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A Time to Mourn: Farewell Mr Lee Kuan Yew
There are commentaries expressing surprise at why many Singaporeans are grieving so visibly and in several instances, unselfishly, at the passing of our former Prime Minister, and founding father, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Is human identity ever a simple concept, let alone national identity? Singaporeans are a highly hybridized and still hybridizing people. We grieve the loss of the past, the pain of the present, the perplexity of the future, and more that we don’t understand or can’t even articulate. Mr Lee connects me to my entire life, one that…
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Online Teaching is like Learning a New Language
Online Teaching is Like Learning a New Language Is online teaching like learning a new language? Do bilingual (or multilingual) teachers find it easier to switch from face-to-face to online teaching? For several weeks, I pondered these questions as I tarried at the intersection of two/three facets of my life — online teaching, online course design and learning French (Français or Française?). The second question is a hypothesis I intend to investigate! Le magazine de l’Alliance de Singapour 1993 [Back Story: When I was twelve or thirteen, I wanted to learn…
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Hypothes.is for Shared Annotation
A week ago, Laura (my colleague) tweet-alerted me to someone who had annotated my extended comment to her Twitter Journal Club blogpost. @yinbk @SuzanKoseoglu @merryspaniel @JeffreyKeefer – @jgmac1106 added an annotation page to his website http://t.co/BzTIojdw3n #cool #tjc15 — Laura Gogia (@GoogleGuacamole) March 13, 2015 It was Greg McVerry, a supergeek. (He knows all these cool tools I’ve been playing with.) He had responded to my blogpost by annotating and replying to the ideas. Impressive! @yinbk @GoogleGuacamole @SuzanKoseoglu @merryspaniel @JeffreyKeefer A #tjc15 annotation: http://t.co/RP1kx66oYy — Greg McVerry (@jgmac1106) March 13, 2015 Intrigued,…
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Truthseeking: Onward to the Next #TJC15 event
To Laura, and all potential truth seekers, Some preliminary thoughts. Having read how your experiment first started (the background, your own journal reading club experiences), I understand better why you made the choices you did. I have had pretty positive experiences of journal article reading with my peers in grad school. In a few classes and during dissertation writing sessions, there were some fine debates with “a disputatious community of truth seekers” (Donald Campbell cited in Shadish, Cook & Leviton 1991 — THE Evaluation book every evaluation student must read?).…
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Thinking about Student Blogs and Community Building
“So you mean we are sharing cyberspace?” Seven words that offered a glimpse into our client’s thinking. I will refer to her as Ms. Z. [Stan and I met with her.] Some background information before I continue. She had come to ALT Lab, bogged down by barriers to blogpost-editing and seeking some assistance on how to integrate Timeline into a blogpost. From her instructor’s [Dr. Halo, pseudonym] course site [BEY 500, fake course name], Ms. Z was able to “jump to” and “see” her own blog site. Happily, she has also been blogging on…
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A Bold Experiment: Live-Skim-Tweet Journal Article #tjc15
Laura Gogia, a.k.a @GoogleGuacamole, my ALT Lab colleague (NOT a Google App as one of my Twitter friends thought!) invited me to her community’s experiment to live-tweet reading a journal article. I needed little persuasion because #1. I enjoy Twitter chats and #2. I am highly curious and like to learn new things. It turned out to be a thoughtful learning experience.There are 2 dimensions about the event I’m going to highlight in this blogpost and a third one I would need to think a bit more about: 1. The…
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Poetry Practice Pieces 2.25.15
Five Not-So-Easy Pieces My head hurt in my effort to complete these assignments. Ils contestaient missions! And so, I’m still working on the Dickinson one. Enjoy! 1.Five Liner Stiff knotty hands misshapen by age Sculpts earthy tators with black steel blade Practicing the presence of God, he says Can I tempt you to rest your gnarled aching grip His neck stretches, recoils, bent on his sacred toil 2. Sound and Sense (A la Peyton Manning -“Nationwide is on Your Side”) I picked this line from one of Barry Manilow’s popular hit,…
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Designing a Course Worth Learning 1
Over the next few weeks or months, my goal is to reflect on what and how I think as I design (big and small, d/Design) UNIV 291 in the roles of an instructional designer and instructor. There are many design decisions to consider. But there are a few BIG questions I must address. Uppermost in my mind is a question I borrow from David Perkins, a scholar I greatly admire for his ideas on thinking, teaching/learning, and clarity of thought. With only 8 weeks for a summer online elective course,…
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The Making of a Course Trailer
The course trailer is up on YouTube. Although it runs for less than 2 minutes, it entails a tremendous amount of work. Many people chipped in to help out given the tight time-frame we had to churn it out. To them I owe a debt of gratitude. Their names were not mentioned in the credits and I would like to use this space to express my appreciation to them.Thank you, in no particular order, Alice Westerberg, Suzie Fairman, Molly Ransone, Emma Gauthier, Aditi Jain and Arianna DeCastro (both the actresses), Marcus…
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Bidart Lipsynch and Imagery
[This post is still under construction.]The last few weeks have been a blur of activities. Does your brain hurt from non-stop mentation? Mine does and did. As Countess Dowager [Dame Maggie Smith] spouts in Downton Abbey, “All this endless thinking, it’s very over-rated!” But poetic imagination is not. To the uninformed, I’m learning to use metaphors in poetry writing, hence this Bidart draft. To Randy and my poetry friends, here are my practice drafts: 1) Here’s my Bidart lipsynching draft 1. [Homonym: Lamp/Lamb] The Poem is a Lamp L A…
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Learning Organization
“… a project’s relative degree of success or failure may change over time. The Sydney Opera House is a good example. The original 1957 project plan called for the project to be finished in 5 years at a cost of $7M. In the end, the project cost $110M and took 13 years. By any measure that was a severely troubled project…” – Calleam Consulting Ltd. I am taking time to reflect on the projects I’m working on, mostly to sort out my understanding about this topic of project success. Thinking…
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Collaborative Learning Activity: Poetry Writing
We sat around a table with interesting objects we had brought from home. A community of poet wannabes. Or poetry machines, Randy Marshall our chief instigator cheekily called us. He led us to write poems inspired by the stories we shared about the items. A good activity that I could use one day with my students, if Randy doesn’t mind.Poetry writing sharpens our minds and writing. I like the opportunity it provides for us to be precise and playful with words. It is a great learning activity to try in…
