I have had a slow week this week, not much have happened. I have only had a position paper to write and a film pitch to do. I have been a bit stressed since I needed to get my credits in the system and yeah I had the last exam this Friday and I need the credits before the 1st of December to be allowed to apply for exchange studies. So, I have had a lot to do at the same time as I have had a slow week from the point of view of the blog. The think is, I need to prioritase my studies before the blog and other things I need to do. The blog is just an extra thing that I will do if I have time for it. 

This weekend I will spend with my love and watch film, play some computer games and actually going to the cinema and watch Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I will post a review tomorrow or on Monday!

Showing your students a film can today be a bit controversial. Should students watch film in school? Why or why not? I believe that if you use film or film clips in the right way it can be very beneficial and an easy tool to teach the students about themes, setting, plot, characters and so on. You can of course teach this through reading but sometimes it cna be nice both for students and for teachers to do something else in a new way, maybe something you haven't tried before. When using film in the classroom you have to make sure that the students don't only see the film but that they read it. There is a difference in seeing and reading and your job is to teach them how to read film.

To be able to read film the students need to watch actively and not only watching the film as entertainment. You can do this by forcing them to take notes or answering questions at the same time as they are watching. You can also choose to only use extracts instead of whole films since time is often a problem when it comes to film. However, you have to think about copyright and make sure you follow the rules when using extracts.

I believe it might be easier to teach the students about setting, plot, characters and so forth by using film since it is portrayed in a different way in films than it is in books. I don't mean that you use film instead of books but as a complement to books. It is sometimes easier to understand what you can see through examples than by reading about something.

Okey, we have had a major set back in my chances to go abroad. Apparently you have to have 15 credits from this autumn term. I have the credits or at least I have 12,5 credits that I know of, but since the credits haven't been transfered to the database I have 0 credits at the moment and as I already mentioned I need 15. The last 2,5 credits I get from another course, which I have the exams in this Friday so if the teacher is nice she might put the credits in the system before deadline 1st of December, but she doesn't have to since she has at least 3 weeks to correct papers.

So, if I'm unlucky I won't get the credits I need before the 1st of December, which means that I can't apply for going abroad and I only get to apply if there are places left after this first round of applications. Why is it that everytime you are doing something, something goes wrong? Everytime! You get so frustrated when there is nothing you can do but to hope that your teachers care enough that they actually transfer the credits to the system. 

It's already weekend again, time moves past quickly now and soon it is Christmas and Christmas Holiday! I have had a lot to do the last couple of days. I have had two oral presentations in one course and begun a second course and now I only have to write a paper which is due to next Friday and do a lot of reading and somewhere I have to find some time to practice my guitar. 

I begun to learn Misty Mountains yesterday and it actually went pretty well :D I'm going to check if I can figure out the rest later today or tomorrow. I also got a wierd thing to train the muscles in the hand in order to get more strength in the fingers and thus be able to play the guitar better, or at least that's the goal. We'll see if it works or not, hopefully it will since it would be much easier to play if it did :)

I had an interesting discussion today at the university about bullying and how far it has gone the past few years. Was it really this big when I went to school? It probably were it's just something you choose to ignore when you grow up I asume. Our discussion made me wonder, do students actually know what bullying is? Do they understand what a bully is? I'm actually not so sure about that since the word "bully" hasn't any affect on students in todays school. They simply don't care about what they do to each other and that words can hurt so much more than if they hit someone.

I'm thinking that students today think bullying isn't that bad since adults do it all the time on the internet. Adults comment, say mean things and bully other people on social media, so if the behaviour is okey when you are an adult why shouldn't it be okey when you are in school? For teachers it's really difficult to draw a line since adults step over it all the time and students who see maybe their parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles bully people online then the behaviour is in one way accepted, the grown ups shows through their actions that this kind of behaviour is okey, so why should the students listen to the teachers saying it is not?

Social media has exploded during the last couple of years and it hardly even existed when I grew up, but today a lot of the bullying going on in schools are done in the cyberspace. Bullying going on on the internet, whose responsibility is it to stop it actually? In an article published in Skolvärden (link to article here) it says that The School Inspection thinks it is the teachers responsibility if the students involved attends the same school. My imediate thought about this is, how can it be the teachers responsibility if it happens outside of school during the weekend or a holiday break? Teachers cannot monitor the internet 24/7, it's not manageble, not with everything else the teachers have to do today. 

Bullying is a huge problem today, and there is still not a solution to it, but I do not believe that the responsibility should be put on teachers alone. Teachers see the students for 8 hours a day 5 days a week what about the 16 hours that are left? Shouldn't it be the parents responsibility to monitor what their children do on the internet when they are at home? It feels more logical that the adult that spend the most time with the child should be responsible and that is not the teacher it is the parent. It is the parents job to raise the child and that responsibility cannot be put on the teacher.

I'm so excited, the new Harry Potter film has it's premier today! The film I'm talking about is of course Fantastic Beasts and where to find them. This film is based loosly on the book Fantastic Beasts & where to find them which is a book in the Harry Potter library set. The book is a textbook used at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I think it's great of J.K Rowling to actually write some of the books that occur in the Harry Potter series. The Harry Potter library set includes Fantastic Beasts & where to find them, Quidditch through the ages and The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

Harry Potter is a phenomena, there are books, films, wands, clothes, candy and you can actually walk thorugh the Hogwarts express and go inside the Dursleys house at Harry Potter studios in London. There are a lot to see at the studio how they made the films, special effects and so much more. It's worth a visit if you happen to be walking by.

Back to the film Fantastic Beasts and where to find them, as I mentioned the premier is today, unfortunatley I won't be able to go on the premier but with a bit of luck I will see the film this weekend and then I will write a review of it. I expect a lot of this film, but then I think the Harry Potter films are great and they are my absolute favourite films ever made. I really admire Rowling's imagination and her ability to actualyl come up with this whole new world. A world where everyone can feel at home, there are characters to identify with no matter what age you are and there are something for everyone.

I write about Fifty Shades Darker the other day and now I have finished the last book in the trilogy. I'm actually surprised by the turn the novel took after the first novel. It's less about the sex and more about what is happening around the characters and the story is actually exciting. I haven't yet decided if I like the novels or not partly because of the similarity to Twilight and it is really difficult to separate the two when you read because there are so many events in the novel that are almost exact the same. Even how the characters are described is almost identical to Bella and Edward. How Edward is the most beutiful and perfect person in the world and Christian is described in the same way and Ana is described to be normal, mediocre and there is nothing special about her apperance.

The turn the novel takes in this novel is surprising, you kind of know in one way that Ana will get pregnant eventually, you get those feelings already in the second novel but you still know it will happen and Christian will freak. It's kind of their thing something happens and Christan freaks out and then they have make up sex. It's the same thing over and over again they always figure it out and have sex. Yes, the novel is an erotic novel but it would be nice with some change also, the story is very predictable even though the events are different the way they handle these events are the same and of course it escaletes in one way.

Since I didn't study yesterday the plans for today is to study a bit. At least I will read what I need to read for the seminar and try to finish my oral presentation. The seminar tomorrow is about the teaching practicum I had a few weeks ago and that means I don't have to read anything for that one :D I just have to bring my 9 page lesson plan. I will aslo try to squeeze in some gaming time with some friends and probably we'll play some terraria. It's a game similar to Minecraft. Other than that I don't have that much plans actually. If I have gotten a response from my teacher I might write on my position paper and try to figure out some good arguments. I'm writing about ethography and my focus is on how it should be a non-acceptable method for data collection. Well, more about that later.

When it comes to going abroad I'm waiting for confirmation of some courses. I sent a list to the person in charge for that on Friday, as soon as I hear from her I think I can write the application and academic statement and then I just have to wait. I actually added a univeristy in Australia in my list and removed San Francisco and replaced it with another university in North Carolina. I'm thinking of taking a look at university of Washington also and maybe apply there to.