It ain't over til it's over....

But now it is. At least for now. I must admit that this course is probably the most useful course I've ever followed, and I can use it in Norwegian, English, cultural studies and in other subjects as well. I want to thank all our teachers at Nesna University College for being able to create an interesting and creative learning environment! And I also want to thank my fellow students for comments and other feedbacks I've received.

I will be moving to the Lofoten Islands this summer, and I hope I will be able to put some of my new knowledge and understanding into good use. And I hope I will be able to fill the same into my teaching, and last, but not least, I hope that both my colleagues and my pupils will find my knowledge useful and rewarding.

So, to you who read this, maybe you find anything worth using or sharing on my blog? A useful link or maybe even something useful I've said? Don't hesitate to comment, and don't hesitate to share your own knowledge. Do you use Frontier, Moodle or It's Learning as an LMS? Do you have any useful knowledge you want to share? C'mon people, let's not be afraid that our work is lesser than what others do! Let's share what we think others can make use of. Hopefully I will get some feedback on this post during the summer. Or are we done using the Internet?

Answers. The main quest for students?

I kind of think that the answer is rather boring. We have a lot of answers. 47 may be an answer. Or green. Or even Iceland. I don't know, and I don't think I really care. The questions are much more interesting! Where does the white colour go when the snow melts? How would our furniture look like if our knees were bending backwards? We can take pictures with our cellphones, why haven't anyone invented a camera witch can be used as a phone? The list of questions is endless. But we always look for the answer.

My point is this: We know a lot of stuff, but we (often) can not explain why things are the way they are. Is the flow of information so breathtaking that we just acknowledge everything for what they are, or what we believe them to be, or don't we see the fantastic things that surrounds us because we've become used to take it all for granted?





This leads to another question. Do we create our own truth? As Adam Savage in the TV-series Mythbuster says: "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"



Mythbusters has a quest, just as Monty Python had a quest. Both of them are, in a way, looking for the Holy Grail.


 


 

Eyafjallajökull has erupted, and this causes a lot of headlines in all kinds of media. I could of course discuss the troubles this causes for air-traffic, but I won't. In stead I will tell you about another incident that happened in class just yesterday. "How does a volcano work?" was the question from a student. Well, I connected my computer to a projector and found this page. One animation explains how Africa and South-America was connected app. 140 million years ago. When I was showing this to the class, I suddenly was cut off by a student shouting "Lies!!" And then he referred to this page, claiming the earth is just app. 10000 years old, and everything else is just a lie. There were, in fact, no human life on earth until app. 6000 years ago.

 

We all create our own understanding of our surroundings, adapting and assimilating impressions as we are exposed to new knowledge. I believe that my quest is to teach my students how to "filtrate", analyze, and think through the information they may find, if it's on TV, Google, Wikipedia, in books, newspaper or parents. One of our quests as teachers must be to develop critical thinking ourselves, and then be able to pass some of our knowledge to our students. Just take a look at what Wikipedia tells us about media literacy here. We all need to train our critical sense.

Tracking me down.

I've become a product of my environment. Every day I make it possible for people with a bit of skills to track me down. If they are good at it, they might even steal my identity. I'm a well-meaning, easy fooled sucker!

Take my credit-card for instance. I use it when I go shopping. I hardly ever carry any cash, my dear friend VISA is always in my pocket. Everywhere I go, he goes with me. And I spread tracks all around me. If someone asks me where I was on April 13th, I just ask my bank-account. VISA is telling me that I was sitting in a bar called "Scruffy Murphy" in Bergen that day. It was pretty early in the day too.... and I spent exactly 368 NOK at 15.28 p.m. No wonder I didn't remember....

My cell-phone is also a good friend of mine. He would never tell on me! I think... At least not if he's turned off. But he's always online, eager to let anyone find me. So if I am visiting places I have no business visiting, then he'll maybe turn out an enemy? Hmm... I wonder..... And what if I've left my phone out of my sight for a little while.... look at this video below.



One of the comments to this video is this :"THE DOWNLOAD THIS GUY IS ADVERTISING IS A SCAM IN ORDER TO MAKE ILLEGAL CALLS FROM YOU CELL PHONE. DON'T FALL FOR THIS VIEWERS"
Maybe not a good idea to try it out, or what?

But my computer then, he's a dear friend in every way. He's my everyday oracle, and he's always willing to find the information I need. Always! And if I want to hide my tracks on the Internet, then I can use so-called "In private browsing". Right? Or am I spreading cookies all over the Net? Well, I can't see why anyone should ever be bothered by what I'm doing in cyber-space.



I just got an e-mail from a nice man who needs my help. He just need my bank-account number to move a substancial amount of money out of Nigeria. And I will get a handsom 10% reward if I help him. I'm a lucky man!

Peanuts: Are ghosts real?

Peanuts: Are ghosts real?

Just for fun... but not entirely.

Sometimes I discuss some of the programmes on TV with my pupils, some of them are really scared because they've watched "Åndenes makt" (The power of the spirits(?)) on TV.
"Of course it's real, the door handle was moving!"

We watched it on TV, so there can be no doubts about it. I sometimes wonder what I can do in order to teach my pupils, and my own children, how to look at things around us with a pair of critic goggles. Is it true just because we watch it on tv, or read about it in the newspaper, or on the Internet?

The power of visual media is great, and the things we read or watch needs to be filtered through our critic senses. In fact, I think we need to have focus on the flow of information, and ask ourselves if it all can be true. I regularly get e-mails from people who, in good meaning I guess, forward e-mails with content that upsets the recipiants. One of the e-mails was containing pictures of a boy who, allegedly, got his arm driven over by a car for stealing food. It upset me, most of all because the content of the e-mail was alienating Islam. And it upset me because it wasn't true. I googled some of the content, and I found the pictures in a newspaper. Acctually, I found one more picture than I got in the e-mail. The last picture of a boy who triumphing was showing that his arm was ok. He was in fact, a part of a street show. Then somebody had taken the pictures from somewhere, deliberately or not, and posted it as a warning against Islamic violence. This is also posted on Youtube as a fact.

Do you forward such e-mails? I never do. Maybe I did some time ago, I honestly can't remember. But I never do anymore. I will not be a part of alienating other people, other cultures. I will demand hard evidence if I'm going to have an opinion in these matters. It's way too easy to criticize what we don't understand, and what we know too little of.

Are ghosts real?

Just for fun...

Children see..... children do.

How do children learn today?

How do children learn today compared to how they learned when I was younger? Is there any difference at all? I think there is a difference. Children of today are using TV, computers, games and a lot of visual medias. It wasn't like this when I was a child. We had to read books in order to give our brains input. All the pictures and movies was all in our head, our inner eye was in constant work. In my opinion, children of today is missing some of the great stories, just because they can't sit still and read a book.

There's a program on the radio today. (Verdt å Vite. 12.30. NRK P2.) The topic is; What happens in the brain of young (?) people who are more social on the Internet than in real life? According to a specialist on this subject, the human brain changes physically, and endanger our ability to form our own identity, understand consequenses and to understand our fellow human beings.

 Do any of you have any thoughts about this? Feel free to comment! :)

Rørfoss- a look into the Information society, cultural dimensions.

This picture I took using an infrared filter, and I'm satisfied with the result. Actually, this is maybe the one picture I like the most. I haven't been out taking pictures lately, but maybe I'll try to take more pics when I get some spare time. (Which is not likely to happen very soon....) 

The culture of the information society today is kind of overwhelming I think. When I think back to the mid 90's, I remember my first computer. Inside it there were a whole new world, and this world just expanded as I started to explore it. The first time I connected my computer to the Internet, I remember the screen started to change, from the top, slowly to the bottom, as the site was loaded. The colours were great! Today, the Hotbot-site is rather boring, but back then it was the gateway to the world.

Now we live our lives on the computers, well, maybe not all our lives, but a bigger part of it at least. We communicate by using e-mail, messenger (Yahoo or MSN), ICQ, chat-sites, and so on. We share our lives on Facebook, blogs, Myspace or Youtube. We read our papers, watch TV and movies, go banking, and much more, online. We share our pictures on Pbase or similar sites, we promote our music like this on Facebook, or like this on Youtube.

In my work as a teacher, I use my computer in the classroom almost all the time. Earlier, when a student asked me a question I needed some time to figure out a good answer to, I had to write down the question, or remember it until I could find time to look it up. Now I use Google, Caplex, Wikipedia and more to find the answer right away. I'm able to take (almost) every question straight on, and make a rewarding discussion in the classroom. The answers are not always conclusive, and this gives me a good oportunity to train both my own, as well as my students, critical sense.

But, I need to ask this question: I all this a good thing, or is it bad? Some of you will maybe say it's good, and some of you will say it's bad. Maybe I'll just say it's ok? At the end of the day I think it can be a little of each. First of all, I need to have given my students some guidance lines in order to know how to find information, and how to develop a critical sense. We have talked about ethics and law, and how this may tell us what we can use or do on the Internet. You can read more of this here. It may be easy to be "thrown off course" if I allow us to discuss all kinds of questions that may arise in the classrom. Good or bad? This depends, I think, on the content of the matter, and on how the students involve themselves in the discussion. It also depends on my ability to draw lines from the actual topic in the classroom to the matter discussed at the moment. If I'm not able to do this, and the students get the experience that we're just having fun, then I clearly need to get us back on track asap!

I think, just to try to sum all this up in a brief conclusion, that we need to realize that for many young people today, books are not an option in order to learn or relax. I try to take pictures, like the one on the top of this page, to promote the place where I live. Or I use some of my pictures in my classroom, trying to make an entrance to a certain subject. To create and obtain a good learning environment today, I think it's vital for us teachers to develop good skills on how to meet the students at their own arena. The digital arena.

My first blog.

This is my first attempt to create my own blog, and the reason I'm blogging is mainly because I'm studying information and communication technology at Nesna University College. I also work as a teacher. I live in a little community in Nord-Trøndelag, a place called Røyrvik. At the moment, I don't know what I'm going to write in my blog, but I guess it will be a little of everything, and sometimes about nothing at all. Time will show.
My interests in life? Well, it's life in general I suppose. Family, friends, art, reading, music, photography, computers... I'm curious in general I think, and the reason for blogging in English is that my course is international. Maybe some of my blogs will be in Norwegian as well, or maybe only in Norwegian. I can't tell at the moment. I'll probably be jumping back and fourth, with no particular subjects, but I will publish some of my photographs.
Anyway, now I wonder how my blog looks like, so I'll have a break now and try publishing what I've written so far.
See you around.....