PRACTICE 3: TREASURE HUNT. CARTOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS
• First of all I would like to say that our group have chosen Australia and United Kingdom to do this activity because there are many differences between them such as one is the northern hemisphere (Australia) and the other is in the southern hemisphere (United Kingdom); their size is different; and the United Kingdom was and still is, one of the world's most powerful nations.
• Map Projections (Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal).
- What is a map? A map is a representation of all or part of the Earth drawn on a flat surface at a specific scale. Maps were devised because they are much easier to use, store, and transport than globes, and they facilitated the development of much larger scaled representations than was the case with a globe.
- What is a map projection? A map projection is a method used to transfer the features of a globe, such as the lines of latitude and longitude and the outlines of continents, onto the flat surface of a map. This was originally done with the use of a light to project the shadow of a wire-skeleton globe onto a flat surface―hence the term “projection.” The three major types of projections developed from this method are the cylindrical, planar, and conic.
Before starting explaining the differences between the three maps, I would like to say that in all of them appears a distortion, so they are not exactly as the reality.
• Mercator Projection by Gerardus Mercator (1563 - 1569):
- PROS: The Mercator projection is one of the most common systems in use today and it was specifically designed for nautical navigation. Being a cylindrical projection, Mercator shows a great deal of the globe and is thus very good for world maps.
- CONS: The Mercator projection is very accurate in equatorial areas but at high and middle latitudes begins to appear a distortion. You can see for example this distortion on the poles. One of the worst characteristics of Mercator is that it severely distorts area. If you see the size of Greenland and South America, they are almost identical, so if you only studied the Mercator, and haven’t looked at a globe, you would come to the conclusion that Greenland is larger than South America, and South America is actually 8 times the size of Greenland. This is because the countries in the northern hemisphere appear with a larger size than they really have, and the countries of the southern hemisphereappear smaller than they actually are.
- What is a map? A map is a representation of all or part of the Earth drawn on a flat surface at a specific scale. Maps were devised because they are much easier to use, store, and transport than globes, and they facilitated the development of much larger scaled representations than was the case with a globe.
- What is a map projection? A map projection is a method used to transfer the features of a globe, such as the lines of latitude and longitude and the outlines of continents, onto the flat surface of a map. This was originally done with the use of a light to project the shadow of a wire-skeleton globe onto a flat surface―hence the term “projection.” The three major types of projections developed from this method are the cylindrical, planar, and conic.
Before starting explaining the differences between the three maps, I would like to say that in all of them appears a distortion, so they are not exactly as the reality.
- PROS: The Mercator projection is one of the most common systems in use today and it was specifically designed for nautical navigation. Being a cylindrical projection, Mercator shows a great deal of the globe and is thus very good for world maps.
• Robinson Projection by Professor Arthur E. Robinson(1963):
- PROS: The Robinson projection was developed to show the entire Earth with less distortion of the area. It looks more beautiful than the others.
- CONS: In this projection the world appears like an oval; however, the poles appear as lines rather than as points.
• Azimuthal Projection
- PROS: These maps are useful for navigation; distances from or through the map centre are true and also the directions from the map centre to any other point.
- CONS: These maps cannot show the whole earth. Typically these projections show about half of the earth; so they are not good for world maps.
• What could be the best projection for being used in a classroom?
We discussed about this question, and we finally decided that Mercator projection is better for children who live in Europe because as I said before, it is very accurate in equatorial areas; and also Europe appears in the “centre” of the map, therefore it will be easier for European children to learn and orientate themselves. But Robinson projection could be better for children who lives e.g. in India. In any case we think that for little kids will be suitable starting with Mercator projections, and gradually learn more complex maps.
• Search another example of one specific media:
Media (news, movies, TV...) can sometimes distort reality and alter society's behaviour:
Our example
- VIDEO GAMES, specifically CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE SERIES
Video games industry is the biggest entertainment industry in the world (bigger than cinema, music, dvd’s, etc). The worldwide videogame market is worth $93 Billion in 2013. But war videogames (first-person shooters mostly) can desensitize and trivialize war. E.g. the Call of Duty Series, one of the most famous and best-selling videogames of all times, gives children a very pro-Western and black-and-white vision of reality. The heroes of the story are mainly North-American or European (Anglo-Saxons mainly), and the terrorist villains are mostly Russian or Middle Eastern countries related.
E.g. in CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 2 “NO RUSSIAN” STAGE, players assume control, joining a group of Russian ultranationalist terrorists enacting an airport massacre. You can shoot innocent people just for fun:
PLAY THE BEGINNING OF VIDEO: CALL OF DUTY MW2 “NO RUSSIAN”
How can we mitigate its effects: teaching children war is not a game, and pain and suffering is real. We can show them more friendly videogames, talk about how bad wars are, show them documentaries, tell stories about war (but nothing too bloody, of course). And mostly, children AND parents must respect the ESRB Ratings Guide.
• Find on the web another good example of a treasure hunt.
-We find on the web another good example of a treasure hunt which name is “Animals of the wold”. This treasure hunt is prepared to do in a primary school with children who are 11-12 years old, in about 1.30h.
-They have to do teams of 3 or 4 students each one and they have to use computers to do it; so the only inconvenient is that schools have to have an area with computers.
-They have to do teams of 3 or 4 students each one and they have to use computers to do it; so the only inconvenient is that schools have to have an area with computers.
-In this activity children have to look for information about these animals that appeared in this URL web sides and they have to answer the following question: “Where are they in the world?”
-At the end of this activity, students learn how to obtain and use information from the web, while improving their comprehension and reading skills among others.
STAR: Irene Martinez Bermúdez
No comments:
Post a Comment