Friday, April 30, 2010

I forgot to write my blog post yesterday.. Wow yesterday was the last day of April!
I finally finished writing my first essay about education. Very tired..

Yesterday we did the peer review on our essays. Natsuko gave me lots of advice. Thank you so much!!! Every one in my group were working very hard on their own essays. I hope all of us get good grades...

After working on essays we watched the video which was about Venezuela's demonstration. I was very impressed.. We discussed if we would demonstrate in Japan. It was a difficult topic. I like to think about these kind of things but I always get confused!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Today we had no discussions in class!
We all worked on worksheets which Rab gave us to improve our writing skills. I'll try hard to be objective as well as I can when I write my essay... Well Rab's explanation was easy to understand and the worksheet was worth doing. I really want to be good at writing!

In the 5th period, we learned how to use zotero and how to make portable firefox accounts in the computer room. After that I had tutorial with Rab. He gave me many advices for my essay. I feel very lucky to have opportunities to talk with teachers like this because we can't do this in other large universities.

Chapter3 LIVING TOGETHER VS. GOING IT ALONE

In this chapter Nisbett describes many differences between East Asian people and Westerners by showing many examples. He writes a lot about Japanese in this chapter so it was more interesting and easier for me to understand than chapter1 and 2. Moreover, I was very happy to find that he writes not only about Greeks and Chinese but many other countries!

Although what he says in this chapter is right and correct, I still felt that he is over-generalizing with too little examples or experiments. He must once read his own writings critically..

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Today most girls of CB were late for class because we had PE swimming class in the 5th period. It was so uncomfortable taking class with my hair wet!

In class, Rab informed us about the PWT test and discussed the PWT test topics. I really felt that I must try hard to prepare for the test....

Well I really enjoyed today's fantastic dinner with CB members!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Today is Sayako's birthday! We gathered at Bakayama at lunch and had a nice birthday cake.

Happy Birthday Sayako!

In class today we used The Little, Brown COMPACT HANDBOOK for the first time and learned how to write essay drafts. We also discussed our essays in essay groups and in pairs. Rab made us think whether constructive teaching is better than direct teaching or not. Well I thought the both way of teaching are important and necessary for us even in college.

I usually hate magic because I can't find out the tricks but today's magic was interesting!

Chapter2 THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF MIND

In this chapter he explains the differences of Greeks and Chinese in terms of cognitive process by looking at their history. His explanation of these two countries' geographic conditions were quite cognitive and the two illustrations of the influences on cognitive processes were interesting.

However, I couldn't agree with the idea that Chinese lacked curiosity. Why did he actually think that Chinese were not interested in other country's culture? I once read in a book that when Chinese visited Africa for the first time and saw giraffes, they were very impressed because there was an animal with a long neck called qi lin in Chinese legends. ( I'm not sure which book it was.. Maybe sometime I'll find it out...Sorry) Whatever, I think his opinion is quite extreme and hard to agree.

Chapter1 THE SYLLOGISM AND THE TAO

In Chapter1, Nisbett describes the differences between the way of thinking of ancient Greeks and Chinese. He says that the ancient Greeks had a strong sense of their individual independency while ancient Chinese emphasized on harmony. He insists that this fundamental difference made further differences such as the social forms, self-understandings, philosophical assumptions, and scientific approaches.

I think that his ideas are reasonable but these differences has much less to do with the differences of present Easterners and Westerners than he thinks because of the effect of other area's thoughts. Why did he ignore all of those regions such as India and South America? I think these civilizations are worth discussing.

PS I was very interested in the spirit of Taoism!

Friday, April 23, 2010

http://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials/zotero_and_google_tools

Just watch this video. I learned how to do this today.

And this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnuULmbon14&feature=PlayList&p=381C67CF3B00B079&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=2






I'll tell my parents how fantastic firefox is. Since all my family members except me are using Windows computers, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Word and other ugly things, I definitely have to tell them how to use these useful, wonderful things. I have my own Macintosh computer and I use firefox and today I learned much more useful technology!

And sure I have to email my little sister to tell the URL link of Ajinomoto Stadium movie...

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Today we learned how to write an essay.
We didn't discuss anything today.
Rab gave us many interesting examples to explain us how to write good essays.
At the end of the class, we presented each of our essay topics.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Today we discussed our essay topics. It was hard to think a topic that has no assumptions.

I'm gradually getting used to critical thinking. It's not easy but it's worth doing!

Monday, April 19, 2010

In the ELP Reader, from 1-10 to 1-12, Meiland suggested colleges to be "subversive" institutions. We discussed how colleges can be "subversive". In our group, the conclusion was that questioning the existing systems might sometimes be a challenge to some institutions or governments. It might threaten some of those institutions.

Also we discussed why too little Japanese students took part in the student protest in February 14th of 2006. It was hard to think but we thought that it was caused by nurture and not nature.

At the end of the class, we discussed what to write in an essay about education. I haven't decided yet...

Friday, April 16, 2010

Today's class was very interesting.

We learned that when we write paragraphs, we should use the Rule of Three.

Also, we learned how to put videos on our blogs.

It was interesting to use Macintosh computers.

I really want to be good at writing.

Two videos

First video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA
I thought that everyone in the video was playing the same song in different places. So I was surprised when Rab told us that they were all playing different songs. The sounds were mixed up in an amazing way so it sounded great.

Second video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjY3UvQ2n98

In this video, many people are playing the same song called " Angels on the moon".

But it isn't unified and the sound is not beautiful. I thought that the first video was much better than the second one.

Test

First blog entry