Hello first-graders!

I am now about to graduate from Sandvika VGS and I must say I have had 3 very good years. You guys should be happy that you will be attending this school for several reasons. What I like best with this school are the teachers and the people, there are so many interesting and nice people. The first 2-3 weeks are a little special because everything is so new and different, and you may feel lonely and stuff, but don’t worry; you will find friends in no time. The one thing that you will find really different from other schools is the freedom that you have. You are very independent during the classes, and most of the work is being done on your own computer. In other words: feel free to use facebook, msn and play games, but you SHOULD pay attention if the teacher is talking. I remember playing games all the time in the beginning, and my grades turned out to be pretty bad. I decided to study abroad for a year, and therefore I was a student at Mankato High School instead of Sandvika last year. If you read this letter you HAVE TO grab that opportunity. Without a doubt the most fun year of my life, you learn so much. Anyways, I enjoyed my 3^rd year more than my 1^st year at this school. The main reason is that you can choose your own classes and you don’t need Spanish, German and French, which is awesome. Another cool thing about the 3^rd year is of course the fact that we are “RUSS”. You should also try not to eat at McDonalds every single day.

You should be very happy that you are a part of Sandvika VGS, it’s a great school with a good environment and the teachers and students get along very well. Enjoy your time here, I sure did!    

The Nothing-to-do Generation

I did know that the teen-situation in England has been a problem for a long time, what I didn’t know, is how bad it really is. I’ve been to England about 5 times. Such places as Manchester, Birmingham and of course; London. I did recognize the youth and how they behaved, but reading this article grosses me out. I get a feeling that the teenagers in England doesn’t care about their families, and think they are cool when they do drugs and stuff. This may be how it is in other countries as well, but if we take a look at the statistics we observe some pretty scary numbers. It says that 38% of British 15-year-olds had tried cannabis. 15 years of age, that’s a shame. Norwegians have a different relationship to these kinds of drugs, illegal drugs.
I believe we need to look at the reasons for why the British teenagers are so brutal. Not only are they doing drugs, but their behavior is unacceptable and rude. Elderly people are frightened just by taking a walk. A lot of British youngsters live with their mothers, and it is hard for them to focus on the children’s school activity and spare time, especially if the mom has more than one son or daughter. Since they are not involved in any after-school activities they simply “got nothing to do”, and this is where it all begins. They can’t come up with anything to do, and therefore they start being sketchy as the time goes on.
Without knowing for sure I would guess that the government is probably spending a lot of money trying to fix this. It IS a huge problem that affects the future generation as much as the youth today, and I think everybody agrees with me when I say: Teenagers in England need to change. We can only hope that they fix the situation themselves and start being more responsible.

DONE

I am finally done with my senior project! I worked with it for 3 hours last night, and at least 8 hours today, no joke! I am soooo tired now, so I'm going to bed, I am pretty satisfied by the way it turned out, and i am SO glad im done!

Easter and Homework

Hey!

The 10 day long vacation has been wonderful. I have been skiing almost every day, and I have been to some nice sunny places in Norway, like Lillehammer and Lom. I have also worked quite a bit on my “russebuss” because it’s far from done yet, and the time is running away from us.

Yesterday I did some thinking about what I was going to write about for my senior project (yes I know I am late) and I came up with a couple of interesting topics. At first I wanted to write about King Henry VIII, but I found out he wasn’t as interesting to write about as Martin Luther King, Jr. So, I will write a text about the famous civil rights fighter. I think there is a lot to write about, and he has done some important things for the black race in the US.

Challenge

What difference has blogging made to your life at school and home e.g. how has it changed how you learn, the challenges of blogging and how teachers might make the process easier?

I think blogging makes the school day more fun. I say this based on several reasons. First of all I would say that blogging is a good way to learn about new technology and opportunities that are easily accessible on the World Wide Web. I am glad that our teacher started this trend in class, because it really makes me more interested to do assignments now that I have my own place to put my own documents. It is also a very neat setup, so that you can find all you need from previous works without struggling. It hasn’t really affected my life very much, but as I mentioned; the fun of it knocks out different teaching-methods easily. I think the blogging makes it easier for our teacher as well, because she’s got all our blog-addresses and she can comment on our work right there. I usually blog at school, and not that much at home, I think I would blog way more if I was traveling or something, so that I could keep my friends updated.

To sum up: I believe the blogging part of this class makes it easier and more fun to both the students and the teachers.

Link to challenge here: 

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/2009/03/27/the-student-blogging-challenge-celebration/#comment-3646

Speech by David Cameron

David cameron is talking about how the union involving Scotland and England have new good ideas for how the future will be. There are very few people there, and just a couple of hundred people have seen his speech on youtube, so I think he sucks. His speech is long and boring to listen to for me, because I’m not that interested in British politics, but his main point is not to separate from England.  David Cameron gives examples and reasons why Scotland and England should maintain a union; he also explains the benefits of the union.

 Some of Cameron’s main arguments are how much the little offshore nation has accomplished since the early days, the power the countries have standing together, and a richer economy together, great health service. He is not easy on the criticism to the English government, and his main point in the speech is: “As a union, we have to stand strong together”.

Here is a random speech i found on youtube, it was posted 3 days ago, and its quite interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFYhputybNI

Northern Ireland

Cecilie had a presentation for us today. She talked about Northern Ireland, and a little bit of the conflict that's going on over there. She started off with giving us a brief explanation of how the conflict started and what the big discussion is. As far as I remember she said something like this:

The conflict in Northern Ireland involves the IRA(Irish Republican Army) and the British. It started in 1923, when the British invaded Northern Ireland because they meant that Ireland should be a part of Great Britain. The IRA’s original goal when this happened was to get all of the British establishments out of Ireland and get up an independent Irish government.  This conflict is still very much alive, and it affects the Irish government in a pretty serious way. 

 

She also told us about Northern Ireland in general, I personally think it sounded like a pretty interesting country.  The country is a part of the UK and is located in the north east. They have a devolved government within the UK. What that means is that

the statutory granting of powers from the central government of a state to government at a sub national level, such as a regional, local, or state level. It differs from federalism in that the powers devolved may be temporary and ultimately reside in central government