http://collapse5pointframework.weebly.com/

​For my benchmark I choose the Bulgaria and El Salvador. To complete this project I review information that I gathered in past work in class taking some information and implementing it in my project. As well as looking up additional information wot work with. After all my information was gathered i had to figure out how I wanted to present my information. I attmepted to use wordpress but  I had difficulty manuevering the website so i use something I knew i could work with.
Working with the five point frame work made making this much easier for me. Reasearching information also became easier because I alreayd knew what i was lookingfor and the information would be easier to digest. If I had to change anything about my project it would most likely be the layout of my project. As of right now it looks satisfatory but I feel like I could havemade it more entertaining and pleasing to the eye. Other than that I dont think i would change much about my project.

​Reflection

For this project, I researched the countries of Taiwan and Armenia. Taiwan is an island to the south east of the Chinese mainland, while Armenia was one of the first European countries to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Both of these countries have similar problems like irreversible environmental damage of its environment, they both have a past with hostile neighbors who have tried to overthrow both nations, and both have presidents who are not putting as much importance into environmental policies as they should be. The difference is that Taiwan keeps connections with its hostile neighbor China, because it benefits the island’s trade levels, while Armenia has not communication with Azerbaijan because of their dispute over territory. Another difference is that Taiwan is much more industrialized than is Armenia. This puts Taiwan on a higher range in the trade category, but on a  lower range on the Environmental soundness category. Armenia is less industrialized and relies on mining  for trade, putting them lower on both the trade and the environmental soundness categories. In essence, both countries have their kinks to work out. Though they continue to stand as nations, they must first resolve these small problems in order to avoid collapsing.

My process of this project was very tedious. Because of family circumstances, I am currently living in my grandmother’s house with no internet access, and was there fore obligated to use a smart phone for most of my research. I spent most of my free time these past two days researching these two countries and incorporated the information that I used for my “global trade, local cost” blog post in my benchmark for Taiwan’s information. I tried as hard as I can to fit this benchmark into my free time, but had so many things going on, that it was difficult to get a lot of information for the project in my work periods. 

The Five points framework helped me because it gave me a guideline to follow for my research of the two countries. The easiest point on the framework was the climate and environmental damage category. There is a lot of information out there about the steps that international countries are taking build a greener environment. The hardest point on framework to research was the hostile neighbor category. Most of the hostile relationships of these two countries occurred many years ago. It was hard to find credible resources for this information, as most of these disputes are either settled or looked over currently. 

If I could do this project one more time, I would start it earlier. As mentioned, I had a lot of work to do during the transcourse of this project, and feel as though if I would have started earlier, I could have finished earlier and saved myself some last minute stress. I would have started my research of Armenia a little earlier, as I did Taiwan. Prior research of Taiwan helped me in the process of completing this project, so I feel like I should have done the same for Armenia.

This project got me thinking about or Collapsibility range. The United States has friendly neighbors, and has friendly trade partners, but also has a lot of debt to countries like China. We also are a large nation, which put us to an advantage. We are also taking measures to create a greener environment and give voice to the people for modifications of law and government. I feel like the United States is pretty stable, accept for our trade patterns. If we don’t pay back our debt and start to take care of the resources that we have (we can’t use too much of our resources), we might collapse.

For my project, click here ;)

         For my Q3 Benchmark, I selected Slovakia, which is located in Central Europe, and Afghanistan, which is located in Central Asia. They both are basically completely different countries that have many differences and some similarities in many ways. I basically rated the collapsibility of each country based on the five point framework from Jared Diamond's "Collapse". The five point framework is Environmental Damage, Society's response to environmental problems, Friendly trade partners, and hostile neighbors. The process was pretty interesting for me, especially the time. I spent most of my time researching whereas I should have started putting toghether the project. For the wordpress work, we put our country's sources under the five point framework and it made it easier for me to put toghether the project. One thing I do think I should have done is I should not have procrastinated alot. Most of the time I pushed the BM off thinking I had time to do it but it soon came time to finish it up and I had a bit of trouble with time management. I did put alot of effort and time into the BM though, spending hours doing research and developing the best responses and collapsibility ratings for my countries, going in deep detail and long explanation. I also spent a large amount of time trying to find photos to make the product look nice and creative. Overall, I think my project is put together well and has good information entailed in it. As for the 5 point framework, doing the research was definitely the hardest part of all, especially because you needed the research to develop a true statement. Other than that, I think the 5 point framework was relatively easy to deal with and I think I had the necessary tools to assess the five point framework for my countries in my own mind. It was pretty straightforward, it just needed the time and thinking and that is exactly what I spent time doing and perfecting.  If I could change one thing about my product, it would probably be the design or the format, because I feel like I could have taken it to another level with creativity; nevertheless, I think I did a great job overall. I would also try to take back time and start the project earlier while doing the research so that i could multitask and get more done. I think this was a fantastic BM that really tested my ability to assess my countries and really learn a deeper understanding of the possible things that might make a country collapse and have problems, and how many of those problems are intertwined. I had a great experience that I definitely recommend to the students next year.

The countries I examined for this benchmark were Poland and El Salvador. Poland is located in Eastern Europe (bordering the Baltic Sea) and El Salvador is in Central America. Both have been experiencing environmental damage and climate change due to heavy pollution from the local population and industries. Although El Salvador's conditions are much harsher, the people have done more to react to the damage and conditions than Poland's people have. However, the two nations are both stable when it comes to trade and neither one of them have an overhanging threat of war. 

I was able to come across all this information by doing very in depth research. Going into this benchmark, I already had information on Poland's environmental damage because of previous assignments. So, I just took a step forward and researched the affects of this environmental damage, and most of the sources I came across also included information about Poland's response to the damage and climate change. Looking at the path I walked down when researching this with Poland (my keywords and google news searches), I merely did the same thing with El Salvador. Any general information or named organizations I came across I then researched separately to see what that was all about. Furthermore, researching the friendly trade partners and hostile neighbors were also very closely interlinked. I began with the CIA World Factbook for general information on what they trade, who they trade with, and what international problems/disputes they had recently. From there, I searched other sources for more specific information and facts. Also, if I did not come across much information this way on the hostile neighbors, I simply looked up who the neighbors of the two countries were and searched for the relations between the countries and their neighbors. This gave me the information I needed. 

So, finding the information for the 5-point framework was simple enough. But, ranking them was a different story. I wasn't sure how to tell if certain conditions were necessarily "irreversible" or how much events that happened decades before affected the international relations of today. Therefore, actually analyzing the countries' collapsibility this way was a little difficult. 

In the end, the only regret I have for my project is that it isn't very creative. I spent all my time and energy collecting facts and sources, so the only creative part of my project was that I made a little "red-to-green scale" video for my ranking - which I can't even show on SLATE. If I had more time to actually put the information together and more room around all my fact and information, I would have put in more pictures and maybe videos of interviews that I came across. However, as my project stands now, I am content. I did the best I could with researching and getting the information across and it is not horrible to look at. I'm satisfied.