'Star' experience

Hello I’m Clara and I had the role of being the ‘STAR’ this past week.

We had to work in several things this week. First of all, we had to explain how two countries (in our case India and Germany) appear in different projections (Mercator, Azimuthal and Robinson) and their comparisons with the reality. Secondly, we had to interpret the meaning of the sentence “Media are not neutral”, the relationship of this sentence with our work and we had to choose an example of media that distorts the reality. Finally, we had to look for a treasure hunt and explain why we had chosen it.

Being the star of your group is a challenge as well as it involves a huge responsibility. This role implies both things because you are alone in the face of danger, that is, you have to defend a topic without the help of anyone.

Working as the way that we have worked this morning has its advantages and its disadvantages. One the one hand, it was good not to have the whole responsibility of the exposition and it has relaxed me that I had to explain this work with two more partners. In addition, it is a chance in order to learn about the works of the other groups and to compare different points of view. On the other hand, I think that you cannot show all the work that you have been doing along the whole week because you have to reduce that work, to mix it with the works of the other groups and to eliminate some parts of your work. Therefore, it has been a little bit frustrating not to have the chance to show our whole work to our partners.

In spite of this last fact, I think that in general it has been a good experience and a great challenge for the three stars, although I had been nervous, but, I hope you liked it and enjoyed the exposition.

*In this exposition we have worked with "Busy Bees" and "The Umpalumpas". When we gathered all the stars, we changed the points of view of our work and we put in common what each group had made. Next, we decide what star was going to say one part or the other of the exposition, but our mistake was not to take into account the time because we didn't have enough time to finish the exposition that all the stars have prepared.

PS: Below you can find everything that my group and I have prepared to talk about this morning, but finally I have only talked about the Treasure Hunt.

TREASURE HUNT: Cartographic projections.

AKA: “Media are not neutral”

Hello, I’m Clara and I am the star of the group Keep Calm and Keep Organized.  I’m going to talk about some topics: maps’ projections, media (media’s distortion and the sentence “Media are not neutral”) and treasure hunt.

MAPS’ PROJECTIONS

First of all, I’m going to start with maps’ projections. India is in reality almost nine times bigger than Germany, but, are they really presented in maps as they are in reality? Let’s see it.

Mercator’s projection

India has 3, 3 million km2, and Germany has 357,046 km2. However, in Mercator’s map they don’t appear as they really are.

In Mercator’s map India is smaller than their dimensions shown and Germany is bigger. This is because Mercator’s map represents the developed countries larger that they are and the underdeveloped countries smaller. Furthermore, Mercator’s map represents bigger the countries that are further away from the equatorial line, that’s why Germany is also shown bigger.

Azimuthal’s projection

First of all, the Azimuthal projection doesn’t show all the Earth. Moreover, the regions that are far away from the projection’s center have deformations that’s why India is distorted. On the contrary, the Azimuthal map projection shows Germany as it is in reality.

Robinson’s projection

Among the disadvantages of Robinson’s projections we can include that there is a severe distortion close the poles but this drawback doesn’t affect too much India and Germany because they are not very near the poles, that’s why these countries are better presented in this projection and its sizes and shapes are better respected.

Every projection has its advantages and its disadvantages because it is very difficult to flatten the Earth into a sheet without distorting the shape or the proportions of the continents. Therefore, we have chosen the Robinson projection because we consider that it has more advantages than the other and, in addition, it has more advantages than disadvantages. Although it distorts regions along edges, it minimizes errors in sizes, shapes of landmasses and it accurately shows sizes of oceans and distances across land. Furthermore, the National Geography society started to use this projection.

MEDIA

We think media are not neutral for many reasons:

According to TV, we can observe that every channel has a specific ideology. For example, is not the same to watch a debate in ‘La Sexta’ than watch it in ‘Intereconomía.’

As well as media are not neutral, the cartographic projections are not neutral either. Depending on the person and on his/her point of view of the world, the map is going to be in one way or another.

Talking about media, we can see that media make us distort the reality.  For example, when we explain the value of money in class we would use two games, ‘SIMS’ and ‘Monopoly’. Here we can find some contradictions with the reality. For instance, in the SIMS we can do tricks-cheats in order to get money, but, in the reality, money doesn’t grow on trees. In ‘Monopoly’ everyone starts with same amount of money while in the real life, each one has different amount of money because it depends on many factors like each person’s background.

Nevertheless, there are also some advantages when we use those games to explain the value of money. In ‘SIMS’ we earn money based on our job, like in real life. In monopoly, we pay taxes and if we do not pay them, we go to the jail.

We consider that in order to explain the real value of money we would choose ‘SIMS’ because it has less things related to reality. Using this videogame to explain children about the value of money, we can point out a huge contrast between how money is achieved in real life and in virtual life.

TREASURE HUNT

We have chosen a treasure hunt related to the house and its stuff. We have imagined as if we were primary school English teachers and we would start from the beginning, I mean, from the things that surround the children, what they see every day.