Globalization Benchmark : Collapse'ibility

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Here is a link to my benchmark

The countries that I selected were Russia and Democratic Republic of Congo. I was given Russia as my country for an election project where I had to get someone in another country to perform an interview on someone who was currently voting that year. My country for my region project that I chose was the Democratic Republic of Congo. The DRC is located in Central Africa and was formerly known as Zaire. For my benchmark I chose to a Google site because it was something that could easily be accessed by everyone in the viral world. The 5 point framework for my countries was relatively  simple to explain because both of my nations are very popular nations throughout the world for various different things. If I could change one thing about my product, I would add more visuals and add more interactivity so that my audience would be more compelled to stay on my site and would have more to do than just read information.

Madagascar And Liberia Collapse 'iblity'

This is my project on the collapse probability of these countries collapsing.

Reflection:
I have selected Madagascar and Liberia. Madagascar is a island of the coast of Africa. LIberia is a costal city around Sierra Leone in Africa. 

The process I went through the process of creating a prezi.I picked a format to capture the audience attention and made it colorful.

The 5 point framework was easy, I could easily figure out the countries' standing in them. The only exception was that I had trouble find hostile neighbors for my countries.
I found this benchmark to be easy and fun to do. I like the fact I chose a prezi instead of anything else

"Collapse"ibility - Q3 Benchmark

The project is also viewable online here.

The countries of my project are Egypt and Greece. The research on information about these two countries was not as hard. However, it became really difficult to find information about "Society Response to Environmental Problems", due to the overshadowing presence of other current issues like financial crisis, Egypt's revolution, etc. It was fairly easy to find an approach of presenting the information. I chose to compare Egypt and Greece side as I go through each of the 5 points framework. Jared Diamond's 5 points framework was an interesting theory to assess a country's collapse'ibility. On the other hand, the framework was reflected based mostly on past civilization that does not seem to adequately apply to today world. The main reason was due to the hyper connected world as a result of today technology. Therefore, it is hard to single out a country to examine whether it is going to collapse. The process for this benchmark could have been much better if I began a bit sooner! I guess I never learn the lesson of procrastination. I should make my product more interactive and some graphs.



Macbeth- Sadie Sprague-Lott

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Yadi Angeles - India vs. Mauritania

Reflection
My places were India and Mauritania. I basically just looked up all the information I could about India, the damage and climate change, hostile neighbors and friendly trade partners, and after having a good idea of what I thought about India, I looked up Mauritania and did the same thing. 
The 5 point framework, was in one way simple. Because it was a direct way to be able to figure out a country in a "short" amount of time, but also made you look deeply into each category. Like looking into India. I found out India was not only hostile but also trade partners with China. That was really interesting. So the way it's broken into categories is really helpful because that way I can more easily compare India as a whole and through little groups. 
If there was one thing I could change, I'd change the lack of information on Mauritania because I feel like I wasn't able to fully analyze and compare the two countries if I barely had any information on one. 
I really didn't like that there was almost no information on Mauritania, but so much information on India. I wasn't sure whether to direct my anger towards being assigned this place, or towards the stereotypical ignorance that we have for Africa in general. Either way, I was quite angry and wasn't entirely sure what to do about it. 



Egypt vs. Brazil

I worked on the comparison between Egypt and Brazil. As far as what I get to know, this is kind of a comparison between social incongruity and stability. I first did the whole thing wrong and did neither the framework or the grading. I happened to be working on the industry and economy facets at the beginning so I have to do it all over again. If I would do this again, I have to work harder on the citations, which is always something I am confused with. Also I have to read the requests more carefully. This benchmark is not hard but really took a lot of effort. I would be searching more data and information about the topic. Some information is not that evident, but it still explains a lot of things. While doing the project, it is really hard to find reliable sites and official explanations.

https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/presentation/d/1CfX5ASsswwoiveZLv057CjzaoNc9bPMuav0GOr-XU6s/edit#slide=id.g328ab7e_1_49

France vs Romania

Based in the theory of Five point Framework from the book Collapse by Jared Diamond, this project above was made with the propose of evaluate and grade (0-10) the collapsibility of two country by comparing each other.

 

The first country France, officially called the French Republic. It’s the second largest country in Europe (with 65,350,000 of people). The capital is Paris; the official language is the French, and the currency the Euro. They have a unitary semi-presidential constitutional republic government. 

 

In the other hand we have Romania, a Southern European country, with a smaller population (just 19,042,936 people). The capital is Bucharest; the official language is Romanian, and their government is unitary semi-presidential republic. Like France, Romania also has as currency the Euro.

 

Both part of the European Union and they are in a very good condition of life in general. Those facts make harder the job of evaluate collapsibility and the criterion to grade it. Also my knowledge in cybernetics is poor, this I would like to change in a future presentation.

 

Overall by the process of making this project, I enjoy it and learned a lo about those two countries, and I was very impress with how those five point framework apply to any community, and even those that we think are very advance, had their point where they are weak. 

Q3_EnglishBM

For my Q3 English benchmark I was to write an essay on either Macbeth or Lady Macbeth's change over the course of the play.  I chose to show Lady Macbeth's change. For the second part of the assignment I was to creatively show Lady Macbeth's change. I did this by making news articles following Lady Macbeth as the play progressed. 
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Macbeth Project

This is my project for English on Macbeth. I started this project with an idea I was given, and made it into my own special thing. I grabbed my friends and used quotes to form a gameshow type setting. I read them the quotes and they answered with an analysis. I filmed all of the segments and then added cheering, quotes, and soundtracks. This is the culmination of our efforts. Enjoy!

Bartholomew_Macbeth_BM

For my quarter three benchmark, our assignment was a Macbeth quote Analysis piece, followed by a creative piece. My creative piece is a mini movie, featuring all the quotes. As the movie goes on, the text of the quote grows a deeper red, which represents the guilt and pain felt by Lady Macbeth as the play continued. 

Brian Birkmire Macbeth BM

I got the idea from watching peoples examples. Basically, I took my quotes from my written part of the benchmark, and acted those scenes out with help from friends. We used some props to make the scene seem more realistic. I'm happy with my outcome, it only took about two periods to record everything, I'm very proud of myself and thankful for my friends helping and getting it done.

Ayanna Robinson History Benchmark Q3

North Korea and Mauritania


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North Korea is located on the Korean Penninsula between China and South Korea. They are an incredibly hostile country that constantly breaches the contracts of the United Nations at the risk of losing trade partners. Fortunately for them, China is a big enough ally and power to protect them. 

Mauritania is a LDC (least developed country). They have an almost nonexistent economy and many water and crop problems. They're located in the western corner of Africa surrounded by Mali., Senegal, Morocco and Algeria.


My first thought for this project was how to make my project not boring without forcing myself to do more than I was capable. I instantly thought my best bet would be a Prezi, because not only can I work well through Prezi, it is easy to make an entertaining and knowledgeable project through it. I did all of my research first; using the five point framework as the basis of everything I gathered. Once I had all the research I placed them in the proper categories and graded each country. 
The five point framework was pretty straightforward except for climate and environmental damage. In some instances, it was hard to tell what was a climate change problem and what was a environmental problem. In a lot of situations they can be interchangeable so it was hard to decide which would go where. 
The one thing I would change about the project would be the final product. I think having a verbal debate rather than turning in a physical project is more effective. At the end, the entire class can vote on the grades for the five point framework of the country. 

Natalie Sanchez History Benchmark Q3


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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.


5 Point Framework, Collapse - Gonzalez

I decided to try and cover all of Sub Saharan Africa. That didn't work out to well but I also covered south korea. Sub Saharan Africa consist of many small countries, and it's a desert area where the outcome of everything basically depends on the weather. If they don't have rain they will not have crops and they will go trough a drought. South Korea has no real problems other than North Korea being north of it and the pollution in the air from all the industry in the general area. It is surrounded by water and is relatively close to china and japan. 

If I where to change one thing about the project I would change my work ethic and how much I payed attention to deadlines. I totally forgot that this project was due until monday morning when it was brought up in class. So next time I plan on looking at moodle more often. As the project progressed I choose to use the research from my other projects and summarized it based on the five point framework. To me if you read collapse the five point frame work is very easy to understand. Because of the fact that it gives a few examples while the first chapter goes on. 

Emma Hersh Globalization Q3 Benchmark

Collapsibility of Mali and the UK

​Here is the link to my text, sources and compare and contrast on these two nations 

Reflection: 

Mali and the UK are two very different countries on every level, one is a third world country with a very underdeveloped economy while the UK is a first world country with a very stable and developed economy. This project began when our class started the Global Goods and Local Costs projects, researching and analyzing different countries in a certain part of the world. I researched the UK, so my process of looking at the UK through the lens of the 5-point-framework began there. Then our class looked at different countries to see how their election worked, my group was in charge of researching Mali, so the second part of my research began there. Once I started finding information about each of these countries, the news links and data from each of these kept flowing as more and more links popped up. From there I was able to analyze each of these countries through the lens of the 5-point-framework which looked at the way different countries handles climate change, friendly trade partners, hostile neighbors, environmental damage and how the society reacts to environmental damage. Then I organized my information in an order that was simple and easy to understand, printed it out and made it into a mobile so that each part of the 5-point-framework could be visually connected. If I could change something about my project, I would find a way to digitally represent my information in a similar way to a mobile, like I did on paper, but instead make it more accessible to the internet. 
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Collapse Ratings: Uganda & Algeria


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​Here's the link to my benchmark. 

Overall, this benchmark was a little challenging, but nothing that couldn't be handled. It taught me a lot about my election day country and one of the countries from my group study. I wanted to really go beyond what I needed to do for this project and even though I found myself cramming work in during the end, I feel like my overall project is pretty good. There are still a few things that need to be added onto the project, but for the most part, it's finished. 
I selected Algeria and Uganda. Both countries reside in Africa (Algeria in the north and Uganda in Subsaharan). Although they both come from the same place, they're not equal in achievements and developments when it comes to the five point framework. Algeria is a little more advanced in its development of a country whereas Uganda still has a lot of trouble with natural resources, neighboring and societal issues. 
I began doing my research a little later than I had expected to, but once I got to it, it wasn't really that hard to do. I did my research and made sure to make notes as I went along during the process. Once I had done the majority of my resources, I put it together in a PDF document that showed some creativity along with my knowledge of these countries. 
The five point framework taught me a lot along the way. I learned more about Jared Diamond's view on the world and how societies grew as a whole. For the most part, it was really easy, but I found myself stuck when it came to neighbors/trade partners. But I got through it with some help from Google! 
If I could change one thing about my benchmark, it would definitely be the process I went through. I should have started my work earlier to produce a better benchmark because I know that the information inside the benchmark isn't as fulfilling as it could be. I would have started earlier so I could produce the best work possible. But overall, I'm happy with my finished product. 
I really enjoyed this project. It gave me a new perspective of a lot of things and allowed me to view another country that I probably never would have if I didn't do this project. I'm now able to talk about a couple of countries and how they relate to the five point framework in Jared Diamond's Collapse book. 

Collapse Project: Mongolia Vs. El Salvador

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The countries I studied where Mongolia in East Asia and El Salvador in Central America. They are very different at first but once one studies their problems and learns more about them, the similarities come through.

I primarily researched articles and government websites to learn about the issues in each country. I decided to challenge myself and create a wordpress site to convey my information.

I did not have that much trouble working with the five point framework and basing my research around it, however when it came to ranking the countries I had a difficult time being objective. 

If I could do this project over again, I would include more links and pictures in my site, and maybe make it slightly more creative. If I didn't do a site I think I would have done something along the lines of a narrated race and the rankings being how well each country was doing in the race and that would determine who won. 

To learn about Mongolia and El Salvador and whether or not they will collapse visit my website here!

Countries & Collapse: Slovakia/Afghanistan Alsardary

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.

Societee Game - Collapse Benchmark


For my project, I studied Mali (in Africa) and Romania (in Europe). Both countries face an immense amount of problems that stem from Environmental Damage (in particular, their farming exports have led to numerous factors) that put each at a high to medium risk of collapse. In evaluating each nation, I researched the nation and their economy in-depth, and saved important articles for later. Then, I reviewed the sources with regard to the five-point framework and determined the likelihood that each nation would collapse. The evaluation was straightforward, but determining what information to include was much more difficult than it seemed. Overall, I would’ve liked to make my project more interactive and visual (with a reduction in text explanation). However, due to the nature of the project, it would’ve been very difficult to do so while still explaining all factors in-depth. In the future, I would like to see this project removed from the curriculum. While I enjoyed the project, it seemed as though it simply modified an essay assignment and turned it into a visual project (which didn’t really work). To solve this, I would either have students write a paper to this regard or avoid the requirement of evaluating with the five point framework. Doing so would allow the project to be more interactive while demonstrating the same levels of knowledge.

Collapsibility of Poland and El Salvador


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. 

Thea Farah: Timor-Leste and Mali

My countries were Timor-Leste and Mali.  Timor-Leste was my country for the election project.  It's a very tiny country that gained independence from Indonesia in 2002, so it's only ten years old.  For the "Global Goods, Local Cost" project, I was put in the Sub-Saharan Africa group and I ended up focusing on gold mining in Mali, so I used that for my other country.  Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite being home to a booming gold mining business.  Originally I was disappointed that I had two developing nations, because I figured they would be quite similar, but they turned out to be different in some respects and it was still quite an interesting project.  I assumed that Mali would be easier to research, because Timor-Leste is such a new and small country, but I found that the country didn't matter as much as the topic.  Finding information about things like environmental damage and climate change was easy for both countries, but it was harder to find information about their relationships with other countries and trading partners.

Using the five-point framework was generally straightforward, although there were times when it was hard for me to separate the relevant from the irrelevant information when I was writing, because I'm always tempted to include every piece of information I have.  I think I managed to do it well in the end.  I do wish the whole piece was a little nicer looking, though.  I think if I could do it again, I would make it more professional-looking.

Collapsibility- France vs. South Korea

My project focuses on France and South Korea.  Both countries have their strengths and weaknesses, although France has considerably more strengths.  South Korea is a relatively new country, which mean they have more challenges to over come than France.  France has experience and stability that results in a very low chance of collapse.  My project is an interactive PowerPoint that puts France and South Korea head to head on Jared Diamond's five-point frame work.  Each slide focuses on one of the points a gives a rating to each country between zero and ten, in the end the points are tallied and the country closest to 50 is the least likely to collapse.  Some of the points are straightforward, such as "Climate Change" and "Citizen's Response to Environmental Damage" while others were more complex such as "Hostile Neighbors" and "Friendly Trade Partners".  Relationships with neighboring countries and trade partners are constantly changing and need to be evaluated on different levels.  One difficult part of the project was finding useful, reliable and, interesting sources.  While my project includes hyperlinks some of those do not lead to the most interesting sites.