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Lecture at ITSP - 先端ITスペシャリスト育成プログラムにて講義

mitcho — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:05:19 +0000

Yesterday I was invited to give a lecture for students the MEXT IT Specialist Program. ITSP is a partnership between Keio, Waseda, and Chuo Universities and NTT, IBM, and Mozilla to bring advanced IT training and opportunities to their Master’s students. It was a longish time slot so I decided to split it up into two different talks: one on open source and open processes (similar to one of my sessions at the recent BarCamp Tokyo) and one on the future of interfaces, internationalization and globalization, and Ubiquity. Here are the slides for posterity. (Note: the second set of slides is mostly in Japanese.)

昨日は文部科学省の先端ITスペシャリスト育成プログラムの学生の為に講義をしました。ちょっと長めの時間だったので、二つのトークに分けてみました。第一部は「オープン」と言うアイデア、特にオープンなデザイン過程の利点について。第二部は未来のインターフェースと国際化とUbiquityの紹介でした。スライドをここにslideshareにあげておきました。

Design processes in the open-source era オープンソース時代のデザインプロセス

Ubiquity: Interfaces and Internationalization インターフェースと国際化

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Talking Ubiquity in Japan: 拡張機能勉強会にて発表

mitcho — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:29:30 +0000

Yesterday I presented on Ubiquity internationalization and the new parser design at the Mozilla Extension Development Meeting (Japanese), a community event organized by some extension developers in Japan. There were a couple other Ubiquity-related “lightning talks” as well, so I’ll summarize some of the interesting ideas from those talks below.

昨日第11回Mozilla拡張機能勉強会で Ubiquity の国際化と次世代パーサについて発表してきました。色々鋭いコメントをいただき、僕も良い勉強になりました。^^ スライドの方をslideshareに載せたので、是非参考にまた見てみてください。ライトニングトークでも Ubiquity の話で盛り上がったので、そのLTの内容で特に面白いと僕が思ったものを下に英語でちょっとまとめてみます。

Mozilla Ubiquity の国際化と次世代パーサ

mar of Japanese SuMo fame (not that sumo) presented on his foray into the development of an improved Japanese parser based on Jono’s. One interesting approach his parser took was to split up the input on delimiters like commas and parse each “clause” and then combining the arguments for one execution. This allows certain types of fronting constructions. For example:
```
...を   送って、 dynamisに
...-NOM send, dynamis-to
```
“To dynamis, send …”
This type of input, aside from being pretty natural in Japanese, has the advantage of offering the parser an unambiguous argument parse within each clause, cutting down on the possible ambiguities.

mar’s discussion, however, also naturally touched on the limitations of the current NLParser implementation, making localization of individual commands and the suggestion of verbs quite difficult.
Hitoshi SASAKI of the Sasaki Lab at Takushoku University discussed some possible applications of Ubiquity in an educational context. In particular he demoed a `hiragana` command which takes some sentence in kanji and rewrites it in hiragana, the Japanese phonetic alphabet. What’s more, the command lets you specify the appropriate grade level for the substitution, making it appropriate for elementary school kids and non-native speakers alike. Sasaki thought the ability to access this kind of functionality right from the content page was of great benefit to this application.

Thanks to dynamis for supporting my Japanese presentation and making this happen! ^^

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Co-schooling in Dongshan

mitcho — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:21:40 +0000

The Fulbright program sets up an extra “co-school” to work at for a small period of time in the spring, as a means of giving us ETA’s increased variety and different school experiences, as well as letting us touch more students’ lives. For the month of March, I will be at Dongshan Elementary in Dongshan (冬山).

Teaching at Dongshan every day involves taking the train every day, and I’m fully psyched about that. I was first quite worried as there are, according to the online trip planner, only three trains a day that go directly from Nan’ao to Dongshan but this has turned out to be false. It still does mean at least an hour a day on trains, but I’ve got my iPod with wonderful podcasts, and I’m pretty sure my class schedule lets me avoid transfers.

I’m also excited about taking the train so often as Dongshan has the newest train station in Yilan county. It’s a beautiful new modern design of tasteful glass and steel.¹

The school itself is much larger than what I’ve been used to, with five classes per grade of about 30 students each… therefore about 700 students total. A special characteristic of the school is kites… the school has a kite museum and students make kites and fly them. The English classroom closet was also filled with kites.

On the teaching front, I’ll be teaching grades 2, 3, 4, and 6. I’ll be teaching all of those classes once a week, focusing on storytelling. Today I told Jump, Frog, Jump! to second graders. I’ve never had the chance to really use the same lesson plan over and over, and I already can see that I’ll be able to learn a lot through the iterative process.

The older Dongshan station’s charm involved night-time tube lights on the fence which spelled out 冬山… I assumed the new station would mean an end to the quaint tube lights, but I now see a single string strung across the metal ribs… ↩

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Dinner with Barack and Hillary

mitcho — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 11:58:27 +0000

I made some pasta tonight for dinner, and decided to share it with Barack and Hillary. I haven’t cooked in a long time here in Taiwan, especially as the noodles down the street are so cheap. Now that I have, though, I do really enjoy the process and the smells, and of course the familiar flavors that are hard to come by. I look forward to cooking more in the months to come. ^^

On a side note, very cool section in the Texas Democratic debate on second language education.

Sign language SuperBowl ad

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I’m Seriously Dreaming of a White Christmas

mitcho — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 11:34:04 +0000

Today we finished up all our Christmas lessons at school, spread over the past week. The lesson involved some basic Christmas vocab, making Christmas cards, and my retelling of The Gift of the Magi.

Christmas Day in Nanao was decisively un-Christmas-like. It was quite sunny this morning, with a fox’s wedding. Personally, I really miss the snow. I saw a picture of someone on a white mountain and was really excited, but it was explained to me that the mountain was covered in salt, not snow.

We had a Christmas event at Penglai this morning so all the class Christmas tree got lined up in front of the school tree.

Some kids performed The Gift of the Magi as a skit, then each grade went up to perform an English song and dance. They were adorable, and they all worked so hard on the performances.

At the end the principal dressed up as Santa and threw candy at the kids.

… and when I say throw, I’m serious.

Merry Christmas!

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It’s That Time of Year!

mitcho — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:06:18 +0000

Time to apply for summer 2008 with Concordia Language Villages! I just applied—you should too!

Make sure to read up on the new position descriptions before applying (no more Junior and Senior Counselors… take a look), as well as the important policy clarifications. Good luck to all who apply!

Eats, shoots, and leaves

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Buklavu

mitcho — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:26:38 +0000

Every day at school they play some music over the PA after lunch and during cleaning time. Today I really enjoyed the music, which was not the usual classical or opera (our orchestra teacher normally chooses from “the classics”), and asked some teachers for the artist name. I then found a couple CD’s by the artist, 王宏恩 (Wáng Hóng’ēn), on the way to Chinese class in Yilan. The CD’s are solid overall. 王宏恩 is a Bunun aboriginal whose aboriginal name is biung tak-banuaz, and half his songs are in the Bunun language. To my pleasant surprise one CD also included a song we dance to at Nanao Elementary every week. The song is called “Buklavu,” written about his hometown and sung in Bunun. it’s beautiful, incredibly catchy, and encapsulates the aborigines’ energy. I found the song online and have embedded it here:

In addition, here’s a YouTube video of someone who’s figured out another one of my favorite songs of his: a beautiful song called “Ana tupa tu” (“moon”). I may try to learn parts of it, but simplified… it’s a little intense.

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Krashen The Party

mitcho — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:46:02 +0000

Yesterday we ETA’s went to a workshop at Lan-Yang Institute of Technology. The workshops were focused around the instruction of reading. The three afternoon sessions we saw included two workshops on building vocabulary and one by Stephen Krashen.

Krashen is kind of like the Chomsky of language acquisition and teaching—a huge and controversial (some may say incendiary) figure who you can love or hate, but can’t ignore. Last Wednesday in our weekly workshop, Dr. Collins delivered a chronological run down of Krashen’s theories.¹ As an entertaining aside, one task given to us was to draw a schematic diagram of Krashen’s view of language acquisition and production. Below is Dale’s drawing, which eerily reflects the geography of the brain… the input comes in through the ears (or eyes, at the back of the brain), then hits the Affective Filter (the amygdala), goes to the Language Acquisition Device (the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas), then the output is filtered by the Monitor—a product of conscious learning—(the frontal lobe). Pretty creepy.

Krashen’s talk² was fascinating, albeit not what I expected: given that the workshop’s focus was on the teaching of reading and that he himself has been a big advocate of recreational reading for language learners, I expected more on teaching English reading as to non-native speakers. The majority of the talk, though, was on writing and the composing process: “reading more makes you a better writer, but writing more makes you smart.” He talked about how the act of (regular) writing clarifies and organizes our thoughts, and advocated for a writing process which involved much revision as, “every time you have to revise, it means you’ve become smarter,” and building relaxation (to allow for eureka moments) into the process. His conclusion and analysis are important for first-language speakers just as much as the second-language learner, and the talk did feel more like a writing seminar than a pedagogical one. Krashen is an engaging and entertaining speaker, using many examples from famous writers and common experience to draw his conclusion.

The intensity with which he spoke and the passion for thinking about thinking reminded me of Sally’s Honors Analysis class, which was as much about thinking as it was about mathematics. Sally once told us that, when we’re stuck on a problem, we should find someone just about as smart as us and just explain the problem to them. He claimed that the majority of the time, the simple process of explaining the problem outloud and answering clarifying questions would make the solution come to us. It’s a powerful technique that I’ve used many times at Chicago and elsewhere, and Krashen’s analysis of what happens when we write thus struck a chord with me.

Afterwards I was fortunate enough to go out to dinner with the speakers, some of our advisors, and some faculty from the Institute that hosted the workshop. I had some great conversations about my background, where my future directions may lie academically, and of course the ideas. ^^ It reminded me of dinners with linguists back at home, after a workshop or CLS. I realized I miss the fraternity of academia—the sense of mutual respect and interest academics have for each other’s work and ideas, even if the “other” is only 22 years old.

A similar basic run down of Krashen’s various theories is found on this blog post, The Krashen Revolution. ↩
Krashen, Stephen. “What is Academic Language Proficiency,” presented at the International Conference and workshops on English Language Teaching: Pedagogical Aspects of Reading. Yilan county, Taiwan, November 8th, 2007. ↩

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Cell phone charm

mitcho — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:05:48 +0000

A sixth grader at Nan-ao today gave Jennifer and me cell phone charms. ^^

I do believe she made it herself. The large bead on top is unique… it is very geometric and features diamonds. In Atayal culture, diamonds represent the eyes of ancestors watching over us. I love the green color of the beads too… it complements my phone very well. ^^

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Halloween Recap

mitcho — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:13:30 +0000

All last week, I taught a Halloween lesson for all of my classes. Both of my schools got decked out in Halloween decor: Jack O’Lanterns, ghosts, bats, etc.

I was dressed as the devil, coming to class late and scaring the children. Then I introduced some basic Halloween vocab, like “bat,” “pumpkin,” “witch,” “ghost,” etc.

I then told a story about a girl who always wears a green scarf… the punchline is that she’s old and takes her scarf off and her head falls off. Some kids were scared, but many thought it was funny.

We then taught them about Halloween costumes and they drew what they wanted to be for Halloween.

This one was particularly sweet… but, then again, we were also in the process of grading their midterms then. ^^

At the end they Trick or Treat’ed and got candy. All the kids had a lot of fun. ^^

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What are you doing?

mitcho — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:50:18 +0000

“I’m eating a baby.”

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English Easy Go!

mitcho — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 10:00:51 +0000

Today was the ROC Year 96 Yilan county English Easy Go! competition. There are two parts to the fall competition: a song competition (song and dance, costumes, sets, the whole nine-yards) and a reader-theater. I think the competition is a great idea, getting kids all over the county excited about English through performance.

A group of 11 6th graders from Penglai have been practicing for the song competition for the past month or so under my co-teacher Jennifer’s direction. They sang and danced to the Fiona Fung song “Proud of You.”

The military guy and I met the kids at the train station at 7AM.

The kids liked playing with my camera and abusing me.

The competition was held at 凱旋國小, a huge elementary school.

We first practiced downstairs a few times and hung out. They were all wearing little angel crown-ish things, black t-shirt with a gold “belt” of tape, and bells on their wrists.

Our school was the third group in the later-morning performance group. They were not at all nervous and did fabulously!

All of us ETA’s were of course all there with our respective teams. In the photo below Katie is videotaping another school’s choreographer standing in the back of the crowd dancing with/directing the kids. He had this whole face, haircut, and outfit that screamed “I am a choreographer.”

Then we came home. A great time was had by all. ^^

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How I name my kids

mitcho — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:01:43 +0000

I previously mentioned that I named a first-grader after my dear Evan, but I should also mention how I named a number of other first-graders after characters from the West Wing. Here are some photos:

Leo:
Donna:
Sam:
Josh:
Abby:

Perhaps some day these kids will find this blog post and identify their namesake as the fine men and women of The West Wing.

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Field trip: Guang-xing Farm

mitcho — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:23:47 +0000

Today I went with Peng-lai Elementary on their field trip to the Guan-xing Educational Farm (廣興農園). The farm has ducks, pigs, and some rabbits, as well as a large carp pond.

Steven (seen below rolling down a hill—he also goes by the name Seven Eleven) started referring to this pig as “mitcho.”

We also had a hands-on activityÃ¢â‚¬â€or, as they say in Chinese, “DIY.” The kids were given bowls of cooked taro and sweet potato and a plate of flour, potato starch, and a little sugar. The kids kneaded them into small balls (粉圓) which were later boiled and put in a sweet bean soup and served with lunch.

I was excited enough to buy a stuffed animal boar at the gift shop. It was just so cute!

After lunch we went to the Luodong Sports Park to hang out and play for an hour and a half. The weather was great and it was an altogether wonderful day.

Atayal cultural festival

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Atayal cultural festival

mitcho — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 08:23:17 +0000

Last night there was an Atayal cultural festival: a traditional Atayal wedding demonstration supplemented by a variety of cultural acts. The wedding demonstration (which actually was a wedding—four couples got married) included:

the first proposal with tribal elders meeting with the families to discuss whether the two should get married—the first proposal always fails, to add value to the marriage;
the second proposal, again with tribal elders, this time accepting the terms of the marriage;
an offering from the groom’s family to the bride’s;
the wedding itself, with the groom carrying off the bride on his back.

A couple famous aboriginal singers came, as well as a number of local primary and secondary school dance groups (complete with pyrotechnics). The (very nice) high school gymnasium was packed.

We sat near the Nan-ao elementary school contingent—here’s a photo of me with some of my kids:

A few other ETA’s came to check out the event as well, and got to play with my kids. (One later told me, in English, that Jeannie is beautiful.)

The real highlight of the show, though, was my kids’ dancing act. Somehow I was under the impression that they were going to do a traditional dance, but it turns out it was a hip-hop routine set to Beyoncé and Sean Paul’s Baby Boy and what I believe to be an Amuro Namie single. Remember, these are elementary school kids. Pretty amazing talent, especially given that this is over 10% of the students at the school.

(Some photos courtesy of Katie.)

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Oh Evan

mitcho — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:00:25 +0000

One of my first graders, Evan (I gave them their English names—this one of course after my dear Evan Jenkins) acts like he wants to be a teacher, today parroting our instructions and telling his classmates to hand in their workbooks to him. Last week he finished his workbook earlier than the others and started walking around looking at the others’ workbooks, saying “goo[d]!” and pretending to draw a star on their pages. He was pretending to be me—it was the cutest thing ever. I think Evan was a good name for him.

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