Monday 25 April 2011

Mario and Luigi, psychedelic heroes!

Mario Bros. are videogame heroes created and licensed by a Japanese corporation called Nintendo.






Mario Bros. are two brothers, Mario and Luigi. They are plumbers and their original mission is to rescue Princess Peach from the castle of an evil dinosaur called Bowser.
I think Mario and Luigi are very cool heroes. They aren’t like typical heroes; they haven’t a lot of muscles and they never gave moral advices. Actually, they and their world are psychedelic! They eat mushrooms and flowers for increasing their size or throwing fire-balls. They ride a dinosaur (why not?) called Yoshi and, when he eats a blue turtle shell, he can fly!  It’s about a radical opposition to a very coherent (so, a moralist and oppressive) world.

Also, they are working-men (plumbers) fighting against an unjust order, and they only survive by the interaction with the ambient. Yes, it’s true that Mario wants to rescue Peach, but he doesn’t work in a lineal way. In the game, there are very short ways for reach Bowser’s castle, but the real challenge is to complete the whole map, liberating all zones under Empire’s domination. In other words, Mario knows only rescuing Peach is not the solution!

Monday 11 April 2011

Lev Vygotski, the 'Mozart' of Psychology

I would like to write about him because, in my view, he emphasized in the importance of a elementary thing: the Other’s support.



Lev Vygotski was a soviet psychologist. He was born in 1896, into a Jewish family. He grew up in Gomel. He studied at Moscow and then he returned to his town. He liked psychology, literature and philosophies, and he taught about it in different places. He liked to read to Marx, Freud and Hegel.

But, in 1919, when he was 23, he has contracted tuberculosis. He has known he’s going to die young, and it motivated him to work with more dedication. Finally, he died in 1934. He was 38 years old.



He understood human development like a process that includes the social interaction as an essential factor. All our abilities are possible by the support of the ‘other’ –mom, dad, sister, etc.-. So, in a determinate moment of life, I could have learnt a lot of things by myself, but there are some things I only can do with the help of that significant other. So, development is about how I’m learning to do more activities by myself, turning me on a more autonomous person.

Monday 4 April 2011

Who is A.J? Take a look!

My name is Antonio Joaquín, alias 'A.J.', I'm 22 years old (I should prefer 'years young'), I'm from Villarrica, South Chile, and I'm in my fifth year of Psychology. I wonder I'm doing the practice next year. Meanwhile, I'm getting on with my thesis.



I want to work in education’s area. I like music and arts, specially classic hard rock and heavy metal. Actually, I have a rock band called Trueno Austral. Oh! And I love Chile and all its geography.



The objective that I follow at this blogging experience is to share points of view with teacher and classmates while we learn together a foreign language's skills.