Porcupine in Penetanguishene

I spotted this guy on a branch over a minor road near Waypoint. It was the first porcupine I’d seen in ten years and my son’s first ever.

That didn’t take long

I prepared ahead – albeit insufficiently – for November and Nanowrimo.  I’ve had an idea for a novel for some time now and have wanted to try writing it.  I have written short fiction and essays short and long for this blog, a few magazines and my students.  I was ready, I felt, to extend myself…

No point in being wordy now.  It will take an extreme effort of will to continue at this point.

Oh, Nanowrimo, for those unwilling to follow the link, is short for national Novel Writing Month.  The organization is international now, so the name is both cumbersome and incorrect.  Anyway, the goal for Nanowrimo is to type 50,000 words during the month of November.  Quantity is important and quality is not.  This makes sense to me as the first step is a sort of brainstorming, with the expectation of massive revisions coming afterward.

By the end of November first, I was a little behind in my word count, but not disastrously so.  In the late afternoon of November second, I received word that my father-in-law had fallen from a tree -a cultivated persimmon tree, so it was particularly tall – and we spent that evening driving to the hospital and visiting with him.  Still, I could catch up.  However, we made plans while at the hospital to work at the farm all weekend to help the family catch up on their work.

I’ve enjoyed even this half-assed attempt at Nanowrimo and see real value in it.  I hope that I can get it together and continue working on my novel even if I don’t reach 50,000 words.

If you think the idea of thousands of amateurs trying to write novels in November is crazy, you aren’t alone. Laura Miller, at Salon, feels the same way and salutes the reader.

Consider turning away from the self-aggrandizing frenzy of NaNoWriMo and embracing the quieter triumph of Kalen Landow and Melissa Klug’s “10/10/10″ challenge: These two women read 10 book in 10 categories between Jan. 1 and Oct. 10, focusing on genres outside their habitual favorites. In her victory-lap blog post, Klug writes of discovering new favorite authors she might otherwise never have encountered, and of her sadness on being reminded that “most Americans don’t read ANY books in a given year, or just one or two.” Instead of locking herself up in a room to crank out 50,000 words of crap, she learned new things and “expanded my reading world.” So let me be the first to say it: Melissa and Kalen, you are the heroes.

pool safety

1) Before taking a shot, look behind you make sure your cue has …

Alright, this post is about swimming pools and water safety, not billiards or the like.

Today, Yahoo News was highlighting a Toronto politician who wanted all children in Toronto to receive swimming lessons so as to prevent drowning.  He felt this would be cheaper than paying for lifeguards to watch every pool in Toronto.  Soon after he made his suggestion, a boy was found floating in a pool with no vital signs. He was pronounced dead the following day.

On Friday afternoon, a boy was plucked from the pool at the Toronto Don Valley Hotel at Eglinton Avenue and the Don Valley Parkway. He was taken to hospital with no vital signs and died Saturday. Another child taken out of the pool was conscious and mobile.

Smitherman says it would be too expensive to make sure there is a lifeguard on duty at every pool including those in condos.

The swimming-lessons pitch is part of a plan Smitherman released Friday to transform Toronto’s schools into community hubs, offering a broad range of government services including daycare, recreation facilities and libraries.

I am unconvinced.  Kids, especially young boys, will find pools and get into trouble even if they are good swimmers.

I guess my feeling is that there is a price that can be placed on human life.  I don’t know what it is, but, for example, I would be willing to accept a few boating deaths of idiots if I didn’t have to carry all that ridiculous safety gear in my canoe on short trips.

Hmm, did that make sense?

I’ll try again.  I don’t want anyone to die and I am comfortable saying we should protect young people in particular.  Yet, they will always be people who kill themselves doing stupid things.  Creating new red tape and expenses to stop those deaths will cost too much per unit death.

All that said, I would like more lifeguards at swimming areas in Korea and more understanding of  water safety in Koreans who use pools and beaches.  Recess isn’t enough (from a Q&A at the Joongang Daily):

All outdoor swimming pools in Korea must abide by the regulation set by the Korea Swimming Pool Management Association that swimming is allowed for 40 to 45 minutes, with 15 to 20 minutes rest time in-between.

According to the manager at the outdoor swimming pool in Jamsil, the recess is for health and safety reasons. By emptying the pool, staff can clean up debris or pick up lost items or foliage. A brief rest also can help prevent hypothermia among young children, who tend to stay for a prolonged period of time at play, and also prevent accidental drowning.

The pool I take Alex too, doesn’t have recess, nor does it have any visible lifeguards. There are security cameras, if that helps.

I will try to find death-by-drowning rates for Korea and the list of causes.

Korea Herald: visiting this site may damage your computer

Today, I visited a library near DaDaePo Beach.  It had a pretty good English section for children’s books – from the Jungle Book, the Secret Garden and White Fang on down to younger ages.

It also had the Korea Herald available.  I haven’t seen the herald in print in years and haven’t visited the site in a few months, since Safari recognizes it as a malware site.  Is it okay to visit? Anyway, I took a few photos of things that caught my interest. Click to embiggen if you want to read them.

Last year, at Gangwon Notes, I wrote about trans-boundary water and water recourses so this conference sounds interesting.  There was only the photo and caption, though.  No further details.

I also read about a ‘Green camp’ in Gangwondo.  I am busy – and they haven’t asked me- but I would love to be involved in a wilderness/conservation-themed camp here.

Since I cannot link directly to the articles, let me say they were in the July 2nd, 2010 edition.

a Foggy Morning

I walked along the shore this morning and here is some of what I saw.

tourism contests

Korea Tourism.org has a variety of contests going on right now. There is a tourism photo contest with the deadline of July 13th and an essay (photo essay? – they require 3 or more photos in the essay).  The essay contest is in honour of the Visit Korea year 2010-2012 but I don’t think essays mocking the chronology will win.  I can’t find a direct link to it but on the main page, upper left, is a button describing special promotions.

I found the contests will looking for other contests that might interest my students; caption contests and the like.  A photo contest isn’t quite as useful for an ESL class, but it might help.  Anyway, in searching for “photo contest korea” I found a great shot of Haedong Yonggung Sa.  Now I want to visit it, even if it is not Buddha’s Birthday.  Congrats to Doug Huffer, who I think is a Busan Gyeongnam KOTESOL member.

Busan Kotesol interview videos

I mentioned in the previous post, that Tim had interviewed some people at the conference.  Here are links to those videos.

Ashley of Busan EFM

David of Ten Magazine

Yeonu of PUFS

Here are some other videos Tim made regarding KOTESOL in general, not just our mini-conference.

online vs in-class teaching

The National Bureau of Economic research has published an article comparing live teaching and online teaching.*

Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students.

My problem with the study is that it compares the blandest-but-neccessary form of live teaching with the absolutely blandest form of online teaching.  When teaching a large group, lectures are almost the only low-tech way to go.

-there was a movie years ago that displayed a lecture hall.  In the first lecture, I think everyone was there. In the second lecture, the professor was absent and an audio system delivered his canned lecture.  In the third lecture, no one was there: at the front of the class was a big, professional looking audio tape player and at each student desk there was a small mini-cassette recorder.-

Online lessons do not need to, and should not, resemble in-class lessons.  I am still uncertain what a good online lesson needs to go or even how it can be measured.  Still, I can make some reasonable suggestions and form a reasonable picture.

First, the audio, visual and written components remain important but but are no longer the entire content of the lesson.  Before I go into the other components, I feel these basics can be improved and want to offer a suggestion.  E-book content: The text could be read anywhere and done so while listening to the audio as most reader devices include mp3 players.  The thing is, this is not a groundbreaking or particularly original thought.  I would, at a minimum, compare a live lecture to an online lecture, downloadable text and downloadable audio.  The study above is comparing what I presume is excellent live-lecture delivery (good acoustics, the opportunity for questions and interaction, good sight-lines…) and crippled internet delivery  (the mere video).

We might as well compare my bike to a car that can only use first gear and is limited to the carrying capacity of my bike.  My bike would look pretty good but even I would admit cars are not so limited.

Next, what else can be offered online?  To be fair, the study is only comparing lecture delivery – perhaps both groups could access other material online.

• Sample tests can easily be placed there – both to prepare the students and to let the prof know if he taught the stuff he thought he taught.
• Peer review has great potential online.  Students write essays, or post the notes they took during the lecture, and classmates -and the prof- can look them over to see what they missed or misheard.
• Links from the lecture is another obvious thing to add.  Case studies, journal articles, popular press reports and other content could be added.
• The biggest problem with supplemental material online is the urge to add bells and whistles (this may even be a literal complaint – we don’t always need sound effects in educational software.  Sound effects that continue beyond a second quickly seem too long). Cute graphics and gifs have their place, but can be easily overused as can varying fonts and colours in the text.

Again, a lecture is great way to send content one-way, but the internet is all about the  two-way flow of information. The article seems to be comparing my bike to a crippled car or an apple and a piece of watermelon that has been carved into apple shape.

An excellent website for learning Korean is at Sogang.  Here is an excellent and professional website that does teaching right.  I would say it is insufficient in itself, but that’s true of any part of the learning experience.

via Freakonomics.

—————

* “live teaching and online teaching” – that looks weird.  I wanted “live teaching and online learning” but teaching and learning aren’t really synonyms.  This really fits the heart of my complaint with the article.

Moon Bears

Via Robert Neff at the Marmot, I found a bit of an update on Moonbears in Korea.

The article touches on poaching at Jirisan, which I looked into in the old day at Gangwon Notes.

Although I love the idea of having bears in Korea, I can’t see how it can work.  Korea has a high population density and bears are famous wanderers.  They will not stay inside the park borders.

Also, the reports linked to above say there are 19 bears.  That sounds about right.  My understanding is that one needs around fifty or more individuals before one can claim the population is sustainable in the short term, and five hundred or more to be sustainable in the long term.

Busan KOTESOL Summer Conference

Updated: I had posted a picture of text that included personal information – I have removed it and tried to replace it.  Safari is showing me a ‘failed photo’ image though.  No luck – refer to the link for further information.

Original:

On June 26, the Busan Gyeongnam branch of KOTESOL will hold a mini conference.  It is worth going to on it’s own merits, but also, you could meet me at the door there.

Click to embiggen or follow the link below.

More information can be found here. At that link, I found a PDF with this information (and more):

KOTESOL is holding the first annual Busan KOTESOL Summer Conference on June 26th at Pusan University of Foreign Studies. This event is open to all educators, both Korean and expatriate, and aims to develop and enhance networks among professionals in the Busan area. The conference also offers teachers an opportunity to develop their professional skills and understanding of how technology can be used in the classroom. The conference is aimed at both public and private sector educators.

KOTESOL is the Korea-based affiliate of TESOL International, a non-profit association of professional EFL/ESL teachers and educators.

At the last meeting I attended – I missed one to do farm work – the plan was to print about 100 copies of the conference book.  The book will contain  abstracts and further information about the presentations.  I mention this because pre-registration will almost certainly guarantee you one – the rest will be handed out on a  first-come, first serve basis.