Final Portfolio

What I learned and was most interested in this year in World History was: people of all races, culture, gender, religion, age, etc should be treated equally. I also learned that there are many ways to create change and that ideas can turn into big things. An example of this would be when we started working on our revolution unit. We learned about how revolutions work, how they are formed, and what causes revolutions. I did a lot of research in my own project in my Digital Revolution Guidebook. Through this project I learned the effectiveness of violent vs. nonviolent revolutions. I compared the Libyan and Tulip Revolution to portray this and explained what occurred to teach people the effectiveness of these revolutions. Revolutions don’t happen overnight, they require time, dedication, commitment, and sacrifice to see or create a change.

Another example of what I learned would be in our Religion unit. In this unit I learned about different world religions to gain a better understanding of each. I explored Christianity and Judaism in my benchmark. I use prayer as my overall theme. I learned and taught how prayers are in both religions and their meanings. I also tried to show how they are similar in a sense even though they are two different religions, they are closely related. This taught me more about the people around me and different belief systems.

This connects to a journal entry I had written when we started exploring the religion unit. We discussed how certain things influence our thinking and our lives. There are societal standards that is already placed for us to follow. We had a small discussion on how women are portrayed and how they too see themselves the same society has set these standards. For example in journal #27 I discuss the concept of women being sexualized and that they too are brought learning that they must be sexualized beings. This important issue of how the things around us like media influence our daily lives.

This leads into journal #49 where this idea is delved into deeper where gender the difference if gender is discussed. We live in a world where  our gender separates us from our abilities, dressing, and even the way we talk. Gender is a label that separates from female or male. It doesn’t represent who we are as a person or our abilities to do certain things. It’s only the genetic and physical interpretation of what we came out as into this world. I learned that there isn’t a difference between genders, the difference only exists because we make it exist.

Further into the school year we get to a more general idea of society. We discussed the issue of the rich vs. poor, in the response to Pathologies of Power. In the world today the rich see are enjoying the benefits of life while the poor think that they have no reason to exist.There is such a huge gap between these two social classes in the way they live. I have learned that the lack of money makes a huge difference. While the rich are feeding off the luxuries the poor are the ones watching or creating those luxuries through labor. We need both of these social classes in our world to work. Without the poor the rich cannot keep benefitting and without the rich the poor cannot support themselves without their money. It’s a twisted system that requires for there to be a balance of the bad and good.

In conclusion, I have gained a better knowledge of the world and how it operates. I understand the conflicts and struggles that we all face whether its with race, gender, religion, culture, etc. There are so many issues in the world that we can learn about or find ways to help. Concluding this year I feel like I have a deeper understanding of different people, societies, and countries.