essay

Movies plus readings a good teaching and learning strategy for modern teachers.

Nowadays teachers around the world have to adapt their classroom practice or their methodology towards those things that catch their students’ attention, trough this kind of material we (teachers) can make the contents more fun and familiar for our students. Moreover we know that teachers utilize movies, documental, or any kind of media file to explain the topic they want to address or talk about. Movies are a good way to show reference of what happened on the past. But can we really trust on the perspective of those movie or media file as something factual? I mean, how much are movies influenced for the director or scriptwriter’s perspective. It is better to show our students this kind of contents with books that are concentrated on the topic we are seeing in the class. This essay has the goal of demonstrate what the advantages and disadvantage of the use of movies or Medias in the classroom are, and how teachers should mixed this with some readings, in that way our students will not forget the relevance of books.
Based on the description explained on the introduction about this new methodology, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the use of movies in the classroom for the teacher practice? For example if we want to represent Elizabeth’s times with the movie “The golden age”.
“The golden age” is a movie based on Elizabeth reign. She was the most important queen in Britain and really beloved and admired for her people. Her courage, passion and dedication were really important for the cultural development of Britain on those times.
One of the things she did was to fight against the church for the freedom of her people, I mean, during those times the religion established some “rules” or “prohibitions” against people and punished them if they say something forbidden. But
Elizabeth do not let the church punished her people because of what they say or think about something. Thanks to that in that period of time we had what we currently know as the “boom of literature” and the blossom of many writer, such as, William Shakespeare.
The movie is focused on two things: the relation of Elizabeth and her country and Elizabeth’s heart. On the movie we could see how Elizabeth was bravely fighting against the church assault which is known as “the crusade against Britain”, and the one side love she felt for Walter Raleigh, because Elizabeth fall in love for him but he was in love for other woman.
The advantage of this movie is that this shows the history in an entertaining way or at least attractive for the student eye. So this would be a good tool for educator to explain some contents that are really wide, kind of boring and complicated, such as, the crusade age or the fight between Spain and Britain reign.
What teachers can do with this material, first show the movie to their students and then develops some activities related with the main topic. Questions like what do you think about the historical context? In that way you (teacher) would be encouraging your students to think about the movie, not just as an ordinary movie, but as important information, in this way this activity would be meaningful and the content would be successfully acquired for your students.
The disadvantage of “The golden age” is that this movie illustrate us a queen that got unwise for love and lost her sense of justice and freedom, because she prohibited the love of her maiden (Bess) with Walter and punished and try to separated them, all because he doe not love her. This kind of reaction we do not know it is real, if happened on Elizabeth’s life or just fiction from the movie, because we should have on mind that the main objective of movies is to catch people attention and the best way to do it is trough this kind of scene, I mean, love, fight scene are the most attractive for the audience. Also other thing she should have on mind it is that movies are based on the perspective of a director or scriptwriter.
To sum up, movies are a good way to show to our students what happened on the past in a funny and interactive way. But we should not just go trough the contents with just this media, because this is not the only truth. We (teachers) should mixed this kind of media, which is attractive and useful with some readings concerned on the same topic, in that way our student would be learning something meaningful and not just fiction. Also this mixed would give the movie most relevancies and our students would be able to debate, discuss and compare the differences and similarities between the movie and the reading from one topic. This would make the learning meaningful and motivate our students to know things from the past.

I will try to write about natives and immigrants.
I think the mixed of both cultures helped on the develop of what we currently know as United Kingdom, I mean, We could see trough the books that we are reading now how different people from different parts of the world got there causing changes. We already recognize that these people had different abilities, skills, customs, cultures and religious. The thing is that those who were natives learned about those who were immigrants. Thanks to all those countries and civilizations that were willing to invade United Kingdom and left them some knowledge and new traditions. They borrowed some traditions, customs and words from immigrants to their own language and they also created new culture, custom, language, etc.
Moreover immigrants changed their ideas of the world, because the also received some knowledge and customs from natives.
To sum up in terms of knowledge it was helpful for both, well that is what I think about it.
That is all for today.
Kiss and Hugs
Lanistica

Modern times

The movie “Modern Times” represents all the changes our society live after the industrialization process, I mean, all the socio-cultural-economical people’s change suffered during those times.
In the movie we can see the pain of many people who could not find a good job. Also those who had a job had to work in factories in where they suffered harassment and abuse from their bosses, they work more than twelve hour per day and their work was bad salaried.
In Women cases were worst, because they had to carry out the worst job and their paid was really low. Also if the woman was married she had to give her salary to her husbands, who kept it and controlled for her.
"All they were workers with no right!".
Modernity has a bright and dark side. For one side we have new device and medical treatment that help us to have a better life style. On the other hand what we could see in the movie was how people were almost slaves of factories just because they needed to bring some food to their houses and feed their families.
I think modernity brought a lot of socio-cultural changes. Some of them were really good, like new tools that help us to have a better life. On the hand the idea of people as machine gave us a wrong idea of the concept modernity.
I believe the wiser thing to do with all this stories is to learned about all the previous mistakes we committed during those times with the purpose of do not do it again
That is all
Kiss and Hugs
lana

Queen Elizabeth I

The first thing I thought when I saw the movie was "she really is a brave woman". I think Elizabeth’s was really concerned about her people. For that reason her reigns was considered one of the best.
Other important fact is that she was a Protestant Queen and in the movie we could see the commitment that she had with her people. One scene that clearly shows us that is when she is talking with the soldiers, before going to the battle, over her horse in the battlefield.
I think this was the reason of the fight between England and Spain. The last one did not accept England religion ideas.
One contribution from her reign was the bloom of the literature and the support she gave to explorers like Raleigh because during that time England started expanding it’s influenced in the world.
She was called the “virgin queen” because she never got married. She considers herself the mother and wife of the whole country. So the man who would marry her it would be married with England too. So she believed she did not need a man at her side, she was stronger enough to do it alone.

that is all for today.
kiss and hugs
lanistica

questions and answer

I think the holidays influenced the answer of the people, because when i asked them about traditional dishes almost all of them said "empanadas". I think it is funny how easily people can forget about their own traditional dishes, i mean a lot of them said spagetti of hamburgers. I think this is because we are so used to eat junf food or fast food and we do not take our time to look for healthyor real food.
Other thing that cought my attetion was the answer of whisch national heroe.... A lot of them aswered that they recall the Chilean heroes not for their history classes. but for the Tv program Heroes, a documental about the most relevant national heroes. Moreove nobody mentioned one women as a national heroine, i mean what about Mistral, Parra....
I think we (Chileans) should give more value to our own things, tradition, products, etc.!!!

civilization-culture and crithical thinker

In my own words.
I would define civilitization as a group of people, who share a specific time in the history, with their own traditions, knowledge, beliefs and aims. Also i think that people must be concerned of the errors of the past then they would not do it again or they would learn about it and try to develop the good side of it at the next level. this is called make a progress. Culture is a fact that is inside of the meaning of the word civilization, for me culture refers to the knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, hierarchies and religion acquired by a group of people, and this is give and improve it generation by generation. furthermore to be able to do what i previously said, we need critical thinkers.
To me a critical thinker is a wise person, who is able to respect others opinion, brave to share their own ideas with the word without feeling shy or ashamed of it, loyal with their own ideas, notions, belief and values. a critical thinker must be concerned about what happen around him/her and try his/her best to change what he/she thinks is wrong.

I believe this three concepts are like a triangle, because we need it all together to make the whole figure, i refers that if we have good critical thinkers we will have a better culture, and a better culture means to develop the best civilization.

That's all for today.

kiss and hugs

lanistica

Expectations!!

What i expect about this class?

First of all, I do not know so much about the history of those country, just what I learned when i was at the school, that were the elemental facts and dates, such as the 1 & 2 war world or the industry revolution, but i would like to know MORE.
I want to know more about the history of United states and England, because i believe that knowing this would help me to understand a little more about their culture (beliefs, traditions and costumes) and point of view of the people from those country.
Also knowing more about it, I would be able to develop a better critical thinking level and be able to talk about different things with my classmates or native speakers. Having a good point of view and support my ideas with facts .
Well I just hope that during this semester will be able to obtain goods marks and be able to understand everything.
i have a good feeling about the course.
I think it would be interesting and fun. that whats really matters!
kiss and hugs
lanistica