Furiousmind

Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding is a 19-minute short-film about teaching at University. It is the winner of “Det gyldne Snit” 2006 and if you are interested about teaching (or learning) in an University environment, we highly recommend it!

The film presents, in a very effective and funny way, how teaching and learning are being done in universities. It basically compares different types of teachers and students in several different situations.
But the best thing about the movie is that it is constructive. It presents more effective ways (or theories) to teach and learn in an university environment.

Maybe it’s because we have started recently teaching (and sometimes we get depressed with students behaviour), but there were two quotes that we think are worth noting here:

Transmission is not the way humans learn

and

“Learning takes place through the active behavior of the student; it is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does. (Ralph W. Tyler, 1949)” .

Hence, the lesson is that learning is an activity that requires initiative and action! That’s what we tell to our (mathematics) students: they will only learn if they practice.

(We thank Claus Brabrand for the comments and the corrections.)

Director: Mel Stuart
Stars: Gene Wilder, Peter Ostrum, Jack Albertson
Year: 1971

IMDB Link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0067992/

The other day we have seen the 1971 version of Roald Dahl’s children story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We have enjoyed Tim Burton’s version (2005) and we were a bit excited to compare both films.

The first thing we noticed about the older film is that there are differences in some important aspects:

• there is no mention to Wonka’s father (the dentist) nor to Wonka’s childhood;
• the Oompa Loopas songs don’t mention the children names;
• there is a scene where Charlie and his grandpa taste some funny drink — it seems that the 1971 Charlie is less innocent and angelical than the 2005 one;
• the announcement to Charlie that he won the factory is very different. In fact, it is a bit scary :)
• after Wonka telling Charlie that the prize is the factory, Charlie asks if he can take his family with him. Wonka replies that he can take his whole family. If you’ve watched the 2005 film, you’ll remember that when Charlie makes this question, Wonka says no. And then Charlie replies that he wouldn’t change his family by all the chocolate in the world. A nice message :-)
• we would say that the Depp’s Wonka is eccentric and lunatic, whilst Wilder’s Wonka is lunatic and scary.

We never read the book, so we are now very curious about the real story (it’s always nice to see if the film follows the real story or not). Maybe in the future we can update this post with additional information related with the book.

We have tried this vegetarian recipe some days ago. It is not difficult to make it and it also tastes very well. We really enjoyed this meal so we decided to share the recipe with you. Enjoy it! :)

Ingredients (Serves 2)

• 1 large aubergine
• 150g red lentils
• 50g butter
• small red pepper, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 50g breadcrumbs
• 50g Cheddar cheese, grated
• salt and white pepper

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Recently, we have watched Sideways, Melinda and Melinda, The Stepford Wives and The Notebook. Although this post presents our opinions about these films, its main goal is just to register some information about them. If you intend to visit this blog regularly, you will see that we will do this frequently. The reason is very simple: sometimes we just forget important details about the films we see and we want to use the blog to help us remember.

(Click the following link to read our opinions)

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