Map Drawing Exercise by Candy

From the map drawing activities, I have learnt how we define the word world map, how do we see our world and how can the drawing related to our own thinking. I have also realised that through doing this drawing, there are something that we can all reflect on and consider about.

First, I realised that the way we drew our maps is depends on how we distinguish the word world map. Some people believed that a world map should be a sphere but the majority of the class think that a world map should be like the map we use in our daily life. I think one of the reasons that we define this word differently is because we see things from different point of view, especially we all have a different background.

Besides, it can show that we do not have enough knowledge about the world. We only have some of the basic knowledge of what a world map should look like but if we have to do it in detailed, most of us could only sketch it instead of drawing it out thoroughly. For example, South Pole and North Pole had been drawn upside down. I think it is important to understand about this world where we are all living in and to be aware of everything that has happened or happening in our world.

Moreover, from this activity, I found out that almost everyone in the class drew the map based on the familiarity of world map we see all the time. We focused more on the part where we are most familiar with and tended to centralize the Asian countries more than the European countries. Sometimes we seems to forget about the other parts of the world other than our own countries, we don’t know what other places look like, where they are located at or even what is actually happening over there, as we are only accustomed to the place where we are in living in and so we believe this is the reality of the entire world. This also demonstrated that we are not thinking broad enough. We only see things from only one point of view but in fact we need to be thinking from different point of view.

To finish, I feel that doing this map drawing can lead us to reflect on some questions. How well do we actually know about this world? Is it really enough just to know the basic of our world? Why should we learn about other countries in the world too but not just the country where we are from? Why is everyone classifying the word world map differently? I think that we all should think about these questions and to reflect on what we have been learning throughout the last couple of weeks. We should not be thinking in one point of view and learning things that have some issues to do with us only. It is essential to understand about what has happened or happening in other parts of the world. 

Candy Lee Hoi Man