KnowBar

http://hanakasij.learnerblogs.org/

http://asijvanessac.learnerblogs.org/

http://kotharis.learnerblogs.org/

Japanese and Americans read faces differently

Danah sez, “A new study is out showing cultural differences in reading cues. Japanese folks focus on people’s eyes to get nuanced expression information while Americans tend to focus on the mouth. The most interesting part of all of this is that it plays out in the emoticons that folks use:”

So when Yuki entered graduate school and began communicating with American scholars over e-mail, he was often confused by their use of emoticons such as smiley faces and sad faces, or .’It took some time before I finally understood that they were faces,’ he wrote in an e-mail. In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). ‘After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles,’ he said.

Link (Thanks, danah!)  From Boing Boing

In February of 1999 my cousin committed suicide. His teenage daughter found the body.

In the intervening years I have tried very hard to keep up a relationship with her….and it has been fraught with difficulty. She went into a tailspin – understandably – and distanced herself. Once, about 4 years ago, we were able to coax her on a family trip to NYC. She and my daughter really made a connection – but again, distance – both physical and pyschological – made it unlikely that they would have another opportunity to see or speak to each other.  I tried, but there was always some reason why she couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. 
Until last weekend.  A month or so ago, an ASIJ alum invited me to join Facebook. I quickly set up a profile and invited my kids and some of their friends to be my Facebook friends. They accepted and I was off and running (I knew better than to try to find any of MY friends on Facebook). Then I found my cousin’s daughter. I sent her a “let’s be friends” request and wonder of wonders, she accepted. Within 24 hours she invited both of my kids to be her friends and they have been posting on each other’s walls ever since.

After years of frustration, it was that simple. I don’t know if people will continue to connect through social spaces like Facebook, but for now it is working for our family.

Lin

I’ll be sending out an all-high-school notice about a recent purchase of Blackboard modules that will that allow podcasts, wikis and/or blogs to be included in a BB course. After a quick glimpse at the new tools, they seem pretty straightforward and in keeping with the BB style.

I’d like to provide some PD on podcasts, wikis and blogs soon. In the meantime, do you have any ideas about how you might use these tools w/in Blackboard? Any questions that leap to mind? Want to collaborate on the training in some way?

Also, found this article the other day on the front page of Wired (about schools embracing social networking). Thoughts? (Glenda, just read your recent comment under going viral and your thoughts resonate with the article.)

p.s. Glenda and Lin, I’ve given you author status on this blog, so feel free to post an entry. Hope Wally will join in soon. Invite anyone else, please!

pps. Glenda has started a new blog for Japanese language study here. Check it out because it isすごい！

ppps. I keep thinking the Wellness info that Bapi and Yoshie manage is perfect blog material. Question is, should it be w/in BB or outside that structure in a place like edublogs?

See, a blog is good for something, although usually comment-writing time is when my house gets cleaner and my garden gets weeded. Is writing comments worth all of the energy it takes and stress it creates? I’m don’t know. I can’t imagine how those of you with large numbers of students do it, and I apologize for taking up your time with this post (unless, you, too, are in the mood to procrastinate).

Some quick replies/thoughts:

• Wally, you can sign up for RSS feeds using the subscribe via e-mail link on the right side of the blog homepage. I’m using Feedburner to manage e-mail subscriptions, but it seems a bit slow and currently it only sends blog entries and not comments, I think. I’ll work on that after my other important comments are done. Oh, “closed” means that this blog isn’t open to search engines on the Internet. Wait, I just realized I needed to open all entries for comment too.  Sorry about that!  All are open now.  Thanks for catching that.
• Julie Dean, funny you mentioned Ian Jukes. Yesterday I almost posted a “what did you find to be the most valuable take-away from EARCOS” entry, hoping for comments, but decided to wait until next week (for obvious reasons). And then Nancy had a similar idea – but for a f2f (face to face) meeting!
• Everyone , thanks for your input so far. When/if you want to author an entry (because I don’t feel comfortable being the only author and I don’t think this type of blog works with only one), please sign up for a teacher account on edublogs.org You may have to create an initial blog to do so but you can just leave it empty for now.

Happy grading/comment writing.

Just finished skimming, and occasionally reading, some of my regular blogs, and as a result, I was inspired to update this one by sharing and soliciting thoughts on a phenomenon that I’ve known about for some time, but only experienced more acutely this year: “going viral.”

In the past few months, three Internet memes have “infected” (sent and/or received) my online world:

• The Machine is Us/ing Us
• Shift Happens
• We Feel Fine

I realize this phenomenon is “old news” for the most part, but for some reason, I have new interest in it. I just wonder if education could tap into this behavior, making certain aspects of learning as compelling.

Well, it’s take two (second blog attempt in several months). Another experiment, but even less focused than the first version, bounded only by the wide arena of learning. I’m still very interested in the connection between technology and learning specifically, but more and more, I see curriculum and instructional design as areas especially rich with possibilities for transforming this process we call school. Sometimes I like to imagine what my dream school would look like, but mainly I want to ask questions and share ideas about tinkering with what we have: what works, what doesn’t, where can we improve. So, what do you want to talk about?