Eva and Trini: our stars for this week.

Hi!!! We are the  STARS 

We are Trini and Eva from C’mon Tutankamon and we want to expose something we will have to keep in mind in our future job as teacher of primary education. In our class, when we are going to choose some  resources  we have to think what kind of resource, how and why because all of this has an impact in our students.

This week we were working on this project related with the distortion of the reality and as an example to understand we choose the topic “Cartographic projection” that can show us in a fast view a global vision about the Earth (in this case) or some part of it. But it wasn’t as easy as it seem. Why? Let me tell you as simple as I can.

We are sure all of you know what a 3D and 2D plane means, right? Well, so the Earth is a globe, like a balloon (3D) and you can see all its parts if you rotate it but… if we take this globe and we want to turn it into a paper (2D) we will ALWAYS have some time of distortion (A deformity of the reality so we don’t see exactly what real Earth looks like).

Having that clear we had to investigate about three types of projections and the way they distort the reality: Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal.

In the post before our pretty facilitator Carolina explain all the aspects of these three cartographic projections so I will just sum up them easily saying in each one why we think it would be better or worse for our students.

Robinson: I doesn’t eliminate the distortion of everything (areas, distances, shapes, etc..) but keeps the levels of it low and give you a global vision of the world.

Mercator: As we move further from the meridian 0º the distortion increases, more in the north hemisphere than in the south. So it can give a wrong idea of the world by putting more importance in the countries in the north (more developed ones). We also must say that this projection wasn’t made for schoolers, it was made for sailor, to facilitate their navigation through ocean and sees around world.

Azimuthal: This projection just give a vision of the part of the world we are focus in. This could be bad for our pupils because they can think that only exist this part of the world, and if we put the other part in another azimuthal projection next to maybe children don’t know how to continue and mix both pictures so we think it would be difficult for them and not clear. Also as move further from the point we are focus in the distortion is bigger.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooo…..

We think the best option is ROBINSON PROJECTION because can give the students a global vision of the world and it has a distortion all around the map and in all the aspect but just a little.

But there are other ways the reality we live in is distort and we have to aware our pupils that everything is not what is seem... 

Do your students know that there is a lot of media distorting their reality…?

For example, our students about to be teenager see at the media (TV, magazines, ads...) womenand men who look so attractive, perfect and beautiful and then they look themself in the mirror and realice they look different. But is this the reality? NO. It oly gives a wrong ideal of beauty. Modern programs like  Photoshop  can change the reality in the way we want to, so they distort the world we live in. 

Pick here to know why we have a stupid ideal of beauty

That can be so treacherous for our students because their streets and media are plenty of all of these photos and videos distorted and they maybe can get obsessed thinking this is the reality and they have to be like all of this "models" to fit in the society. 

The worst part of it all is that this can lead our studentsnto be very unhappy and even have some eating disorder like bulimia, anorexia... or think they don't worth anything.

But Photoshop can decieve students from younger ages by false sceneries, animals and other things created by it. To put an example to see it clearly children can be on internet and find sceneries with blue trees, an elephant with a beak of a duck etc... and maybe they can think all of these creations are real.

In order to avoid it we have to aware our students that programmes like photoshop exist and teach them how to differenciate among false world and reality.

Treasure hunt

We have made all this investigation by a  methodology  called treasure hunt.  It is an activity that by giving lacks to the children, they should investigate and discover a topic by themselves. This activity is a good way for learning and it improves the research capacity of children.

The example of treasure hunt is about the body. There are 8 questions about it and later, there is big question. For do it this activity, there are these links, and children can look for on the internet with these links.

This is the link of our treasure hunt.

Post written by:

Trini María Albert Palazón

Eva García García