Reflection on Map-Making

1.  I really enjoyed this project and I thought it went really well!  I worked with Priscilla and it was a good experience.  The first thing that went well was the tracing of the map to scale.  It was difficult and at first took a while to figure out the scale but once that was done it was not really that bad.  I was pleasantly surprised that the map turned out correct.  I never would have thought I could successfully redraw a map on a larger scale and have it turn out half way decent.  Another thing that went well was how doing this map helped with understanding of different things happening at once.  Doing a large map like we did allows you to think about different societies or areas at the same time which is helpful.  The last thing that went well was the positive experience I got with the partnership of this project.  Sometimes when you do group projects in school you find one person doing more work because someone isn't doing anything.  This wasn't the case for making the map because me and Priscilla did everything fairly!  I would definitely want to do another group project if she could be my partner again.

2.Some things that didn't go as well making the map was the difficulty in finding the sizes of empires or societies because there were no borders.  Sometimes we would have to redraw a certain area several times to get the best look.  Another thing was the vagueness in some of the products that were spread.  For example we did nutmeg and in the book there wasn't a thorough description of where and how it was traded and spread and it was hard to find specifics online.  Finally one last thing that didn't go well was finding a scale at first because we wanted to find the easiest and best way to do it and it took a couple of tries before finding a good one.

3.What was hard about the map making was drawing things to scale.  Once you found a scale it was difficult to measure then multiply and it was tricky.  For our map we made a grid on the big and small map to follow but sometimes it was hard keeping track of what box you were in so it got hard.

4. In my opinion the collaboration for this project was really good!  Priscilla and I were able to work very well together and were able to work off each others strengths.  For example I was a little better at doing the outline of the map so I did a lot of that and she worked on figuring out the spread of our items.  This worked out better for us and made the final product the best it could be.  Another thing that helped was that we get along good so when we had to work outside of school twice this weekend it was not a problem at all..(even on a Friday night)! I had a fun time doing this map even with its challenges because Priscilla made such a good partner.

5. If we had to do this project again one thing I would do differently would be to organize the coloring better.  There were a couple things we did in colors that were difficult to tell the differences of.  There is a key to differentiate the colors but it would just make it easier to do it differently next time.  Another thing I would do differently would be to put more labels on  the map, even items that aren't necessarily needed.  I think this would just make the overall map look better and be easier to read.