Personal Project Report By: Pedro Gourgel

Supervisor: Amy Rice

MYP class of 2016

March 18, 2016

Word count: 3100

Introduction

I. The Problem / Challenge

II. The Goal

III. Sources

IV. Solutions

A. Proposed solutions

B. Chosen Solution

i. Justification

ii. Specifications

V. The Product

VI. Reflection

A. Achieved goals

B. Further research

Conclusion

Introduction

I. The Problem / Challenge

Doing investigation for Humanities, design and science subjects, I realized that the

world is having too many environmental issues, and that many people do not know

very much about them. Examples are water pollution, land mis-use, human over

population, air pollution, nuclear issues, trash problems and many others that we are

seeing nowadays; for instance according to National Geographic, the current decade is

one of the worst in this millennium, because the environmental issues are increasing

in a crazy number. Another example is from Clive Gifford, he says that our planet is

under pressure from pollution and that around 90% of the world's population just

think that it is impossible to solve, and that saving or protecting the environment will

cost too much.

Another big problem is land pollution; many countries have always put their trash in

landfills, but now they just realized that these places are running out of the capacity.

(Sue Stewart, page 4)

Many people have now started to discuss whether or not it is possible to have a clean

future; actually governments are taking actions towards this goal, such as the Kyoto

Protocol (an international agreement connected to the United Nations about climate

change), but as a real fact, nobody can ensure that, and it is turning into a very hard

topic to think about. What I have experienced is that many people just do not realize if

they are doing something wrong; maybe it is easier to think that there are no more

options in the place where we live or just leave the initiative to take action about

environmental issues to somebody else.

In my opinion, I think that I can take actions within my community to deal with this

undeniable situation. I believe that to reduce the problems in the environment,

somebody has to take the initiative; I would like to play that role because I know it is

something easy and challenging to do, share the knowledge and let people know what

is going on now with our planet; after all it is clear that the solution is in our hands.

In conclusion, the problem I will consider in this personal project is how I can

enhance people's knowledge about the environmental issues we are facing nowadays.

To do that I am planning to develop different strategies to educate people, such as

in-school events, social media web sites images, or videos.

II. The Goal

After initially exploring the problem and studying it further, I realized that, to solve

this problem alone and at my age could be impossible. Then with more investigation,

I realized that are many different companies are trying very hard to do something

about the same problem, such as Standfortrees.com, and that one of the problems is,

that people do not know much about the environment. With the efforts of these

companies, it could be possible to improve the knowledge of people who know very

little about the environment. Therefore, my personal aim is to try to reduce this

number, by improving people's knowledge about environmental, problems which exist

all across the world.

My goal is to try to improve people's knowledge about the environment; this will be

good because I will help to reduce misconceptions and challenge poor education

about the environment, not just with people close to me but also with people around

the world. Of course, it is impossible to improve everyone’s knowledge about the

environment alone, but if more people start to create projects in this way and start to

do more, then people's knowledge about the environment will grow.

I am planning to achieve my goal by:

Creating a social network page, such as Blog, INSTAGRAM, TWITTER or

FACEBOOK, and this will make it possible to share knowledge with people around

the world. Social Networks also make it possible to share knowledge with people of

different ages because it can be accessed by many different people.

Creating a video: By creating a video I can make a visual and audio teaching process,

which is easy to get, but a video would be harder to share as a social website. If I

create a video, the possibility is that I will improve the knowledge of the people

around me. However, my goal does not define the number of the people that I want to

improve the knowledge; it could be one person, two people, hundreds or thousands of

them.

My specific interest is to improve people’s knowledge about the environment because,

according to my research, the world needs someone to have the initiative to start to

teach people about the environment and this person could be me. (Ted Talk)

My goal: Improve people’s knowledge about the environment.

III. Sources

#1Impact of Plastic Bags (AB0501 Green Marketing). Devina Kok, 16 Nov. 2012.

Web. (Secondary)

Important Points:

1 million of plastic bags are used in the world per minute - 100,000 million per

year in Europe.

If a person goes to supermarket 4 times, then on average, they use 60 plastic

bags.

We use plastic bags for 25 minutes and then they stay here for 300 years.

Relevant points:

Plastic bags create a lot of different problems for our environment; it is something that

we use and we do not think about the consequences. The world’s population use it for

a very short time and after the use of it, they throw away and they do not think what

could happen or what they are doing.

#2 "Story of Stuff (2007, OFFICIAL Version)." Youtube. N.p., n.d. Web.

(Secondary)

Important points:

In the past 3 decades 1/3 of the natural resources been consumed.

40 % of the waterways have become undrinkable.

Amazon is losing 2,000 trees a minute; that is 7 football fields a minute.

Relevant Points:

This source is very good because it gives a lot of information and also explains a lot

of things that many of people do not know. Also this video contains many of the

different facts that will be very useful, because I can explain the video to people, and

the people would not need to spend too much time watching it themselves.

Some of the qualities that this video has, is that they use images to try to explain their

points and it makes easier to the person who is watching it.

#3 Survey (primary source)

This was a survey that I designed and sent to everyone in my school (UISZ). Only 49

people answered it but the information that they gave to me will be very important. It

will help to improve the recycling initiative in my school and share more knowledge

about recycling.

Important points:

34 % of the people always recycle, 38 % sometimes recycle and 26 % do not

do it very often.

93 % of the people think that recycling is very important, but 7 % do not care

about recycling.

26 % of the people think that UISZ is sustainable, 72 % thinks that it is not

and 2 % do not know what sustainable/sustainability is.

Relevant Points

This research showed me that the majority of the people are not happy with the

recycling in UISZ and they gave me some comments to improve it. Also I realised

that a lot of people are still not recycling and some people still do not knowing what is

sustainability, so I will try to help them. This research was one of the best sources that

I had.

#4 Stewart, Sue. Recycling. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. (Secondary)

Important Points:

Nothing is rubbish, you can recycle everything.

8 billion plastic bags are used in UK each year and most of them are only used

once and then thrown away. That is 135 bags for each person in a year.

In USA each person throws away about 2 kilos of rubbish a day.

Relevant Points:

This was one of the best sources that I had, because it made me realize that we can

use a lot of things again (recycle). Basically almost everything has a way to be

recycled and nothing is rubbish, like they just said in the book. There are many ways

to reduce rubbish through recycling. Also this source has a lot of relevant points.

#5 "POLLUTION., 9781844439812, PEARSON EDUCATION, OXFORD. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2016. (Secondary source)

Relevant Points:

China is the most polluted country in the world.

More than 2 million of people in the world do not have easy access to water

and more than 1 million do not take care of their water.

Relevant Points

This is a very useful source of information because it contains so much useful

information.

This book contains many explanations of the different pollutions like water pollution,

air, soil, light pollution. It also talks about the countries that suffer more with this

problems and how the planet is under threat from pollution and how we can reduce

the pollution in the world.

IV. Solutions

A. Proposed solutions

Based on my research, I realized that many different ways exist to achieve my goal,

which is to improve people’s knowledge about the environment. In order to do that,

you have many different ways to work on it; most of the solutions that were relevant

in my research is that, the solutions/products that more people have used, when trying

to achieve a similar goal, is make books, videos, websites/blog, conferences,

assemblies, competitions, social network sites and posters.

I used my judgment on those possible solutions and I realised that to make a

conference or an assembly will not be that useful to achieve my goal, because it

would probably only help people or the society that is very close to me. Also in a one

day conference or in a single assembly I would not be able to achieve my goal,

because it is impossible to explain or teach everything about the environment in such

a short time, I might be able to improve people’s knowledge, but in an assembly or

conference environment of 200 people, then possibly only 150 would pay attention,

100 would understand something and 70 would improve their knowledge. That could

be good but I think that I can do something better.

Another Idea is to make a poster, but I do not think that this is a good idea because

first of all, it will waste a lot of paper, and secondly, the amount of information that

you can include on a poster cannot be compared with the amount of information that

can be put in a book, social network, video, website/blog.

I think that books, social network sites, videos, websites/blogs are the best possible

solutions but to make a book costs money and to make people read a book is very

hard. Also, to make a single video can be very hard and I do not have the necessary

skills to edit and make videos, so I think that the best ideas will be a social network

page or a website/blog because this solutions do not cost money and people almost

everywhere in the world have easy access. A primary source (Ms. Luz Martinez) said

that a website or a blog will be better than a social network site, because people would

believe in, use and accept more in the information from a website/blog than the

information from a social network. Most of the time, social networks are used to share

information that might not always be reliable and sometimes it is hard to make people

understand or see and learn something good from a social network.

I think that the best product to achieve my goal will be a blog, and not a website,

because a website takes more skills to create and for a blog, I can use the same format

which has already been made. Also, because usually websites are for companies or are

pages that have more than one creator, but a blog would usually have only one person

in charge, called a blogger.

B. Chosen Solution

i. Justifications

A blog will be very good because I can post information at any time and almost

everywhere, I can use a phone, or any kind of device to post the information on my

blog, meaning that it is very portable. Also a blog would be very good because you

can post different kinds of information and almost everything such as videos, articles,

links and a lot of things. Creating a blog will be very good and very easy to share and

people can leave comments, so I can know their opinion and use their feedback, in

order to improve the information and content of my blog.

ii. Specifications

The characteristics or the specifications that my product should have:

- The access to the blog should be free – I want people to have easy access to

the blog and for free, so they will be able to use the blog for their academic

use or access, which the visitors do not have to pay anything.

- Should be trustful- What I mean is that the blog should be a reputable

webpage that people can trust and it also cannot post anything that it is not

real or post jokes on the blog.

- Should be an active blog- What I mean is that I need to have at least one entry

per week and the blog cannot be without publications for too long, or people

will lose interest and stop following/ reading my blog.

- Diversification on the posts- it should have different types of information, in

different formats- not just documents, but also videos, documentaries, photos,

interviews and other material that can help me to achieve my goal.

- The information needs to be cited – this is very important, not just for

academic reasons, but also because I want my followers, and the people that

follow me, to know that the information that I post was not written by me and

I want to let my followers know where it came from. The other reason is, that

I do not want to take information from other people and say that it is mine, is

because this would be stealing and I am not willing to break the rules of

academic honesty.

To make this product I will need to follow the following steps

- Research and learn how to create a blog.

- Create the blog.

- Find contributors for the blog; these are the people who will help me with my

blog, and they are allowed to publish things or edit the things that I post in my

blog. Basically it will be a help to develop my blog.

- Choose a good design that will be good and related to the environment.

- The first post should have information about the product- For the first post, I

will need to explain what the blog is going to be about, so people will have

the opportunity to know why I am doing this type of project and what the next

posts are going to be about.

- Share the blog with many people as possible- It will be important that people

know about the blog and that they follow the posts so I can achieve my goal.

- Publish at least one post per week

- Use a variety of materials- post videos, articles, photos and more things.

V. The Product

http://www.environment-ib.blogspot.com/

My blog to inform and educate people about the environment.

VI. Reflection

During the research and the creation for my product, I have discovered many things

related with the environment, like Genetic Modified Organisms, called GMOs for

short, recycling, climate change, and how the world is going to be in the next

generations. This has made me both more of a thinker and more knowledgeable. Also

I learned how to write in the third person, and how it is related to writing for people

that you do not know, which has made me a better communicator. I realised that

citation is very important and how to do a proper citation, that allows people to know

my sources and where I took that information from.

The creation of the blog was the step that I considered the hardest, because I needed

to use personal information, and I did not want to share much of my personal life with

the people who access my blog, but during the process I realised that it was necessary

to provide basic information. Also it was very hard to create the blog because I am

currently living in China and here you are not able to use Google software, which

made the creation of my blog even harder. Here I improved my knowledge.

What I enjoyed the most was looking at my blog statistics, where I could see how

many views my page had; I was surprised that, after two weeks, my page had 300

views, from many places in the world. Also I am able to know what devices people

were using when they accessed my page, and I realised that most of my followers

used Iphones to check my blog.

What I dislike the most was having to write the posts, because I needed to use proper

words. I could not have many grammar mistakes, and I always had to ask a teacher to

check what I wrote for my blog. In another perspective though, the writing part was

good, because having to check many times what I wrote before I posted it, made me a

better writer, and I improved my English, especially my writing skills. This made me

have a more open minded attitude towards improving my written communication.

A. Achieved goals

I recognise that I have completed my specifications of my product because:

The access of my blog is free; it is open for everybody and is accessible, by just

clicking the link.

It is trustful; I consider this specification achieved, because when I selected the

information to post in my blog, I always chose accredited sources of information,

which made the posts trustful.

Diversity in the posts; my blog has a big variety in the posts, because I used many

ways to share information with people like videos, images, articles, and letters.

All the posts in my blog were citied which was good, because I let my followers know

where I took the information from, and if they wanted to access the source, they could.

Also I did cite my own words, which made it easier for my followers to differentiate

which are my words and which are not.

B. Further research

To research this further, I could have used National Geographic, TDC and TED talks

websites. This would have helped me to gain more information which I could have

used for more posts on my blog.

Conclusion

Based on the achievement of the specifications, I believe that I accomplished my main

goal, which was “To improve people’s knowledge about the environment because

according to the statistics in my blog, today (March 16, 2016) I have 436 page views.

I believe that at least 10% of the people who accessed did not know something about

the topics that I have covered. I was expecting to have comments so that I could know

if people have improved their knowledge or not, but I did not receive many comments

and I realized that it is not the most important thing, which makes a lot of sense;

because when people are doing research, usually they do not comment on the pages.

Works Cited

A Letter From The Year 2070." A Letter From The Year 2070. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar.

2016. <http://www.slideshare.net/nolimit2it/a-letter-from-the-year-2070>.

"BAG IT 1." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

By Randy Lee Loftis, National Geographic PUBLISHED Thu Oct 29 07:00:00 EDT

2015. "Smoke From Wildfires Is Killing Hundreds of Thousands of People." National

Geographic. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Facebook Logo." Security Check Required. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2016.

<https://www.facebook.com/ALetterFromTheYear2070/>.

Gifford, Clive. Pollution. Oxford: Raintree, 2006. Print.

GMO Facts." Non-GMO Project. N.p., n.d. Web.

<http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/>.

" Global Pandemic - Air Pollution | Romain Lacombe | TEDxAthens."YouTube.

YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015

"Story of Stuff (2007, OFFICIAL Version)." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Nov.

2015.

Human Impacts on the Environment: Crash Course Ecology #10." YouTube. YouTube,

n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Mason, Pau;. "Population (Planet Under Pressure) Paperback – 4 Dec 2006."

Population (Planet Under Pressure): Amazon.co.uk: Paul Mason: 9781844439843:

Books. Raintree, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Newsela articles, Fernando Mouses Newsela: Genetic Modified Organisms debate.

2015.Print. View 2016/3/09

N.p., n.d. Web.

<http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/14901/1/The-Effects-of-Plastic-Bags-on-Envir

onment.html>.

"Plastic Planet." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Recycled Fashion." Behance. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

<https://www.behance.net/gallery/1138039/Recycled-Fashion>.

Rissman, Rebecca. "We Can Help the Environment." Barnes & Noble. Read-Aloud,

n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Sacola Ecológica Com Camiseta Velha (Sem Costura!)." YouTube. YouTube, n.d.

Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Stewart, Sue. Recycling. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Story of Stuff (2007, OFFICIAL Version)." YouTube. YouTube, 22 Apr. 2009. Web. 25

Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM>.

Taraporewala, Azmin. "What Is Recycling." Buzzle. Buzzle.com, n.d. Web. 07 Mar.

2016. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-is-recycling.html>.

tefanow, Jennifer. "Polluted Waters." (Book, 2004) [WorldCat.org]. Raintree, n.d. Web.

11 Nov. 2015.

TDC2. "Climate Change Explained." YouTube. YouTube, 2 Dec. 2015. Web. 06 Mar.

2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifrHogD

Todhunter, Colin. "Lies, Lies And More Lies" - GMOs, Poisoned Agriculture And

Toxic Rants." Colin Todhunter, 4 Feb. 2016. Web.

<http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter040216.htm>.

"Trash to Treasure: 40 Creative Recycled and Repurposed Artworks."Inspirationfeed.

N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

Nye, James. "China Starts Televising the Sunrise on Giant TV Screens Because

Beijing Is so Clouded in Smog Read More:

Http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2540955/Beijing-clouded-smog-way-sunrise

-watch-giant-commercial-screens-Tiananmen-Square.html#ixzz3r4UVcmfv Follow

Us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook." Mail Online. Mail Online, 17

Jan. 2014. Web.

What Is the Environment?" Fact Monster. N.p., n.d. Web.

<http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775267.html>.

Xun, Yue Han, and Zhu Yan Yan. Bao Hu Hai Yang. Bei Jing: Wai Yu Jiao Xue Yu

Yan Jiu Chu Ban She, 2003. Print.

Appendix

Process Journal

Today (Sunday 13, March 16 ) I wrote about Genetic modified organisms ) It was a

very big task because I had to read a lot of articles, watch videos and see what

information was the best to share. I did not post only information from one source,

today I did something different and I post different paragraphs with different

information from different sources. During the creation of this task I was a little be

scared, because I realized that I am “ GMO consumer “ Witch scared me a lot because

those consumers have a higher chance to have cancer.

Today (Sunday 6 march 2016) I did post a video from Youtube in my blog with

information about ' Climate Change ".TDC2.”Climate Change Explained." YouTube.

YouTube, 2 Dec. 2015. Web. 06 Mar. 2016. <>.Also I did share the link of the blog

with many people and I could see that the number of page views are increasing and

also the number of countries are Increasing. In today's task what I found hard was that

in Youtube were a lot of good videos about the topic that I chose, and was very hard

to choose the best one. And when I finally did choose the internet was very slow and I

was unable to Blog. Also usually I try to find someone to correct the grammar that I

use I write in my blog so it does not have any mistake but today was nobody around

to help me, so I had to read and write more carefully because I did not want to have

any mistake in my Blog.

Today ( Saturday, February 27, 2016 ) I shared my blog with many people as possible

( friends, family, classmates ) and I think that it was great because I could see that

people liked and that they are very interested to see my page .I track the page views

and I realized that people from countries like : USA. Ukraine and Germany saw my

blog and I am really impressed with that .Also I did post an article where I talk about

" The impact of plastic bags in the environment. " and over one our this article got

more than 19 views and I think that it is really good because I am being able to

achieve my goal .I also achieve 200 followers in my Instagram and it means that

people are happy with the information that I am posting, and that they trust in my

page and that is why they are sharing it.

Today (Thursday 25 February 2016) I posted the video called "Story of stuff" "Story

of Stuff (2007, OFFICIAL Version)." YouTube. YouTube, 22 Apr. 2009. Web. 25 Feb.

2016. <>. .

And I also had a reflection on it. I found it a bit frustrating because the Internet was

very slow and was the first time that I post one Video and I did not know how to post

the videos. I also shared the post with few people and I think that they liked my page.

I could see that people from Ukraine, USA, Germany and China are looking at my

page so it means that I need to be very careful and reliable.

Today (Saturday, 27 January 2016) I realized that I need to change my product

because the product that I was thinking to make was not that useful and after the

teacher feedback I realized that make a Blog can be more effective because people

can think that an Instagram page are not serious as a blog and a Blog can be more

serious and more effective and I can post more things such as Videos; Files; Articles

and others things. And a blog will be good for the next years in school because of the

subjects that I am planning to do in the Diploma the blog will be useful

Today (Tuesday 24 November 2015) I came up with the idea that I will make a

product by the end of December in order to make a research for my Personal Project, I

will make a Christmas tree made out of plastic bottles and bamboo. It will represent

the green Christmas and show people in my school that they use too many plastic

bottles during school days. The information and the following idea I took from the

following website

https://ghajnsielemprimary.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/reuse-of-plastic-bottles/

Today (Monday, 9 November 2015 )I have realize that most of the recycle bins in my

school are not being used correctly, so I decided that I should talk to my design

teachers and the Senior head of house so we can re-start the recycle competition. With

the plastic bottles that we find from there I can make a Christmas tree with reusable

plastic bottles, so that I could teach people that in our small school environment we

can reuse/recycle materials and make new things out of it, also is a good way to

demonstrate the topic “nothing is rubbish "

Today ( Wednesday, 16 September 2015) I have researched pictures that I can use

in personal project , I have found over 40 pictures the others was pictures with

nothing related with my topic the page that I found the pictures was on Twitter

@TheFactsBook and I try to send a message to the guy who post the pictures, and ask

him if I can use the pictures in my Personal Project but I cannot because he do not

follow me and I cannot send a message but I ask him for his email and I am still

waiting . Also I have search about how to reduce the plastic.

Today (Tuesday 23, February 2016) I have created my blog, to find the link of the

blog was hard because the easy links to remember exists already. I also wrote the first

post explaining what is going to be in the blog and I showed my supervisor before

post it. Also I did put the link of the page in my Instagram so more people can enjoy

and see the page.

Today (Monday, 2 November 2015) I research how do to a easier reference because

before I used Easybib but that software sometimes don't work in cellphone/ Ipad , so I

decided to research for a easier way to make a reference .In order to find a good app

or software to make a citation I found a straight Logic app called RefME ,, this App is

free and very good because it's not really necessary you type something like in the

Easybib, the only thing that you have to do is open the app and it will open your

camera so you can read the bar code and automatically it will find you the reference

for that book, also this app is free . Also I research for easy ways to make people see

my page " my product " and get the information that I post there, I discovered some

ways from two Degree of importance videos that already started to help me about my

personal project product.

Pictures of the product

Some statistics: