Click Here for my project

The countries I chose were Japan and Serbia. The countries share a lot of commonalities involving environmental damages. My project overall discusses all of the five point framework points and also involves the ratings that I gave the country based on their performance. I decided to present my work on a pages document and convert it as a PDF file for online. I created my work in the same layout as a previous student's project at SLA. I really enjoyed the way she showed her project the way everything was organized. It was easy to read and to me I felt it was exotic yet fun and NOT boring.

Deciding on the ratings from the different countries I realized that I had to really be strict about it because this was the real deal to me. I felt as though it was complicated but then again it wasn't. I had a hard time trying to figure out, which number I wanted to give each country based on their environmental damages, climate changes and so forth. It was the point where I had to judge both countries on the same frame point. It got to the point where I didn't really focus on what other people thought because this was my opinion not any one else's.

If I were to do this project again I wouldn't wait til last minute like I did with this project. I would use my time wisely next time. I would also try to use a different kind if layout instead of going straight for Kimbery Bush's layout. It was creative and well thought out I believed I also think that maybe if I would have taken my time doing this project I would have though up a better way to present my work rather then following someone's layout.

​Here is a link to my PDF walk through of my evaluation of Burma and Peru's "collapse-ability".

For this project I examined Burma and Peru. Burma is a country in Southeast Asia, plagued with civil unrest. The people of Burma struggle constantly with the authoritarian government that has committed so many human rights abuses. Peru on the other hand is found in South America where it is frequently exploited for it's precious natural resources such as rich mahogany forests and plentiful gold.
For this project I was blown away by Kim Bush's pdf exploration of India vs. China in terms of collapse-ability. Unfortunately, I lack the artistic skill to really make mine as nice looking as hers, so I was a bit disappointed by my final product. I think the information is good, but I do wish that I had picked a more interested medium.
When comparing these countries, I was supposed to judge them based on the five point framework: environmental damage, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, climate change and society's response to environmental change. This was fairly easy to do with these two countries. I accredit this to the fact that there is fairly plentiful information on these topics for these countries.
If I could change anything about my project, I would have chosen a more interesting/unique format. I briefly thought about doing a prezi, but I came to the conclusion that my laptop is a bit too old, and can hardly handle pop-up ads, let alone the rather draining task of running a prezi.
All in all, I really liked this project as it gave me insight to how a country's strengths and weaknesses can be broken down into a fairly simple set of categories. This new found knowledge will help me in the future to consider how countries rise and fall, and keep that in mind when media hype seems to block out even the strongest of arguments.

Click the picture above for the link to my benchmark. The countries I compared are Mali and Chad. I did research with key words that fit with the 5 point framework and collected articles and blogs that provided decent information. Then I put the scores into Prezi and made a video of my analysis. It was challenging because I had never used Prezi before.

When I had to decide what numbers to give the countries, I found myself torn about exactly what number to give. However, the fact that I judged both countries in the same framework, the numbers seem pretty fair to me. But to someone else, the numbers may seem out of whack. The framework itself seems to cover all of the things that could make a country collapse. The benchmark description also helped make it more straightforward.

Originally, I wanted to make a product similar to Kim Bush's. However, I wanted to make mine more interactive and I am happy that I branched out and tried Prezi. I wish I made my project more visually appealing: more pictures and video in the Prezi itself. Now that I have the experience with Prezi, I could do that more confidently. My other idea that I wanted to try was to make a game show with the two countries. But with my computer having issues and the fact that a video is not interactive, I am glad I stuck with my idea.

 

Here's a link to my IWEB comparison of Brazil vs. Ecuador five point frame work. 

                                     

It's being present in a form of iWeb as you can see above. The whole idea of using online site to create a website is really fun and creative, but I like to kick it back old school just a little. iWeb is actually a really interesting program to use because it allows you to do as many thing as you want on it. You can pick your own template and create your own web page without staying on the internet for too long and you also don't have to worry about the internet crashing on you, deleting your hard work. iWeb live right on your computer and also save every process of your work until the final produces! 

Brazil and Ecuador? Why? Why Braziladorian?
I was actually assigned to work with a group to investigate in issues in the south region and Brazil/Ecuador happened to be my expert. Since I took a lot of time investigated in these two countries, I took some interest in wanting to learn more about the two together and find out it's similarity and differences. The five point frame work gave me an opportunity to learn more about both of the countries together and individually. 


I came up with an idea of making a comparison video between the two countries using footages as well as short video clips to make it more entertaining and active. However, there were not many videos that were informative and useful for this specific project. After all, the iWed didn't fail to let me down, it was a really fun and interesting tool for me to use during the process of building this project. Perhaps it will be fun for others to view and get engage into the iWeb as well. 

When giving this project, I came to a conclusion that I will enjoy putting this project together and enjoy the content part of the project. However, though out the research process, I've learned a lot about both of the countries together and individually. I would say that the research would be the best part of this project. I really enjoyed learning a little more about mining and the relationship that mining have opened Brazil as a whole. Also it was also interesting to know more about Ecuador since it's a small country from the south region that not many people talk about. I would say that learning facts between the two countries opened my eyes to see the other side of these two countries as well as how it's function. 


I decided to make an iWeb to shows my knowledge and understanding form this project. However, if I were to do this project again. I would like to create a game or a video talk rather than using this method to show what I've learn to others. I feel like this is an informative way to teach others about the two countries and it's five points frame work. But it was not one of the most creative or fundamental ways to get viewers active and remember what they learned. 

​In this exercise I think I was the most accurate when it came to females that were able and unable to read and write. I'm not too sure why this was the case because as I was doing this category I really just wanted to give women an advantage that I feel like they don't really have in the real world and when I put all the information together I realized that I was dead on in what I thought and predicted for the women of this world. 


I was the most inaccurate when it came to females with and without a secondary education. Again I tried to give women the benefit of the doubt because i feel like often times women are looked down on and their education isn't valued as much as males so I tried to have a higher portion of women have a secondary education and I ended up being wrong.


I was really shocked to see that not a lot of women had a secondary level of education. I always thought that women were the ones that usually continued their education and men didn't so when I saw that it wasn't really true I was a little taken back. I was also shocked to see how close I was to the males that had and didnt have a secondary education. Although apart of me knew that the numbers weren't as high women I was still expecting higher numbers than what I saw.  

​Analysis

Surprisingly enough, out of the three categories that I chose (Poverty, Geography, Age), I was most accurate compared to the real answers in the Age category. I think I was most accurate in this category mostly because Age is much easier to predict, especially since it is most likely that a majority of people would be middle aged, and a small percentage either kids or old people. The category that I was extremely innacurate, and though it surprised me at first, I found to understand a bit more, was the Poverty. I was mostly innacurate because i assumed that basically everyone would be working with more than 2 USD a day when the real truth is around the world, there are many people that work under that. It is sort of split straight down the middle. The real/correct answer that really surprised me the most would be that almost 50% of the 100 people work under 2 USD. Its not only surprising, but it is also sad to really realize that the truth is most people around the world are actually working on that type of wage. The one that honestly didnt surprise me was that 60 out of 100 people would be from Asia. That is the case because there a huge amount more people around there, especially since not only are you including Asian/Chinese, but you are including Middle Eastern countries like Iraq and such. Some of my predictions were a bit off for some like the Geography, but I was more or less trying to split the population down the middle more than really realize the truth to how many people would actually be real and on point. Overall, I found it pretty surprising the outcomes I found out and it was pretty knowledgable.

1. My answers tend to be really off, because I tend to think of the good as too good and the bad as too bad.

2. What really shocked me the most was the access to drinking water, i would've never guessed that 87% of people have clean water to drink.

3. But soon I predict that clean water levels will drop due to pollution, and that sooner or later everyone will have a cellphone in the world no matter how poor


*I plan on turning in better work down the line next assignement

​Estimated Literacy

Analysis: It appears that I was the closest to the correct answer in the first graph on the left, labeled “Literate Men” than in the other three. I was actually more accurate than the class average. However in the next three graphs, for “Illiterate Men”, “Literate Women” and “Illiterate Women” my estimations were way off. For categories “Illiterate men”, my answer was closer to the correct answer but only because the class average’s estimation was more off than mine. For “Literate Women” my answer fell just under that of the class averages’ and they both fell very short of the correct answer. For “Illiterate Women” my answer was the most incorrect, the correct answer was so much less than that of both the class average and my answer. I found it interesting that our class as a whole thought that there would be much less of a gap between illiterate women and men.

Estimated World Language

Analysis: For this graph I noticed that the class average was always pretty off, but we were the most off for the category labeled “Speak other languages” located at the end on the right. My answer was closest to the correct answer for the number of people who would speak Chinese, Hindustani and Bengali. I over shot the majority of the languages; I based my numbers off of the most popular languages that are taught in schools in America today. It turns out that the most popular would be Chinese, Malay-Indonesian and other languages. This category proved to be the one that the class as a whole was the most off, which is also shown on the next graph.

Estimated Secondary Language

Analysis: My estimations were pretty dead on, for each section my answer fell either just under or just above the correct answer. The class average stayed around the same number (50) even though the categories changed. For example, Men with Secondary Education, the class average fell just under fifty, and Men without Secondary Education the class average fell right at fifty. I think that it’s interesting that the class average doesn’t change as far as secondary education between women and men.

All categories:

Part 4: My most inaccurate category was Language, I was way off, and my most accurate category was Secondary Education. I’m not quite sure why I was much more accurate for secondary education than the other categories. But Like I said earlier, I have a hunch that the reason that I was so inaccurate for Language was because I used my own general understanding about popular languages. I only used the most popular languages taught in the United States, I didn’t factor in to languages taught in other places in the world. Since these charts would reflect the whole world that probably didn’t help me in the end. The answer that shocked me the most was how many people would speak other languages, the class average and my answer was both estimated that 5%-10% of the world would speak languages that weren’t listed when in actuality 51.8%, that’s half of the world who would speak languages that weren’t listed. I was surprised at how many languages I didn’t know existed/ account for. I showed me how limited my knowledge was about languages, since I would like to become a translator in the future I was really taken back by how inaccurate my numbers turned out being (especially because that was the one section I felt most confident in). Overall my numbers were pretty off I think that happened because I haven’t been paying as much attention to current events that have been happening in the world. I do find the majority of these categories interesting, but I haven’t been paying as much attention as I could be and will do more often.