Charlie Wilson's War.

We saw Charlie Wilson's War today, and I have to say that I were very impressed. The film covered the real story about Congressman Charles Wilson, and his quest to make sure the poor Afghan people got the weapons they needed to stop a Soviet invasion in the midst of the Cold War.

I think the film had a lot of very interesting characters, spanning from the lighthearted Charlie Wilson to the rather inverted Joanne, and also Gust, which I would describe as a reckless and rather realistic American. I think these three characters made the film, but I also have to add that there were several other deep and funny characters.

Also, the story around Charlie Wilson and what he did in the 1980s is something everyone should know. That he managed to lobby and make deals with several Middle-Eastern governments while keeping everything under the press' radar is rather extraordinary, and it also helped the Aghan people get their liberty and peace. What is rather ironic in this film is that Charlie Wilson was advised by Gust to keep sending funds to Afghanistan, as they needed a lot of money to re-build the country. Of course, the Americans often come in and clean things up, but they often don't care too much about what happens afterwards, and you could say that they got smacked by not doing so.

I really enjoyed the film, and I have to say that I've found a new character on my hall of fame; Gust Avrakotos.

A new way of working in the classroom

Mrs Michaelsen had a brand new idea of teaching today, and that was to divide the class into five different groups with different responsibilities, and our collaboration should end up with a proper and high-quality text around our topics.

The groups were as following:

1. Front desk, responsibilities: divide material, prioritize, approve material, give time limits talk to all groups
2. Research group, find material, and send to front desk, journalists, teachers and designers
3. Journalists, write blogs, and send to front desk, teachers, designers
4. Teachers, make rubrics with criteria for testing, write test questions
5. Designers, make Glogs and Photostory with material

Anders and I were in group one, and we had the responsibility of approving material, giving out time limits to the other groups as well as organize the whole process. I think we did a pretty ok job, but I have to say that we were wrong on how much time the different groups needed. The journalists were way over time, and that kind of slowed the process down. The latter groups had to start improvising without having any material, but I think it worked out pretty good overall.

I liked this way of learning, because it was very unique. However, I think some of the groups like the front desk didn't have to do a lot, which gave us too much free time. We did however use it wisely as we read, researched on our own and also wrote a few blog entries.

Mathias

The Catcher in the Rye week one

I've only read like thirty pages yet, and the story has resolved around Holden Caulfield, a boy that is enrolling at Pencey Prep, which is a preperational college. There hasn't been much action yet, so I haven't really developed any particular view on the plot, but I have to say that the language of the book is rather unique. It is pretty raw and actually pretty real in terms of how teens tend to talk.

Mathias