MOSI Live Google Hangout on the Cotton Factories

Hello readers!

In class earlier this week we did a live Google hangout, a video chat, with an "Explainer" from MOSI, Museum of Science and Industry, in England! I was sadly not able to attend it as I was sick but I have learned a lot from the videos of the Google hangout. To prepare for the chat we did a few things the day before. We first looked at the MOSI website and read a few articles on the machines used in the cotton mills as well as learning a bit more on the life of someone working in a cotton mill. We also watched a video our "Explainer", Jaime, had sent to us the took us on a tour of some of the machines they had a the museum. This allowed us to see what they really looked like. While we watched the video we wrote down some vocab on the machines, like names and tools. It was very interesting to hear how they were pronounced, although with his thick British accent it was a bit hard to understand what he really said. After we wrote down the words we researched them using Google to see what they meant. Many of them were just the names of mechanisms and when we researched the words we were able to learn even more about how they worked. We then all tried to come up with some questions to ask Jaime during the Google hangout. This allowed us to prepare for the chat so we knew we would always have a question and a topic to talk about!

Watching the videos from the Google hangout on Edline, provided by my teacher, I learned a lot about how hard the working conditions were for the factory workers. The machines were very loud at the time and many of the workers would go deaf especially because there were so many machines in the factories. This was a big problem and hardship faced by the workers. In the clips I also learned about some of the protesters called the Luddites. They were protesting because the increase in cotton factories made them lose their jobs. They were also violent protesters that participated in burning houses down and other violent rituals. In another clip I learned about how many of the very dangerous jobs were given to orphans the factory owners had "adopted". The owners would go to orphanages and tell the people that they were going to take orphans for an apprenticeship till they were 18. The orphanage workers of course agreed because the orphans got free food and board. Sadly, many of the orphans died or got permanent injuries because of the dangerous job. By watching the clips I learned even more about how dangerous and horrendous a place the factories were.

As I was not there for the live event I of course would like to do another one so I could experience it first hand. I think it is a very interesting way to learn things and it allows not to listen to a teacher or the people in our class for yet another class period, not that we don't love learning from teachers and students! I think it is a great way to get some more information on a topic we know a bit about. It is also very interesting to be able to see the objects we were learning about right there. It is a great new way of learning things!

Thanks for reading!
Julianna