Should we allow the use of internet during tests and exams

Today, using internet during a test or an exam would be cheating, but recently there have been a debate whether or not students should be allowed the use of internet during tests and exams. Being allowed internet give us the ability to research facts about whatever we would be writing about, and therefore, the evaluation will be more focused on how we present the facts, rather than what we know. Even though internet can be a huge advantage, it can be “dangerous” as well, because finding reliable information can be hard, and it is easy to just use the first you find when you search on Google. 

So I think whether or not students should be allowed internet during a test or an exam should be dependent of what kind of subject you’re writing about. If there is a history test, where the whole point is to test you on dates and historical events, having internet might be a too huge advantage.

My views on using the internet during the exam

If you are using internet during the exam, it is very easy to burn yourself by using bad sources. Because there are a lot of bad sources and a lot of incorrect facts spread all over the internet. Sometimes it is easy to see which facts that are false, but other times it is harder because they can be somewhat close to the truth but still wrong, and that is why we hear over and over again to pick our sources on the internet carefully.

Wikipedia is an example of a website filled with useful facts, easy to use, first site which appears on Google, but still have flaws in some articles because people can easily edit it without any form for approval. Students are being advised against using Wikipedia, but still we use, because finding an article on Wikipedia about pretty much anything is so easy. By doing this, we lose the skills to find other more reliable sites, and therefore keep using Wikipedia.

The best way to find good, correct facts is to find sources you know are reliable, like articles written by experts, teachers or other qualified people. Another encyclopedia (not Wikipedia) you know is written by professionals might be a good source. Controlling your facts by crosschecking them with other sites is a good way to find out whether the facts are true or not, but of course this requires more work.

So using internet during an exam can help you a lot in form of providing information, just make sure you fin reliable sources, or at least double-check you facts trough several websites.

The great debaters

The great debaters is a movie based on a true story, and is set in the 1930’s. It is made by Oprah Winfrey, and is directed by Denzel Washington, whom is also one of the main characters in movie, along with Forest Whitaker, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, and Denzel Whitaker.

The plot revolves around Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington), a professor at Wiley College and the debate team’s coach. He wants them to be the best and later debate against white people, and even the Harvard debate team. During the movie you can also see a lot of racism, which was common during the great depression, and this time period. One of the most essential scenes in the movie is a scene where they see a man who had been lynched, which was when a mob of white people hung or burned a black man.

They eventually get an answer from Harvard, and they are going to debate them, but Mr. Tolson are not allowed to join them, and they have to do all the work themselves, but they manage to pull it off, and win in the end.
I think it was a good movie about racism and the conditions during the great depression.

Lamb to the slaughter

Today we read a short story called “Lamb to the slaughter” by Roald Dahl. The whole class then wrote some questions each, and I’ve picked two of them to answer in this blogpost. Roald Dahl is a British novelist and short story writer. He was born in Wales and had Norwegian parents. In addition to “lamb to the slaughter”, he has also written “Charlie and the chocolate factory” and “the BFG”.

When was this short story written and what would be the penalty for killing if she was caught?
-    The short story was posted by Harper’s Magazine in September 1953, after being rejected by The New Yorker. If Mary Maloney were to be caught for the murder of her husband, she would have been sentenced to death. Death penalty was not suspended until 1965 in England.

What could the husband be telling his wife that was so bad she had to kill him?
-    It does not say in the story what Mr. Maloney tells his wife when he comes home. But from the way Mary Maloney act and from her thoughts, we can presume it’s something along the line of him leaving her. Maybe even for someone else.

Living in Norway

In this blogpost i will be elaborating how it is to live in Norway in comparison to china. This might be somewhat hard since I haven’t actually lived in china before, but I’ll at least try. China and Norway are two completely different countries in many ways, and maybe the most noticeable different is the amount of people living in the two countries. In Norway it live about 4,6 million people, while in China it lives about 1,3 billion!

The education system in Norway seems like it’s a lot more laid-back than the one in China, but we see that Chinese students score a lot better on international school tests. So it seems that even though Chinese students have to work harder, it will pay off later. The economy in the two countries is also very different. In China they mainly get their income from industry, while in Norway we get it from oil. The GDP (gross domestic product) is also much larger in China than in Norway, but since it’s so many people there, the GDP per person is a lot lower. The cultures are also very different, and just to be a bit stereotypical, all Norwegians like to go skiing during the winter and eat cabbage and lamb, while all Chinese know karate and eat about everything else. Although this is not true, the two cultures are also very different.

In conclusion, the two countries are very different, but that’s something we should be fascinated by, not scared or feel that it’s something we should just repel, but rather learn from. All in all I’m pretty happy about living in Norway, except when it’s too much snow, which it tend to be during wintertime, but there is a lot of other things to do during the winter.

Project Lesotho

This week we have a project, to collect money for a school in Lesotho. The money will then go to giving the school internet so they can use it for their schoolwork. The first week we were planning how and what we were supposed to collect the money. One idea was to sell cake, and that’s what we ended up with. We split into four groups, one where going to sell at the school, one at the station, one in Oslo, and the last group where filming it so they later can make it into a movie/sketch. 

I was on the group who were supposed to well at the school, so baked a cake the day before the sales. When we arrived at the school we did the finishing planning, made a poster with the cause and the prices written on it, and hung it on the table we were selling our cakes and cupcakes. We sat and sold for about two and a half hour. At the end we hadn’t sold all the cakes, but all of the brownies where gone, but some cupcakes and applecake were left. Clearly brownie is people’s favorite. 

All in all the project went pretty well, even though we didn’t collect as much money as I hoped, but I don’t know how much the other groups collected, and maybe they did better. Even though it didn’t have much to do with English, the project was a good way to do something new, and not just sit in the classroom all day, and it was all for a good cause!