"In our first two weeks, you have read two articles, seen several videos and been engaged in several discussions related to the concept of academic leadership. At this point, and in your own words, what does the concept mean to you? What subjects or interests do you have a sophisticated, intellectual understanding of that you may want to turn into a major academic project in this class? How do people sometimes abuse academic knowledge to manipulate others? How would you feel if someone used your work to manipulate others (as Jared Diamond claims Mitt Romney has)? How can creating academically sophisticated, intellectual leaders help prevent such people from taking advantage of others the way they do? How can this create a stronger democratic society?"

Academic Leadership, to me, is a course that prepares for the IB, graduate students able to position themselves in debates, arguing about something, develops leadership and also helps in the process of technological integration. Various themes can be worked in a major academic project, since currently there are numerous resources to assist in this process. I wish my project was about basketball, it's my favorite sport and I think it has many interesting topics to be addressed.

As we saw in the article that we read, some people manipulate other ideas to form their own "knowledge", but without even analyzing and studying the concepts of the author. This has occurred because the professionals are not being taught how to build their own arguments and opinions. Most often, people only seek what is in their interest and are not taught to look for diverse opinions and establish connections between them. If something happened to me, I would feel disrespected because the knowledge I built with much effort and hard work, was easily distorted and manipulated by someone who does not even researched the subject.

Creating leaders with a sophisticated general knowledge can avoid manipulation and distortion of ideas, since they will be able to form their own knowledge and also will know that to build concepts of other authors they must study them. This contributes to the existence of a better and better structured democratic society, a society in which the laws are not only on paper but are put into practice. People will not choose any candidate for the office, because they will have a critical knowledge and will know which projects that the candidate has and whether or not it will be good for the development of society.