Last Assignment

Hi there! Here's my essay.

Advantages and disadvantages of using blogs in the English class.

The implementation of blogs as a learning tool is completely new to me as a student. Therefore, it would be interesting to comment on good and bad points about this innovating homework system. Some important advantages might be the possibility of sharing our work with other classmates; and also time flexibility. On the other hand, some bad points could be the extra effort that involves the use of technology; and the lack of evaluation of speaking skills.

In my opinion, the use of blogs for doing homework has shown excellent results. In the first place, writing on a blog instead of delivering hand-written or printed papers allows us students to share our work with each other. When you deliver a paper directly to the teacher, only he/she gets the chance to see it; instead, when you post on a blog, all of the class has the opportunity to check on other people’s work. This is great because you can improve your own skills and learn from your classmates’ work; you can see their work’s good and bad points, and then check your own work looking for mistakes you may have not noticed. This also means you can leave posts on your classmates’ blogs, giving them opinions and helping them to improve their English.

Another advantage consists on the chance to work on your own schedule. You can work during class on your blog, but if you don’t do it quickly enough, you always got the chance to finish it up at home. That’s something you can’t do with most evaluation systems.

In spite of these good points, there are some difficulties on the use of blogs. First of all, not everyone is used to working with internet-based technology, such as blogs. For some people it’s hard to handle options and uploading pictures and such. Besides, not everyone has internet at home, at sometimes it’s troublesome to get to a cyber-café or such.

Blog assignment system also doesn’t allow evaluating speaking skills. When it comes to learning a new language, a big part of it involves handling pronunciation and being able to express your self by speaking. And of course, blog’s text format support sound.

Taking all of these points into consideration, I can honestly say that I believe blog evaluation system to be a very good option. Good points are much more important than the bad ones. You can always ask a friend to help you handle the blog program, or go to a cyber café near home, if you don’t have internet at home. And about speaking, the class activities seem to cover that part of evaluation.

The advantages, on the other hand, are great. It really is priceless to be able to do homework from the comfort of your own house and your own computer. Also, sharing advice regarding homework is not very usual, and it has been really good.

I would definitely recommend the use of the evaluation system. It has turned out to be quite useful, at least for me.

Sixth Assignment

Hello.

For this assignment, I’ve chosen a Chilean film called La vida me mata, or Life kills me. The film is directed by Sebastián Silva. And the main actors are Gabriel Díaz, Diego Muñoz, Amparo Noguera, Claudia Celedón, Alejandro Sieveking.

The movie was about a guy whose brother had died recently, so he’s very depressed. He’s a camera-man and he’s working on a short film with three other people. While working on this movie, he meets a guy who starts working with them on that project. This new guy turns out to have sort of an obsession with death, a very sensitive, yet amazingly attractive topic to the main character. At the end of the movie, he finally manages to find some peace, under bizarre circumstances.

I really liked the film. It had some very good actors I already knew, and the ones I didn’t know, I really liked too.

It was sort of funny, but not in a shallow way… the characters were all very special and had particular characteristics that made you like… I don’t know, feel like you already knew them, like you understood what they were all about, that’s a great feeling when you watch a movie.

What a probably liked the most was the ending. It’d be hard to explain it without giving a much longer description of the movie, but… what I liked about it is that it was very unexpected, I just didn’t see it coming. In fact, I thought the movie had ended… I stayed while the credits went by, and at the end of it…. The movie just kind of started again, and it was great to see that end, because the previous one was kind of…. I don’t know… unfulfilling.

I would definitely recommend it, and even watch it again.

Fifth Assignment

Hello.

For this assignment I’ll be commenting on Daniela’s blog. To which the address is: http://psyquita.blogspot.com/.

I really like Daniela’s blog because of many reasons.

First of all, I think the design she chose is pretty nice, the text color and the background color don’t make a lot of contrast, so you don’t get tired of reading.

She also expresses her self very well, she uses a lot of every-day, more colloquial expressions, which make her English sound a lot more natural, not like she’s copying phrases from a text book.

Also, I noticed she chose some of the links I chose to post on her blog, for instance, http://www.apch.cl/.

It’s also great that she posts images of the activities or subjects she’s writing about. It makes the whole reading a lot more interesting. And, they’re great pictures too! When I had to upload a picture of an activity I couldn’t really come up with anything good.

I also noticed that in the assignment where we were supposed to talk about a piece of art, Daniela chose the same painting I chose: The Japanese Bridge, by Monet. I also posted the two different pictures and explained why they were painted differently by the artist. It was pretty funny when I noticed that.

Nice blog Daniela !

Fourth Assignment - National Holidays

Hi.

I don't usually stay in Santiago for the national holidays. My parents have a house at the beach, so they spend these days there. This year's wasn't an exception, but I decided not to go with them because it's a very very small town: very few people live or go there, and there isn't much to do besides lying on the sand and watching the birds.... which I don't find very interesting.

So... I stayed in Santiago this year, and I don't regret it, I had a much better time. I went out with some friends a couple of times, to eat... or to a party.. or things like that... Some friends came over to my place too, we watched movies and stuff... Doesn't sound so much fun now that I'm typing it... but it was =). Oh and... I did my own hair... I was bored and didn't wanna spend time in a hair dresser... So I did it my self... I was actually surprised when I saw how OK it came out in the front... But in the back, it was a disaster... Luckily... it's growing now and it doesn't show so much anymore.

Anyways... I don't know what this has to do with the national holidays, besides the fact that I did it on those days... I hope I've made it to the 170 words... =D

bye!

Third Assignment - Piece of Art

Hi there.

The piece of art that I'd like to talk about is called ''The Japanese Bridge'' by Claude Monet.
I think it's a beautiful picture. As you can imagine, I haven't seen the actual painting, because it's probably exposed at a French museum.

I first found out about it while I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary. It was a program about visual perception's biology. They where explaining how the color-sensitive cells in the eye ball start dieing at a certain age, and by the end of a person's life, there are actually very few cells left. And also how one of the eye's layers changes it form through one's life period.

How does this have to do with Monet? Well... He made a painting of the same scene in two different periods of his life, one when he was young, and the other in his late years. The point is that although it was the same scene, the two pictures are very different. Because by the end of his life, his vision had deteriorated severely, and he actually saw a very different scene, which translated into a very different painting.

I like them both a lot, but I think I prefer the second one.

Second Assignment - Article

Hello...

The article I chose for this assignment is called The Social Psychology of Organizations, by Daniel Katz & Robert L. Kahn.

This article consists on a series of research concerning issues related to motivation and morale, productivity and effectiveness, leadership and in general, how change processes take place within large organizations, such as economic organizations, maintenance organizations, adaptive organizations and managerial-political organizations.
In an attempt to observe the organizational processes in a deeper and more comprehensive way, this article's authors based their research on a new vision of interpersonal relationships and individual psychology. These matters have historically been interpreted in very traditional ways, which haven't allowed a better look into the process of interest.
The adopted point of view is based on the belief that people's interdependent behavior takes place in particular ways, that can be conceptualized as a structure. This structure's role is extremely important when it comes to stuyding large organizations.

First Assignment - Web Page

Hi there... The web page I've chosen for this assignment is Box Torrents (www.boxtorrents.com)

This is a website where people upload anime series, movies, soundtracks and other stuff related to anime. You can download all this content by using bittorrent, which is a very popular exchanging method in the internet. It's specially efficient when you need to download large files or lists of files, which is the case when it comes to anime.
I really like this website because there are tons of contents, and they're always adding new series and movies. Besides, in this particular site you can find some rare content, which isn't always available in other places in the internet. I visit it pretty often to check out if there've been any good updates.