Jumat, 28 Februari 2014

Synopsis for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo


 
Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who works for the magazine Millennium, a local Swedish newspaper that publishes left-wing political articles, loses a libel case brought on by corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. The magazine & Blomkvist are ordered to pay damages and Blomkvist is sentenced to a short prison term.

While waiting to serve his sentence, Blomkvist is approached by a lawyer for Henrik Vanger, the frail & wealthy octagenarian of The Vanger Group, who lives in a remote island located several miles to the north of Stockholm, surrounded by other family members' houses.

It turns out Mr. Vanger wants to hire Blomkvist to unearth the truth behind his niece Harriet's disappearance some 40 years ago when she was sixteen. Although her body was never found, Mr. Vanger believes it was murder because that day there was an accident on the only bridge that links the island with the mainland. The bridge was closed, nobody could get out & nobody could get onto the island. Yet, Harriet just vanished into thin air. Although 40 years have passed on the cold case, Mr. Vanger still hopes to learn what happened to her, before he dies.

Before going to the island to see Mr. Vanger, Blomkvist is unaware that he is being followed & photographed by Lisbeth Salander, a Goth girl who makes a living as a computer hacker and who works part-time at Merrin Security Inc.

The young woman has a troubled past---due to crime committed in her youth, (later we learn that when she was much younger, she had set fire to a man, presumably her abusive father, in a car) she must report to a probation guardian who controls her finances. One day, she is informed that her previous guardian has had a stroke, and a new one has been assigned to her. During her first meeting with him, a lawyer named Nils Bjurman, he forces her to perform oral sex on him, threatening to accuse her of causing trouble and have her put into a psychiatric hospital, if she does not comply.

Some days later, Lisbeth Salander is attacked by punks in a subway tunnel and during the scuffle, her laptop computer is damaged, which requires her to re-visit Nils Bjurman to request some of her own money to replace it. She arrives at his apartment to get the money for the new computer, fully expecting she might have to endure further sexual harrassment from him, but is prepared, with a camcorder hidden in her purse, to record the violation. In spite of her seeming cooperation, Bjurman catches her completely off guard by throwing her down and hits her violently, then handcuffs her to his bed and binds her legs, proceeding to brutally rape her... again threatening her to keep quiet about the abuse.

Some time later, Salander shows up unannounced at Bjurman's door, and turns on him with an electric stun device. She strips him naked and binds and gags him, as he had done to her. She plays what she had recorded the last time she was there so he will understand that she has proof against him. Salander proceeds to sodomize him forcefully with a dildo she finds in his room, then using a tattoo needle, carves permanently on his chest and abdomen: "I am a sadistic pig & rapist". She threatens to reveal the evidence she has to the authorities and the media, and from now on, he has to abide by HER rules---never contact her again, not touch her finances, and release her from guardianship with glowing behavior reports in a year's time. (So as not to arouse suspicion.)

During his investigation, Blomkvist finds out his PC is being hacked into, after Lisbeth Salander sends an "anonymous" clue to him to assist him in the investigation of the disappearance of Vanger's niece, Harriet. He's able to trace back to Salander and comes to her apartment back in Stockholm where Lisbeth has just spent the night with another woman, named Miriam Wu, whom Lisbeth apparented picked up the night before. He persuades her to collaborate with him in his research. Together they dig up more and more troubling information which shows something more sinister than just Mr. Vanger's relatives preying on his fortune and who, perhaps, had succeed in getting rid of Harriet for the sake of inheritance.

As the investigation (and their relationship) progresses, Blomkvist and Salander return to the cottage Blomkvist is renting one night to discover the lock has been picked & someone has been examining their research. Blomkvist decides to pay a clandestine visit to the home of one of Mr. Vanger's brothers who had always been Nazi sympathizers. He is surprised inside, however, by the old man, with a rifle pointing to his face. Martin, Harriet's brother, appears & tries to calm down the old man, then leaves with Mikael.

Blomkvist confides to Martin a lot of information that he has dug up, and Martin leaves the room under the pretense of calling police. While Martin is out of the room, Mikael suddenly questions what Martin was doing in the old man's house, too, but the revelation comes to late, as Martin injects him in the neck with some kind of tranquilizer. When he awakens, he finds himself tied up and Martin reveals himself as a serial killer who has killed many women over the past four decades. He shows Blomkvist a collection of photos of all the dead women he raped & mutilated. The reason: "I take whatever I want". He admits that his father was a religious fanatic, and had taught him how to strangle victims. Martin puts a noose around Blomkvist's neck and winches him up to hang him.

Salander, after doing more research at the archives of Mr. Vanger's company, comes back to the house where they're staying and finds that Blomkvist is missing. After viewing the surveillance video and seeing who the intruder was, Salander rushes to Martin's house just in time to save Blomkvist from being hanged, taking a golf club to Martin's head and arms. Despite having a broken right arm, Martin gets away in his car and drives full speed but uncertain with Salander on her motobike in hot pursuit. To avoid a frontal collision with a big truck, Martin swerves off the roadside and the car overturns down a steep slope, coming to rest upside down. As Salander arrives, he begs and pleads for help, but she just looks at him and recalls setting the match to her abusive father in his car years before. Martin is burned alive when the gasoline leaks and catches fire as Salander just walks away.

Salander doesn't want to face the police so she writes to Blomkvist a note and leaves. With information supplied by Salander, Blomkvist goes to Australia to find a woman whose goes by the name Anita, who was Harriet's aunt and friend, but who was known to have died of cancer years back. He returns to see Mr. Vanger with Anita... or, the real Harriet... in tow.

It turns out Harriet was never killed by any of the Vanger family members. In fact back in 1965, she killed her own father after many years of being brutally raped by him, and by her own brother Martin. Her drunken Nazi father had chased her down to a pier where Harriet got into a boat. Harriet used an oar to knock him into the water, and keep him underwater until he stopped breathing. Everyone assumed he was drunk, fell into the water of the lake and drowned. However, she was seen by Martin and he continued to abuse her until he went away to college. One day she saw Martin had returned home and she decided to leave the island at once. With the help of her look-alike aunt Anita, she got off the island by hiding in Anita's car under a blanket & fled to Australia with Anita's passport. Now with Martin dead and learning her uncle Henrik had never stopped thinking of her, she decided to return to Sweden to reunite with him. For all those 40 years she sent him framed dried flowers every year, as she had done as a child, meant as a message that she was "out there somewhere," but he had always thought it was the killer who was sending them to taunt him.

Later, Blomkvist goes to prison to serve his three-month sentence. One day he receives a visit from Salander who brings him a lot of reading material. He finds it to be incriminating documents against Wennerström. Upon his release, Blomkvist again publishes these findings in the Millennium. Wennerström apparently commits suicide as a result. It is discovered that a large amount of money has been withdrawn from his Cayman bank account by a mysterious woman. Upon seeing a picture on TV, Blomkvist recognizes a now-blonde Salander and smiles.

In the final scene, Salander is shown getting out of a chauffered driven limousine, well-dressed and lovely, and walks away along the sidewalk of a sunny seaside resort with palm trees along the beach.
Page last updated by BigJobMan, 6 months ago

EDUCATION ISSUE: SCHOOL FACILITIES




            A school facility is becoming one of the issues in our education started from the elementary level until the university level. It has become our own responsibility as Indonesian citizen to overcome this problem in order to get the good result in our education. Based on Bafadal (2003: 2), Education facilities are all equipment set, material, furniture used directly in the process of education at school. Wahyuningrum (2004: 5) states that school facilities are all facilities needed in learning process including the moveable and unmovable things in order to get the education target. Also According to Moenir (1992: 119), facilities are all kind of equipments or work facilities that can assist the job process and are concerned with work organization.
            Based on the above definitions, facilities offer some benefits. They can make the work implementation proficiently in order to save time, increase the things and service productivity, get qualified and guaranteed result, ease the user, accurate in work stability, give comfortable feeling for the users, and give satisfactory feeling for the user.     
                Facilities are very important for the achievement of students. That is why there is the relation of facilities to student’s achievement. Number of studies has shown that many school systems, particularly those in urban and high-poverty areas, are plagued by decaying buildings that threaten the health, safety, and learning opportunities of students. Good facilities appear to be an important precondition for student learning, provided that other conditions are present that support a strong academic program in the school. A growing body of research has linked student achievement and behavior to the physical building conditions and overcrowding.
Physical Building Conditions
Decaying environmental conditions such as peeling paint, crumbling plaster, nonfunctioning toilets, poor lighting, inadequate ventilation, and inoperative heating and cooling systems can affect the learning as well as the health and the morale of staff and students.
Impact on student achievement
  • A study of the District of Columbia school system found, after controlling for other variables such as a student's socioeconomic status, that students' standardized achievement scores were lower in schools with poor building conditions. Students in school buildings in poor condition had achievement that was 6% below schools in fair condition and 11% below schools in excellent condition. (Edwards, 1991)
  • Cash (1993) examined the relationship between building condition and student achievement in small, rural Virginia high schools. Student scores on achievement tests, adjusted for socioeconomic status, was found to be up to 5 percentile points lower in buildings with lower quality ratings. Achievement also appeared to be more directly related to cosmetic factors than to structural ones. Poorer achievement was associated with specific building condition factors such as substandard science facilities, air conditioning, locker conditions, classroom furniture, more graffiti, and noisy external environments.
  • Similarly, Hines' (1996) study of large, urban high schools in Virginia also found a relationship between building condition and student achievement. Indeed, Hines found that student achievement was as much as 11 percentile points lower in substandard buildings as compared to above-standard buildings.
  • A study of North Dakota high schools, a state selected in part because of its relatively homogeneous, rural population, also found a positive relationship between school condition (as measured by principals' survey responses) and both student achievement and student behavior. (Earthman, 1995)
  • McGuffey (1982) concluded that heating and air conditioning systems appeared to be very important, along with special instructional facilities (i.e., science laboratories or equipment) and color and interior painting, in contributing to student achievement. Proper building maintenance was also found to be related to better attitudes and fewer disciplinary problems in one cited study.
  • Research indicates that the quality of air inside public school facilities may significantly affect students' ability to concentrate. The evidence suggests that youth, especially those under ten years of age, are more vulnerable than adults to the types of contaminants (asbestos, radon, and formaldehyde) found in some school facilities (Andrews and Neuroth, 1988).
Impact on teaching
  • Lowe (1988) interviewed State Teachers of the Year to determine which aspects of the physical environment affected their teaching the most, and these teachers pointed to the availability and quality of classroom equipment and furnishings, as well as ambient features such as climate control and acoustics as the most important environmental factors. In particular, the teachers emphasized that the ability to control classroom temperature is crucial to the effective performance of both students and teachers.
  • A study of working conditions in urban schools concluded that "physical conditions have direct positive and negative effects on teacher morale, sense of personal safety, feelings of effectiveness in the classroom, and on the general learning environment." Building renovations in one district led teachers to feel "a renewed sense of hope, of commitment, a belief that the district cared about what went on that building." In dilapidated buildings in another district, the atmosphere was punctuated more by despair and frustration, with teachers reporting that leaking roofs, burned out lights, and broken toilets were the typical backdrop for teaching and learning." (Corcoran et al., 1988)
  • Corcoran et al. (1988) also found that "where the problems with working conditions are serious enough to impinge on the work of teachers, they result in higher absenteeism, reduced levels of effort, lower effectiveness in the classroom, low morale, and reduced job satisfaction. Where working conditions are good, they result in enthusiasm, high morale, cooperation, and acceptance of responsibility."
A Carnegie Foundation (1988) report on urban schools concluded that "the tacit message of the physical indignities in many urban schools is not lost on students. It bespeaks neglect, and students' conduct seems simply an extension of the physical environment that surrounds them." Similarly, Poplin and Weeres (1992) reported that, based on an intensive study of teachers, administrators, and students in four schools, "the depressed physical environment of many schools... is believed to reflect society's lack of priority for these children and their education."
Overcrowding
Overcrowded schools are a serious problem in many school systems, particularly in the inner cities, where space for new construction is at a premium and funding for such construction is limited. As a result, students find themselves trying to learn while jammed into spaces never intended as classrooms, such as libraries, gymnasiums, laboratories, lunchrooms, and even closets. Although research on the relationship between overcrowding and student learning has been limited, there is some evidence, particularly in high-poverty schools, that overcrowding can have an adverse impact on learning.
  • A study of overcrowded schools in New York City found that students in such schools scored significantly lower on both mathematics and reading exams than did similar students in underutilized schools. In addition, when asked, students and teachers in overcrowded schools agreed that overcrowding negatively affected both classroom activities and instructional techniques. (Rivera-Batiz and Marti, 1995)
  • Corcoran et al. (1988) found that overcrowding and heavy teacher workloads created stressful working conditions for teachers and led to higher teacher absenteeism.
Crowded classroom conditions not only make it difficult for students to concentrate on their lessons, but inevitably limit the amount of time teachers can spend on innovative teaching methods such as cooperative learning and group work or, indeed on teaching anything beyond the barest minimum of required material. In addition, because teachers must constantly struggle simply to maintain order in an overcrowded classroom, the likelihood increases that they will suffer from burnout earlier than might otherwise are the case.
Source: (http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OESE/archives/inits/construction/impact2.html)  
FACILITIES PROBLEMS
·         School Building       
The broken school roof, 7 wounded people because of the broken roof school, three students got injured on their heads because the broken school, the broken elementary school (Indramayu), students studied on the street, 67 % of elementary schools in Sukabumi in bad condition, 2.278 elementary school in very bad condition, students studied under the trees, fifty thousands constructions are delayed, The rural vocational school are limited, The bad facilities in many schools, lack of 250 junior high school buildings in West Kalimantan, the bad condition of under bridge school, School needs librarians, no electricity  in some areas, 4.401 school in Riau are uncertified, 60  bad school buildings in Samarinda and many more.
 (http://Jurnal Pendidikan/614. Html)
·         Library
Actually, library is not just a place to put some books. But it is one way to improve the students’ achievement. It is “the heart of school”. Many schools do not have qualified librarians. Based on some research, there are  some surprising factors about the library. They are as follows; no students in library, only open in school hour (more a less 15 minutes), no cooperation with teachers to guide students to get information from library, teachers can not ask students to find books from library because library does not open after school, the librarian are often not in the library, the librarians does not promote their library actively and creatively. (jurnal.pendidikan.net/jurnal1.html)
·         Learning facilities
            There are some problems in learning facilities at school. First, In the school, facilities are available but they are not accessible to use.  Many facilities are kept in the head or vice master’s room. It makes the learning facilities can not be used regularly and efficiently. It needs time and procedures to use them. At least, the teachers ask permissions first from the head or vice master at school.  Second, there are no learning facilities because of the limited fund from the school to buy the facilities. For example, tape recorder, laptop, in focus and etc. Third, the school has the limited maintenance staff to make the facilities in good conditions. It will waste money if the facilities are not maintained well.
SOLUTIONS
            Government has the rules about facilities. If one school can not fulfill the facilities standard in their school, it will influence the score of their school accreditation. In Indonesia government rules number 19 year 2005 about the eight educational national standards. One of them in facilities standard in education institution rule number 24 year 2007. The standard facilities of one school must have these following items.
1.      Classroom is a room for theory and practical that does not need the specific equipment
2.      Laboratory room is a room to learn the practical lesson that needs the specific equipment
3.      The headmaster room is a room for the headmaster to manage the school   
4.      The teacher room is  a room for the teacher to work outside the classroom, take a rest and welcome the quests
5.      Administration room is a room to manage the school administration
6.      Library is a room for getting knowledge and information
7.      Students’ health room is a room for the  early sick students
8.      Praying room is a room for students to pray
9.      Students’ school association room is a room for the students to manage their organization
10.  Toilet is a place for the students to wash their hands
11.  ‘Gudang” is a room  to keep the equipments of outside class and school file
12.  Circulation room is a room to connect every parts  of building at school
13.  Sport place is a place to have sport supported by the sport facilities
14.  Studying group is  a group of students in one class to study.

            According to Hamied (2014) in the 3rd  Southern Region of Sumatera Teflin national Seminar dated at 9th  February 2014, On  the basis of the complexity associated with the process of learning a second language, teaching English to young learners requires fulfillment of fundamental bases which include (1) clarity of the target to achieve, (2) availability of qualified teachers and supporting facilities, (3) societal and environmental supports, such as exposure via different media to the target language consistent with specified goals as outlined above.
            Some aspects of facilities should be active in implementation the qualified facilities. First, 25 % of education fund from government should be run well in order to get good result education. Next, the role of School Committee to assist school in providing good facilities. We can commence with used books, magazines, newspapers, comics, etc. donated from our local community. There is no publication that is not useful to someone in some way. The main thing is that we start!
 Then, the school provides good facilities management and maintained staff. Also, there are some active librarians at school to  implement the idea to open library one or two hours after school hours end. And it should be “online library” because not all the students have access to browse the information at home. Last, we promote the lifelong learning at school and in their family.
REFERENCES
http://educationindonesia.net/perpustakaan.html
jurnal.pendidikan.net/jurnal1.html
http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OESE/archives/inits/construction/impact2.html
Impact of inadequate school facilities  on student’s learning





Reflection “ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”


This novel tells the story of a journalist 's involvement in the Millennium magazine to solve the mystery of the disappearance of one of Vanger family named Harllet . Harllet Vanger who became the adopted son by Hendrick Vanger . Harllet Vanger is the biological child of Gotfried Vanger . Harllet reported missing when he was 14th. In every Hendrick’s birthday , Harllet always give flowers in frame to hendrick and it always happens though Harllet declared missing and dead . Hendrick asks Blomkvist to solve the mystery . Before Hendrick asked for Blomkvist , he hired Lisbeth ( hacker ) to find out all about Blomkvist . Blomkvist saw many irregularities in Harrlet’s case , he tried to find a hint of Harllet photo accidentally caught on camera a newspaper on the day of the disappearance Harllet. Lisbeth access ( hack ) laptop Blomkvist t and found that he being involved in the disappearance of Harrlet Vanger , then Lisbeth help Blomkvist to solve the clues to find Harrlet . In the end it was solved clues and start unpacking that the existence of the murder of some women who had worked at the Vanger family company. From all the clues that they discover that the perpetrators of these women are Gotfried and Martin (who at that time were aged 17th) . Then note also that Gotfried and Martin was the cause of the Harllet disappearance. Gotried is a disorder that has sex, he also acted like that to her child Harllet and it make Harllet drown Gotfried to protect themselves and the incident was seen by Martin ( brother Harllet ) . Anita , sister Harlet who know this eventually help Harllet to go from the Vanger family life .

Major character in this novel are Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth salander.
Minor character in this novel are Vanger family, Martin and Harllet.
The story happens in some place in Australia.
Exposition :  -     This is an novel action about Hendrick problem solved by Blomkvist
          -     Is about to know man in the mysterious photo. 

The Theme of this novel are : - a woman voilant
                                                 - about corruption



Moral message in this novel based on the presentasion last week are:
- to know the some information from others you should know that information clearly, do not take some part of that information because it can made you give a wrong information to others.
- do  not expose our family problem