Devyani’s Social Studies Blog

This is the URL to my homework:

http://ssmeetsit.edublogs.org/2007/05/30/united-nations-world-issues-reflection/

United Nations World Issues Reflection

1.  Think about the presentations and reflect on the projects your classmates presented and the information you listened to. Explain with details and specific information what you learned, what you found interesting, surprising, or shocking about the presentations you heard in class.

      All of these presentations were really, really amazing because they showed what’s really out there in the world. I never really knew that this was happening until that day that we saw the presentations. Most of the presentations that I saw, were really, really sad (especially the pictures) because where we live, we don’t see much of what is going on but in other places it’s terrible! The presentation that I mainly remembered and that definitely got stuck in my head was biodiversity. In the “biodiversity” presentation done by Hanna, Lara and Sawyer, it was extremely depressing to see all of the animals being killed and there was so much blood. Biodiversity is mainly about the Earth, animals, and plants. It made me want to become vegetarian and it made me think, “Would I want that to happen to me?” The animals are exactly the same as the humans but for some reason, humans think that it’s okay to kill them but it’s not okay for them to kill us. If a crocodile eats a human, it will probably be in most of the newspapers but if a human eats a crocodile it’s like “just another crocodile” to us. I sometimes wish that every single person would take a minute and think about what they’re doing before they actually do it and how it’s affecting everyone and everything. This doesn’t only apply to biodiversity, but also to other topics such as peacekeeping and education. It really amazed me that so many people didn’t get an education but I was very, very happy that people also help others to get one. For example, I remember from watching that iMovie that Oprah Winfrey built a school for children who didn’t have an education. This iMovie on education was by Bryan, Haniff and Mikaela. They did an excellent job on their iMovie!

      Not only did I learn about these topics that are currently being discussed and have already been discussed in the UN, but I also learned some basic facts about presenting and the final product in iMovie. For example, I believe that the “education group” did an excellent job on their iMovie because the music that was in the background fit really, really well with the iMovie itself. I thought that the music made the mood of the iMovie. I also learned that speaking loud and clear helps a lot because I couldn’t really hear some of the people when they were talking since it seemed kind of like they were mumbling. Besides that, HANDS OFF TO EVERYONE because everyone did an excellent, excellent job!

2.  What would you change to improve your project/presentation if you were to do the  assignment again?

      If I were to do the assignment again, I would definitely make the text in the iMovie easier to see because when, I was presenting, nobody could read the text. This flaw really affected the appearance of my iMovie because the audience could only see the pictures. Maybe I should have added narration so that the text not showing wouldn’t have made such a difference. Also, I feel that when I was presenting, I wasn’t very confident because I was kind of “all over the place.”

      Though I would change the things mentioned above, I feel that my iMovie was a real success. We chose the application iMovie, because it had many, many features. The only down side about iMovie is that it takes slightly longer than other applications. That’s the reason my group had to sometimes work during lunch. In the middle of the process of making my iMovie, there was a tragedy though because part of my group broke up so we had one less person but it wasn’t very bad because we definitely managed to cope.