This week, I am... The Facilitator!

My role this week, is the facilitator.

The facilitator is the boss of the group, and he or she has to coordinate and organize the work of every member in the group.

The facilitator is the key person in the solution of personal affairs between members.

And finally, to finish  with this point, the facilitator must be the administrator of the Web.

As I have said previously, the facilitator is responsable for coordinating the different tasks that we need to do to successfully perform entries in our blog and our presentation.

For this reason, I decided to distribute the work between everybody since we should make different parts.

Firstly, we have to explain waht is a Creative Common Licence in more or less  10 slides.

Next we must explain how we can do a good and interesting presentation and how we have to créate and design a perfect one. Since, I am the facilitator I decided in collaboration and with the consent of my classmates to arrange the tasks in the following manner:

- Alba and Marina, who are the stars would beresponsible for making the powerpoint related to the “Creative Common Licence”.

- Carolina and Lola, who are the facilitator and the journalist, have to make the powerpoint about how to make the powerpoint about how to do a good presentation in 10 slides.

- Trini, Eva and Miriam have to make a powerpoint about how the presentation design should be: again in 10 slides.

- Maria had to make the powerpoint for the presentation in class. First of all, it was going to be about the senses, but in the end, after the class last Thursday, we understood that it was not as we thought and decided between all of us to change the theme for a more original one.

We decided to change the theme of the senses by another. We had several options as for example climate change, the sims... but we decided on the different regions who live together. Alba and Marina be responsible for drawing up the powerpoint and Maria subsequently would review it and would make the necessary modifications.

I have to say that the this week´s task has been different from previous tasks because this week we have studied how to make a good presentation, although in other weeks we have focused on the aspects indicated but the teacher in the virtual classroom. Then, we had to study them and make a presentation, but without really knowing how it should be.

One of the things in which I have had to intervene as shown in my role was in the moment in which we had to change the subject and to rearrange everything a little again.

It is important to say that we had a bug in powerpoint since we not put references along with the images, which I had also to intervene and Alba and Marina changes this on Monday afternoon because the powepoint have to appear perfectly later.

This week, the roles are:

-Facilitator: Lola

-Journalist: Carolina

- Analyst: Eva

-Curator Farmer: Miriam and Trini

-Translater: Maria

-Stars: Alba and Marina

We are Curator-farmers!

Hello, we are Alba and Marina and this week our role has been curator-farmer, we have organized all the web pages where we have found interesting information, and also photos and videos about the topic of this week: Cartographic Projection.

You can see all the things that we have used, they are in our pearltrees: 

And the analyst this week is... Maria!

Hello everybody, I am María Fuentes Martínez, this week I am the Analyst and I have had to evaluate each member of our group as well as the work of the whole group. Moreover, I have to answer some questions related with this second practice: “Treasure hand: cartographic projections”

a.       What was the best part of the activity?

The best part of the activity was the concepts that we have learnt, because none of us knew that the countries shown on maps and that have always been taught us in school, college ... 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).

b.      What was the worst?

From my point of view, the worst of this activity has been 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.

c.       What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?

The best moment of the week has been our own behavior, I mean, our faces fascinated to see 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.

d.      What have you learnt?

We have learnt 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).

e.      What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks?

We are a united group and we have a good organization, although we work in different ways and each of us have different opinions, we use this diversity of opinions to enrich our work. The opinion of each of us is taken into account and our base as a group is the trust we have in all of us.

f.        What do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks?

What we need to improve as a group is the availability of each of us to meet together to do the work. Because of extracurricular activities we cannot meet all together and we are always missing someone when we meet for doing a practice. Thus we need to distribute the work and it is a little more complicated to work.

g.       How THIS content is related to other contents in the course and in your degree?

During this first year of the degree there are not any subjects in which the contents related with the practice Treasure Hand are given. But in the following years we will be given Geography in which we will surely seen maps from different projections that we have learned in this practice.

h.       There is any evident social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?

        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. Now if you want to see how the Photoshop transforms a woman in 38 seconds check this link:

Moreover, 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.

   Futhermore, all the analysts have done an explanation of the distortion of the reality, and how media distort it.

As I have mentioned before, I have had to grade each member's work, using the following rubric. I'll rate from 1 to 5 depending on the involvement and responsibility in the group.

	Trini Mª Albert Palazón	Lola López Serrano	Eva García García	Marina Garcerán Conesa	Alba Marín Cano	Carolina Eva Gómez de Cecilia	Miriam Gamuz Gea
Implications in the group	5	4	5	3	4	5	3
Creativity in the contributed ideas.	5	4	3	2	3	5	3
Collaboration: helps when she is needed	5	5	5	3	5	5	4
Good work	5	5	5	3	4	5	3
Punctuality when we meet together to do the practice	5	5	5	5	5	5	5
Endeavour	4	5	4	3	4	5	4
Final Grade	29	28	27	19	25	30	22

Hi! I'm Miriam and this week I'm the Translator.

Projection map: Is a systematic transformation of the latitudes and longitudes of locations on the surface of a sphere or an ellipsoid into locations on a plane. Map projections are necessary for creating maps. All map projections distort the surface in some fashion. Depending on the purpose of the map, some distortions are acceptable and others are not; therefore different map projections exist in order to preserve some properties of the sphere-like body at the expense of other properties. There is no limit to the number of possible map projections.

Distortion: is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of something, such as an object, image, sound or waveform. Distortion is usually unwanted, and so engineers strive to eliminate distortion, or minimize it. In some situations, however, distortion may be desirable.

Treasure Hunt: is a minor activity in relation to the WebQuest.

In this activity, students should not carry out a complex task, you only need 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: 

- A Brief Introduction on the subject which may include an explanation of the task that the student will perform. 

- A set of more or less difficult questions, depending on the level and age of the students. 

- The "big question" that must be answered after thinking about all the information obtained. 

- Links to web pages where students will find the answers. 

-  An assessment section where you explain how you are going to rate the task performed.

The Earth Ecuador, is the plane perpendicular to the axis of rotation of a planet and passing through its center.

-  Divide the planet's surface into two parts, the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.

-  The latitude of Ecuador is 0 °.

-  The plane of Ecuador "short" the planet's surface on an imaginary line (great circle) which is exactly the same distance from the geographic poles (line equidistant from the North Pole Ecuador and the geographical South Pole).

-  The equatorial circle of the Earth is about 40,075 km. Its radius is 6371 km.

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 varies.

-  Broadcast media such as radio, recorded music, film and television transmit their information electronically.

-  Print media use a physical object such as a newspaper, book, pamphlet or comics, to distribute their information.

-  Outdoor media -commercial buildings, sports stadiums, shops and buses, blimps, and skywriting.

-  Public speaking and event organizing can also be considered as forms of mass media.

-  The digital media comprises both Internet and mobile mass communication.

-  Internet media provides many mass media services, such as email, websites, blogs, and internet based radio and television

-  The organizations that control these technologies, such as television stations or publishing companies, are also known as the mass media.