1. Post your group's presentation.
2. Reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the criteria established. Where these good criteria, or should there have been different criteria established?
The criteria that was establiished by the class was very precise. There was not a whole lot of criteria that the class came up with. That meant that the information presented by the various groups should all be very similar in content. The only thing that would be different is the way in which the groups present the information. This was very apparent when the groups were giving their presentations. I did however think that we should have created the criteria before we were given our group number. I thought that since the class knew what side they would be arguing for before creating the criteria, there would be more people trying to sway the criteria towards their side of the argument. Turns out that it was not that big of deal because very few people tried to sway the criteria. The overall criteria for the paper was good. It was not biased towards either of the two sides presenting. Strengths included, criteria was agreed upon by class not already given too the class, it was fair to both sides and it was very open and not extremely specific. I cannot think of a weakness.
3. Reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the presentations as a whole. Consider the "yes" and the "no" groups as a whole.
As a whole, I thought that the presentations where way better than the ones we gave on the "One Cent." The quality of the presentations was significantly better than our last ones. One thing that helped improve the quality of the presentation was the fact that all the groups took the idea that only one person needs to be presenting the information that the group had reasearched instead of multiple people. However, I feel as if some of the groups had people in them better suited for the "talking" and the actual "presentation" of the findings, but decided to do more of the research portion of it instead. I think that overall both groups did a good job. The "No" groups could have used a little more help on rebuttlaing questions asked by the class and it was very evident in some of the "Yes" groups that they, or at least the speaker, did not believe in what they were telling the class. Let me just add and say that it is almost impossible to give a great presentation on a topic if you do not believe that what you are saying is true. People tend to give better presentation if they believe in what they are saying.
4. Reflect on the group management of your group. What went well, what did not?
Our group had pretty good management skills. I think at first it was hard to distinguish what everyones skills were in the group. Once we figured out what each person could bring to the ttable we were able to effeciently divide our group up into smaller parts where everyone had their own areas to research. This allowed for a better use of time. After everyone had gathered the information that they had been given our group met outside of class to put it all together. One person who was proficient with powerpoint created the actual powerpoint, while the other members discussed what we should put on it. I liked this method because now instead of just one person adding and editing the powerpoint, the entire group knew all the information.
5. Reflect on the personal "ethic" you felt in your group. Did you believe in your position? where you arguing against your beliefs?
I had a hard time with this one. The reason why it was hard for me to argue for the paper is because I did not believe that the paper was indeed correct. Sometimes in life you are thrown into things that you really do not want to do and the only option is to really make the best of it. The content of the paper is what bothered me the most even though we were not suppose to even take that into consideration or bring it up in our presentations. Naturally however, when researching this topic you are going to find information about the content of the article.
6. Did the class make the correct decision when considering the broader impacts of the global warming/climate change debate? Why?
The class was not debating the broader impacts of the global warming/climate change debate. We were debating on the legitamacy of the paper being presented. Even if this question was asked I still believe that no the class did not make the correct decision...Well maybe they did, but not for the right reasons. When you say that the winning group/groups get more points than the losing groups of course the majority of the time people are going to vote for their own group. Especially the high academic achievers in the class. Why would they vote for the other team if they know that they would lose points in the class if the other team one. It would have been interesting to count up the number of people in the "No" groups and the number of people in the "Yes" groups and see how those results would compare to the final results of the voting.
7. Explain the statement, "What we do in the US, soon will not matter." Provide evidence to justify this statement.
It means that it does not matter how enviornmentally friendly or earthly the United States is. It does not matter how many electric cars we are producing, how many wind, solar, or water powered devices we create. It does not matter how many regulations we put on factories regualting the amount of pollution those factories put in the air.
8. Explain this statement, "What we do as individuals matters." Provide evidence to justify this statement.
It means if enough people can join together and form a group, people can make big changes to things. It all starts with one persons motivation to make a difference in the world. If there is something that is going wrong in life...change it. If there is something that a person does not like...Then try to change it. Taking it on a more global scale if there is an apparent problem that needs to be delt with take the initiative on yourself to start small with you as an "individual" to tackle the problem then as you open more peoples eyes to the problem other will join your casue.
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