Getting ready for our annual “study trip” where 300 women go next to the beach and spend 4 days on a really tight schedule so they rarely get to the actual beach. For the 4th year, I lead this group, along with 12 other teachers. The “height” of the year. It was designed to teach how to live together and cooperate. Needed now much more than before.
For the Critical Thinking bin. Spending money on prisons and schools in the US. The best food in Japan, where? This video title about misleading titles is misleading, but watch the video anyway (it’s 3 tricks, not one). Also, Moral Relativism. The soul should be included here, and nobody better to
On the theory of knowledge (or epistemology): Do we need Knowledge any more? Is perception just a part of a regular ongoing hallucination that we are able to control?
Japan Corner: What do young people think about Japan? Fewer young Japanese want to travel or live abroad. Some reasons.
MOOCs: Friend Charles pointed me to a very interesting MOOC on Digital Humanities, which uses data to give a picture of things we usually study in books. Tools below. Another I have been finishing up this week is a look into Japanese Subcultures, mostly manga, but other stuff too, by 4 profs at Keio University through FutureLearn. Variety is good, but a little too much in the style of literary criticism.
Planting trees and empowering women, I had the pleasure of seeing Wangari Maathai at an event at my university about a decade ago.
Tech News: Who is out to get tech, now that it hasn’t turned out to be the silver bullet we thought it would be. Also, how the regulators are clueless.
Language learning: I guess adults CAN learn languages as well as kids, they (we) just take longer.
Find out where tourists take pictures in 135 cities worldwide.
Use tools like Voyant to analyze
See Nick Ellis, my favorite psycholinguist, in Tokyo (Rikkyo U, near Ikebukuro) July 19 (Fri) at 6:30. He is giving an overview of his work. Put on by JALT Tokyo.
Research-based language learning tools (vocabulary and pronunciation) by the keynote speaker at JALTCALL2019 last weekend. Linguatorium.
Curation, such as blog writing, is a real important skill.
Sutori looks like a good way to organize projects for students to increase collaborative learning. Looks a bit more organized than StartSole, which are Self Organized Learning Environments.