My tasks is

• Check comments
• Check posts
• if needed:
• create users

If it´s something you are wondering about anything please send me a mail: laso1992@gmail.com.

Some students went on a schooltrip to London. They used their cellphone as a camera and got tasks they had to construe with their camera. The rest of the students from MK went to Råholt ungdomsskole and helped 9th grade with a project about marketing. The project was a cooperation with Moelven Eidsvoll Værk.

I will ask everyone to come to Fugleberget on thursday to have a look!

See ya!

On March 18, 2009 the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, signed the bill abolishing the death penalty. New Mexico is the 15th state to repeal the death penalty and is the first of the western states.

From March 13th, when the law was legislated, until the 18th, the governor’s office recieved 10,847 e-mails, phone-calls and walk-in comments from people who wanted the Governor to hear their opinion. 8,102 of those were for the repeal of the death penalty, 2,745 were against. A survey from 2008 showed that 64% of the New Mexican population supported repealing the death penalty. The death penalty will be replaced with life-sentence without parole but the legislation will not affect the people who currently are on death row.

A death penalty sentence is long and expensive. Studies shows that a death penalty trials typically cost far more than a non-death penalty trial, often more than twice as much. Also criminologists say that the death penalty doesn’t discourage murder. FBI reports show that the South has the highest murder rates. The executions in the Southern States is over 80% of the total executions. Only 1% of the police chiefs in the US believe that expanding the death penalty will reduce the murder rates.

With the new law the state of New Mexico has received more money to enhance law enforcements, public works and other important things.

Map of Death Penalty State statutes in the United States

• Blue: No current death penalty statute
• Orange: Death penalty statute declared unconstitutional (New York Court of Appeals declared statute unconstitutional June 24, 2004)
• Green: No one executed since 1976
• Red: Has performed execution since 1976
  

  Death penalty status in the United States of America

My opinion on the matter

First a little summarization on the flaws in the death penalty.

Capital punishment is supposed to be a deterent to murder but in fact it has next to no deteterring effect. Very few murderers consider the punishment before they kill. In fact the murder rates are highest in the states that still practice the death penalty. The costs of executing a person sentenced to the death penalty is more than twice as expensive as sending the same person to a high security prison. There is also a risk of executing an innocent person. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 133 persons have been freed from death row, four of these were in New Mexico.

To me it seems like a bad solution, a primitive way of getting rid of the problem. In theory the capital punishment should discourage criminals from comitting murder. In reality it has almost no detering effect. If thats the main reason for practicing the death penalty. then it does’nt work. They should consider other options instead of continuing the practice of capital punishment. New Mexico as the first of the Western US states sends a message to the rest of America, that this is something that they can change and turn to their benefit.

As Bill Richardson says, “While today’s focus will be on the repeal of the death penalty, I want to make clear that this bill I’m signing actually makes New Mexico safer.”, I think that repleaing the death penalty will make the US safer.

Sources

• CNN
  • Emanuella Grinberg, CNN (2009), New Mexico governor repeals death penalty in state <http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/18/new.mexico.death.penalty/>, 21 May. 2009.
  • Brett Roegiers, CNN (2009), Budget concerns force states to reconsider the death penalty <http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/02/economy.death.penalty/>, 21 May. 2009.
• Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia (2009), Capital punishment in the United States <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States>, 21 May. 2009.
  • Wikipedia (2009), New Mexico <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico#Law_and_government>, 21 May. 2009.
• Death Penalty Information Center
  • Death Penalty Information Center (2009) ‘Facts about the death penalty’, 17 Apr., p. 1-4.
  • Death Penalty Information Center (2009), Death Penalty Abolished in New Mexico–Governor Says Repeal Will Make the State Safer <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-abolished-new-mexico-governor-says-repeal-will-make-state-safer>, 21 May. 2009.
• Dallas News
  • Dallas News (2007), The Myth of Deterrence: Death penalty does not reduce homicide rate <http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-deterrence_1202edi.ART.State.Edition1.36bbe2f.html>, 21 May. 2009.

Dear  Sir\Madam,

I am Barbara Anna Zielonka and I am an English teacher at Nannestad High School, Norway. I am writing on behalf of all English teachers working in Nannestad High School ( www.nannestad.vgs.no).We are a middle sized school situated in the northwestern Akershus county, Norway and only 10minutes from the international airport Gardermoen. Nannestad High School is a young school consisting of around 700students and 100 teachers. It offers different educational programmes like general study, healthcare and social services, media and communication, preparational programme, restaurant and catering, service and logistics, sports education and training. Not only does the school use traditional ways of teaching but it also puts emphasis on new, modern approaches and methods that use available and emerging technology.

This year we are extremely interested in the use of Skype technology for teaching English. We have started to use Skype in order to communicate with teachers and teenagers from English speaking countries during our English classes, but we would like to get more partner schools\ institutions in this communication experiment/project. We see that there is a great need in establishing contacts with young people who have similar interests and skills. We have already found that such lessons are very effective and all the students find the technology interesting and appropriate to their interests.

We would be very grateful if you could pass this information to all English teachers in your school with the intention of connecting up with your school so that students between our two schools can communicate by Skype and learn from each other.

If you are interested in this cooperative project (Skype Project) please feel free to contact us. Together we can make better schools for our students using technology they are interested in and technology that can be effective in teaching.

Yours sincerely,

Barbara Anna Zielonka

Barbara.Zielonka@nannestad.vgs.no

www.nannestad.vgs.no

We started searching the internet for blueprints for the car and soon we got some that we could work from. We loaded them into the program of choice, Cinema 4D R10, which we both have installed and are somewhat familliar with. You have to purchase Cinema 4D software made by Maxxon. We also searched the internet for some tutorials on how best to model a car in 3D, preferably in our program, since interfaces and modeling techniques differ, sometimes a lot, from each other when it comes to the different programs.

Erling started modelling tires and I started modelling the body of the car. 3D modelling is time consuming work and we never really got to finish the car but you can see our work in our Power Point presentation.

Click here to download the Power Point presentation

A progressive image, and an interlaced image.

All the electronic stores brag about incoming products which have more incomprehensible functions and specifications than the product before. I will do one little digression before trying to explain it all; I think that there are two reasons that the biggest electronic stores like Elkjøp do not explain everything in their advertising, that they send out to everyone’s breakfast table with the morning newspaper. One; It’s easier to sell products that are of less worth, because most people do not have that knowledge to judge if it is a good product or not. Reason Two; if people don’t know, and they want to buy a new television, I think, or at least I would prefer to go to the store to get it explained for me, instead of doing research on my own. When people are at the store it’s much more easy to try to talk one person in to buying something.

Before we can understand what is best, we need to understand the difference between interlaced and progressive. In the older days, when we had old television monitors with glass in front of it, and the old computer screens (CTR instead of todays LCD) all the media that were streamed through were interlaced. Most people know that video has normally 30 frames per second to make it look realistic. But the thing about interlaced is this; each single frame only shows half the picture. The frame was divided into 625 vertical lines (PAL, the television standard in almost all of Europe), showing only the odd lines at frame one, and then even lines in the next frame. The human eye can not see this and the screens were built to show this type of media standard, therefore it was no problem. There are one obvious benefit with this system; Less data needs to be sent and with no loss of quality, since the monitors would put the images together.

When the producers of the television started to create such big screen as 32 inches (diagonal measurement) they realized that it would at a certain point be no use to have bigger screens. The quality on the media aired from the television stations was for screens below the size 32 inches. So looking at TV on a screen bigger than that would look slightly horrible. The answer was a whole new technology, and maybe something that would have seen more obvious today; progressive screens. Instead of using odd and even lines, each frame would instead be whole. All media would be progressive and all monitors would be progressive. Since the speed of the technology would support this, the big benefit is better quality.

So what is the best? Since interlaced media is not the proper thing to use at a progressive monitor the list over the best media will look like this:

1. 1080p is the best, which is standard blu-ray format. 1920 pixels across per frame, and 1080 pixels vertical.
2. 720p is the media below 1080p, with 720 pixels vertical and 1280 pixels horizontal.
3. 1080i is below 720p technically, because of two reasons; the quality does not actually exist, it is not there the whole time since it’s only showing half a frame at a time. Some 1080i got 60 frames per second, so then it contains as much data as the 1080p. But still the media is interlaced which creates a nasty look on it all when you look at it on a progressive monitor.

So, what should you choose?

If your screen is progressive, most people would choose progressive media if they could compare it to interlaced media there and then. If you have an old screen, its really not necessary with 1080i because most of the interlaced screen would not be able to show all the lines. Except if you have a really big interlaced monitor. So really, the choice is yours. And if you wonder if its really worth the extra money for a 1080p monitor, instead of 720p, a little note to yourself could be this; Screens less than 22 thumbs less difference, the higher in screen size, the bigger difference.

The restaurant and Coffee-bar is one of the services that that program field of study provides. It is a light-filled and modern restaurant which is open every Thursday evening from six o`clock and can tempt with delightful food and good service. The coffee-bar is a little Café that serves an omelette or a sweet and many types of coffee to students or other people that need a break. It’s a great environment for a casual meeting or just for a break during a hectic day.

So two of the groups found help in the media field of study and that was the start of two very different program studies working together. What a great opportunity.

Then the five media girls left their classes after having agreed with their teachers. They were off to a good and interesting day of a different kind of work than they were used to. One girl helped with the menu and four with the commercial video.

Our day:
The first thing we did was go to get equipment. We needed a video camera, microphone, wires, dolly, tripod and a photo camera.
The next thing on our agenda was the idea. We needed to know what the original idea was, and how we could improve it. We went together with some of the students in the kitchen and heard what they wanted and what they had pictured. We had to tell them what we could do, and what would be impossible for us and our budget. Then we had to work on the idea so it could be a real life movie commercial, we also had to think about all the technique to consider. Where should the camera stand to get the best light? What camera movements should we use? How to avoid the mirrors and reflections of us, and of course how to get a good result.

The idea was classic and good they had in the beginning, so all we had to do, was putting it into life and making it visually perfect.
And finally the real work could begin, which became a lot harder than we first thought. We started the search for actors. While some of us were looking for hungry, hard working people who were interested in a nice meal for our commercial started, the others were shooting the food in the kitchen. After a while we managed to fill all the empty seats. After filming everything we needed, we released all the actors, just to start the search for new ones to the coffee-bar scene. It took some time, but we did get everything we needed, and more.

Then there was just one more thing to do. Now we had to start the editing, and find the perfect song, and finish the project. And we did it!
Our last problem, and maybe the hardest off them all; convert the movie into the right file type. I think we have tried the third time now, just to match the file type to the school computers and make sure we had the chance to put it on the school webpage.

But we had a lot of fun, and learned more doing this, than just reading in the textbook. We have also had the opportunity to work across the different program fields here at school. We learned from them, and they learned from us.

This program field of study is not just working with the cafeteria, but also with the coffee bar and the restaurant. The restaurant is open every Thursday and the eleventh and twelfth grades have the restaurant every other week.
Nannestad also has its own butcher shop. Students prepare various meats and delicatessen food for the public to buy.

Emil and I made a web page that we named Daydreamfilm.net.

We have used most of the English classes to complete this web page. Unfortunately the page is not up and running. We have had some technical problems with the domain. We are hoping to fix this as soon as possible.

As you know, we are going to put footage and video on this page. We used four English classes before this winter to make one film. It was short, but also okey.

Emil even made a short film edit of Vemund Venner who´s a first year student in media and cummunication at Nannestad. We might as well use this for our webpage.

To make this web page we used some time checking out other similar pages on the internet. We also drew some sketches of the design we´d like to have.

Now on to something else. Emil startet do his thing in Flash and make animation. After some hours of work, it was done. We both liked it, but it was a bit of boring in the long run, so we decided to make a new one. When the new one was complete we both agreed that we could use this one.

Now. After the second design, we changed our minds again. We will go for the first design.

When Emil made the animation in Adobe Flash (Program) he drew it all. First he drew one tree, then another one and so on. When he had enough different trees he copied the trees and made a bunch of them. The trees were put in different groups so they could stand in more than one position.

The design is based on a ski resort in the mighty Alps.

The airplanes in the background are commercial for the webpage and the helicopter is there just to make it look cooler and fill up some empty space.

The elevator in our design is an animation, among with the airplaines and the helicopter. To make an animation you have to take one piece and put it in the start position. Then you mark an area where the piece is going to move. When this is ready you take an x number of frames (in the timeline) and this will make it move.

After having the chat with you, Marianne, we are going to make the webpage in English as you wanted. We might make two pages, one with Norwegian language and one in English.

We also will try to make our films in English.

I will soon start with the footage to our webpage. I´m hoping to get som great footage to the page, so the quality of the entire page will be good !

To do this I have to ”think outside the box”. I will try many different things, hoping this will get som great photos in the end. It´s been a long time since I last took picture at all, so I´m looking forward to being active with the camera again !