TREASURE HUNT: CARTOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS, TASK 3

ROLES:

STAR:

Hi! I am Elena Torres Soto and I am the star of this week. My role this week was to expalin map projections, how media distorts our reality as well as explain that they are not neutral. I also had to explain an example of a trasure hunt, which we search on the Interntet and was really funny.
From my point of view, I have to say that I was really nervous since I had to make a presentation of 8 minutes in my own in front of whole the class, so since I am a little afraid of speaking in public I have to say that it was a big challenge for me.
However, when Istarted the presentation althoug I was nervous, of course, it was not so hard as I thought, but I was disappointed because I prepared the presentation a lot and I couldn´t finish it and that let me down. Nevertheless, when the teacher talked to me after tha classroom finishes I felt relaxed again since the teacher said to me that it was not going to have any consequences on the punctuation of the project.

In conclusion, I have to say that I have learned a lot with this project about how reality is distorted in many aspects of our life. Althoug this project was a little hard Ithink that finally we had a very good result thanks to all my group that makes a great effort in each Project we make and we make a great work together.

JOURNALIST: 

Hi everyone!!! I´m Paula Martínez García the journalist of this week. My work is to tell you what we have done in order to do our task of this week.
On Monday morning Linda explained what was going to be the third task about. Once she explained it, we started to become worry about the new task called “Treasure Hunt: cartographic projections” because it seemed to be more difficult that the others.
In class we began to investigate and collect information and we went running to the library to continue working. There we organized and divided the work so that by staying in the afternoon everything was easier.
At the afternoon meeting we were so stressed because we have many doubts about the task so we spent long time trying to solve them. Once we have solved everything we started to work again but this time was not enough to finish the entire task and because of that we had to meet again after Tuesday´s classes.
We were so happy because we thought we have finished everything but... What was our surprise? Some of the questions we have answered were not okay so we had to meet again in the afternoon although less time as it was not too much to do.

Finally arrived the day of the presentations and our star Elena was very nervous since she had to speak alone in front of the whole class for 8 minutes. But she finally got it and did it very well, we were very happy! That day in class we laughed a lot because some of our classmates made very funny presentations 

TRANSLATOR:

Hi, my name is Aintzane Martin and this week I’m the translator! Here are the key words I considered important:

1.     MASS MEDIA:  All the technology that are used in order to reach a mass audience (radio, television, internet…)

2.     MEDIA: Tools used to deliver information.

3.     TREASURE HANT: It’s a game which consists in finding answer to give questions about a topic, there is a questions that includes all the others, and in the end there is a ‘prize’ , the ‘treasure’.

4.     DISTORTION OF REALITY: something that can makes us think in a way that is not correct

5.     TO ARISE: It means ‘happen’, ‘occur’…

ANALYST:

Hi guys! I am Rocío Muñoz Verdú and I am the analyst of the third task that we must do this week.

On Monday Linda explained us and commanded this task called "treasure hunt" and in which we have carried out various activities based on the distorsion of the intelligence of children.

First of all we did not understand the task well and we did not manage to take advantage of the afternoon on Moday but thanks to the help of my colleagues we were able to fulfill it so I think we did a good job.

On the other hand in the presentation we were very nervous and did not expose as we would have liked. However, in the meetings we all collaborate. Moreover in the survey you can check the effort of the whole group highlighting the star and another partner because they involved something more than the rest .

      Finally I would like to say that I am happy with my group because we are very hardworking and we work very hard, with motivation and a lot of creativity as the rest of tasks since the subject is very interesting for our future. 

FACILITATOR:

Hi! I´m Vero again, and this was my turn to be the facilitator, so part of my job has been to organize the work of the group.

The task was called “Treasure Hunt: cartographic projections” where we learned the 3 different types of representation maps (Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal). Then, we chose 2 countries (France and India) and compared them in the maps to see how each one could distort the dimensions.

After that, the second part of the task was to found another media that distort the reality of the student; we thought the marks are a good example of this.

Then, we looked for another type of treasure hunt already done on Internet and finally we explained what´s the meaning of “Media are not neutral”.

Dividing all the groups work was a little difficult because at the beginning, we didn´t understand the task at all and when we thought we had already finished, we had to meet to work again due to the fact that what we had done was incomplete.

For the moment this has been the more difficult task, sometimes we felt lost, luckily, to encourage my partners, one morning of hard work I brought some sweet to make it more pleasant.

CURATOR FARMER: 

Hello Flowers! I’m Paula Martínez Plaza and this week I have been the curator-farmer of my group. My role was to collect all the webpages and links that we have used for doing our task called Treasure Hunt: Cartographic Projections.
The task consisted of various activities such as compare two countries (one from Europe and one from another continent) in the different projections and choose what is the best projection once we would have finished the analysis, also we had to search another media that could distort the vision of students about something, then we had to find another example of treasure hunt related to primary school content and finally we had to explain the relationship between the task and the sentence “Media are not neutral”.

The references are in the following list:

-www.geographyeducation.com (9 April, 2009), why do map projections matter

Retrieved from: https://geographyeducation.org/2013/04/09/why-do-map-projections-matter/

-www.wikipedia.com (30 January, 2017), Map Projection

Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection 

-www.wikipedia.com (8 January, 2017), Scavenger Hunt

Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scavenger_hunt

-www.literacymatters.com (2015), Scavenger Hunts

Retrieved from: https://literacymatters.wikispaces.com/Scavenger+Hunts 

-www.youtube.com (30 July, 2010), Gall-Peter Projection


Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY&feature=youtu.be

I leave here the mind map that I have done to show you all the references that we have used: 

TASK 3: Treasure Hunt: cartographic projections

The goal of this tas was to understand and explain how the media understand the world in very different ways, since media are not neutral, and and also to realize how important it is. We had to read some documents about this issue.

First of all we identified what was exactly a globe to be able to do the rest of the task which was not something difficult at all. It  is the perfect  representation of the Earth´s surface.

However the maps are distorted by the shape, distance, relative size and direction and there are different projections which require different distortions.

According to this we had to explore three different map projections which correspond to Azimuthal, Mercator and Robinson. According to the perspectives each one of them sees the Earth in a different way.

Then we had to adapt these three models to one example, which consists of compare to countries according to this three perspectives in terms of shape, distance and size. We chose India and France since they are very different and it was more easy to make the comparations among them. We also included some relevant aspects which characterized each country such as its population and its extension.

Finally we had to decide which could be the best projection for using it in a classroom. All of us conclude that the best one  was Mercator´s projection because compared to the other ones it seems more clear since the image is not so distorted than in Azimuthal and Robinson projection. This is one example of how media can distort reality.

Another part of this task consisted of make another example of an specific media which could also the visions of our students. One example we chose was related to the Pygmalion Effect which is one of the events that describes the belief that one person has to be able to influence the performance of another. This is because sometimes others have some expectations of us which in reality are not in that way, but their expectations and beliefs are able yo distort our reality and think in that way instead of the real one.

The last part of this task was related to the treasure hunt, which is a technological and content game which consists in finding answers to give questions about a topic. There is a big question which includes all the others. They have linked different webpages where they can look for the information they need. We chose an example which consisted of looking for in the Internet the information they need and give them clues that will guide them from one spot to the next until find “the treasure”. The difficulty of these clues would be according to their ages.