Presentations 6/17

I really liked Yusuke's presentation, his talking was very uptempo making it easy to follow. I could see the influences of stand up comedy in his talking, the way that he talks is absolutely hilarious. Anyway, his message that in history, there are no good guys and bad guys, only humans was something he always says in his blogs. It is obvious that he has a lot of passion for history and he showed in the presentation. He lent me a comic book by Howard Zinn which illustrates the contradictions of American history. I am looking forward to making the information inside a part of myself.

Izumi's presentation on photojournalism was interesting also. I never knew that she was a photographer, but moreover I never had considered the ethical sides of photography. I can't imagine how much pressure the photographers take on when taking photos in areas where ethical problems are brought up. Something new to consider when taking photos.

The Corporation 4~6

I honestly think that if you've watched the movie, there is no point in reading the book. The movie illustrates the topics the book covers and it is much easier to understand than the book. Anyway, it was quite obvious for me that corporations work for profit, and not humanitarianism. It is quite obvious that many corporations and celebrities give money to charity just to boost their public image. A friend of mine from the states taught me this concept when he was SEVEN years old. He used to watch the history channel and discovery channel all the time, and he had very intellectual parents, which was probably the reason he always so realistic, telling me on Christmas that Santa didn't exist etc.

I am interested in the fairly new kind of business, social business, which Koji pointed out in his presentation. There is actually another girl who is a friend of mine that is looking to shoot a documentary in Bangladesh about street children, and how there needs to be a way to start these social businesses in these areas. In ICU, there are many students who are aware of what corporations can accomplish to help educate and expand the economy in the less developed countries.

Corporations have so many negative effects on various aspects of our lives, and becoming a part of one seems like the norm especially in Japan but I really do not want to. First off, salarymen in Japan have the terrible quality of life. They work long unproductive hours and their life revolves around work. Stress levels are obviously high and although there are many merits of working in a company, I just think that it does not align with my value system. Secondly, what do salarymen actually do? I'm assuming that you do what your boss tells you to do which diminishes your creativity. Lastly, there are more interesting things one can do other than joining a company. If joining a company can accomplish your goals, then I think that is fine, but just joining one because everyone is joining one seems like a path for boredom in the future. Just my opinion though.

6/14 Presentations

The first presenter today was Koji, and I felt that his presentation was very impressing. His use of effects on keynote were fantastic, and the entire flow was great. I read his essay and thought that his perspective on what corporations could possible accomplish concerning poorer countries was interesting..

I also had read Narumi's essay after the presentation because I found the topic to be interesting. Psychopaths a.e depicted in movies such as Hannibal, and the I assume the characters were accurate in their characteristics. I wonder what motivated Narumi to select this topic, and if she likes movies like Hannibal.

Kenta's topic about blood type was entertaining because I've always thought the Japanese' obsession with blood type categorization was absurd. Obviously, there were no connections between blood type and personality. I guess it is just another form of fortune telling where the fortune teller says things that can apply to anyone.

Overall, I think everyone's presentations were informing and I had a great time listening to them!

6/12 Presentations

The topics of the presentations today were particulary of my interest because they were about food and creative arts in education. I used to have a great interest in food when I was studying sports nutrition and training. The problems America, Australia, England, and other western countries face is enormous; the food quality is rubbish. The culprit in the increase in obesity rates is sugar, not fat. The government in the U.S. in, I think it was the 1970s, sent out a message saying that fat was evil when in fact sugar was the culprit of people getting bigger. I really think that a lot of things are messed up and corrupted in America, and food is one of the issues that has turned into a major problem that cannot be fixed easily.

The quote from Picasso goes as follows: "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." I agree with this quote and I think that modern education kills creativity, as Ken Robinson said in his TED speech a few years back. The implementation of the arts in education is definetly a great thing, but in Japan I don't think it would be as effective as in other western countries. Japan has cultural aspects which would not correspond well with arts in education. First, Japanese value grades from standardized testing, but creative things cannot be measured by numbers. If they are, I feel that creativeness is lost in the process. Second, Japanese people tend not to express their feelings. This goes against the self expression that is supposed to happen when creating art. If it is in the form of drawing, perhaps students would be able to better express themselves because those forms of arts are not directly seen by peers. However, forms of art like dance are direct shapes of their body, therfore one can predict that Japanese students will become uncomfortable. I think it is extremely difficult to implement creative arts effectively in the education system in Japan (or in any country actually.) The only way for this to happen is for the paradigm to change, which will not happen easily. In the future there may become a time when the people realize that modern education is ineffective in embracing creativity and real knowledge and skills, not just undigested crammed information.

Some interesting videos

Here are some interesting videos somewhat relating to my presentation, about the salaryman lifestyle:

The Corporation Chapter 1-3

I think that this book gives strong points on how the corporation is morally harmful. The corporation is a psychopath, according to this book, when compared to human traits of a psychopath. I agree to this, and it was a new way of looking at things. It was very convincing and made me look at it from a new perspective.

On the other hand, people like Koji disagree with this, and say that not all corporations are evil and some strive to do good in society. I haven't done any research on this topic, but I have a bias that corporations only do good for society in order to raise the company`s image. Corporation`s role to increase profit, not to necessarily do good in society. That is why volunteer groups, NPOs, and groups like those exist and have meaning in society. According to the book, there is even a law stating that the corporation's main purpose must be to make profit. This lead to a contradiction, as mentioned in the book, that doing good for society and sacrificing profit for it is immoral. However, maybe there can be a compromise between profit and doing good for society.

I don't think it is meaningful to complain again and again about how horrible and evil corporations are, because that is quite obvious and it doesn't lead to any solutions. The problem is, the corporations own almost everything, so there is no way to fight against this, and no way to get out of this cycle of destruction. Also, the people that are in the corporations are not particulary evil, they are just doing their jobs. Which leads me to think that it is impossible to solve this problem because people would not feel bad at all for the negative effects of their corporations, because they are just doing their job well. The system is the problem, but fixing this problem is impossible. I am looking forward to Koji's presentation as he might offer some creative solutions about this topic.

6/11 Presentation Feedback

It was amazing receiving feedback from a specialist in presentations. Rab emphasized the design of the slides, and he repeated the mistakes over and over so we got it in our heads. Following the CRAP principles were key in making the slides. The points Rab made were clear, and I learned a lot today about the design aspect of presentations. The size and alignment of the photos were emphasized as well as the repetition of font style. These were all part of the CRAP principles, and I missed some of them in my slides.

I am looking forward to watching myself present, and figuring out what kind of unnecessary movements I have in my presentation. I want to take Rab`s presentation class in the winter semester because I am sure that it will help in the future when trying to share new ideas to people.

6/10 Presentations

I did my presentation today about corporal punishment, and I came across some problems. The first problem was that we did not have remote controllers so that we could slide through our powerpoints remotely while talking. I tried carrying the mouse and the keyboard, but the wires were too short to do so, so I ended up just going back and forth to the keyboard. It would have been better if I had just programmed some of the actions so that the slides would be more smoother. Another problem was time. We had 4 people in our group, which meant we only had about 6-7 minutes to talk. We had to cram everything in to get everything to fit in, but ended up having little time for questions. I liked how Rab was strict about the time, because in a professional setting the same rules apply. I needed to take out the unnecessary words in my talking to make it fit into the time, which I will try to do next time. The final problem I encountered was movement. I forgot all about walking around to make the presentation more interesting. I was distributing eye contact throughout the class, but I didn't move around enough in a natural way.

I felt Joki did a great job talking about his subject, which he was obviously passionate about. His integration of music in the slides and the points he made with it were clear and had an impact. It actually convinced me to listen to some old hip hop. He was calm throughout the presentation, and had very interesting points.

Next time I do a presentation I think I will take more photos by myself, as finding images were difficult. Also, the video I took was messed up because I took the video using the iPhone, but it wasn`t in landscape mode so the width was too short. I uploaded the videos, so you can take a look again if you want.

 

The Old Man and the Sea lecture

Mr. Paul Wadden gave us an interesting lecture about the Hemingway and the Old Man and the Sea. I had checked some information about the novel so some of the things he talked about were reviews from what I learned by looking it up. I found the approach of looking at the author's background and trying to make connections to his/her life was interesting, because doing so would lead to a much different view of the world of literature.

It was funny of him mentioning how he has friends that are authors, and how he needs to be careful because you never know when you might appear in the next novel. I can imagine how honoring that would be. Anyway, the story had a few points that were surpirising.

The first was that Hemingway showed clues of Christianity throughout the book. I wonder what motivated him to write the book. I am not too familiar with the bible, so I could not relate to the references, but Mr. Wadden explained to us the similarities in the book.

The second was how the story seemed like an old tale like Mr. Wadden mentioned. Santiago seemed to be an impossibly great human as all stories of this sort has. I question why although Hemingway was a realistic writer, this novel was more of a fantasy. What changed his writing style and what made this novel more relavant than others?

The Future of Technology is Obvious

We had a lecture from a gentleman with a great smile, Mr. Ken Enochs. He talked about technologies that is said to take over this world based on a book called "Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreu. I looked at reviews of the book, and found out that what Mr. Enochs talked about today was probably basically a summary of the book. Although I haven't read the book, the concepts Mr. Enochs talked about were all from the book. I agree with the 4 technologies that are said to take over the world (Genetic Engineering, Robotics, Intelligence, Nanotechnology) and the way he dissected them into strong and weak forms of each technology, and the 3 possible outcomes of the future, but I felt like I had felt nothing new. The things we learned today were obvious in a way, and just rephrased to make them seem like complex new things. However, I don't think Mr. Enochs was trying to give us an in depth view about this topic, but instead was trying to give us an introduction to this topic which he did a fantastic job on. I especially like his introduction slide with all the cool effects and sci-fi background music.

It is interesting to think about how technology will evolve in the future, as newer and newer technology keep coming out every year. The recent Google product, the Google Glasses, look like they have the potential to become something big. Right now, they are too expensive and too chunky to become something that normal people can use, but like a lot of digital products, after it gets more slimmer and more accessible, it is sure to become a popular product. I am predicting that someday there will be a product that is like Google Glasses, except in the form of contact lenses, or in a form that is not visible to other people. I wonder if Rab has tried them out already, because he is a member of Google. If these glasses become popular, I'm predicting that a "megane boom" might occur in Japan.

ARW 6/3

Watching TheYoungTurks' videos was entertaining and informative at the same time. I had watched their videos before, and back then I thought that they were hilarious but had no credibility, However, I checked Google if they were credible or not, and it turned out that they have a big fan base because of the way they present various news, balanced and neutral. Rab emphasized that he recommends them to us students, and because he is extremely educated and has gained my trust, I am convinced that they are a good source of information. The thing Rab mentioned at the end, saying that politics involves everything, not just war, was very interesting. The topics we discussed concerning TheYoungTurks were not all about politicians, such as the girls fight in a soccer game, the sexy Italian teacher, etc. It gave me a new perspective on politics, because Rab mentioned that people getting fired and getting sued for fighting in sports are part of politics, and I never considered those things.

We had a discussion about if the girl that punched another girl for tripping her should have been charged of assault. I felt that this would not have happened in Japan, because no one sues anyone unless something drastic occurs. America is famous for people suing people for the smallest things, and I think that played a big part in this incident. Discussing about this topic brought up a confusing question. How come violence and attacking someone in sports is allowed but not allowed in the streets? Why is it allowed in sports when its illegal on the streets? From a nonviolence perspective, sports can be seen as an excuse to commit acts of violence. However from a person that watches or plays a lot of sports, that is just utter nonsense. It's a difficult problem to solve, because it involves more than the law, as it involves cultural aspects as well. Personally, I know from experience in playing in competitive sports that fighting in sports and fighting in the streets are somewhat different. However, if we allow violence in sports, then why is it allowed in sports and not on the streets? If we make exceptions like this to the law, then I feel that there are many places where the law can become exploited in a similar way. There needs to be a clear line of what is allowed and what is not, and currently there isn't because a lot of violence goes on in sports in Japan, not only in games but corporal punishment in practice, violence from sennpais to kouhais, and etc. This is what my essay is going to be on, which I need to work on more and get it finished by the deadline.

The Meatrix was something that I watched in high school when I was reading and researching on the Internet about sports nutrition. My main goal was to find out if the quality of the food (where the food was grown, the method of making the food, additives, etc.) had an effect on athletic performance, physically and mentally. There were two sides to this argument, one saying that as long as sufficient calories and nutrients are taken in, the quality of the food doesn't matter so much, and the other saying that the quality of the food determines our performance as well as our health. Both sides of the argument had strong points, but after researching both views I came to the conclusion that eating real food has more benefits to health, performance, and vitality than simply devouring calories. What videos like The Meatrix accomplished for me was clarify what actually happens to the meat and how corporations tries to make a clean image of the food. Another documentary that was highly informative was Food Inc. which described how food is grown in the U.S.

Living in Japan, I noticed that more people are concerned about the safety of the food than in America, so the food is much cleaner. America's food problem has caused many problems from diabetes, cancer, obesity and other diseases. However. there are movements to help people become more aware of the food they eat. Jamie Oliver, an English chef, made a speech on TED that really described the reality of how little children know about their food. He promotes solutions to educate children about food so that they do not grow obese and get diabetes or cancer.

There are plenty of creative people making an influence on people, getting the message across on the Internet. Being tech savvy is going to be important for people that want to change society in any way, because the Internet is the most effective way to get the message out to people efficiently. 

Democracy

In this lecture, Rab pointed out the contradictions of what is considered to be democracy in the modern world and how it fails to serve the people's opinions. It was a very interesting lecture, as it covered the problems and reasons for why "democracy" is corrupt and the alternative solutions.

Rab mentioned that in the UK (or in a any country), politics is a rich mans game. He pointed out that this is unfair because this means that unless you don't have money, you cannot represent your political opinions. However, although I think this is true I also think that in today's world, it is difficult to be in an environment to have high education without sufficient money. I am not saying that rich people coming into power is a coincidence, but I think that it would be difficult for a person to be politically influential and have strong points to back up their political opinions without a high education. I think that even if someone tried to change the system so that money wouldn't be involved in political power, not much would change.

Money being the motivation for governments and companies isn't healthy because of the economic disparity it causes, but it seems normal because it is a capitalist era where money is everything. With money, you can buy almost anything (besides love of course). If money is the motivation to take advantage of poorer countries, then money should be used as the demotivator to solve these kinds of issues. This has been effective in reducing CO2 (Kyoto Protocol), and it could be used in solving the power issues between poor and rich countries (I assume that there are some international laws like this already).

LLA 5/21

I honestly thought that this lecture would be boring, because the museum we visited for this class was boring. At the museum we were able to look at different ages of kombinis, but I didn't find it interesting at all. However, Professor Whitelaw's lecture was very interesting and entertaining. I noticed how he started off the presentation by grabbing our attention with numbers and data, as Rab taught us to do. I thought that it was effective looking at the reactions of myself and my other classmates. He used images that had impact, which were humurous but made a point at the same time. I knew that Seven Eleven was originated in the United States, but I had no idea Lawson was too. The history of komibini was interesting and I thought that the culture of komibinis changed according to the era. The fact that the hardness of the food sold in komibini is becoming softer because of the majority of the population becoming old-aged people was interesting because I thought that it could possibly lead to other problems such as jaw disfunctions for younger people. Anyway, the presentation by Professor Whitelaw was excellent and I actually learned quite a few things about not only komibini, but about various other things as well such as the mindset of an anthropologist. We learned by but not only listening, but by looking at things and doing things. I am going to try incorporating these aspects into my future presentations.

ARW 5/27

We learned how to make websites using Google's services. I've never used Google Sites before, but I found that it was easy to use because of the integration with other the other Google services such as Google Calender and Google Drive. This makes it easy to manage and share information. However, I felt that there are better alternatives to Google Sites but for just starting out I guess it is a good place start.

I personally have experience with making websites, as I used to make them as a hobby. I made a little bit of money (I still am) from a basketball website I built in high school. The way I made money was from placing advertisements on my website. I found that Google AdSense made me the most money, and Amazon Affiliates the next. I learned a little bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and just enough HTML and CSS to enable me to build a website that functioned decently. Here is the link (Japanese): http://thebasketballblog.seesaa.net/ 

Focusing on Effectiveness

Rab gave us some hints on how to change systems in our society by using the media or anonymity. I like how Rab always focuses on what would actually work. I notice that a lot of times, especially in Japan, we tend to focus on things that are ineffective (as I’ve written in other blog posts as well) and end up getting nothing done while thinking that a lot was accomplished. I hear from many adults living in this country that most meetings are useless, and time consuming. I’ve had the same experience in “bukatsu” or club activities in Japan, and it irritated me a lot of times because much more could be done in less time with better organization.

This is one of the reasons why I do not want to work in Japan. I never want to waste my time doing unimportant tasks or activities that are not aligned with my values. In Japan, society forces everyone to fit in to one molded character, therefore uniqueness and originality are often killed. Although this creates more human robots and increases the amount of work that can be handled, creative work is made difficult. Innovation will never take place in these kinds of environments. Although one might argue that this happens in places besides Japan, I believe that Japan is really extreme in terms of being slaves to the company. If more and more Japanese companies and schools start promoting effectiveness based on educated reasoning, the society will become much better in terms of work conditions and stress levels.


(image source: http://attentio.com/files/1212/6381/5134/campaign%20effectiveness.jpg)

Problem Solving

Loewen repeatedly states that the reason for student's lack of education is because of the bland nature of history textbooks. Because of the strict requirements of page length and content, it is practically impossible to write a textbook that are interesting to students. Although history is said to be extremely controversial and dynamic, history portrayed in history textbooks are the complete opposite. This leads to boring bites of information that must be memorized instead of naturally becoming knowledge of one. I agree with Loewen’s argument because I was one of those students who had to cram in order to memorize anything in the history textbook. However, Loewen fails to present a solution to this problem. Although it is obviously a difficult problem to tackle, without a realistic solution I don’t think there is a point in arguing about the problem.

I think that the difficulty with these kinds of problems is that it is the organization’s problem and the culture of the organization, so it is difficult to change anything. Changes that have to do with many people take years and years to change. Even if there was a way to change the paradigm of textbook making, it would take so much time to change everything that it would have become a new era and new material would have to be added and so forth which would make the task even more difficult. I think that a more realistic approach to tackling this problem is to inform students that textbooks are not always correct and that critical thinking is necessary in order to be informed about history. However, this would require a lot of reading and discussing, which means that there will be students that will not read on their own, which would lead to disparity in children’s interest in history anyway. If teachers could get their students to become more interested in history, then I think that would be the best way to solve this problem, but then the problem would be how to raise the number of teachers capable of doing so. It is just too sophisticated of a problem to solve, but I am really interested in how Loewen would tackle the problem (Although he might have written about solutions in other chapters).

The Necessity for an Educational Pardigm Shift

After listening to Rab's argument concerning the system of ELA and ICU as a whole, I thought that ICU should accept creativity more. Even though ICU is much more creative than most schools in Japan, I think that it could be better because of new technology that is being introduced year by year. I think that Rab's way of teaching is very up-to-date, there are many articles and videos online that support Rab's philosophy. I think that the problem of the upper powers being too conservative is a major concern for many creative educators around the world. The educational pardigm needs to shift from the classic classroom to the new, more techy kind of classroom. It's just more efficient and effective in my opinion. I've experienced both kinds of classes, but its obvious to me that using technology in class is far more superior in terms of efficiency and effectiveness than just reading textbooks or copying the blackboard onto a piece of paper. There are way too much inefficient methods used not only in education in schools, but in education in various fields such as sports. For example, the training methods used in basketball in Japan is unscientific and is in fact, completely detrimental to the player's performance. However, most coaches do not see this as a problem because they believe that old training methods are more effective because that's how they think they got better. There needs to be a shift in the education paradigm, and we need to use more efficient and effective methods that have evidence or logic, instead of just sticking with tradition. I think that this is one of the major problems that needs to be dealt with when it comes to education.

Macs > Windows

It was a coincidence that we learned how to use iMovie, because I had made a movie with it two hours before class to make a birthday video for my friend. (By the way, happy birthday to Yuca too.) I was familiar with how to use iMovie but it was fun using the QuickTime recording function. I am personally a Windows user, but I might consider becoming a Mac user after editing videos on a Mac. It is much more easier to make high quality movies on a Mac than on a Windows. It is more user friendly and has less clutter, and also has great templates on iMovie. Overall, the interface on the Mac is much better than the Windows, and I think that is why most designers prefer using a Mac than a Windows. I appreciate the fact that there are loads of Mac computers on campus here at ICU, so I can access them whenever I want to make movies.

Although Macs cost more than Windows, I might consider buying one because I love videos, music, and multimedia overall. Windows are better in some ways, for example being more customizable than Macs, and costing less overall. This blog post is becoming more of a Windows vs Mac kind of post, but this is because I was so shocked at how easy it was to edit videos on a Mac. I have had a lot of trouble trying to edit videos on a Windows in the past. iMovie is so much more better than Windows Movie Maker, and I believe that it is possible to make professional looking videos just with iMovie. If I had the money, I would definitely buy a Mac but since I don't I guess I will have to work for the money over the summer.

(image source: http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/zzcj/imgs/d/f/dfc2fa6f.jpg?56656948)

See No Evil

I feel that the Vietnam War effected many people that are in the age of my parents, making it difficult to show violent images to students. One thing I wonder about is if the Vietnam War would have more coverage in the history textbooks a hundred years from now, or if it would be censored as it is today. I was told by my history teacher that the National Archives of JFK are kept hidden until 2017 because many Americans would get angry if they knew the secret about the incident. I don’t know if this is a credible reason for the secrecy of the files, but if this was true, is the government doing the same thing for the Vietnam War? Or are they not covering the war fully to justify the war?

From the information Loewen gives us in his book, it seems to be clear that the government is hiding a lot of information to prevent students from having a bad image about their own country. There are obviously a lot of shocking images and episodes that would be disturbing to students that would not be appropriate for textbooks, because arguably they could be harmful to students. I assume that there would be many parents concerned about the material. Is it worth the risk to educate students about the cruel acts of America? I don’t think any textbooks would risk it. It is too much of an inconvenient truth.

(image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Vietnam_War_protesters._1967._Wichita,_Kans_-_NARA_-_283625.jpg)

(image source: http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/images/kabc/cms_exf_2007/news/world_news/8685670_600x338.jpg)

 

Bakayama Discussions

There's nothing like having discussions outside in perfect weather. I feel that being in a relaxed environment enables us to express our opinions more freely. It started with a notice from the person that revised the Meiland article, Paul Wadden, and it was funny seeing that Rab and Mr. Warden shared the same thoughts about the ELA Reader and the system of ICU, having to give students quizzes at the end of the lecture and etc.

There was a story Rab told us that symbolized a lot of the nonsense rules Japanese people tend to make. It was a story which a Japanese elementary school didn’t allow for wearing hoodies to school even though the hoodie didn’t include any violent words or anything harmful. There was apparently no good reason for banning the hoodie. However this happens a lot in Japan. There is a lot of nonsense that goes on, unnecessary rules and unnecessary traditions. I felt that researching this kind of topic would be extremely interesting as it concerns education, cultural studies, sociology, etc.