Name: MBE (jason)
After living in China for over 6 years, my life back stateside...
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(since 5.14.04)
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UGA beat the University of Florida for the first time in six years today! (Well, yesterday if you live in China 
) I was totally excited to see that not only did they win, but it was not a very close match up. This is one of those days when I wish I still lived in Athens!
I have been using Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird for about 6 months now. I have never had such a smooth surfing and e-mailing experience before! I totally love it! As far as the Firefox browsing could not be better; no more 'unknown' freezes and shutdowns, and also I like the tabbed interface. Thunderbird takes the place of Outlook or Outlook Express. It really works smoothly and I am impressed. Here is a button for your surfing enjoyment!
Let me start with saying that I am still really sick with the 'FUNK' (flu-like sickness, for those readers not from my neck of the woods). I am just trying to make it through each day of school without talking much. If you know me, not talking is a fate worse than death! I hope to be up to snuff for this weekend!
I have just concluded my first poll. It was more of a test run and I got 13 votes. The majority of the votes said that the site was fine, but a few folks suggested some changes. I will see what I can do. I played around with this color scheme and design until I got one that I liked, but a little change never hurt anyone;)
Finally, I see that a lot of folks are stopping by my blog to see it from BlogExplosion. That is great! I hope you like what you see. If you are a regular reader you can visit blogexplosion here. Check it out and let me know what you think!
I was reading an entry today from Ape Rifle and it struck me because this is not the first time I have seen this sort of entry from a former China blogger (Emma is another example). Usually people who start blogs while living in China have very interesting perspectives and comments. It is excellent to read what some people have to say about there first impressions of this country that I now call home. I can even recall this past summer when I was in America with my wife for the first time she visited my family. I thought that I would be posting entries every day, however, I only posted a hand-full of times. I feel that after reading this entry from Ape Rifle you will see the trend that I am referring to:
...my life as an ESL teacher to 5th graders has hit the WALL! Let me explain. It is often said that the average adult who travels to a different country, with a different culture and language lasts anywhere from 2-3 months before they hit 'the wall.' The wall that I am talking about is that period of time where you are still in awe of that new place. If this is true for ADULTS then that time must be shorter for a child. Add to that that an adult will usually be the person to choose the move to another place. These children in my classroom did not ask to come here. They did not ask to be taken from there happy lives in their home country to a new place with new people and to be educated in a school that teaches with the English language. So, to say that my students have hit the wall, they are at a turning point in their language learning. Many of them made many strides in spoken English in the beginning and now they seem to have plateaued. However, just when I think that they are not growing in their language ability, they write something like from today's blog entry. (check out the comments)
Find out here!
I know that in the states right now there is a shortage of flu shots and I am not going to dig any deeper into that side of the subject for the time being. There is obviously a 'bug' going around my workplace. Last week alone there were three different people out sick (which is really unusual) and upon arrival to work this morning I was told that two more people were out sick. This is even more interesting because I was sick all weekend with a low-grade fever and body ache. My wife tried to make me stay home this morning, but since I was feeling better I decided to come to work. I think that the source of my illness was mainly the weather change in the region where we live. The central eastern coast of China is starting to cool off from the really hot summer. Add to that the amount of dust, mold, pollen, etc., it is hard to believe that I was able to last this long without feeling bad. Many of the students at school have been suffering from some sort of flu-like bug since late September, so I guess it was just my time.
Being under the weather afforded me the opportunity to watch some films that I have been wanting to watch but have not had the time. I mentioned that I watch Napoleon Dynamite and that was a great film, but over the weekend I watched "Magnolia." I must admit that I had some reservations about it. I must say that I would have missed out on a great film had I not watched it. It was well acted and I recommend it...
Get Shorty has to be one of my top 25 favorite movies. I have read the book and they are very similar, with the exception of name changes, locations, etc. Well, the sequel, Be Cool, has completed production and is just putting on the finishing touches. It is scheduled to be released on March 4th, 2005. Both of these stories are written by Elmore Leonard. I have read several of his novels including: The Moonshine War, The Switch, Rum Punch (which inspired the film Jackie Brown), Out of Sight, Freaky Deaky, Mr. Majestyk, 52 Pick-up, Cuba Libre, Get Shorty, Tishomingo Blues (my personal favorite) and I am currently reading Be Cool. There is something about the 'true-to-life' feel of his books. His characters are totally original and fresh and who can forget Chili Palmer? At any rate it is worth a read sometime when you are in the mood for something new.
I have 5 gmail invites for the first five people to leave their contact information on this post via commenting. I need family and given name as well as current e-mail address.
Yesterday, after work and eating dinner, I settled in for an evening of enjoying DVDs and Xbox games. I was delightfully surprised when I watched Napoleon Dynamite. I had not heard anything about it, but what a GREAT movie! It was so good that I would have to say that it is one of the best movies that I have seen all year (and I watch more movies than the average person). My wife was in another room of our house and had to come and see what was the matter with me because I could not stop laughing. It was well written and had me from the very beginning; even the opening credits were entertaining. I highly recommend checking it out!
Somehow, I don't remember subscribing but, I got an e-mail that listed the 4teachers.org website. It has a load of information and online tools for teachers. The main tools are:
Equity Index: Locate resources and tools to help you meet the needs of a diverse classroom.
RubiStar: Create customized rubrics in English and Spanish.
TrackStar: View thousands of online lessons or quickly create your own.
QuizStar: Construct online quizzes that can include multimedia.
Assign-A-Day: Post your own online class calendar with hyperlinks and projects.
Casa Notes: Assemble take-home notes in English and Spanish.
PBL Checklists: Make custom checklists for multiple projects.
R*TEC Teacher: Locate top-rated Tracks, WebQuests, and ThinkQuests for your subject.
Web Worksheet Wizard: Make and post a simple Web page within minutes.
NoteStar: Assist students with collecting group notes and citations for papers.
Think Tank: Helps student set up topics for reports. Use alone or with NoteStar.
Project Poster: Provide students with a tool to create and post Web pages for projects.
I have looked at several of the tools and I am impressed. I think that teachers of all backgrounds and years of experience can benefit from using this page.
Nothing, other than the fact that I took pictures of them within a two week period. This past weekend I was in Shanghai, China at a workshop for school. On one evening the workshop coordinators arranged a boat tour of the Huangpu river. This photo was a view while waiting to board the boat. If you notice the very tall building on the right hand side of the screen, it is the third tallest building in the world and the tallest hotel in the world! The corn is from my wife's grand-parents' village home in northeastern China. I happen to catch the light of day at a perfect time to see this really great color on the corn. Enjoy! More of my photos are at: Flickr & Webshots...
I was scanning through my RSS feeds this morning and this article came to my attention. It is from eLearnspace and it very informative. Anyone who is interested in eLearning this entry lists several categories of eLearning types. They are listed here, but I suggest checking out the article for it has a really groovy flow-chart/mind map of the types/styles:
The categories of elearning:
I know that I have been 'out of the loop' for a few days and I will spend a few hours today catching up on my RSS feed reading. I noted some concerns about the workshop on the first day. Well, that was the highlight! It steadily got worse from the first day. I will not go into deatils here, but trust me... I am so tired, but it is actually nice to be back at work with my students. They are the reason that I do what I do and it is nice to see their smiling faces each morning. After this past weekend I have come to realize that most people are just 'getting by' in their classrooms also. (not to say that I am just getting by 
) Anyway, it gives me more confidence that whenever I take on more things to improve my teaching it will work sooner or later. I am beginning to see that most teachers are happy to just come to work from 8:00 - 3:30 (or whatever their hours are) and then just go home not giving it any other thought. To see how hard the teachers at my school are actually working it makes me have a more respect for them. (I already had the upmost respect for them) I better stop here so as not to sound like I am rambling on and on about nothing. Then again, what else would I have a blog for?!
...was one of introduction and light discussion. There are 16 teachers taking part in the section that I am in, which is nice, however, we are meeting in the sitting area of one of the suites of the hotel that normally would seat 3-5. So to say the least it is cramped. The main presenter is from Australia with the co-leading being from India, but teaching in Jakarta. It has been good for me being new to the curriculum, but for the others it may be a little dry. More to come later!
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