​Anjali Phadke's P​ortfolio

Our goal for a project in U.S. History was to expand upon a topic that was briefly taught about during the first quarter of the class. We were studying the cultures of Native Americans as well as Europeans and we decided to create an infographics about the cultural differences between the two groups.

 

Mr. Anticoli showed us a few examples of infographics so that we could get an idea about what we were going to do. We then got our groups and thought of ideas. After we got our ideas, then came the research aspect of the project. For example, since we chose sociology, we had to look at four aspects of it. So we chose food, clothing, weapons, and architecture. We researched for days before we actually looked at the design of the infographic. Our design basically had four circles in the center going down vertically. There were two sides, right for the Europeans and left for the Native Americans. Then, we put our info on the poster corresponding which piece of info goes on which side. There were requirements that our group had to follow. Some include: A map, a graph, sources, etc. Our info graphic did look good when we finished it though.

 

Our group didn’t get along at first. It was like 2 sides of a war. We worked individually, fought all the time, and did what we needed to do to accomplish our own tasks. I felt like I was the person that could stop this, but I didn’t even try to. We had to overcome these challenges somehow, but we didn’t know what to do just yet. It was towards the end of the project where the whole group felt like we had to get this project done. We had two days to put our info and such on the poster board provided. Those two days flew by in a second. We were working so fast and hard, we wouldn’t even notice if the fire alarm rang! I feel like our group overcame the challenge of fighting, by finally agreeing that we had to get the project done.

 

Educating others is not easy. It all depends on the person you are teaching. When making an infographic, you don’t know who will be seeing it. So it is basically like teaching with a blindfold on. This project made me work with people that I wouldn’t usually choose. It helped me be a better leader and work with people despite our personalities or preferences. I also learned how to teach a variety of people, without knowing who I am teaching.

 

My first artifact is the actual final project. When I look at my poster, I don’t see creativity or the info on the poster. I see collaboration. This fits in the story because, it shows four totally different topics coming together to form one info graphic.

 

Most of the info that my group learned is demonstrated in our final product. I don’t really know about the other topics (architecture, weapons and clothing), but I do know about food! I had to look at both Native American and European food. For Native Americans: The three staples of Native American food are corn, squash, and beans. Other commonly used foods are greens, dear meat, berries, pumpkin, and wild rice. For Europeans: During a typical day, a middle class family will eat bread and milk for breakfast, pudding, breads, meats and cheese for dinner, and bread, milk and dried fruits for supper. The beverages were either cider or a small flavored beer. This info is an example of the kind of info you would see in the project.

 

This project has made me more collaborative and more persistent. This project itself shows 4 topics together, going hand in hand together. Each topic would go fine by itself, but the overall presence of all the topics together, makes the project better. This shows how we all worked together to do research and make a beautiful info graphic. This is where the persistence comes in. Sometimes, we all just gave up working together and just stopped doing anything. It took a lot of persistence to make the final product.

 

My second artifact is my research. During the week of research, our group was working as individuals. We would argue any time someone spoke. So we all just kept our mouths shut and kept researching alone. The research shows how I worked alone and how my collaborative skills had just began to peak.

 

In the research, I had pages and pages worth of work to boil down. This is some of the info I had boiled down. Native American: Corn and corn products are abundant in Native American food recipes. They used ground up corn as flour. Native Americans frequently ate rabbits, prairie dog, beaver, lamb, buffalo, mutton, and pork. The women were the people who cleared the land, planted, cultivated, and harvested the crops. The stores food in jug shaped pits. They used flood plain terraces for cropland. For Europeans: Methods of preserving food were pickling, drying, salting, and smoking. They also used cold storage as an option. Before the Industrial Revolution, most Europeans worked in agriculture. Some methods for commercialized farming were crop rotations, using iron ploughs, seed drills, and irrigation projects. Because of these methods, farms could export more and population increased.

 

At the beginning, I was just starting to learn the real meaning of collaboration. The research shows how the first step of learning anything, is making a mistake. I made the mistake of not talking to my teammates about the problem.