Last assignment!...

Advantages and disadvantages of using a blog on classroom.

After doing blog’s work for about a year, I think that it’s important to think carefully about it. First of all I think that I’ve got the enough experience to talk about this topic, not only for my experience, but from what I’ve seen in my companions. I believe that it has been a very good experience in many ways, but in other ways it’s more complicated.

I’ll begin with the good things that I find in this experience. First of all, I’d never had a blog on my life before, so it was very good for me as experience this work, besides I think that you can share a lot of things in a blog, and maybe you can reflect more than in other instances, as a fotolog for example, because in there it doesn’t matter very much what you write because almost nobody reads it. For other side I believe that sharing experiences and “tastes” with other companions has been very good to know each other a little more, and when you don’t understand very much what you had to do in an assignment you could read someone else work, an use it as a guide. Besides it’s very good for us to train our writing in English and I think that this is a very good way to do that, because you can correct your text in a program or in word, and that may help to write even better. Other important think it’s that we could finish them in our houses.

One of the bad things that I can find in this way of working, it’s many times I’ve working for many time in the lab and our time finished, so my work remained in the middle and I couldn’t finish it in my house, because sometimes I didn’t have time to send it to me, or internet didn’t worked (this happened sometimes in the first term of the year), and the times that I could send it to me I wasn’t able to finish it in my house because I didn’t remember in what was I thinking in the time that I wrote it, so I had to do it all over again, and sometimes it was frustrating.

But finally I think that it has many more positive things than negatives, so I believe it to be a very good experience, and I hope that it’ll be repeated for the next generation.

I’m sad this is the last assignment, thanks for all, Take care a lot! bye

6th assignment, movie review

I chose a movie that I saw recently, and has already become one of my favorites ever, it’s a spanish movie, and it’s called “Mar Adentro”. It’s starring by Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda and Lola Dueñas, and it’s directed by Alejandro Amenábar. The movie it’s about a true history, it’s the history of Ramon Sampedro, a sailor that suffered an accident in his youth and became quadriplegic, for that he had to stay in bed for almost thirty years and he wanted to die for this. Many situations happens to him in his last year alive, involving specially two women, but most important than that it’s the main objective of the movie, that’s to talk about the euthanasia. I liked so much the movie that I don’t find any “bad things” in it, and I like it specially for the “euthanasia item”, because I think that it’s a very important topic to discuss and in some countries it’s accepted. Besides they try to show the church view of this topic and the “normal” people view, but I think that being against euthanasia and not going to die soon, or suffering for a disease that doesn’t have a cure it’s like talking about something that doesn’t concern you, so I strongly believe that people must have the right to suicide themselves if they’re suffering for this kind of disease, but just in this situations, obviously many people that commits suicide doesn’t do it because of this, but in case of euthanasia I think that people should have the right to do it. Besides I think that church shouldn’t be trying to control people thoughts and decisions, because the life of the people doesn’t belong to them. Well that was, I think that the film it’s a must see… Bye

5th assignment, Cristian's blog

I’m going to talk about my friend’s blog, Cristian’s blog (powellmakross.blogspot.com). First of all I’ve got to say that I like his blog, I’ve almost read all his post, and one of the things that I most like it’s the design, the color of the back, the black looks great, and the combination with the color of the words it’s quite good too. Besides the blog has a lot of links in the assingments, and I think that we have the same “taste” for many things, another thing that I like a lot, it’s that in the down side of the page you can find videos from different songs, and I like many of the songs that he putted there. I also like the Picture that he putted in the “Art assignment”, I’ve seen it befote and I like it too, but I didn’t remember it when I did the assingment, I also like the song that he putted in for an assingment last term. I think that there ins’t anything that I dislike, the blog it’s very good from my point of view. Bye

4th assingment, Fiestas PAtrias

In my family we’re accustomed to do a special “party” for Fiestas Patrias. This jeans that, two days befote the 18 of september, my uncle organizes a “Fonda” in his house. All the family goes there, and we stay until very late in the night, drinking “chicha” and eating “Empanadas de horno”, that are the special food’s eaten in these times.

We arrived at my uncle’s house at five o’clock, and the party was already started, because my other uncles and their families have already get there, many of my relatives we’re dressed like “huasos”, but I didn’t because it’s uncomfortable and I don’t like it.

Other of the important things in this party is the music, because we just hear chilean music, but in special the “folklore” music and classic music of our country. This party was the 16 of september, then the 17 I went to Parque O’Higgins, to the Fondas that are in there, it’s a very funny experience because you see a lot of things that you wont see in a lot of time, the bad thing it’s that sometimes are many people drunk and it’s unpleasant. Then the 18 and 19 of september I just stayed at my house, and the 19 I match the “Parada Militar”, but just a while, because I got bored.

That’s all, bye!

Assignment 3

I don’t like art very much, because I think that I don’t understand it, and sincerely I haven’t tried to understand it yet, so I searched in the internet about a picture (a piece of art) that I liked and I found that I didn’t like many of the pictures that I saw, so I searched for a landscape that I liked to be in, and I found this picture

The artist is Joan Colomer, and I first saw it today (It's oil on cloth). Besides, I like this picture because the landscape is very beautiful, and I’ll like to be in a place like that someday, a lonely place but beautiful, in which I could relax, read and think a lot. I think that I need it. The problem is that is hard to be in a place like that, at least here in Chile, because all the places like that are private or you can’t go in them, at least not “legally”. Well, I hope that someday I find a place like this…
Bye

2nd Assignment

Hi, I chose the following article for my summary: The Holographic Principle Theory of Mind, and the author is Mark Germine.

The article links the theory of the Holographic Principle, that’s about how the things are seen, this means that we can see in a 3D way, being the third D the radius of the things, it gives an example with an sphere, the radius of it’ll be the third D. The article speaks about this theory in physics, but just giving information about it. The important of this is how they link it with consciousness and the representations of the brain. The article talks about how we can remember something special, and that we have a correct 3D representation of it, in this point the connect the brain with this physic theory. As the article says it can explain “the unity and mechanisms of perception, experience, memory, and consciousness.”

It’s a little complicated with the things we know until now, but the article it’s for sure a very interesting one.

Take care!

Website that I enjoy...

Hi everyone, one of my favourite website in the internet is the page www.cooperativa.cl. And now I’ll explain why… I like because it’s a news page, that inform almost everything that happens here in Chile and in the world, and I can know all that just by doing some clicks and reading. I like it more than other similar Chilean pages, because of the order, because it’s easy to explore, and because it doesn’t “lie” or speculates too much (like www.terra.cl ). I visit the page everyday, specially to know about the last piece of news in sports. Finally, I know the website from long ago, about a couple of yeas maybe, I don’t remember exactly. If you want to inform about something, I recommend it.

Assignment 6, Summary

New Developments in Psychology of the Personality: The Model of the Five Factors

(Authors: Eugenia Vinet, José Saiz)

This model is a new paradigm in psychology of the personality, and is about five main factors that the authors presents as the “regulators” or the characteristics of the personality in all the people (Characteristics that all have in common, but at different levels). These five factors are: Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A) and Conscientiousness (C). The measurement instrument used for this model is the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). The purpose of this model is to “make” a “picture” of the personality based in the factors, for example, in a clinic treatment, someone with a higher level of E and A will be better treated by a therapist, and a person with lower levels of E and A will have a better treatment if this is based on pills. For the authors this model is a very good complement for the therapy, and they expect that the model keeps growing in popularity among the therapists.

5th Assignment, Topic related to psychology

Hi to everyone!
Well this year we have been studying a lot of interesting topics, but there's one that called my attention more than the others, and that was Operant Conditioning.
This because with this information I could train my animals to do certain behaviors, and I found it very funny and interesting. Operant Conditioning consist of form an association between a behavior and a consequence, to make the desired behavior be more often in the future (if the consequence is good, if it's bad it'll tend to reduce the behavior). We are realizing an experiment with a Rat (it's called Yawght) in the subject (Learning psychology it's called) and we've got to make it push a button, and then it recieves food. This is to improve the times that the rat pushes the button. As I said, I like it because I can "teach" my pets to do things to recieve something, I already have teached my cat to do a certain behavior in a certain time.
Take care!

Links:
http://www.wagntrain.com/OC/#Operant
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/proj/nru/opcond.html
http://www.bfskinner.org/Operant.asp

4th assignment, weekend

Hi to everyone! I’ve got to say that my last weekend wasn’t too good, because I couldn’t move too much, so I didn’t go out like I usually do. But I wasn’t alone so I can’t say that it was boring, specially on Sunday, because my favorite football team (soccer in the United States), Colo Colo, beat Universidad Católica and I enjoyed it with my girlfriend. After that I called my best friend, that’s from Universidad Católica team, and I made fun of him, I mocked of him, he was very angry because his team was completely defeated. Colo Colo is very close to be Champion for the twenty six time in it’s history, and complete a three times in a row championship, hope that happens.

Here is the picture that I took to my Colo Colo’s T-shirt to put it in my fotolog. Take care!

3rd Assignment, Links...

Well, I put two links in my blog that I believe are very useful to all the people that are studying, teaching or just interested in psychology.
The first link is www.psychology.org, it contains a lot of definitions, papers and links that are related with psychology. It has many different papers of a lot of different subjects related to psychology.
The second link is http://www.psychology.heacademy.ac.uk, it is related mostly to psychology in the UK, all the research there and other topics, but contains a lot of papers that are very useful in psychology, it's a very interesting website.

Second assignment, Lyric of a song

This time I’ll put the lyrics of a song that I’ll like, the song is “Disposable Heroes” from Metallica. Metallica is a band formed in October of the 1981 by the guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. The group searched a lot for a lead guitar, until they found Dave Mustaine. Then Cliff Burton joined the band. After some singles of them were put in some “metal compilations”, Mustaine left the band and created Megadeth, and Kirk Hammet took his placer as a lead guitar. With that formation, they recorded 3 discs, with a lot of success, then Cliff Burton (bass) died in an accident of Metallica’s bus. After that the formation changed two times, Jason Newsted covered the bass place, until some years ago, when Robert Trujillo took the place of bass, until now.

Disposable Heroes has a very “powerful” sound. I love the “speed” of the guitars in this song and I believe that this is one of the greatest Metallica songs. The song is a critic to “military politics”, to send and “kill” young men, doesn’t caring about it. And that they just follow orders like an “empty shell”, of course losing all his “capacity” to take decisions.

Here it is:

Metallica - Disposable Heroes Lyrics

Bodies fill the fields I see, hungry heroes end,
No one to play soldier now, no one to pretend,
Running blind through killing fields, Bred to kill them all,
Victim of what said should be,
A servant 'til I fall

Soldier boy, made of clay,
Now an empty shell,
Twenty one, only son,
But he served us well,
Bred to kill, not to care,
Do just as we say,
Finished here, greeting death,
He's yours to take away

Back to the front,
You willdo what I say, when I say,
Back to the front,
You will die when I say, you must die,
Back to the front,
You coward,
You servant,
You blindman

Barking of machinegun fire, does nothing to me now,
Sounding of the clock that ticks, get used to it somehow,
More a man, more stripes you bare, glory seeker trends,
Bodies fill the fields I see,
The slaughter never ends

Soldier boy, made of clay,
Now an empty shell,
Twenty one, only son,
But he served us well,
Bred to kill, not to care,
Do just as we say,
Finished here, greeting death,
He's yours to take away

Back to the front,
You willdo what I say, when I say,
Back to the front,
You will die when I say, you must die,
Back to the front,
You coward,
You servant,
You blindman

Why, am I dying?
Kill, have no fear,
Lie, live off lying,
Hell, hell is here

I was born for dying

Life planned out before my birth, nothing could I say,
Had no chance to see myself, moulded day by day,
Looking back I realize, nothing have I done,
Left to die with only friend,
Alone I clench my gun

Soldier boy, made of clay,
Now an empty shell,
Twenty one, only son,
But he served us well,
Bred to kill, not to care,
Do just as we say,
Finished here, greeting death,
He's yours to take away

Back to the front,
You willdo what I say, when I say,
Back to the front,
You will die when I say, you must die,
Back to the front,
You coward,
You servant,
You blindman

Back to the front

First assignment

Hello to everyone that visits this new blog.

I’ll introduce myself, I’m Ignacio Leyton, I study psychology in the Universidad de Chile and the intention of this blog will be do all the assignments that my “teacher” Chelsea wants me to do. It’s for the English course, level 3.

I hope that I can show in this blog many things that I like, and that for another side, many things that are related with my career, psychology. Maybe something interesting appears in all the things that I’ll have to do, and I hope that people that visit this blog like them. Well, that’s all for now, bye