ARW last class

     With hearing Rab’s talking about what he taught through this term, I felt that this term was different from other term’s ARW. We learned normal education of ELA (reading, writing, and speaking) in spring and autumn, then in a sense, those methods were challenged by Rab. We were confused. However, now, It was good opportunity to know the diversity of education.

     By the way, yesterday, I talked with my friend who was a student of Rab’s R&P class. He said, “ Rab’s presentation style is not necessarily effective because what audience hope for presenter is different according to the situation.” I think this point is important. In short, Rab's presentation is appropriate for presentation in company or TED in order to stimulate audience and get interest. However, in some case, such a presentation style is not wanted. For example, some presentations want presenters just to summerize what they research and consider. In this case, creative presentation is not effective. Therefore, we should know that presentation has diversity and Rab's is not always best.

  

ARW Feb 18th

      Yesterday, I made a presentation. However, the result was not good. I made some mistakes especially slide, though I watched Rab's YouTube channel. I practiced my presentation many times, but through my presentation and other's presentation, I was shamed by the bore of my presentation and envied other's interesting presentation. Now, I don't know how to make my topic interesting(but maybe I can improve my presentation and essay to make them easy to understand).
     Anyway, in last class, I learned some helpful advices for presentation from Rab. I put them on this blog.

1slide-1point-1photo
Mouth for words, slide for image
Clip art - for comic and children
Don't put photo on photo

ARW Feb 14th

     Today, Rab showed us former websites of ARW students. I was surprised at and inspired by the quality of them. Especially, the way of emphasizing large number (000000...) was fantastic. That is one of the examples of creativity. I think creativity runs away if we pursue it, so we have to pursue the most effective way of showing. That is the shortest route of creativity.
     And in class, I had tutorial about my essay. The result was a little bit shoking. Needless to say, I was disappointed with bad grade, rather, a fatal contradiction of my essay let me down. I have to fix and improve it druing this holiday.  

ARW Feb 11

     Today's lecture was about basic method and structure of presentation. And Rab told us to watch some movies about presentation on Youtube. Those movies are advices for making slideshow: CRAP (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity) and 4A(Accessibility, Appropriateness, Arrangement, Awesomeness).  These basic skills prevent people from making terrible presentation. Teaching these basic structure is good for learners because most students didn't know them and they did presentation without role model. Yet, these basic knowledge should be taught to younger students. High or junior high students can understand and conduct them. I have seen a lot of terrible presentations since elementary school, and I have to see them in whole of life. If these presentation skills become common in education, such a tragedy will disappear.  I hope it.

ARW 10th Feb

     Today, we watched some movies that are taken by ordinary people. Those movies are published on Youtube in order to show a reality that mass media do not report: Seatle battle in 1999, Occupy wall-street, and discussion between government officer and citizens in Fukushima.
     A few days ago, I read an article about Japanese political attitude written by Osamu Hashimoto, a novelist. According to him, Japanese people have conducted politics in closed group even after introducing democracy. Governers and politicians have kept the habit and wanted people not to participate in their job. In addition, people don't have will to participate in politics due to politician's leading. Special Security Law (Tokutei himitsu hogo hou) is one of the typical examples. The law means that secret must be treated in closed group.
     This view is accurate. Many Japanese people often look down on those who enthusiastically claim about politics. Those who walk in demonstration are abnormal. Yet, recently, these situations have changed. Some demonstrations are held in order to improve younger's political attention; it is easy to join and looks like a festival. In the internet, a famous website delivering movies partly becomes a platform of political discussion for youngers (Unfortunately, the quality of arguement is not high.). SNS helps these movement to gather young people. It is able to say that Japanese political attitude starts to change through new technologies.

ARW Feb 4th

     Why Japanese annoy Westerners and why Westerners look down on Japanese and cast ridicule? Through Tuesday's lecture and reading the articles that Rab sent to us, I realized that Japanese have been annoying Westerners and they have wanted Japanese to notice it and admire themselves. (Perhaps, Rab purposely tried to provoke us to react.) Moreover, according to section mates' blogs, interestingly, Japanese like to pretend to notice and reflect on it. I want to know those relationship between western and others and self-consciousness of Japanese.
   
     Anyway, as to political attitude of Japanese, It is sure that Japanese people don't join to political movements. For example, a voter turnout of the election of the Governor of Tokyo on Sunday stood at 46%. The attitude should be change in order to improve the benefit of Democracy because Japan adopts it. Yet, the notion of democracy is not innate in Japan. It was imported (was partly forced to imported) from Westerners. So, the notion may have been indigenized in Japan, and that is not necessary bad and criticized. What Japanese youngers should do is not completery pursue Western but try to build Japanese-democracy.

ARW Feb 3

    In today's lecture, Rab mainly talked about efficiency of his writing method and the development of the method.
    I was surprised at there were not enough Internet condition when Rab's collage days. I was born in 1994 when Windows started to be popular, so our generation have sent a life with Internet. IT native. Yet, on the contrary, we could not experience the shock which the Internet gave like Rab. For the reason, I guess our IT skill is not high while those who were shocked at the Internet pursuited the new technology.
    In my opinion, the efficiency of work on the web is sure. In office or academic work, the efficiency is helpful and provides us with speed and connection. However, it does not means that other styles of work are useless. We cannot work without paper and pencil, and those devices can help us to think in other way. In short, each device has strength and weakness for users. This fact never change in this web era.

ARW Jan 31th

     In anthropology, there is a term to explain human's exchange: giftedness. If one receive something, he or she have a duty to return or pass it. Rab gave us gifts, but we did not return them. This violation of cultural norm is rude as human in any society and situation.
    I know it is meaningless to show the anthropology term and feeling of guilty. What I should and can do is writing my essay, supporting group members, and returning.

3B of W. Warren Wager

 I looked up Wager's history and what he did. He was born in 1932 and died in 2004 in the U.S. He was American historian and future studies scholar. Moreover, he wrote SF novels about future and deeply studied H.G.Wells who is the pionner of SF novels. He published some short stories and essays about future and Wells's political philosophy. To be honest, I cannot find his bias.

ARW Jan 24th

 Today, we learned about the way of peer review (I was absent 1st period because of another class, so I was taught from my group menbers.) and of making google form. I feel the system of comment on google drive is very useful because comments do not interfere with passages. If we check and point mistakes on Microsoft word, it become messy.

Ex) Japan should abolishs(abolish) to death penalty.(- You should write reasons.)

Yet, on google drive, it is clear and easy to understand.
Ex)

The comments are like post-it!
     Google form is also useful to know ordinary opinions and to get primary sources. However, the opinions which we can gather is not equal to the statistics. We cannot control the balance of sample's age, sex, and region. In short, the reliability is not so high. Maybe I won't use google form for essay in this term.  

ARW Jan 20th

     In class, Rab gave us a lecture about structure of essay. Basically, what he said is not very different from what previous ARW teacher said and the contents of SGW or Little Brown. Yet, it is sure that he is good at presentation. Through the lecture, I can get deep understanding and image of good essay. But of course, actual essay is unlike that simple structure. While we see it as a sample, we have to modify the sample in order to make it clear what we want to write. In fact, I have never seen "rules of 3" in ELA reader. To think this fact carefully, I think what we should do is not to write long academic essay but to write many academic essay? It is sure that long writing is helpful for RW, but the idea to make students write many essays is not so bad. It is a subtle selection.

Tech staff- movie

 Last Funky-Friday was awesome. We learned about how to make movie to use some free download soft(?) and application.
・awesome screenshot- This function is equal to the name. I have got used to taking screenshot on iphone. It is very useful, so I feel lucky to know that same function is able to use in my laptop.
・Quick Time Player- Of course I know the existance in my laptop, but I didn't know the function to record voice and movie.
・ MacTube- After the lecture, I rapidly downloaded it, and then, I was surprised at the usefulness. I often miss to find favorite movies, so I will use Mactube in daily life.
・ imovie- I have used this application once. In sea program, I recorded and edited movie that I played slam poetry. I was not good at editing because it was first time and there were no explanation about many function. Yet, Rab's lecture was easy to understand, so maybe I can make better movie for winter project.

Before reading Morioka

     Before reading Morioka, I researched Morioka's 3B(background, biography, bias). He was born in Kouchi prefecture in 1958. Now, he is a professor of philosophy and ethics at Osaka Prefecture University , the director of Research Institute for Contemporary Philosophy of Life , and the editor-in-chief of Journal of Philosophy of Life. He studies "life" from various viewpoints: philosophy, bioethics, gender, environmental ethics, and civilization. As for brain death, he claimed that it is necessary that paitiants declare the will to give their internal organs. Yet, his political standpoint is not obvious.