Reflective Report

“Muslim Children in America”

1)      How do you meet your specific goals and objectives as stated in your project proposal?

Our specific goal in creating this project is to give the non-Muslim American society a positive image of how Muslim children in America practice their religion and have a normal childhood doing normal activities throughout their daily routine. This goal was meet by creating one video documentary of each child explaining what they know about their religion Islam and how they practice their religion freely at home, school, and in public.

Our objective is to give Muslim children in America from the age of 8-12 the opportunity to display their daily life and routine. This project is going to target Muslim and non-Muslim audience. Many Muslim children are provided with a normal life and their religion does not forbid them of achieving their goals and practicing their religion at the same time. The reason we chose to do this topic for our project is to explain to the non-Muslim audience how Muslim children have a normal life. The problem is many people believe that Muslims in general and children to be specific have rules and guidelines that they must obey to be a faithful Muslim, but in reality a Muslim child has no limit to achieve her/his goal. Our objective was meet by giving the children an opportunity to display themselves on camera and explain how they are not facing obstacles; the objective was also meet in the opportunity to display the videos and the web-site in front on non-Muslim classmates that come from different religious backgrounds.

2)      What unexpected obstacles occurred during your project?

The only obstacle that occurred is managing time with the children because of school and their busy weekend that is filled with activities such as soccer, family gatherings and school show rehearsals. However the children were very friendly, patient and strong determined which was not expected because usually children in the age group from 7-12 normally are aggressive feisty and impatient. The children were very excited when we showed them the web-site during the weekend and were happy to show it to their parents and friends.

3)      How might you avoid these obstacles in similar future projects?

In the future the time management obstacle will be avoided by setting a schedule that would work for us as designers and the customer.

4)      What do you think are the most effective specific aspects of your project and why?

We believe that the most effective aspects of the project is the objective and purpose of the project as a whole and the videos that are displayed truly works with what our objective is and gives the viewer a clear purpose. Why we believe it is effective is because the children gave an honest and descent view of what they understand about Islam and how it allows them to enjoy their daily lives without facing obstacles.

5)      What do you think are the least effective specific aspects of your project and why?

We don’t believe that there is a least effective aspect of our project, but if we must mention one we believe that it is the layout of the web-site which has minor error that we have corrected after the final review before the final class. 

6)      What would you do differently if you were able to do this project over again?

What we would do differently if we have the chance to redo the project with longer time is capture more video of the children daily lives in detail and have them share what they believe they understand about Islam in more detail. What we would do as well is have the chance to capture videos of non-Muslim children and ask them what they know about Islam and whether Muslims are treated differently according to what they know from school, parents or the media.