My post today isn’t about the New Year, but about two events that occurred this past week.  They have a surprising number of parallels.

First, on Wednesday night I played badminton for the first time in ages.  My friend Tom invited me to play.  I am a terrible badminton player (indeed, this is true for most team sports) but thought a friendly game would be fun.

It turned out I had an edge, a wonderful advantage.  Tom’s shoes just didn’t agree with the gym floor.  For whatever reason, he had almost no traction and I did.  To win a point against him, all I needed to do was to shoot to one side then the other, or anyway to shoot where he was not and he would be unable to get into position.

Sounds simple, right?  It did work a few times despite Tom’s long arms.  There were a few occasions where I did get him to the left side then forced him to run unsuccessfully to the other side chasing (shuttle)cock.

For the most part though, I just kept returning the shuttlecock to the middle of the court.  Sometimes this was because I was reaching a distant or fast shuttlecock and didn’t have time to aim.  Even when I did have time to aim, and tried to deliberately choose to angle the racket, it still somehow went to the middle.  Many times I just couldn’t avoid placing the shuttlecock right where Tom was standing.

Two nights later, I received a phone call from Tom.  He was standing at the stairwell on the third floor and saw a rat on the stairs.  He wanted my help getting rid of the rat.

He was surprised when I asked if we were going to trap and stomp on it. He advocated a more humane approach. Hey, I’ve been working on a farm all summer; killing a nuisance rat made sense to me.

His plan turned out to be much more fun and I’m glad we kinda followed it.

I collected some broom, a long-handled mop and a box to hold the rat.  I remained on the third floor while Tom went out a fire escape to the the ground floor and re-entered the building.  His plan was to climb the stairs so we could trap the rat between us and somehow get it into the box.

While Tom was gone though, the rat made a run for it down the stairs.  I closed the doors at the top of the stairwell and followed it.  At the second floor, I had a problem.  Did I search out the second floor or keep descending? Tom still had not reappeared.

Splitting the difference, I closed the doors at the stairwell and continued down.  Upon meeting Tom I explained things and looked for the rat.  On the second floor, we opened the doors, entered, then reclosed the doors.  We followed the hall to the right to the end and saw nothing.  Heading to the left, we checked under a sofa in the hallway.  I have to say Tom jumped quite amusingly when loose fabric fluttered out from under the sofa.

As we walked, the motion sensor lights turned on so we could see where we were but not far ahead.  Tom saw a shadow and had time to question if that was the rat before we saw that it was.

Tom bravely advanced with the box while I remained a distance behind him with the mop.  My job was to keep the rat from passing us in the corridor.

The rat did everything right.  In seeing that the hallway ended and there was no escape, it ran back at us, keeping to the wall.  It did not attack but did unhesitatingly try for freedom.

It passed Tom and I had to stop it.  I shoved the mop head at the rat and knocked it flying back to the end of the corridor: a perfect move!

The same thing happened again, but just as I was unable to aim that shuttlecock, I was unable to aim this rat.  I knocked it toward the wall, but centred it, right to where Tom was standing.  It struck Tom’s legs and he danced trying to get away in the narrow corridor but also place himself to drop the box.

This happened many times.  The rat escaped Tom and I knocked it back, usually into Tom’s legs.  He danced and skittered trying to keep his distance but also to slam the box down.  I was quite comfortable and the rat never got closer than a meter and a half to me.  I lined up the mop and knocked that rat back.  There was no sense of impact and I think the mop was cushioned enough that the rat wasn’t injured by being pushed back.

The whole melee lasted a minute or less, but each iteration was only a few seconds long so I’m describing ten or more repetitions.  Finally, Tom got the box on the rat, we found a second piece of cardboard to slip under and provide a floor to the trap and Tom carried out the rat some distance to release it.  While he was away, I relived the events and tried to stop laughing.

As a great ending to the story, Tom received a phone call -his phone was in his pant pocket and on vibrate- and he nearly freaked out.

I am tempted to catch a rat now and bring it back so Tom and I can play some more.

Because the whole post is just glowing blobs on a black background, I have placed some of the images after the jump so less interested visitors don’t get too bored.

I attempted the Nanowrimo project last month (the goal is to write 50,000 words- a novel – in one month) and didn’t get very far.  Still, that was the number one thing I was to do, so if I wasnt doing it, I couldn’t do things lower on the list either.

Anyway, I’m back.

December third was our wedding anniversary so like any middle-aged couple with a child, we did child-friendly stuff.  Heck, we all loved the dinosaur museum!

I sure didn’t love the trip to the museum.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve been suffering from headaches occurring roughly every other day.  First, I went to a dentist but he found no problems.  Then I went to a hospital and I learned my cold has progressed to sinusitis and the infection in a sinus cavity has been causing my headaches.

On the drive to the museum, my head began to pound.  In addition to the anti-viral pills, my doctor had also given me Tylenol to help until the infection subsided.  I’m not the smartest man in Korea, but I knew better than to take pain-killers then drive in heavy traffic on unfamiliar roads. So, I suffered.

The tiny bit of blue paint scuffed onto the bumper of my car came from a low-speed accident.  Of course, this is the back bumper: I am in the clear, responsibility-wise.  In a tunnel, in heavy traffic, a car stopped.  The next two struck.  I stopped in time.  The truck behind me didn’t.  Not the smartest man, but in the top 40% of drivers (five cars and drivers, two blameless)!

I probably scared the very concerned driver who struck us.  I stumbled out of the car holding my head and looking at him from my left eye.  Anyway, it was a low-speed impact and we took some pictures and told the guy not to worry.

Then we got to the museum.  The little guy was out of control and could hardly breathe he was so excited.  We climbed some stairs and he looked left at some dinosaurs and right at some dinosaurs and was briefly rooted as he didn’t know which way to go.  Finally he went left.

After checking out the T. rex, we headed toward the museum proper.  The location is fantastic on it’s own, as you can see below.

The museum itself is good for all ages and includes a 3-d video for children.  My camera takes terrible photos indoors, so let me skip to what I found to be the best part.

I repeated the number “one hundred million years” to my son, but he didn’t seem so thrilled.  For me, though, these prints, the actual prints of actual dinosaurs from so long ago were more interesting than the models inside.

There is a ‘cafeteria’ onsite, but it didn’t have much to offer.  Bring your own food!  The little guy was energetic and uncomplaining through the whole visit although he didn’t eat much.

As we headed to the car, we found this roller-slide.

I would say this wasn’t the highpoint of the visit – nothing can beat dinosaurs – but it was a highpoint.

The little guy went up the escalator and down the slide many times.

Around four, the place was getting cold and we were ready to head home.  If I had been feeling better and the weather warmer (it was as good as one could expect for December) we could have stayed much longer.  I want to go back and hike along the shore more.

We spent the night at the in-laws farm and did some farm work on Sunday.  I also found this spider skeleton.  A photo of a skeleton is appropriate in a post about a museum, right?

I knew spiders have an ‘exo-skeleton’ but wasn’t aware of the internal frame that is clear in the photo.  Cool.

The unit was about prepositions of location and of movement.  After discussing the terms at their desks, I showed them what they would be doing with another set of desks previously organized.  Click to embiggen any photo.

Here is a staged photo that was intended to show the students going over or under or around desks and through a gap between some chairs.  I don’t think this photo has all the action I had hoped for.  The game did, though.  I hope you can see the stickers on the desks and chairs, each with a number or letter.  The actions for each number or letter were shown on the chalkboard above.

Luckily, no one followed the last set of instructions as shown below!

The actual game was a relay with one student from each team going through the course before the next student could start.  I’ve just remembered why the numbers and letter – and stickers -are out of order.  It was for a second round of the game and I didn’t want the students to have the route so carefully memorized.

I think that if I were to do the game again, I would have the students perform the actions -going over a desk, for example- while repeating the phase – “over the desk, over the desk…” before allowing them to race.  Too often, I heard students explaining the next step in Korean to their teammates.

I have used a blogs to relay information to my students for years now.  I am happy to avoid wasting paper but also to prevent any “I lost the form” or “I missed class, I didn’t know what the homework was.” claims in class.  In this way, it leaves a sort of (non)paper trail that shows my students had all the information they needed.

The blog, or any online communication platform for students, should be more than that, of course.  In the past, I have pushed the internet tools part of class as far as I could and found diminishing returns very quickly.  In my current classes, I can only use ten percent of the student’s grade for homework.  Having the students sign in to a common website and share information and consistently spend time is difficult to impossible.

Still, I use the blog to its full extent.  Class and university information is posted there as well as English Cafe events.  Often, but not for every week, I post the presentation slides on the blog.  IN fact, they are usually up early so students could check them out before class.  Finally, sleeping students are photographed, their faces obscured so only classmate will recognize them, then posted on the blog.

As a result, I don’t hand any paper out to my students.  However, I do expect them to hand in assignments in hard-copy.  I don’t know if there are any word processors that offer ‘grading’ features that work simply.  It is far easier to use a red pen (or pens of varied colors) to underline and circle and jot notes, then to use a word processor’s capabilities to highlight offending passages, offer corrections and the like.  Maybe I could do that in image manipulation programs.

Anyway, I find it easier to offer commentary in pen than via a word processor.

This year, my second year students are blogging their homework.  I like what I am seeing but I have the same problems.  Their work is paperless, but my grading works best on hard copy.  This is for the reasons set above, but also because I wish to be circumspect in publicly pointing out student’s errors.  On my student’s blogs, I routinely add comments on the content but don’t mention which parts I find confusing or have bad grammar or the like.

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On a similar subject, I am now reading Pencil Me In, a wonderful story, told in an elaborate and satisfying metaphor, of using modern technology in the classroom.  The story is set in the early 1900′s and Techno Tom is advocating for the use of pencils in his classrooms. The older teachers don’t see why students can’t just use slates and chalk, and the parents are concerned that the students will just use the pencils to play games (hangman and some form of Bingo).  On nearly every page, I see teachers, techniques and even the terminology of this era accurately described and thought out.  In an inspired section, students save their work in folders.  Some accidentally save their work on the desktop and one student absent-mindedly places his in the trash can.  I was honestly startled in recalling that all these are real world objects, not merely icons on my computer.

Spencer, the author has many blogs that are aggregated here.

If you are interested in paperless teaching, follow Spenser or Shelly Blake-plock for ideas and such.

First up are some persimmons.  I think they are on a broken branch so they have ripened faster than the other in the grove.  The next two show family digging caterpillars and worms out of the cabbage.  Man, from I saw in those cabbage, wash them before you eat!  The fourth pic is of a frog that must have been slacking as they were letting the caterpillars in. Tsk, Tsk.

Fifth, I eat eggplant but don’t really care for it.  I think the dark branches, leaves and flowers have a gothic sort of Hallowe’en feel to them.

Sixth, and last, is a kind of sweet potato.  I have never seen any this darkly colored before.  I thought it was a beet!

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It was pretty cool to see the dragonfly go by and notice it seemed to be carrying something.  Luckily it landed nearby and I was able to study it briefly.

I was nervous about photographing it as it is on the windowsill of a bathroom at my university.  Not the sort of place I want someone looking out of and seeing a prof with a camera!

This time of year, I see many preying mantids.  They are easy to catch and seem to be at the end of their lives.  This dragonfly was still pretty spry, though.

92% of PhD theses are in English, most university textbooks are in English, all lecturers must think about doing their classes in English if someone asks them to, and they use English more than any other Scandinavian country. All that, and yet there are also fewer borrowed words in Icelandic than in Danish, Norwegian or Swedish.

Sounds like the complete opposite of here in Japan, where nothing is done in English but the language is being taken over! As I’ve said before, the Japanese really should import teachers and policy makers from countries that are doing things right, rather than native speakers from some of the world’s least bilingual countries…

Regarding that last point: Ouch.

This is especially ironic as his talk was about using language teaching to transport and share cultural beliefs and practices.  Morrison, described (very) briefly in a previous post, discussed how Jin-hye comes to English class and becomes “Jenny” and how this is wrong.  I think Kumaravadivelu would agree.

Um, that’s about all I have to say about Kumaravadivelu and his talk.  It was moderately interesting  but a little too ‘big-think’ for me.  I did feel it was particularly appropriate for an Indian to discuss how English is a language of colonialism as well as globalism.

He was also interviewed by McNulty for Koreabridge.  The Korea Herald mentions him in it’s description of the conference.

I was satisfied by his talk, even though I didn’t take any notes -nor for any of the plenary speakers; a problem I should rectify at the next conference.

Those among his students who use Rate-My-Teacher seem to find him an interesting speaker if not the best of teachers.

In the final situation, the teacher would typically turn lights off as he passed vacant rooms. 

“For my part, I like the last one with the students and the teachers taking care of things around us on their own.  That is, after all, the real aim of education.”

I agree with his philosophical point; that we should care for things around us.  I wonder who should be teaching this, and when, though.

A simple activity that anyone at university can do, that will make everyone much more comfortable and will also save energy is to ensure that the access doors to the building are closed when not in use.  I see this as win, win, win, win.  The fourth ‘win’ is that fewer access doors to buildings will be locked if people learn to close them properly. 

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Also in the Times was the article “Solo travels offers unique perspective for women”.  I expect that the titles claim is correct but article is interesting for two other reasons.

The first is that the online version of the paper has no awareness of the article.  MSNBC offers the article and notes that it is copyrighted with the Associated Press.  Okay, in the corner in small print of the Time, I can see (AP).

The second reason I find it interesting is a travel story included in the article that matches very closely the experience a friend had and it also relates to language awareness.

Safety is also an important consideration for Warkentin. After being robbed of her camera at knifepoint while traveling alone in Chile in 1992, she downsized her camera and routinely uses windows or other reflective surfaces to see who’s behind her.

A female friend traveled to Brazil some time ago and spent a day at a beach.  While on the beach, vendors repeatedly spoke to her, asking her to buy their product.  At the end of the day, she was tired of this and when a man near a bus stop stood in front of her and yelled, “cuchillo…[something, something..]“, she ignored him and told him, “No!”.  Then she went to her hotel and learned “cuchillo” means knife*and the man had probably been trying to rob her.

If she had spoken better Portuguese, she could have been robbed.  I think she was lucky and don’t recommend this, but not knowing the language saved her a lot of trouble.

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*I think “cuchillo” is knife in Spanish and Portuguese, but could be off. Also, I heard the story long ago.