The Settlement Debate: Strategy & Reflection

What did I do differently during the second round of preparation?

We were doing a debate describing why the settlement we were assigned to "praise" is better than the others, which my group got as the topic of urban areas.

We had two rounds of debate in total. The first round is for practice.

What we did differently in the second round of the debate was that we developed our claim, we found that the claims were too set in stone, and we suffered from their lack of flexibility in the first round. We revised the reasoning part to make it fit better, regardless of the groups we met.

We weren't able to hold a script in our hands during the second round of the debate, but I think we (or I) did surprisingly well. One of our teammates who performed well in the first round struggled to express our claim due to the same circumstance.

I was curious about how another group came up with mysterious counterclaims like "we would land missiles on your settlement faster than you!" 

Overall Reflection

I used a Taiwan example, which is Taipei, as an example of urban areas. But we did not elaborate much on the sites, mostly because the advantages of urban areas are the situations, for example: convenience, close public transport stations, large groups, and wide varieties of customers for businesses, etc. Maybe I can research further on the sites next time?

Feedback: I'm Ashley, I think Renee did a great job she write the lesson really detailed and also adding her emotions and what she thinks. And when our class are debating I notice that she did really well at defencing the other group and also a lot of evidence to support her ideas.

Taiwan Choropleth Map

Reflection

Improvements

I think we could elaborate on the population per km next time. If I am right, the population number we are using is the total number of people in a city or county, but the areas are different, so they shouldn't be compared under the same conditions in a choropleth map.

Work and Study Habits

I struggle most with calculations. I did the calculations before fully understanding the instructions, so I had to redo them. It was stressful because I forgot to bring my calculator that day.

I am planning to adjust how I colored the map in the next choropleth map assignment, especially how I kind of gave up when there wasn't a big difference in the shade. I could color it more accurately next time. 

Based on how I worked on this map, I've identified one habit I want to improve before your next choropleth map: focusing in class. This seemed to be the standard of everything, but it is actually hard for me for some reason. I am forcing myself to pay attention in lectures to prevent further crisis in my learning.

Feedback

Janet gave me helpful feedback on my choropleth map. She commented that my map was unclear, because I only used one color (pencil), and I did not color the most dense areas using 100% of my force, so it is hard to tell which place is what. Although I think the peer feedback session was too late (I don't have time to color it again :( But I still tried to make it clearer in the final version.

Country Choropleth Map

The improvement I made on my chosen country (Japan) choropleth map compared to my Taiwan choropleth map made previously is that my color scale (my usage of the colors) is clearer. 

There was one thing I planned to improve after the Taiwan choropleth map, but I still struggled with on my country map: my calculations aren't really specific, which happened because there isn't a gap between categories (it would be hard to tell which category a region with exactly 9.6 million people would fall in). I could improve this by elaborating more on this part next time. 

I calculate the value scale by: First, I list the populations from high to low. Then, calculate the difference between the highest and lowest population region. After that, calculate the proper value of each class. Finally, decide the hue and try to shade with a certain color. 

I showed the two choropleth maps to my brother, and he said my second map is a lot clearer, but both maps are understandable. I guess the clarity really depends on the color, so I'm glad I used color pencils to shade the second map.