Blog 10: Evaluation of your Blogging Experience

Write about your experience using blogs in the English class.

Say:

> What you think about the experience in general

> How much you feel your writing skills have developed

> What you would like to include in the future

> What else you would like to write about

Wordcount: 200

Make comments on 3 of your classmates' posts.

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Evaluation of My Experience With Students:

As I have always said, when being here in front of a group of people in a class, I feel lucky to have the chance of being able to be their teacher, and I take very seriously and passionately the fact that the work I can make may change History someday – No one knows for sure if some of the people you were teacher’s to, might grow to become a future senator or the future president.

Having said that is time to reflect upon the practices and understand the ways in which the experience of the process of teaching and learning has enriched one’s life. It is time to assess one’s motivations, one’s teaching practice and the learning gained from the students.

By doing the self-analysis exercise, I realize that by being related to the academic affairs of a wide diversity of students from several faculties and majors, this term as well as the former ones, I have learnt and deepened in areas which were unknown to me and so I have learnt about the world of Dentistry and the different functions of the different organs involved in teething. Furthermore I have explored the world of cinema and the many dimensions to it and that are not always displayed for the mere spectator; I have enriched my understanding of the current national affairs just by listening to my journalism students and the discussions they have in the hallways or when just having a coffee with their peers.

From the interaction with my students –n English most of the time, I always insist - I have seen art in a way that was distant to me, I could finally appreciate artistic forms that before seemed sterile to me and needless say that as a whole, when reflecting upon the learning I have obtained from my students, I understand how wonderful my profession is and that from that nourishing feedback we both, teacher and students, receive from each other,  I believe we may endue the world with ways to stop inequity and contribute for citizens to overcome deprivation.

In the future I aim at opening up more to look over students learning styles, to take their ideas and try to include them in class activities that are even more profitable and beneficial not only for the academic endeavor but furthermore for the pursue of happiness. 

Blog 9. Themed Post: a Book or Movie Review

Review: Inside Job

Last weekend I finally watched the film: Inside Job, by Charles Ferguson. It was an excellent documentary for people who don’t want to understand the financial crisis but for those of us who enjoy the "Michael Moore"-type of films. I say this because the movie has an angry tone towards American Financial system and consequent meltdown in 2007.

It depicts the late-twentieth-century American economic policy in an effort to reveal and unfold the roots of the recent crisis – which is attributed to alliance between politics, academics and big business. The film received an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and is both a careful exposition of the causes and effects of the crisis that shook the world in September 2008, when 20 trillion dollars were lost.

The movie is a documentary narrated by Matt Damon who seems to be the journalist behind the extensive interviews, however, the piece bases all its research on Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short,”. The documentary looks at all the people who made mistakes and asks how they possibly could have overlooked a crisis so obvious

There are many facts and areas that the movie analyses, ranging from the impact of America’s influence in Iceland’s economy, to the changes suffered in American and World society after the break.

The director’s style is to allow his interviewees do the talking, with a sober voiceover from Matt Damon, but later in the movie, the strategy gets really aggressive, and even there’s a touch of Michael Moore in the later scenes, when he (Damon) insists on hard questioning an economic adviser under Bush, who is currently the Dean of the Columbia University Business School, on the cosy relationship between academia and government.

Particularly, it’s parts four and five of the film (“Accountability” and “Where are we now?”) that are the most devastating. By exposing debatable facts and figures, Ferguson makes it clear that the individual men and women behind the decisions that caused the crisis not only benefited from what happened, but are still running the financial services sector; also, the director briefly comments on the more sordid side of the crisis – the cocaine and prostitutes paid for with money from the people because bankers competed for bigger deals and better bonuses. He also cross examines the academic world– exposing the role that business school economists played in creating the chaos, by giving arguments that supported the financial bubble.

It’s an insightful and very eloquent story of the worst kind of greed, and with the deliberate lack of a resolution, the film – which requires some concentration – will almost certainly leave you feeling that heads must roll.