For the Edublog Awards this year I´d like to nominate a couple of my classmates, but most importantly my teacher, who is the drive behind our weekly blog posts!
Best teacher blog:
http://digitalkonferanse.blogspot.no/
My teacher, Ann has a lot of experience with the use of technical facilities in school.
Best Mobile app:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-bro-code-codes-for-bros/id590231679?ls=1&mt=8
My classmate, Håkon Bakker, has made written collected the laws of nature and friendship in his app for bros.
Best student blog:
http://justanormalblogger.wordpress.com/
The girl sitting next to me has an aesthetic and interesting blog for school assignments.
tirsdag 26. november 2013
mandag 25. november 2013
NrK P2 Ekko - Do the social medias make us more social?
After the
exciting experience of having NrK P2 Ekko visiting us at school, our class was
invited to join them for their weekly live broadcast from Kulturhuset at
Youngstorget. Some of us were once again sharing our broad knowledge and
familiarity with the social medias, as the topic for this Tuesday´s broadcast
was whether social medias make us more social or not!
The host of
the show sat on a stage in front of us joined by “experts”, as far as one can
be an expert on such a phenomenon, and quite a few interesting sides of the
social medias were made clear to me. This is by no means an unknown topic to
me, so I had a good idea of what would be discussed, but I was pleasantly
surprised by the experts and their points of view. An important aspect that was
brought up , in my opinion, was that the debate and attention around the use of
social medias, is heavily influenced by the younger crowd. What is left out at
many occasions is that the amount of users on the social medias exceed the
youngsters by far, and that the older part of the users should not be left out.
Not to get
off topic, do social medias make us more social? I myself actively utilize a
variety of social medias during a day, and I would like to think they make me
more social. However, defining “social” is crucial to this. If being social
simply means I communicate or interact with other people, then sure, I´m
social. Do social medias provide me with social experiences in any other way
than me chatting with friends though? Do I meet new people online that I
proceed to develop a real-life friendship with? I´m not so sure about that, and
in a lot of scenarios, the social medias may prevent physical interactions with
others, in the sense that I could rather just tell them what I´d like to say
over Facebook.
At Ekko,
they concluded to a certain degree that social medias make you more social, and
I agree to that. It was a new and fun experience and I´d like to do it again, but
I regret not volunteering to speak on behalf of my class. Nevertheless, I will
bring what I learned from this along the way, as I´m positive this is not a
topic that will fall off the hype-train anytime soon!
onsdag 13. november 2013
Eastwood & Tan illustrate cultural differences
Immigrants
in Norway are becoming an increasing part of our population, whether they are
first generation or second generation. However we are nowhere near being as
multicultural as the nation across the Atlantic, the United States of America.
The movie Gran Torino and the short
story When Rich came to Sunday dinner
both display the differences in culture between stereotypical Americans and
immigrated minorities in USA. What can we learn from the two, and how do they
compare?
Walt teaching Thao what all the tools in his garage is for. |
What these
two have in common is that both the Hmongs and and Chinese have roots in Asia,
some in China for the Hmongs as well. Traditions for cooking seem
characteristic for them both, and family is important. This was educative for
me, as I know very little about Asia in general, and here, a variety of scenarios
illustrate their cultures. I figure I would reply much like Rich when the
mother claims her food is awful, expecting everyone to disagree.
In both Amy
Tan´s short story and Clint Eastwood´s movie, Asian people and cultures are in
a close encounter with the Western-American culture. At one point they differ
however, in Gran Torino there are clear signs of prejudice and ignorance from
both the Hmongs and Walt, and while Rich seems quite ignorant to the Chinese
traditions of his fiancée´s family, he doesn´t seem negative towards them. Gran
Torino illustrates the two cultures in a bigger degree as it is a movie of
course, but I think the fact that Walt´s knowledges of the Hmongs were as few
as mine, makes it all a lot more educative. Gran Torino also shows the alleged
pattern of how Hmong women go to college, whilst the men go to jail.
I think the
Hmongs´ situation in USA is an important subject that deliberately has been
focused in Gran Torino, and Clint Eastwood intends to put this on the agenda so
to speak. It is hard to make something along these lines out of the excerpt
from “The Joy Luck Club”, but it definitely goes to show how different people
are in the melting pot of a nation the United States is.
tirsdag 5. november 2013
Gran Torino, strong dynamics
Walt
Kowalski has just lost his wife, he has two sons that struggle to get along and
communicate with him, and his neighborhood has become dominated by Hmongs. Walt
is a veteran of war, and will never forget the terrible things he has done
during the Vietnam War. Needless to say he is not happy, but refuses to make a
change in his living.
I would
describe Walt´s relationship with his sons as shallow. The level of
communication and mutual understanding between Walt and his closest is poor.
There is, however, a gradual improvement throughout the movie, particularly
when Walt has just been to the doctor and tests positive for something I assume
was fatal. My grandfather is 89 years old, and there is no doubt he was born
many decades before me. He does not struggle to communicate with our family
like Walt does with his, but I can see myself as one of the youngster in some
of the scenarios from Gran Torino.
We never
get to see the wife of Walt, but he describes her as the best thing that ever
happened to him. The local priest insists that Walt must relief his sins in
confession, but Walt refuses. Much like his relationship to his family, his
relationship to his priest improves. The priest and Walt learn from each other,
and both seem to benefit from their relationship in the end. I think there is
clear resemblance between Walt´s attitude towards the priest and the Hmongs,
his ignorance prevents him of seeing how they really are. Walt believes the
priest is an overeducated youngster with no real experience with life and
death. I think the turning point for their relationship is when they discover
they have something in common; Thao and his family. It is at this point Walt
corrects the priest when calling Walt “Mr. Kowalski”, and encourages him to
address him by his first name. In Norway we have less of a tradition of using
titles, and it has never been something I have considered utilizing.
Nevertheless I have experienced the same growth of a relationship that Walt and
the priest did.
When Walt
called his son after having been to the doctor, something was different. I
think Walt reckoned how nice it was to just have a casual conversation with his
son, without there being a higher agenda to it all, like when his son called
seemingly for the bare reason of getting his hands on tickets for a football
game. At the point when Walt had been to the doctor, I think he had decided to
make the Hmong gang shoot him in front of witnesses already, so he did not
really care much for his sickness, as it would not affect him for much longer.
In other words, he probably knew this would be his last conversation with his
son, and did not want it to be a sad one. Walt´s situation is not unfamiliar to
me, I lost my dad a couple of years back, and there are definitely some
situations where I prefer keeping that to myself.
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