czech Republic

Go through tje presentation http://uloz.to/xzkLCGpE/structure-of-educational-system-ppt
and prepare and learn the topic Education in the Czech Republic.
See the information also in the National system overview http://uloz.to/xWX7d1Sq/047-cz-en-pdf

Tasks for the week - 5th - 18th April 2015

Hello,
your tasks will be:
Tasks about School and Education, including videos.
Three texts from the topic Inventions and Discoveries.
Worksheet Transport and Travelling and Prepositions and Way description.

Tasks for 2nd March 2015

Hallo my sweethearts,
your tasks for this week are:
Revising unit 7, 8 http://uloz.to/xvA6Z4Zw/revising-unit-7-8-xps - priste si vybrana cviceni projdeme.
Read the text and do the exercises in your textbooks - page 66, 67.
Watch the video about human body systems and describe in 15 sentences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j1PWhOnlmk