Hi, I am Miriam! This week I have been the role of the analyst. I really thought it was going to be easy because give a note to calificate my group-mates, from my point of view, it can’t be so many difficult. But I was totally wrong, I had to be objective, and althought they are my friends I had to give the note that they really must have. I hope that I have did it right because I have tried to be a righteous and objective person.
At first, I have to say, that this task it wasn’t easy but we did it the best that we could and we did our best. Also, it was not easy work with 9 people, but we always try to be patient with all and help ourselves because not always can meet all of us, or stay all the time that we must.
I would like to say that we have learned a lot of map projections, of Robinson Mercator and Azimuthal and of geography in general. Also, we have learned that exist something called media distortion that show how the media distort reality.
At last, I think that we can improve and be better in our works, because althought we know that get a 10 is going to be a really hard work, we want to have a good mark, so we are going to conserve hope and our team spirit. We are a team of nine people, but we are going to work as only one.
Hi, it´s
James, and this week it´s my turn to be the facilitator. This week the task was
to compare different map projections and how they represent each country, in
our case, a country from Europe and another one from a different continent.
Now, I will
explain the organization involved in completing the task.
The process
took place over 3 days, from Monday to Wednesday. On Monday, the task was
explained to the whole class, and we were given some time to begin working and
plan how we were going to confront the project.
On Tuesday,
the same as the week before, we spent an hour in the morning putting our ideas
together manually, leaving everything ready for that afternoon. We had lunch at
the university after class and stayed for a few hours to complete the
presentation. It was easy to divide the work as we all get on well and wanted
to work together to put together the best presentation we could in a reasonable
amount of time.
Finally, on
Wednesday, our presentation took place, with Jamal and Sara (the stars), doing
a good job at presenting our PowerPoint dressed up as a Frenchman and a
Bolivian woman.
For me the
hardest part was actually doing the work and gathering all the information,
since reaching agreements amongst us and organization ourselves was the easiest
part.
We feel
like we did well, as our PowerPoint included all of the information required in
a clear and simple manner, as well as adding a touch of originality with the
costumes.
Hi, again! Im Paula from The Prickles group!
As translator
this week, my work is put here the 5 most important contents I have learned
during the second task.The five terms
we have chosen to give them a definition have been:
Map projection: It is a way to represent the entire world in a plane
image. All the map projections are not very correct, because they distort the
reality. There are 3 main types of map projection:
-Cylindrical
projection (Mercator)
-Flat projection
(Robinson)
-Conic
projection (Azimuthal)
Robinson map projection: This projection was created by Arthur H.Robinson, and
its primary purpose was to create visually appealing maps of the entire world.
It’s a compromise projection, it does not eliminate any type of distortion, but
it keeps the levels of all types of distortion relatively low over most of the
map.
It shows the
entire world in just one plane with round corners. It was replaced by
Winkel-Tripel’s
projection.
Internet Scavenger Hunt: It is a new
kind of activity which helps children to understand some concepts. It is a way
of introducing technology in content knowledge so it will be used in those classrooms
in which teachers are involved in technology.
The activity consists
in in give to the pupils some questions and a web page when they can find the
answers to those questions. And to finish with the activity, there is a
question called: big question in
which children will have to link up all the contents they have learned because
they won’t find in the web page the solution of this question.
This strategy is
created to help children to learn information about some interesting issues.
Media Distortion:
This word refers
to the alteration of the original form of something.
Mercator projection: It is a cylindrical map projection, created by
Gerardus Mercator.
It is an
adaptation of the transverse standard Mercator projection. It is used in
national and international mapping systems around the world. The worst
consequence of this projection is that the scale is distorted and it creates a
vision against the 3rd
worlds.
WEB PAGES REFERENCES:
It has been a pleasure to get to know you this information, guys! Have a nice weekend!

Hi, we are Jamal and Sara, and we have been the stars this week. We did the entire work together, but in the exposition day, we explained different parts of the task and we answered different questions. We think that this role is problably the most difficult because you have to be self confident. The star has to explain the work the group has done during the week to the rest of the class, so you have to be able to control yourself to not be nervious. This role can be your worst nightmare if you are afraid of talking to a lot of people, so you have to get rid of the fear to perform your role properly.
Now we are going talk about our personal experiences during the exposition day, and about the content that we explained the last day.
Sara: Hi, I decided to be one of the stars this week because i prefered to show our work to the rest of the class with someone else instead of alone.This time there were two stars per group and not only one, so it was a golden opportunity for me. I regretted my decision when I realised that I had to speak for 8 long minutes... This is the first time that I've done something like that, so it has been challenging. Im also a bit shy, so it has been a bit stressful.
I introduced the topic and explained the different map projections and the differences between them. In every projection, I explained:
- If there is more than one version
- The different types of distorsion.
- The pros and cons
- The purpose
- And the sociocultural implications of using it as a learning resource.
To make the comparison in the different projections between France and Bolivia, I dressed up like a Bolivian girl, to make it more enjoable to watch, I had fun doing that. I also answered to the question of what a treasure hunt is , and explained the treasure hunt that we had created.
Jamal: Hi, it's me again. This week I had a lot of fun being the star, I really enjoyed it. Its a hard role, but if you are not nervious when you have to explain the task, you would like to do it again because it's amusing. I didnt want to be the star in the first place, but i realised that i would have to do it sooner or later, so I wasn't very concerned about it. I did a comparison between France and Bolivia, a comparison of how are those countries represented in the different projections. To do that, I was dressed like a french man (that's probably what I enjoyed the most). I explain that there is not a perfect projection, that all of them are distorted in some way, and that there are different preferences (in choosing the best one) depending on the different interest that we might have. I said that a french man would probably prefer the Mercator projection because France looks bigger there, and size is associated with power. The bigger a country is, the more powerful it looks. What I was trying, was to explain the relationship between the slogan: Media are not neutral and our work.
I also explained how media distorts the reality. I showed a picture from a peruvian book that was created to explain the origin of the races, but the picture was very racist and far away from the truth.
We hope you enjoyed our work.
Hi, I´m here again! I´m Juan and this week I´m the journalist for the task of this week. The task for this week was Treasure Hunt: Map Projections, AKA Media are not neutral. The first thing that my team, The Prickles, did was to assign the new roles for this week.
On Monday, the task was presented in a video, which explained that media are not neutral, giving the example of map projections. Those are distorted and don´t reflect exactly the reality of our world, showing countries smaller or bigger than they are.

Well, once that the explanation of the task was done and we have checked the feedback in order to correct our weak points, we thought that we should collect all the information that we could and in gather up on Tuesday to compare idea and data, as we did last week.
Looking for information on Internet
Tuesday arrived and everything went according to the plan, so after comparing and sharing everything that we had found we got down to work! After several hours we ended our project for the exposition. I want to remark the idea of my pal Paula of dressing up our stars with the objective to make the exposition of the next day funny and original. We disguised our stars, Jamal and Sara, like people from France and Bolivia, because were the countries that we were comparing in the exposition.The disguises were a little bit improvised but they worked pretty well.
Finally, in the day of the exposition, our stars did an amazing work. As the star of the last week I know the preassure of that role, so my congratulations to them and all the stars of that day!
Here are some photos of the process of our work and the exposition. Have fun trying to find some funny faces:
Before I go, I want you to check the post of my colleagues from the group Loonatics. I left a coment there!
http://loonatics.blogspot.es/1456499996/concepts-task-ii/#com
Well, that´s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend!