The Edublog Awards Nomination 2013

I nominate Jørgen Frydenberg and his blog theamazingbookblogg.blogspot.no as the student blog of the year. He has a sharp mind, and with his technological intellect, he does good and thorough research before posting an interesting and informative blog post.

I nominate Ann Sørum Michaelsen and her blog annmic.wordpress.com as the teacher blog of the year. With over 177.000 hits on her blog, her words reach out to many people all over the world. This blog is an amazing tool for all teachers, and a lot of teachers can learn a lot. There are many good and fascinating tasks to be found on this blog, and doing them will give a good understanding about the world as it is today.

 

Social media experiment

 

When I was searching around for information about social media I found this amazing and eye-opening video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P_0s1TYpJU

Is the use of social media making us more social?

Today we went to Youngstorget in Oslo, to a café called “Kulturhuset”, or “the Culturehouse” in English. We went there because we were invited to be the audience for a radio show here in Norway called “Ekko”.
 If you want to listen to the interview, click here for the link. Start listening from 1:24:30. Unfortunately it is only in Norwegian, so it can be a bit hard for all the non-Norwegian readers to understand.J

The host of the program was Kristi Kraft, and she interviews three experts on this field. I do not want to write as summary, but I will write what they concluded with. They all agreed that social media makes us more social, but in a different way. You get to know more people and you increase your social network. This can be really helpful in some occasions, such as getting job interviews. They also agreed that it is easy to make more acquaintances through social media, but that it is hard to make good and close friends.                

I agreed the expert panel to a certain point with, and I also believe that social media make us social, but in a different way. On the other hand, I think that it all depends on the type of social media and how it is being used.  A study in Texas also agrees, but a post on dailymail.co.uk disagrees. It presents a study that social media makes us more lonely and unhappy, and less sociable. It says that that Facebook use can undermine well-being and increase loneliness, and that the more time people spent on Facebook, the less happy they felt over time.

It is safe to say that the way people socialize has changed, but in some ways it always stays the same. People have always had the need to present themselves in the best ways possible. It has always been normal to share the picture that makes you look happy and successful.

Personal I do not use social media as much as many of the others in my generation, but I use it enough to be accessible every day. It might be a good thing or it might be bad, it is hard to say. There a lot of research about social media, and I put all my trust onto them to find the answer.

 

Sources:

http://www.astramatch.com/blog/social-media-making-social/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2419419/All-lonely-Facebook-friends-Study-shows-social-media-makes-MORE-lonely-unhappy-LESS-sociable.html

 

 

The Joy Luck Club vs Gran Torino

Today we read an extract of the novel “The Joy Luck Club” written by Amy Tan, a first generation American author with Chinese origin.

 

The extract we read is also known as “When Rich Came To Sunday Dinner”. Waverly Jong, who is the main character, brings her boyfriend Rich over to her parents for Sunday dinner. Waverly Jong come from a Chinese family with strict traditions, and with a mother that is very proud of her cocking. Rich is a small American man who works with Waverly, and they plan to get married. Waverly have not told her parents about this, because she does not believe they would accept it. Her parents, Lindo and Tin Yong, are very strict, but Waverly hopes that after a dinner with Rich, they will see why she loves him. Her parents are not impressed when they for the first time lay eyes on Rich, and the night does not get any better. Rich does not understand the culture, and without knowing it, he disrespects the family several times. The way he eats, and the way he talks to the parents is not acceptable in the Chines culture. After the dinner, Rich is really satisfied with the way it went, unaware of his actions. Waverly on the other hand, knows that her parents got a really bad impression of her boyfriend, and she figured that it was not the time to tell them that she and Rich are engaged.

 

Last week I wrote about the movie “Gran Torino”, which also focuses on the meeting of different cultures.  There are similarities between the stories, but there is one major difference.  “Gran Torino” is mostly shown from the American point of view, through the grumpy old veteran Walt Kowalski. The extract “When Rich Came to Sunday Dinner”, focuses on the viewpoint of the immigrant family, Yong. While Walt has problems accepting that the Hmong people move to his country and keeps their culture, the Yong family has problems accepting the American boy Rich. The Yong family knows that Rich is not familiar with their traditions and norms, but they do not make it easy for him. It is possible to draw the conclusion, that Waverly’s mother wants her to marry a Chinese man, and is unsatisfied that she is dating an American. Walt wants the immigrants to adapt to the American culture, while the Yong wants to keep their own culture. This is the problem in the stories, and also in the World. A big problem in the World is that most people want others to adapt to their ways, and have a hard time adapting to others. This leads to conflicts, such as the ones shown in “Grand Torino” and “When Rich Came to Sunday Dinner”.

Picture: http://atlantaladylitwits.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/the-joy-luck-club-by-amy-tan.jpg