Seattle Family Trip 2011

For Megumi and the kids, this was a one month stay with my Mom (Grandma) in Seattle. For me, it was two weeks since I was teaching the summer GLS program at ICU.

We weren't sure whether we could come up with the money for airfare etc., but because I got the summer job, it worked out and I'm very glad we decided to go. The kids had a great time hanging out with their cousins and going to local camps at YMCA etc. and Megumi and I were able to enjoy meeting family and friends in the dry, cool, sunny Seattle area.

Below are just a few photo highlights for the record. We have sooooo many good pictures and videos from this month long event that it is very difficult and time consuming to go through and choose the best pictures!

 

Born and evolved to run...barefoot

Interesting NY Times article today. Should I give up on my cushioned Asics and go for a more barefoot-style "foot glove"? I'm curious how that kind of running will feel, and apparently it is the natural way to go, possibly with fewer long term running injuries. Hmm...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/science/23conversation.html?pagewanted=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

20 Questions: Can Pecha-Kucha 20x20 Help Students Improve Presentation Skills?

1. What is Pecha-Kucha 20x20?
   Pecha-Kucha (PK) 20x20 is a presentation format that asks the speaker to make a presentation using 20 slides shown exactly for 20 seconds each, with slides advancing automatically. Pecha-Kucha is a Japanese onomatopoeic adverb based on the sound of chit-chat and used to describe chattering or jabbering on in an energetic way.
   
   Official website and explanation = http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what
   
   Note: In Japan, the phrase pecha-kucha has a bit of a negative connotation meaning noisy, mindless and even annoying jabber, which may have been lost on the non-Japanese inventors when they chose that name...but oh well, it is the official name and it has stuck to a cool presentation format that I like. My Japanese students find it an awkward name to use for what ends up being a well-prepared presentation and we just use "20x20." Another problem is that most people around the world never know how to pronounce pecha-kucha, so personally I feel PK 20x20 or just "20x20" may be a more practical and informative name to use in the long term. But at the same time Pecha-Kucha is quite a unique sounding and mysterious word for non-Japanese people, and can be fun to try to pronounce, so I guess it may stick.
   
   
2. When, how and why did it start?
   PK 20x20 was invented by two architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in Tokyo in 2003 as a format for young architects and artists to showcase their recent work in a concise, visual way. Given a microphone on stage, some speakers can get a little too carried away and take too much time explaining their concepts, so 20x20 was devised to help "liberate" the speaker (and the audience even more) from that type of over-explanation and force the presentation to be highly visual and to the point. That's the genius of 20x20. My own experience made me a fan. When I tried creating and delivering a 20x20 myself as a pilot and sample to show my students, I found the constraints of the format very helpful and fun to work with.
   
   
3. Who does 20x20s today?
   Today PK 20x20 presentations are made at events called PK Nights in hundreds of cities around the world. See pecha-kucha.org for event details and many examples of voiced over slideshows in the 20x20 format. After we did 20x20s in my ICU class, some students decided to go check out a PK night in Roppongi and said it was a cool experience.
   This video here doubles as an example of a 20x20 and an invitation to a PK Night sponsored by Speakers.org (click to see video).
   
   
4. What are people saying about it?
   Scott Gross of Forbes.com (Dec. 10, 2010) has called it "An amazing cure for death by PowerPoint" and Garr Reynolds, professor of Kansai Gaidai, presentation consultant, and author of the best-selling Presentation Zen books has labelled it an "art of liberating constraints" that helps presenters keep their talk focused and concise, much to the pleasure of the audience (Sep. 28, 2007). See also Wired Magazine Aug. 21, 2007 and www.pecha-kucha.org for what people think about 20x20 presentations.
   
   
5. How long have you (Mark) used it in your classes and in what ways?
   In January 2011, I was introduced to the concept by my highly artistic and innovative colleague Sylvan Payne (See/listen to his cool PK night presentation here) when we team-taught a presentation skills course at ICU . This year I have used it for a total of 100 students in two different English language courses at ICU and in one course in the engineering faculty of a national university called TAT where I teach part-time. I'm going to focus on describing the results from my core ICU class.
   
   
6. What did the ICU students present on?
   In Feb. this year, I used PK for academic research paper summary presentations at International Christian University (ICU) in my Academic Reading and Writing (ARW) course. 1st year ELP students finishing up their academic year presented their 1000 word research paper results in PK 20x20 format. Each student had 10 minutes including the 6 min. 40 sec. for the 20x20 and Q&A time. Topics = Death penalty, suicide, commercial surrogacy, child labor etc.
   
   
7. Did the ICU students like it? What do your surveys show?
   Almost all of my ICU ARW students (n = 32 survey respondents) rated it very positively both for being:
   "enjoyable" (31% Strongly Agree, 56% Agree, 9% Disagree, 3% Strongly Disagree) and "good as a format for improving presentation skills (69% Strongly Agree, 22% Agree, 3% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree).
   Judging from the comments, 3 students out of the 32 seemed to have had a negative reaction due to struggling with the PowerPoint requirement and the demands for preparation and rehearsal.
   
   
8. What did the TAT students present on and how did they react?
   My 2nd year TAT engineering/biology students did "Team 20x20s" in teams of three for a final presentation on a social issue (problem/analysis/possible solutions) at the end of a required English Communication course. Each student spoke for 6 or 7 slides, or a little over a minute. Topics included the need for volunteers in Tohoku, child abuse, food poisoning etc.
   
   Student reactions at TAT were mixed--one of my classes really liked it and did a fabulous job on their team 20x20s. In my other class, several groups had difficulty with team work and energy level and really struggled to make it work. I'm still tabulating those (n = 60) and may present them at an upcoming conference. 20x20 is a quite challenging speaking task and imposing the format as a requirement may not be ideal for some types of students or presentation projects.
   
   
9. How do students make a PK 20x20? What's the most difficult part?
   If I have enough time in the course, the 10 steps are 1) topic selection/goal-setting, 2) background research, 3) outline, 4) draft of script/visuals in 20x20 format, 5) creation of visuals with timed slides, 6) rehearsal, 7) delivery, 8) peer feedback, 9) criterion-based self-assessment and self-grading after watching one's own video on YouTube, 10) instructor feedback. If time is limited, I make some steps optional.
   
   The most challenging part of a 20x20 is adjusting one's content to fit the 20x20 format - Showing 20 slides 20 seconds each. To help students, I give two types of documents:
   1) A 20x20 .doc planning outline (Click to Download)
   2) A 20x20 .ppt template (Click to Download)
   
   Credit due: The original forms of both of these documents were created by my cool, innovative colleague Sylvan Payne.
   
   
10. Overall, what are the main benefits as perceived by students?
    The three biggest benefits seem to be that PK 20x20 forces students to
    1) focus on what they really want to say,
    2) use visuals effectively, and
    3) prepare/rehearse well
    and as a result of those, end up making a more interesting presentation for the audience. Some other benefits are easier time-management because speakers cannot go over their time limit, and no problem with speakers rushing to finish their conclusions. Rehearsing with the timer forces the speaker to prepare a just-right amount of ideas for each slide.
    
    
11. Benefit 1: Forces students to have more focused and organized points - Really?
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "In PK, the number of words are strictly limited, so my skill to sift the content and focus on what is the most important and to summarize the contents was improved."
    "I liked that I need to create or present as simple as I can. By that way, I need to focus on only the most important thing, so it helped me to understand what I want to say most too."
    "Because each slide only takes 20 seconds, I could say only the main key point so that it was good to organize the presentation."
    
    
12. Benefit 2 Better use of visuals = more interesting to create / watch ?
    Survey Results:
    
    "PK helped me make a more visually attractive presentation"
    50% Strongly Agree, 28% Agree, 13% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    "PK helped me make a better presentation than a free style presentation"
    38% Strongly Agree, 41% Agree, 16% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    "PK presentations (of classmates) are more interesting to listen to than regular presentations."
    50% Strongly Agree, 34% Agree, 9% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    Of course, we have to consider that not all of the students have extensive presentation experience, and so their ability to compare to other types of presentations may be limited.
    
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "Creating slides was enjoyable, because PK made us to use images to communicate with the listeners."
    "First of all, doing/listening to this kind of presentation was not boring! I think it is very efficient to keep audience's attention during presentation because of many images."
    "As for the listener, I was never bored because the tempo was good and easy to understand."
    
    
13. Benefit 3 Forces more preparation and rehearsal?
    Survey:
    
    "I had to practice harder than regular presentations to prepare for PK"
    Strongly Agree 41%, Agree 34%, Disagree 16%, Strongly Disagree 9%
    
    "PK helped me speak with more rhythm"
    Strongly Agree 41%, Agree 38%, Disagree 13%, Strongly Disagree 6%
    
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "It made me practice more, but it was effective because I could find easily what I had to practice on"
    "The first few practices were hard because I couldn't keep up with the time limit, but it was easy to practice once you got the hang of it. I felt i could speak more smoothly when I did the PK than when I did a regular presentation."
    "The PK is demanding, so I like this. To make good presentations in the PK Style, students have to think, think, and think, and practice, practice, and practice."
    
    
14. What are the drawbacks or issues that came up? What did students want to change about their PK assignment?
    Students mainly mentioned problems with
    1) the demand of preparation and practice being heavy within the tight schedule we had,
    2) the format being too inflexible for what they wanted to communicate, and
    3) discomfort and a feeling of being rushed with having a timer to worry about during their presentation.
    Let's look at these one by one below.
    
    
15. Drawback 1: High demand for preparation and practice
    "To create the content and slides suitable for and effective for 20x20 slides, we need a little bit long time."
    "There should be more class time to rehearse the PK. Also, I wanted to start preparing much earlier in the term" (We had one month, but it was not enough because I chose a new topic different from my essay.)
    "There were some technical defects creating PK; for example, the counter doesn't work or the visual effects animations cannot be used."
    
    
16. Drawback 2: A lack of flexibility in making and delivering
    "Not every slides have the same importance, so 20 second for 20 slides are not so effective sometimes. "
    "In the PK presentation, speakers can hardly tell deep contents."
    "It was uncomfortable for me to make 20 slides. I want to make slides more few. This method didn't fit my want to improve my presentation."
    "Once I failed to mention some key information, but I do not have chance to retry because of time restriction."
    "I thought presenters should be in control of the timing to switch the screens because changing screens at the right time is also an important skill for presenters to make their presentation look smooth."
    
    
17. Drawback 3: A sense of discomfort with the timer
    "I very worried about whether I could finish speaking in 20 seconds, so I was hasty during the presentation. It was hard for me to relax!"
    "
    
    
18. Is it better than other types of presentation requirements? Does it help students MORE? Is it worth trying?
    This is the ultimate question, but I think it depends on what level the students are at and what their needs are. I imagine that trying to get empirical comparison results to other types of presentations (with no timer, no slide number constraint) would be a complex study to design and am not setting up anything at this point. What I can say at this point is: Give it a try yourself (for a conference presentation or class lecture to explain something) and consider it as one way to push your students to develop good habits to make better presentations (focused, visual, rehearsed). For motivated students who have some experience with trying to make an English presentation, PK 20x20 will probably work well. For students who do not have much to say or do not care enough to prepare well, or have never made a presentation in English before, PK 20x20 may not be ideal or modifications of the format may be needed. Also, for fairly advanced or experienced presenters (like myself), some of the constraints can be a bit frustrating, too, but it is still enjoyable to try to design a message within 20x20 specs.
    
    
19. Will you continue to use it in classes or research it in the future?
    Use in classes? Yes. Research? Still seeking future directions. My main research interest is identifying the stages that Japanese college and professional ELLs go through toward developing a sense of confidence in their ability to communicate orally in an effective way, and I believe that using PK 20x20 is beneficial training for emphasizing good habits in making a presentation using slides and avoiding death by PowerPoint. At the same time, I think I will use it in a flexible manner with an aim to squeeze out only the real essence that makes 20x20 work. For example, 20 seconds may not need be an exact time. The essence is to help students speak shortly on a focused point, so it probably makes more sense to require the use of a timer, but say "No more than 20 seconds per slide" just in case students want to speak more shortly on one image. The timer can be easily shortened (or lengthed a bit, perhaps) in the PowerPoint template by deleting some of the dots. As a result, 20 slides becomes a minimum number to encourage students to not overload slides and keep key words and images focused on one point. I want to try with those new flexible guidelines.
    
    It may also be interesting to act like the requirements are strict until just one day before the presentation and then relax them suddenly to allow some degree of flexibility in the style of delivery such as: 1) It will be OK to stop the timer or even go back to a slide to clarify a point, 2) It is OK to change the timer a little by adding or taking off dots, and 3) It is OK to not have exactly 20 slides. Plus or minus a few is no problem. Too flexible for Pecha-Kucha purists? I want to try it and see how it goes.
    
    
20. Can we see samples? Can we ask you questions about it?
    Samples of my materials and student work such as slides, photos, handouts, and video clips will be presented at JACET 50 in Fukuoka next week. Also, feel free to send me questions or comments through this blog. -Mark
    

The Rite (2011) with Anthony Hopkins, Directed by Mikael Håfström

IMDB Link

You will either find it "OK" for one of two reasons or hate it.

Those who hate it would be those who can't stomach scenes of demonic possession to begin with or those believers who abhor any attempt to portray exorcisms in a semi-secular, semi-fictional film like this that many people will simply watch for thrills and entertainment and not really take as a message to become a believer.

If you are not in the group above, you will find the film interesting whether you believe in demons and exorcisms or are basically skeptical.

First, those who believe in the God vs. Satan conflict and demonic possession will probably approve of the approach of this film to allegedly base it on a true events that happened to a practicing Catholic exorcist Father Gary Thomas. However, apparently Father Gary Thomas feels that "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" (2005) is more accurate. I haven't seen that one, so I assume what Anthony Hopkins does in this film is basically what happens in actual exorcisms. Taken seriously, the message of the film is that the Devil is real, and those who do not believe in the Bible and pray to Jesus are in danger of being possessed. I can see this fairly serious message working for many people who are already believers and want to affirm what they believe or try to convince others.

Another group who will find the film interesting in a different way are those who basically don't believe or are not sure what to make of all this (like myself) but are fascinated by the concept and the idea that rites and rituals to cast out "demons" may go down like this. The film succeeds in terms of being real enough (no spinning heads or pea soup, for example, like The Exorcist) like making you wonder about many things. Does this really happen? How does this all work? What happens in non-Christian cultures and how does that relate to what happens in the Christian ones?

So...my main burning question ends up being that, if all this does really happen (very frequently, all over the world, ostensibly), why wouldn't the Vatican or other church groups show it publicly a bit more often on an official basis to people to stoke more fear of the devil? As the doubting, skeptical priest in training Michael, realizes in the end, the devil and demons are the strongest evidence of God, especially if those demons confirm they are scared of God/Jesus/Holy Water etc. and can be successfully fought with faith, prayer, symbols and rituals. From my high school days, for example, when I was attending a evangelical Christian organization for missionary kids in Japan, the only spiritual talk that got me close to really overcoming my skeptical stance was the stories of a guest speaker of a pastor called Greg Speck who told us in length how he cast a demon out of a girl he met in a summer Bible camp. Freaky stuff, just like this movie. If the churches have evidence on video, or can stand up to skeptical inquiry on this, it seems logical to release it a bit more, no? Why withhold it?

In the film, Michael (who is based on the real priest Gary Thomas) becomes a believer after becoming unable to explain away the phenomena he witnesses in the exorcisms in terms of psychosis or ESP any more--there is just no explanation any more for how the possessed know know so much about him or how the possessed react to holy rites conducted by the eccentric, half crazy Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins). In this film, it is actually really weird how, in fact, the demon itself works so hard to make Michael believe in the Devil and therefore God...It is strange because, if I were the demon and hoping to lead Michael away from God and remain a skeptic and quit the priesthood and all, I would just stay quiet or try to act like it is a psychosis. The bumbling demon, however, has to show his supernatural devilish powers again and again and push Michael over the edge into faith. Uh-Oh. The consequence? Now the devil and his legions have to fight against an active Father Gary Thomas who is a very famous exorcist. Damn. I would bet that demon's superiors gave him a good tongue lashing on that blunder in the war against the forces of good. Or maybe that is part of a greater long-term strategy?

That inexplicable part aside, I recommend the film because it makes you ask some fascinating, and possibly unanswerable? questions about the nature of our world and the possible existence of supernatural phenomenon. I consider myself a faithful believer in many Christian ideas such as humility, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice, and do my best to practice them, but still feel the "jury is out" as the main character Michael put it, on this spiritual battle stuff. I am keeping an open mind and am willing to go where the evidence leads.

In real life, maybe this is related to why we never see possession or exorcisms on real video; the demons probably are coached to shut up and never get filmed in a way that would convince people they are real because a series of convincing, scientist and journalist observed YouTube videos that show demons are really possessing people and can only be fought with rites would get more faithful Christian believers than a century of sermons. It is mind-boggling to consider how this all works, if it actually does happen. So far, I haven't seen anything convincing.

Further Reading:

1. http://www.skepdic.com/exorcism.html

2. An Interview of Father Gary Thomas on his exorcism work - apparently he only has one possessed person he is working with as of January this year. He admits most people who ask for help need a doctor or psychologist, not an exorcist, and that most exorcisms are low key affairs that are done several times on the same person. But at the same time he claims to have witnessed dramatic, violent events like those in the film that made him find his faith. Curious.

3. Ebert on the film. "eerie...evocative...grant its assumptions and it has something to say"

4. The book by Matt Baglio that the movie is based on seems to have gotten good reviews on Amazon.

What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain (Harvard University Press, 2004)

Based on interviews and other information gathering such as observations, colleague/student comments, and course materials from 63 "excellent" college teachers in the USA, Ken Bain presents his conclusions on how the best college teachers create exceptional learning in their college courses that stimulates and challenges their students.

"Exceptional learning" (p.189) is defined in two dimensions: intellectual development and personal development. Intellectual development includes acquiring subject knowledge, learning how to learn independently, reasoning from evidence, employing abstract concepts, engaging in conversations/communication in speaking and writing about that field, asking sophisticated questions, and developing the habits of mind to continue to employ those abilities. Personal development includes 1) understanding one's self (history, emotions, dispositions, abilities, limitations prejudices, assumptions, passions, 2) understanding what it means to be human, 3) developing a sense of responsibility to one's self and others, including moral development and the ability to exercise compassion and understand and use one's emotions.

I think that list above covers what I aim for. I hadn't thought about the "personal development" side of exceptional learning very deeply before, but feel that I aim to help my students with their personal development through the liberal arts academic English courses I teach, especially when I am able to include a sufficient amount of personal choice and reflective writing in the learning curriculum so that students can explore their interests and create meaningful learning experiences for themselves.

The book can serve as a good introduction to what good college learning should be, and has much value there, especially for college professors who may have never studied recent learning theory and methods and are stuck in traditional lecture and test-giving models of college courses that fail to stimulate intellectual engagement.Unfortunately, for teachers who are already conducting teaching according to the "learning-centered" principles that the book introduces, it lacks well-developed specific examples of good practices, and primary goes on and on about abstract descriptions of what good teachers seem to do, supported only by a few rather vague quotes. When some interesting practice was mentioned, I kept wishing for more details, or at least a reference to some documentation that could shed more light on how to carry it out.

Some interesting practices that I want to explore (more) in my teaching are:

1.Writing a syllabus as an inspiring list of invitations to a learning environment and promises for discovery and personal development based on adherence to community guidelines, rather than requirements with penalties. What abilities can you learn/develop in this course? Why are those abilities important? (Who gives a damn?) How can we work together to make that happen? How will we assess whether you are being able to develop those abilities? How will we assess whether the course is optimally helping you develop those abilities?

2. Write a book like this on "What the best college English teachers in Japan do?" employing research methods similar to his. Has this already been done? Who might be interested in working with me on this?

3. Students must learn to judge their own quality of work. Best grading is to some extent based on a final reflective essay that explains what they learned or developed and how they want to improve further.

4. Create an archive of student research results that other students can see (Richardson case, 1999 Texas University). ICU really, really needs this. Students each year are doing very inspiring work, but their work is rarely ever made available to peers or the world. We need a system for publishing student work--some kind of balance between requiring all students to publish and only publishing student work that is exceptional--publishing work that student/teacher/peers have worked together to polish and engage readers should be a standard practice for this learning community, especially in the end of the first year + second year of ELP, as it should be in the major courses as well. And how about senior theses? Are those available easily online, and why not?

5. Expect personal development from students - mention this explicitly as a learning objective - compassion, find new passions, responsibility, understanding oneself, human society, and one's community.

6. Ask an inpartial third party consultant (Director? Staff member? Another student?) to come into the class around mid-term (and also at the end, possibly) to ask students their honest views of the learning in the course and any suggestions or expectations.

7. Building a convincing teaching portfolio each term - Class materials, observations, student reflections/evaluations, quality of student work. I guess my blog can act as this, but what would help organize the process more effectively?

Nice ideas to explore and experiment with in the new term. Good stuff.

坂の上の雲ー植民地主義と戦争の悲惨さに怒りを感じつづけさせられる全８巻

BookOffで買い込み７月にスタートして今週やっと第八巻を読み終えました。

Amazon.co.jp

日露戦争という大きな歴史の渦に吸い込まれながら読み進めました。

この長編歴史小説は「日本がどのようにしてロシアに勝ったか」という歴史を考えるために書かれているのですが、その時代と人物への理解はかなり深まります。陸軍の秋山古好・海軍の秋山真之という実在の兄弟の伝記を中心に書いているので、明治維新初期の教育制度、留学、外交、軍事制度、庶民生活などについてイメージが持てるようになりました。特に伝統的な古典教育から西洋の技術を取り入れるための近代化教育への転換が説明されていてとても興味深かいです。日本がロシアに勝った要因は天佑も含めたくさんあったことがこの小説から見えてきますが、一つの大きな要因は日本が優先的に行った教育の近代化と専門家養成のための留学の成功だっとと言えるのではないかと思います。このあたりは今後もまた研究してみたいと思います。

フィクション的な部分もいろいろあるのでしょうが、司馬遼太郎先生は文献研究をとても丁寧に行いながら書いている印象を受けます。中国など周辺のアジア諸国が欧米列強に植民地化されていく状況の中で、明治維新後の日本が経済と軍事を必死に発展させてロシアの東アジア侵攻を食い止め戦勝国となり、世界の列強の一つとある程度認められた、という事実はその後の日本の発展に良い意味・悪い意味の両面で大きな影響を及ぼしたことは確かです。

しかし悲すぎる歴史です。日本、ロシア、そして間に挟まれた満州や朝鮮の数万人の命の犠牲があり、涙を滲ませながらしか読めません。ロシア皇帝の植民地拡大主義を阻止するために朝鮮や満州における戦争が必要だった、ということは完全に賛成できないにしても現実的に見て理解できます。知識が浅いので他の文献も読まないと言い切れませんが、その当時の欧米諸国は弱肉強食の原理で次々と世界の国の主権を奪っていましたから、日本も立ち上がるしかないと決断したのでしょう。この小説を読んで以前以上にその必要性を理解できた気はします。日本帝国としては「日本を守った」大勝利として捉える気持ちは分かります。しかし朝鮮や満州の人々は二つの外国に主権と生活を侵害されましたし、日本（死傷２０万以上）とロシア（死傷１７万以上）の兵隊たちも皇帝の欲による侵略戦争と外交手段の失敗のために犠牲にされました。悲惨すぎる歴史です。どんな戦争にも「勝利」という言葉は不適切だな、と改めて思わされました。

つい１００年ほど前の話です。二度とそのような無駄な殺し合いがないようにするにはどうしたら良いのか、学校や家庭で話し合われなければならないと思いました。小説や映画を通して戦争の事実を被害者の観点から勉強し、事実関係をただ暗記するだけではなく、そのような歴史を起こす人間の個人や組織の性質について「どうして？」と考え、今後同じ間違えを繰り返さないようにしなくてはなりません。そのための教育体制と心がけは日本や他の国々で十分にできているのでしょうか？

私は小学校の頃(長野県浅科村、今は合併で佐久市）で通っていました、担任の中原先生の熱心な反戦教育・平和教育を受ける機会がありました。同時私は何故かその反戦教育が嫌いだった記憶があります。例えば、今も忘れられない授業としては東京大空襲で死んだ１０万人という被害者の数を実感するために、模造紙の方眼を１０万枚、はさみで切りとって、色を塗って「二度と戦争をおこさない」（確か）という横断幕のモザイクを作りました。数日の授業時間を使い、私はそれが面倒で無駄に思えて嫌でした。ただでさえ、戦争の間違えを考えることよりも格好いい軍艦や戦闘機の図鑑を見る方が好き（その年齢の男には多いと思います）だったり、歴史を読む時、他を侵略して大帝国を築くアレクサンダー大王、ジンギスカン、織田信長など、他を制服する強い国や人物を尊敬する傾向がありました。でもその時に受けた平和教育は今は必要で正しいものだと思いますし、深い印象が残っているので、中原先生には感謝の気持しかありません。

戦争で被害にあったことがない我々、授業やテレビで戦争の辛さや犠牲の大きさを知っても、多くの場合は実感がなく、その悲惨さを心に留めることができないのでしょう。私が受けたような徹底した平和教育はすべての国の学校と家庭において必要なのではないでしょうか。アメリカはそれをかなり欠いているのが現実で、大きな問題だと思っています。兵力という手段は防衛の目的でも最後の最後の手であり、必要な場合は使うが、その防御が成功しても人が死んでいる場合はお祝い事ではない。そういう教育を自分の子供には徹底したいと思います。

坂の上の雲の最終巻最終章、ロシアのバルチック艦隊を日本海海戦で全滅させ圧倒的勝利をおさめた時、秋山真之に喜びはない：

「秋山真之がそういう調子であるため、他の幕僚たちは大声をあげてはしゃぐわけにもいかず、ぜんたいの空気は病院の手術室のようにしずかだった(p.271)。」

損害　（from Wikipedia)
日本側 戦没88,429人， うち戦死戦傷死は55,655人[1] 病死27,192人 負傷者153,584人[2]	ロシア側 戦死25,331人 病死11,170人 戦傷死6,127人 負傷146,032人 [3]

My first flat, changing inner tube - Nice YouTube video!

When to a bike shop and got a flat repair kit and a new tube. The hole was very small, so I just did a patch. The only troubles I had were a temporary failure to get the whole tube back into the tire without pinching it, which ended up in a strange bulge in the tire when I tried to inflate it and having to deflate and adjust the tube, and also a bit of time spent on figuring out how to re-connect the brake wire I had to take off when removing the tire.

Took about 30 minutes? Next time it should be much, much faster.

My 2nd pair of ASICS Nimbus

I did quite well with these over the last two years, so I decided to get a new pair at Jock'n Jill again. After reading Born to Run and hearing about the possible long-term problems with cushioned shoes, I was a little leery to go with gel, but they feel great and I haven't had any foot or leg problems over the past 5 years with cushioned shoes. Hopefully they will get me through the next few marathons!

http://www.asicsamerica.com/products/product.aspx?STYLE_NUMBER=T142N&TITLE_CATEGORY_ID=250001543&PARENT_CATEGORY_ID=250001538

Running in Seattle over the past two weeks has been fabulous. Cool, dry, sunny. Just love Seattle in the summer. Running the trails in Hamlin Park in Shoreline was especially fun.

10 Skills Every Student Should Learn

I read through this article this morning, and wondered what I myself would list and how I would rank them by priority.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/08/11/ten-skills-every-student-should-learn/

The list/order (which may not be a ranking) in the article was as follows. Some items seem to overlap, but it is a good list that includes many of the skills and concepts I try to prioritize in my college liberal arts courses:

Every Student Should Develop the Ability to...
1. read, enjoy reading
2. type quickly - 40 words per minute and use electronic media fluently to get/send ideas
3. write (meaningfully, persuasively in an organized, engaging way)
4. communicate effectively and respectfully (especially in situations of conflict, high pressure)
5. ask questions / analyze the quality of answers- Could you explain this again? What does this mean? Why is it significant? etc.
6. be resourceful - find what you need proactively, creatively
7. be accountable - be responsible/get things done
8. know how to learn - get needed info/ideas/help
9. think critically - evidence based thinking like a scientist, make decisions and solve problems creatively
10. be happy - have/get necessities + positive outlook on life

Also mentioned = Find one's passion for something, have global empathy, prioritize, put others before oneself, be persistent

I agree that all of the above are important, though "typing quickly" seems a bit too micro compared to the others. I would just include that under the ability to write or communicate.

I would probably put "The ability to learn actively and autonomously" (as opposed to passively/dependently) as the main skill students need to learn. Of course, that skill would include many of the other skills because effective autonomous learning requires the ability to find something one is passionate about, set priorites/schedules, ask questions, get needed resources, read, understand and evaluate the materials critically and communicate what is learned in order to get feedback/reactions from others.