10 $ covers the house rent for an average family for one month.
35$ a month covers expences for school, tutoring, food and follow up for one child a month.
100$ supports an orphan and puts it into a home all expences covered.

Seldom have I seen a humanitarian effort that hits the nail as well as this one. You can’t probably read what my students write about after visiting Maisha Mema in October, but you can read what Maisha Mema has to say about itself.

Supporting Maisha Mema is a Christmas gift I recommend. You can use the Chipin link below to give money dircetly. Happy Christmas!

Popularity: 9% [?]

It’s been a while since this blog has been updated, the little I have written in the past three months bas been posted to my Så var det sagt…, my Norwegian  language blog. This wasn’t the plan, as Speak Friendly is suppose to be the English mirroring of SVDS.

Come Christmas and two weeks off from school, it’s time to get back on route. That’s why you see the new face of Speak Friendly. November was spent redesigning my Norwegian side, now this side gets it’s facelift. So here’s the info:

Color scheme and graphics were made by Majann, a Norwegian friend of mine finishing her last year of Designer school. She’s really got The Eye.

Thc coding is a hackup of the Illacrimo widget ready theme, made by Design Disease and published by Life Spy. The reason for picking this theme, is the simplicity of it’s code.

You’ll find most of the plugins in many different versions, but I want to mention two:

• Xmas Quotes is a citation plugin made by a Norwegian blogger going by the ID Xmas. The plugin lets you set up citations and images, and are very easy to handle.
• Visitor counter are run by whos.among.us, and chosen for it’s delicious graphics more than its functions. I love it still.
• The blog is running on Wordpress 2.3, and at the moment I wouldn’t consider any other solution.

Hopefully there’ll be more to read here in the next year, and equally much hopefully there’ll be someone here reading it.

Felis Navidad, everyone!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Funny little thing with Qumana and the Leopard (OS X, version 5). When you check the "About" menu for Qumana in the latest version of the Mac OS, you get the Norwegian translation of About. What you get is the word "omtrent", whick back to English translates "Approximately". I find that funny.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I am stealing a bit from JaO, Norwegian Edublogger, on this one since he has got all the facts in his Norwegian only edublog, but the story was all over the Norwegian newsboard last night.
The thing is, according to the ITU Monitor 2007, Norwegian teachers aren’t able to integrate Computer Technology in the classroom. The report states that teachers lack the tecnological knowledge to incorporate IT into practical use.

Strange thing is, teachers have been updated through heavy coursing, and most teachers are technologically able. It’s just that there is a gap to wide to bridgje between usage and teachage.

I asked my daughter about this yesterday. She spends quie a lot of time on our iMac or MacBook, and is able to use it extensively. She, nine years old at the time, took over my role in my classroom for one period, teaching my students how to edit images and posting them on the web. But her answer to my question was:

IT is boooooring. They just teach me how to use Word and Excel, but I already know that. We never do anything fun

In our technological age, representatives from central administration and from teacher’s labor groups are worried that we will turn into a nation of defuncs whith the level of use of IT. I am surprised at this, because everyone are computer savvy, just not the teachers.

Blogged with Flock

Popularity: 10% [?]

I don’t comment much on newspaper articles in this publication. But today I just have to comment on a story in Norwegian underground daily, Verdens Gang.

Gay parades are not a new thing in Europe, neither are the angry religous mobs fringing the parades with messages of doom. The new thing is that these kinds of parades have come to ht eprovincial towns of Norway.
And following the parades are the flocks of doom hounds. In Porsgrunn, fiery evangelist Petar Keseljevic can inform the participants that they will end up in hell - not might end up, nor may be a chance that, neither that there is a lovely heaven waiting for any believer. Just this: You will end up in hell. Read about it in the Bible.

Long live the freedom of speech. May the freedom of religion prevail, to do some Bush speech. But why do people have to get the working arrangements between themselves and the Almigthy wrong all the time. In my Bible there is one juricator, no lawyers, and a lot of people told to get out there to do some love. Mr. Peter got his role wrong.

They say that hell freezes over. But here’s my thougth: The heaven that mr. Keseljevic advocates must be a cold place.

Powered by marsedit

Popularity: 13% [?]

So I am into curses today.
There has to be a rule about computer breakdown at the least suitable time.

This spring I sent a guy to Cambodia to prepare five short films about som NGO work in the capital Phnom Penh. The films will be distributed to 6000 people throughout Norway as DVD’s, and they’re going into production today.
Yesterday at 5 PM I was just going to hit the Burn CD button when the harddisk went:

“SPROING, bong, tch tch thc SPROING bong bong”.

So what do I do?

First: Find the backup computer. Where is the backup computer? Backup computer shows deletede file.
Second: Find backup DVD. Backup DVD disappeared.
Third: Call film editor. Film editor got backup. But he lives in another city. Can’t deliver on time.
Fourth: Dig into faulty harddisk, check if fault is controller or disk. Result: Dead Disk.
Fifth: Call the producer - sing him a sad song.

Question: Why do errors come in numbers?

Popularity: 12% [?]

So it suddenly stopped. On with the startup curse. Which startup curse, you ask? An average Norwegian works 37,5 hours a week, has five weeks of vacation and 12 days of public holidays. A fair deal, most American workaholics would say. Some say my deal is a bit better. I’ve got the same 12 public holidays, but I’ve also got four weeks of school breaks, five weeks vacation like any other Norwegian, and 8 weeks of compensation for working so much.

What?

i hear you scream! Do you ever work?

Well, I am a teacher, and I work a full year. It’s just that my job is compressed into nine months. In plain speech it means that I have to work 52 hours, and I have the tasks to go with it. A Norwegian folkehøgskole year consists of 190 school days, with classes on 26 Saturdays throughout the winter between September and early May. And the tasks?

Well, I’m a teacher, 20 hours in the classroom - which ads up to 41,6 hours of clock time of classroom work and preparation. Then I have follow up for four hours every week. Since we don’t have a curriculum, I am my own dean and have to prepare the yearly, monthly and weekly plans. There are two hours of student conversations. Then I have to plan our twice yearly student trips to Africa and Asia (two different trips), I’m responsible for a budget of $150 000 which just doesn’t live it’s own life, and, have boarding school duties 12 hours every twelve days including sleeping at the school. So there’s enough to do.

But what’s the startup curse? Well, most of this has to be prepared during the first three weeks of school. So you work extra, forget that you have a life, and dig into it. Most of the time it works fine, but this year we’ve got a new assistant headmaster. She wasn’t able to start her job before September 1, so all the organizing of the total activities had to be done by someone else. This planning is done in August, and guess who that planner turned out to be?

For 52 hours a week plus 26 hours a week for one month makes up a 78 hours working week. But that’s only what’s counted for. Put in ten to twelve extra hours every week, and there you have it. Not much time for blogging when the startup curse hits.

Without the Getting things done, this year i have to thank Scott’s postings for being where I am (breakfast table, coffee pot, 7:30 AM) instead of at an institution for Burnt- Out cases.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Yesterday I found out by accident (if you can call following the links in the referrer stats on Wordpress.com an accident - some would call it narcissism…) that this blog has been reviewed at blogwatch.eu. Blogwatch is a German site which aims to guide bloggers through the chaos that is the European blogosphere and to discern between the good, the bad and the ugly. Blogs are rated with stars from 1 to 5. Blogwatch looks like a very good site, and I would definitely give it a ****+ or *****- if I could just understand the lingo. (Thing is, I am an educated European, but have a greater understanding of grocery labels than of this world language…). Fortunately they have some English writing correspondents, one of these is a certain Larko,

This present blog was given three stars, while he mentions that my Norwegian blog would get four if it was readable for people outside of Scandinavia. But as the correspondent states:

The only reason for settling with three stars at this moment is that the Norwegian blog has been around for a longer time and updated more frequently. I hope to have a reason to reconsider at a later point.

I am happy with the review, it is always nice to be noticed.

But…
The thing is. Some people love exposing themselves, their thoughts or whatever they like to expose - banish the thougth, but when getting noticed the anti-muse of creativity appears from a dark corner. For me to get a four star rating, I only have to post a little bit more.

Why did I suddenly feel writers block looming around the corner…?

Popularity: 13% [?]

The students arrived on Wednesday. As usual they seem like a very nice bunch of people, 130 people from all over the country meeting up for the first time, not knowing what to expect but still expecting a lot from what we hope will be one of the best years in their life.

I am going to write about being a folkehøgskole teacher. But that isn’t easy. What can you say wihtout compromising the students. If I tell too much, anyone can find out who I am talking about. Their privacy has to bee protected. At the same time, telling too little must make this into onw of the most boring edublogs ever.

But now they are here, and I feel motivation creeping in after three months of summer - or what should have been summer.

Being part of the holiday tour is one of the goods things with being a teacher. Every year I have four and a half months of vacation. My job is like an old car’s. Start and stop all the time. Cold starts wear down engines. and some times I find it hard to change moods, one moment having all the time in the world, caring only for myself and the closes family. The next I live a publig life having to keep up a good spirit for the 130 students that I serve every day. I told a friend of mine that every time I take a break from work, I have to spend a week picking up the threads. I have five of these one week or longer breaks every year, in addition to two longer trips abroad with the students. Being a folkehøgskole teacher is all about catching up. After two days with this bunch, motivation is not hard to find.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Popularity: 13% [?]