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!

My edublog nominations

This is a grat way to share all the great blogs that are made by students.

Best student blog: http://donaldduck125.blogg.no/?c=1314093302
I nominated Donald because he have great content on different topics.

Blog and Twitter

Over the last months we have used a blog to put up the texts we have written in our English-class, and in today’s class we created a twitter account. The reason we have used a blog instead of just giving the assignment to the teacher, is so more people can read what we write. Because when you have a public blog like this, people all over the world have the opportunity to read what you write. This gives other people the opportunity to learn from what you write and maybe use the information you have gather their self.

 The problem this might cause is that you give out wrong information. There is always a chance that the information you have gathered is wrong, and just like you can bring good information to others, you can bring wrong information. Another problem writing your assignments can bring, is that students do not want to put their assignments on the internet, and that they fell forced to do so. Students might prefer that their assignments are something for them self, and their teacher. Another risk is if it is a student who isn’t very confident about their writing, putting their assignments on the internet, might receive bad comments and feedback that might make their confident even worse.

I personally feel it’s a good way to share information and even your own thoughts, but I also feel a bit more vulnerable than if it was only me and the teacher who had the opportunity to see the assignment. At the moment though, I’m not very worried since I just have 99 blog views at the moment, mostly from Norway, and some from the UK. When it comes to twitter, I don’t see the point of it quite yet, and don’t see how it would help my education.

News of the world scandal

On 10th of July the British newspaper; News of the world, released their last newspaper, saying “Thank you & goodbye” the reason for this was a phone-hacking scandal in the spring 2011.
The newspaper was in July 2011 accused for hacking a huge number of phones. First is was believed that hacking was limited to celebrities, politicians and the royal family, but later the investigation showed that among others Milly Dowler; a murdered schoolgirl and victims of the 7^th July bombings had their phones hacked. The newspaper hacked up to 4000 different targets.

They managed to hack into the phone by using the four-digit code the phone originally came with. The reason for the hacking was to get exclusive stories and scandals. Phone-hacking is against the law, and some victims have received several thousand pounds. Several of the employees at the newspaper are arrested and chief executive; Rebekah Brooks, have stepped down from her position.

The scandal has shocked many people, and we are starting to question how far the press can go to get the stories. When the press has as much power as they have in today’s society, they have to know when to stop, and not abuse the power they are given.

Gran Torino

Gran Torino is a movie about Walt Kowalski. He is an old war veteran who just lost his wife, he live in a neighborhood where most of the families are from different countries and have many different cultures. Walt is not happy about this, and don’t like these people and call them names. He is also in a bad relationship with his family, he think his grandchildren are rude and his son and the sons wife tries to put him in a home for elderly people. So in the beginning he seems like a pretty grumpy, racist old man who just wants to be left alone. 

But the movie isn’t just about Walt; it is about the relationship between Walt and the Mhong family nest door. Mhong is a people who live in parts of Japan, China and Laos. The boy in the family, Thao one day meets a gang his cousin is a part of, and get in some trouble with them. The gang makes Thao try to steel Walt’s Gran Torino.

The daughter of the Mhong family, Sue invites Walt to a party at their house, and he realizes he have more in common with them than his own family. Later Thao works for Walt as an apology for trying to steel his car. The time they spend during this period make him starting to like Thao, and he slowly is starting to accept the Mhongs, and he even helps Thao get a job. But when Walt threatens one of the gang members after they messed with Thao one day, they come to the Mhongs house and starts shooting. They also beat up Sue. Now Walt start to realize what it takes to be able to stop them, and he starts planning. So one night, he lock Thao in the cellar and go to the gang members house, and when he pretend to take out a gun, while it’s really just a lighter, the gang members shoot him. And since he made sure there was enough witnesses the gang members go to prison.

The movie is a good movie about different cultures, racism and that you might have more in common with people from other cultures than you think. It’s about learning to accept these people, even though they look a bit different and have different traditions.

Social media

Today in class we went to hear a couple of presentations about marketing and economic. The first presentation was about how the social media is used in companies today. We know that social medias, such as Twitter and Facebook is highly used for personal stuff, but it getting more and more used by companies, and this is what the presentation was about. 

The reason companies have started using social media is that people no longer only want to take in information through commercials and ads, but want to interact with the company and have the opportunity to contact them easy via social media. In addition their customers can also get constant updates from the company. 

But when you as an individual and companies use these social media, you have to be careful as well. You have to be careful about what you post, and what you write about yourself on you page. This is topics that have been a problem for many people, and many of them are trying to make their pages safer for people. When you post something on Facebook, you have to be careful about what you are saying, and according to the woman having the presentation, people have lost their job because they wrote something racist or inappropriate on their page.

So the social media is good for bringing out messages fast, and it’s easy to communicate with friends, family and even companies. It’s also good too bring out news or other messages fast, but you have to be careful when using them, as you never know who read your posts or check out your profile.

English is the most spoken language in India next to Hindi. English is not the official language, but it is used in many situations. The reason English is spoken in India is because India was a British colony from the 17^th century to 1947. And when almost every high job position in the society required you to speak English, many started learning English.

Today English is still used in many jobs in India. For example there are hundreds of call centers for companies all over the world is located in India, and here all their employees have to speak English at their job. English is also used in the teaching of higher education, justice, science. English is also the most used language for international and political matters in India.

For most Indians though, English is not their mother tongue, and are not introduced to the language before they begin at school, still about one third of the population can maintain a conversation in English. So English is defiantly not the only language in India as they have several hundred languages, but it is the second, or for many the most important and used language.