Learning American English game and Edward Scissorhands

Today in class we did not do much school-like things. First we saw a movie called Edward Scissorhands which shortly was a movie about a boy with scissorhands who was created by an old scientist who died. Edward, who he was called, lived in the big old house alone until a woman found him and brought him home and took care of him. The film was very cute, and I thought it was very good! After we saw the movie we played an education game made by the U.S state department to learn better American English, and learn more about American culture. I chose to write about this game, and what it is, and what I thought about it. 

The game is called Trace Effects. I haven´t played the whole game through, but I played it for a while, and I don´t know if I think it´s a good source of learning better American English and learning about American culture. The game is also supposed to teach how to behave and how to act in different situations. There are different chapters, and when you are finished with one chapter the game tells you what you have learnt in this chapter and how many points you have gotten. 

The language is very simple, but they use American English all the time, so when people or students play it I think they unconsciously start to talk and write American English because they are used to read American English. So maybe it is a good way of learning American English, but at the same time I don´t know if so many people will find it interesting to play. It´s not much action so I don´t think students will play this game by free will, but maybe if the teacher adds it to the time schedule in class and make the students play it they will learn from it. I also think the game is made for kids in late primary school because it’s a quite simple game with a simple language, so even if the language is not too easy for high school students, I think they will find the game a bit boring over a longer time perspective. The game is also made to learn more about American culture, but so far I have played the game, I don´t think you learn especially much about American culture, but maybe you learn something about the American school system or something. But I think the game teaches in a good way how to make good decisions and how to behave, because you need to click on which answer you would like to say to the person you are talking to. 

Then in the end of each chapter you get points from how good decisions and things you have made and done. So the game is quite good in the meaning of learning how to make good decisions and to behave right.

I would also give the game points from 1 to 6. I will give the game a four on the dice because it is a good game in some ways, but I think it´s too boring to make someone play it for a longer time. So I don´t think I would recommend the game strongly to anyone, but I would rather say it´s a fun game for younger children. 

I would think that the game is most suitable for learning better American English than learning about American culture. At least in the beginning of the game I think you learn more about American English than American culture!

Second World War- Real shortstory

Norway lost around 11 000 people during the second WW which is about 0.32 percent of the population, and mostly of the people who died, died on merchant marines. Britain lost about 450,900 people totally during the second WW, where the largest amount of people died in the Military. The United Stated lost around 418.500 people, mostly in the military, which is approximately 0.32 percent of the population. So Norway and The United States both lost 0.32 percent of their population, but there are a lot more people in the United States which means that a lot more people died in the United States than in Norway. We can see that Britain lost most people, and that a huge amount died in the military, so then I would think that without Britain´s help, Norway would perhaps have lost a much larger amount of people in the war. Britain lost a lot of people by fighting and helping other countries, so they sacrificed a lot to help for example Norway. The United States also lost a great amount of people in the Second WW.

Still writing in the theme of the second WW, we have read a real story told from a person who had participated in second WW on the British side, and who had been in Norway during the war. The story I read was about a man who joined The Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) which is the volunteer reserve force of the Royal Navy (RN) in the United Kingdom, when he was twenty years old, and then served in His Majesty's Ship when the war started. The story was a bit hard to understand with some difficult descriptions, but it seems like the British man in the start of the war was going to escort several groups of ships to Bergen (since Norway was neutral), and then to Britain. This was his first visit in Norway. Then he tells that at the outbreak of the invasion of Norway by Germany in 1940 he and some others from His Majesty´s Ship was ordered to Norway as anti-aircraft cover for relieving British land forces for the capture of Narvik. Then it´s hard to understand exactly what they did, but it seems like they started transporting several groups of ships from Tromsø to Harstad. He then tells that he was member of a gun-crew on a boat, and that there was a bomb exploding really close to the ship, so him and some others was hit by shrapnel. 

He was hit in his around his hip, and was transported to a hospital in Harstad. In the rest of the story he tells about all the hospitals he was transferred to, but in the end that he remembers the all the things on the first hospital in Harstad.

I thought this story was interesting because it´s a real story, but some of the things in the text was hard to understand sometimes, but I think I managed to understand the most important things!

The story was very well written, but for me it was hard to understand sometimes because of all the things they had special names for in the war. I have learned about second WW in school of course, but I think some of the names and words get a bit to advance for me. Also I didn´t quite understand whether the man got bad injured or just slightly injured. But the text was very interesting from what I understood!

Here is a link to the story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/21/a2072521.shtml

In the end I thought I would tell something about the tour I went on with the White Buses in 10^th grade! On the trip we went to a couple concentration- camps such as Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. It was very interesting to see and hear about all the happenings, and how they lived in the camps, at the same time as it was horrible. They lived under extremely bad conditions, and I can´t imagine how the winters must have been from the prisoners there without almost any clothes when we were freezing in the fall when we had a lot more clothes than them! For each place we visited we had a guide who told us about the horrible stories and for each place we went we had a sort of ceremony where someone sang and then laid a bouquet of flowers on a memory spot.  The trip was interesting, and we visited a lot of places, but it´s been a while since I went there so it is hard to write more detailed descriptions. But I would recommend a trip like that to get more understanding for what happened during the Second World War. 

Christmas tree from Norway to England!

Every year Norway sends a Christmas tree to England around Christmas times, and it is placed at Trafalgar square where it´s being decorated. It´s very known that Norway are sending this tree, but I think many people, including me, actually don´t know why Norway send this tree to England every year, or at least they don´t always know the whole story!  So this is what I am going to write about this week, including some other stuff connected to the theme World War II.

The Norwegian Christmas tree has been sent from Norway to England each year around Christmas times for 65 years now in 2012! It has been sent since 1947 as a symbol of Norway and Britain´s good relationship since 1947. When the tree was brought to England for the first time in 1947 it was sent as a token of Norwegian appreciation of British friendship during the second WW. When Norway was invaded by German forces in 1940, King Haakon VII escaped to Britain, and a Norwegian exile government was set up in London. To most Norwegians, London represented the spirit of freedom during those difficult years. The latest war news was broadcasted in Norway from England, along with a message and information network which became vital to the resistance movement. The tree has therefore become an important symbol of Britain and Norway´s close relationship. The tree is from the surrounding forests of Oslo, and is usually about 20 to 25 meters tall.

There is also a lighting ceremony which always takes place on the first Thursday of December, and there is also a band playing and a choir that sings Christmas carols as the Lord Mayor of Westminster arrives with his party. 

The 11th hour and how to take notes!

This week we have prepared ourselves for the mock-exam next week, and we have practiced and tested different ways of taking notes. We also saw a film called “The 11^th hour”, which is a documentary about how humans have adapted or not adapted to the environment, and how we are affecting the planet with our way of living. First there is a short summary of the film, and then there is about the different ways of taking notes, and what I think is the best way to learn from a lecture.

The film “the 11^th hour” is a documentary about our environment today and how it will be if we continue to do as we do now. The film has collected several scientists, authors, and other people with knowledge about this theme who are talking about our environment, how humans have affected it, and the consequences of how we are treating it today.

The film starts with a lot of pictures and small clips from great nature disasters such as the hurricane Katrina, and lots of other horrible disaster who has caused a lot of damage to our society. I can´t say you get a nice, cozy feeling when you watch the first part of the movie. As we see these clips from nature disasters we listen to all these different people who talks about what the problem is, and a lot about the consequences if we continue to burn so much coal and bring so much oil from the sea. We are living in a waste society, where we are trashing so much and not recycling it. The ice is melting around the polar areas, and lots of animals such as the polar bears are threatened. Some of the consequences will also be that the temperature will rise, and the ocean level will also rise and drown a lot of countries in the future.

They also speak a lot of what the main problem in this global warming of the planet is, and they conclude that people have to change their way of thinking. We have to be more cautious with our environment and our planet.

In the end we can suddenly see a light in all this misery and we get some advanced explanations of what we can do to save our environment. Some of the things I understood were the solar panels we could possibly cover buildings with, and windmills, and some other things.

So it was very interesting to know some more about the global warming, and what can be the consequences. The movie was quite advanced, and it was hard to understand a lot of what they said, but I hope I have managed to make a short useful summary here even though!

 

While we were watching this movie we were separated in three groups, where one group started writing notes on paper for the first twenty minutes, and the other group started writing on their own computer notes, and the last group started writing in a sharing document in class on their computers. Then we switched after twenty minutes so everybody got to write notes in every way. I thought the best way to take notes and to learn most from the lecture was to write on my own notes. Writing on paper also worked out well, but it takes a lot more time and is much more stressing. Writing on the shared document on Google-doc was okay, but it was quite annoying when a lot of people started to write in your notes while you were writing, and just wrote rubbish for fun. So writing on my own notes worked best! I think you learn most from writing own notes on either computer or paper, depending on what you prefer and in which way you manage to concentrate best. 

The Edublog Awards!

This week we are nominating blogs for the Edublog Awards, where there are different types of awards you can nominate blogs for. Even though there are lots of different awards you can nominate blogs to, we have only nominated for three. If you want to know more about the Edublog Awards and how you can nominate blogs you can click here. But you can only vote for a limited time, so do it soon! 

This year I would like to nominate the following student blog in category best student blog: English School Blog (Ingeborg) 

I would also like to nominate a blog in the category "best teacher blog": Teaching using web (Ann)  

Library/Librarian blog: Leselyst (the librarian at Sandvika High School, in Norwegian). 

Blogs or paper writing?

This week we just worked on correcting some of our texts and we focused on grammar, so we were not supposed to write any long texts about a special theme or something this week. But we got some questions connected to what we think about writing blogs compared to writing texts for our teacher only that we were supposed to answer in a short blog post. Here are the questions we were going to answer:

•       Do you think there is more pressure on how you perform/write when you use blogs instead of writing a paper for the teacher only?

I think it´s in some ways more pressure on how we perform on our blogs because when the whole world can see what you write you feel more pressure on writing correct grammar and writing coherent sentences. But at the same time when you write on a paper to a teacher you feel a slight pressure then too because you get grades from the teacher and your grade is depending on how well you write. And when you write on a blog, even though the whole world can see what you have written, you may feel a bit freer to write what you want.

•    Do you think the use of blogs reduces the difference between your work at school and your everyday life?

Yes, I think it reduces the difference a bit, because with a blog you feel more relaxed about the writing, and you feel freer to write what you want, and it does not feel similar to what you usually think school work is.  I think that when we write our blogs we get more inspired and motivated to write more than we are supposed to, and more motivated to write better answers. When I write a blog post I don´t think of it as unnecessary homework that not even my teacher is going to look at, but I rather think of it as something fun and useful. 

Sandy the Hurricane

In class this week we worked in groups of three, and was supposed to choose to either write about the Presidential Election, or Sandy the Hurricane. We chose Sandy the Hurricane, and we started with writing four things we knew about the case, four things we would like to find out, and four things we could to to know some more about it. 
Here are what we did:

What do we know?

1. It was one of the most powerful storms in a long time.

2. It hit New York, New Jersey, Haiti and Iceland as far as we know.

3. A lots of people are without electricity.

4. The storm has affected the presidential election.

What would we like to know?

1. How many are injured or has died totally?

2. How much has the storm cost so far?

3. Where did the hurricane begin?

4. Which place are most damaged so far?

How can we learn more about the topic?

1. Use different search methodes on internet to find information.

2. Look at some of the links to different sources we got.

3. Search for more information about hurricane/ storms and waves.

4. We can use social networks as Twitter and search hashtags for instance to find information.

Here are the answers we found to the questions under "What we would like to know"

1. How many people are dead or injured so far? 

The hurricane, Sandy, killed more than 65 peoples in Caribbean and 106 lives got lost. Sandy first hit the Caribbean, and then the USA. Threes has fell over peoples and roads. The dirty water and lack of food makes the numbers of dead rise every day because of illness like Cholera.

Later Sandy hit the west coast of USA. A water flood came with Sandy, and now all public transport and all kind of transport are down. Also in the USA threes has fell down and killed a lots of people. People has been found hanging out their windows dead. Building and cars are destroyed and there is no electricity. Peoples can’t call or go to Facebook for example, to tell their family and friends they are alive.

Numbers of injured peoples are still not published.

2. How much has the storm cost so far? 

According to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm believes that Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damage and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, making it one of the costliest natural disasters on record in the U.S., with a possible total cost of $50 billion. The Gov. Chris Christie said. "The devastation on the Jersey Shore is some of the worst we've ever seen. The cost of the storm is incalculable at this point."

The United States weren’t the only country Sandy affected. Both Cuba and Jamaica were some of the affected countries in the Caribbean, and is expected to use $88 million and $16.5 million to rebuild their countries. Haiti was also tragically touched by the storm, and while no specific number of the cost has been published, the country is suffering a great food crisis.

3 and 4. Where did the hurricane begin, and which place was most damaged?

The storm, Sandy, hit the Caribbean first, and it was Haiti who was worst hit. According to what we read Jamaica was the first to get hit, but it was still Haiti who was most affected and who got the biggest damages.

 The majority of deaths and the most extensive damage has fell upon Haiti, who was already devastated from the earthquake in 2010. The damage is especially significant since it already was 400.000 homeless people in Haiti from the earthquake in 2010, and now there are 200.000 more homeless people. On top of all this Haiti was also struggling with the aftermath of The Tropical Strom Isaac, which hit the country in August, and a cholera epidemic that killed thousands and afflicted more than half a million people.

The Hurricane hit Haiti worst, and then Jamaica and Cuba we think. As this article says, there has almost been given none attention to Haiti and the other countries in the Caribbean, only to the USA.

There has been given very much attention to the storm when it hit the USA, but almost nothing to especially Haiti who is most damaged. Lots of people are dead or injured, or without electricity in the US, but Haiti was also struggling with the damages from the earthquake in 2010 and the Tropical storm Isaac, and then they get so hit by Sandy to and gets very little attention. It’s important to help people in the USA too, but Haiti should have gotten more attention so they could get more help than they get now. Also because of the Presidential Election there is given a lot of attention to the USA, but maybe it would have been possible to wait for a little while and focus on helping all the countries who are hit?