Act 2: Cartographic projections

 Short Description

That week we have worked with a treasure hunt an activity to explore the impact of the resources in our students like a discovering game. At the begining we talked about cartography projections and completed a table analysing and comparing different types of projections.

After that we chose two countries: Germany and Kenia and we compared its situation in the different projections answering questions like: how is it big? Where is it in the whole world? And how important it seems on the representation?

We concluded that Robinson projection is the best for teaching purpose, it gives you a vision of the entire world.

Thanks to this activity we have learned that we as teachers can distort the vision of students so we have to take care about what resources we are going to us. It also can happen that media distort the vision of the students and we have to mitigate the effects of that.

Product

Our history about how we have worked.

Working in groups can be a really good experience or a nightmare. Since I started the high school I have always been working in groups but not in an effective way, every time there were two or one member of the group that did everything.

But these course is very different, we (as a group) have to do lot of activities so we must work in an effective way just not to overwhelmed some members of the group. I look for some information on the web and I found that:

Tips for working effectively in groups.

We met three times in a group study room in the Faculty of Philosophy, in the first session we establish the objectives, what tasks we were going to do and in what order. So we divided the tasks into small groups and create a timeline.

- Trini and Carol investigated about different types of proyections.

- Lola and Eva looked for an interesting treasure hunt.

- María and Marina searched for a good example to demostrate that media distort the vision of the students.

In the second session Trini and Carol explained their task to the rest of the group and specially to Miriam and Alba to continue with the examples of different projections, Lola, Eva, María and Marina explained what they had done.

- Miriam and Alba compared two different countries.

Finally, in the last session we put everything in common and did the poster and we prepared the presentation of the stars.

In the sessions if some couple had a problem they said and everyone tried to help them, exchange information is crucial so we create a group with our emails.

Translation

• Map projection: Is a representation of the globe or celestial sphere, consists in a  systematic construction of lines drawn on a planesurface representative of and corresponding to the meridians and parallels of the curved surface of the earth or celestial sphere. Map projections are necessary for creating maps but you have to take into account that all map projections distort the surface in some way. Many map projections have been designed but just a few are currently in widespread use. 

(2014) “Map projection” Otained in:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection

Furuti, C. (2013) “Basic Definitions and Concepts” http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/CartDef/MapDef/mapDef.html

• A distortion is the alteration of the original shape of something, it makes something appear different from the way it really is. Distortion can be in an object, image, sound or waveform. It is usually unwanted, so engineers, for example, strive to eliminate distortion, or minimize it.You can distort an image, a thought, or even an idea. 

 (2014) “Distortion” Obtained in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion

• Treasure Hunt: There is an activity in which students have to find answers to some questions given in the content of the links previously selected by the teacher. Sometimes included a global question that requires the student to make a more elaborate use of the information, this is called "the big question".

Treasure Hunt may consist of the following elements:

1. A Brief Introduction on the subject which may include an explanation of the task that the student will perform. 
2. A set of more or less difficult questions, depending on the level and age of the students. 
3. The "big question" that must be answered after thinking about all the information obtained. 
4. Links to web pages where students will find the answers. 
5. An assessment section where you explain how you are going to rate the task performed.

Pérez, I. (1997-2014) “Treasure Hunt” Otained in http://www.isabelperez.com/webquest/taller/treasure.htm

• Earth Equator: The equator is an imaginary line that runs from east to west on the Earth's surface and passing through its center. This line divides the Earth into the Northem hemisphere and South hemisphere and its latitute  is 0˚ .

 (2014) “Equator” obtained in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator

-Briney, A. (2014) “Geography of the Earth's Equator” obtained in http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/equatorgeography.htm

• The media are diversified media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication.

The technology through which this communication takes place in differents situations.

1.    Broadcast media such as radio, recorded music, film and television, transmit their information electronically. 
2.   . Mass media use a physical object such as a newspaper, book and comic to distribute their information
3.  ..  Outdoor media, commercial buildings, sports stadiums, shops and buses.
4.  ..  Public speaking and event organizing can also be considered as forms of mass media. 
5.  . . The digital media comprises both Internet and mobile mass communication.
6.   . Internet media provides many mass media services, such as email, websites, blogs an internet based radio and television.
7.  .  The organizations that control these technologies, such as television stations or publishing companies, are also known as the mass media.

       (2014) “Mass Media” obtained in:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media

Reflection

We have decided to put this activity because we think that this activity is one of the most interesting because of the concepts that we have learnt, it was the first time that we studied this. 
None of us knew that the countries shown on maps and that have always been taught us in school, college ... they are distorted and does not show the whole reality. We have really enjoyed researching and comparing countries, and investigating which of them are bigger or smaller with the use of map projections (Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal).

But, of course, there’s not a easy work, we have many difficulties at the beginning, that is, knowing how to begin and how to route the activity, since none of the members of the group had some knowledge about the different types of projections and the types of distortions that media produce. Before carrying out and investigate about this activity, the panic enters in our group and it was a kind of "chaos", nobody knew what to do or where to start... 

This "chaos" was produced because at school or at high school no one had taught us the distortions that could produce the maps, we simply were teach geography using a type of map, mercator or robinson in my case. From the first cycle of primary, students begin to use maps in order to extend the geographical space that they known. In addition, the teacher must know the elements of a map including the different types of projections and let them know their students.

But finally came the order into the group and everything has been find. Have you ever heard that you should always be willing to learn and acquire new knowledge as future teachers? Well, that did us.

The best moment of the week has been our own behavior, I mean, our faces fascinated to see We were very interested in the fact that the surfaces of the countries do not correspond to the  size of these countries appears in the maps. We considered very interesting the different projections used that nobody had taught to us before, to test these differences.

We, as a group, have putted in common what we have learnt, and we think that there are different types of media that distort the reality and how these distortions affect learning.  We could see it more practically through different map projections, some geographic principles that permit us to differentiate the real and non real world. 

 In addition we also have seen the incompetence of some teachers, who have not taught us the distortions that occur in the different projections and which I consider important. We now learn at university, for example, that the area of Africa is about 14 times that of Greenland, and the in the Mercator projection Greenland appears about the same size of Africa.

Teachers must act as a filter of all the information that comes to the students. We also have to think about how the resources we use affect the vision that students have about reality. Reality has different interpretations, teachers must teach students the highest number of possible interpretations so that they be able to understand others who don´t think like them. For example the fundamentalists of any religion, the Nazis ... get a very distorted and closed education, which does not focus on the reality in which we live, but only part of it (they only are taught a part of reality).

 Also, this activity served us to the following years because we will study Geography in which we will surely seen maps from different projections that we have learned in this practice.

Moreover, some media offered us distorted pictures of reality, for example in many magazines appear images that have been retouched through different programs. The Photoshop is an example of program that distorts the reality.

Futhermore, we have been researched on the internet and we have found images of blue trees or elephants with a peak, which also have been retouched with Photoshop. This distortion of the reality can cause confusion in children.

On the other hand in the political sense, news, tv brands with informational and associated programs, newspapers and magazines tend to give their particular view depending on the ideology or the funds they receive from certain political parties or brand advertisers. 

In the books something similar happens, depending on the publisher and responsible for funding the book, the contents vary from other textbooks. For example when we talking about the history of Spain and Franco. Today textbooks explain that historical facts have economic, political and social causes. Different interpretations of the facts are given and it is explained that historians construct them.

Self-Evaluation

2. Cartography Projections	9
Albert Palazón, Trini Mª	9
Fuentes Marínez, María	9
Gamuz Gea, Miriam	9
Garcerán Conesa, Marina	8
García García, Eva	9
Gómez de Cecilia, Carolina Eva	9
López Serrano, Lola	9
Marín Cano, Alba	8

  

We think that in the activity of the cartographics projections we did since the first moment  a very good work, we divided the work into each member of the group so in some way we depend a lot of each other. For example, if two of them search the wrong information, the other two couldn't work with this information, so we tried to do it the best as possible to have the easiest work for our compains of the group. For this, we think that it was a very good work and it was very completed, at the same time we were very happy with the work of our group this week.
In order to do the portfolio, we looked our blog and we, as always, divided the work, for this, each member of the group did her work but in this time  Alba and Marina didn't work as much as in the other activities so we decided to put them one point less than the others.