Random thoughts

2006-10-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

Zhang Haoran

greetings from zhang haoran

Random painting

2006-10-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

Mrpicassohead

2006-10-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

white paper: top 10 lists in elearning

2006-02-24T19:10:00.000-08:00

Top 10 lists: Twenty Top 10s in e-learning

Free Wi-Fi?

2005-12-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

Source: "Google has offered to blanket the city of San Francisco with Wi-Fi, according to News.com. The proposed broadband service would be freely available throughout the city and would pay for itself through advertising. Could this be the beginning of a paradigm shift in the Internet access business, changing broadband delivery from a subscription-based model to a broadcast advertising model akin to television? Despite recent ISP lobbying efforts in Washington to restrict municipalities from providing free broadband access, a handful of cities and community organizations have already constructed Wi-Fi zones that offer residents, traveling professionals, and tourists free Wi-Fi connections to the Internet. What better way is there to bridge the digital divide than to make broadband freely available? "

The Sky(ke) is falling?

2005-12-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

There is a time when skeptical people worry about the security problem of VoIP (Voice over internet protocol). An interesting article on Skype flaws, but the quick response and patching by the company is highly appreciated. The Sky(pe) is falling?

Using Electronic Communication Tools for Language Learning

2005-11-28T15:19:00.000-08:00

Source: wwwtools for EducationThe November 11, 2005 edition of wwwtools for Education highlights several resources which may be of interest to language teachers. IM, Chat, and Education:- Teresa Almeida d'Eça's Online / Virtual Learning Environments: annotated entries for resources involving Chat, SMS and Instant Messaging, related to ESL and other language-related disciplines- eTandem offers a free introduction service for people who want to learn a foreign language through communication with a native speaker; tips for teachers also availableExtra Reading:- Online Communication (Mark Warschauer / in R. Carter & D. Nunan eds., The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages , pp. 207-212: Cambridge University Press)- Online Communication Tools That Promote Language Learning And Foster Professional Development (Teresa Almeida d'Eça)

Read this issue of wwwtools for Education at Tools for Communication: Talking and Messaging.

Forest or trees

2005-08-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

Came across this intersting article on USA Today: Asians, Americans see world differently
Do you see the forest or the trees?

Chinese government blocking unregistered websites and blogs

2005-06-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

Reporters Without Borders issued a release on June 6th: Chinese Authorities declare war on unregistered websites and blogs:
"Chinese government's announced intention to close down all China-based websites and blogs that are not officially registered. The plan is all the more worrying as the government has also revealed that it has a new system for monitoring sites in real time and spotting those that fail to comply. "
Night Crawler System is used by the government to block unauthorized access to unregistered websites. For more reading, check out Steven Cherry's Net Effect and Joho the Blog

From Kaifeng to New York, Glory is ephemeral as smoke and clouds

2005-05-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

"As this millennium dawns, New York City is the most important city in the world, the unofficial capital of planet Earth. But before we New Yorkers become too full of ourselves, it might be worthwhile to glance at dilapidated Kaifeng in central China." Nicholas Kristof

quote of the day

2005-05-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

[NYTimes, May 15, 2005] "Being born in the elite in the U.S. gives you a constellation of privileges that very few people in the world have ever experienced. Being born poor in the U.S. gives you disadvantages unlike anything in Western Europe and Japan and Canada." DAVID I. LEVINE, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

When I read the quote, I just can't help thinking how suitable the quote is for the situation of China. On a second thought, I have to admit the narrow perspective of Americans. As the richest country in the world, from when could its people and experts of economics start to adopt the global perspective, look beyond the 'America', and look outside the box.

Game-playing kids read more?

2005-04-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

An interesting read from "Generation M: Reports on Kids and Multimedia": Young people today are media-saturated, spending an average of 61/2 hours a day with all kinds of media, especially multimedia. "Heavy video game use does not mean less reading - in fact heavy game players seemed to read more and spend more time with their parents (see full report for details of this)- but there seem to be some mixed results. Children with the poorest grades, had the lowest times spent reading (no surprise), but also spent more time each day playing video games."

Education goes global?

2005-04-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Read and like Owen Hembry's article "Education goes global". His opening remark of "Collaboration among institutions and a shift to student-centred learning using the internet are the future of tertiary educatio" sounds very old cliche, but IT IS TRUE. And the lack of awareness of the challenge that higher ed is facing is startling. The real challenge for higher ed and its faculty is the total mindset change from the chalk-and-talk to different learning styles, learning opportunities, learning experiences and the exploding learning interaction.

Are we ready for elearning?

2005-04-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

[Learning Circuits, April 2005] In this article, Karl Kapp proposes "an excellent method for pinpointing the needs of your organization and for developing an accurate list of requirements is to conduct an E-Learning Readiness Assessment". The learning needs of a corporation are assessed in five categories: business, financial, cultural, technological and learning. To read the original article: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/apr2005/kapp.htm

10 places of my city - Eugene, Oregon

2005-04-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

University of Oregon Library: 很别致的图书馆,特别喜欢它的厚厚的铁门,很有历史感的那种。有很完整的东亚区藏书,在那里找到了我以前爱读的"小说月报"。
Starbucks Cafe on 13th near UO: UO 学生的集聚地，学习，会友，聊天。很喜欢沿街靠窗的那一排橘黄色的小灯。
Eugene Station: 雨津公交（LTD）的枢纽中转站，也是雨津嬉皮人士集散地。经常坐标36路车，可以看到很多所谓的“怪人”。这里是北美最Hippie小镇雨津的缩影。
Amazon Creek: 一直沿着亚瑪逊小溪跑步，散步。不知和www.amazon.com有没有什么关系。就象俄勒冈小镇Half在www.half.com的鼓动和赞助下该名为Half.com。
Spencer Butte: 雨津的最高峰，Hiking的好地方，在最高点可以看到Willimette River 和 Three Sisters。不过，要注意树林里的有毒Oak和rattlesnake。
Ｓkinner Butte: 在雨津Downtown, 离Ａmtrak很近，沿僻静的小路走上去，可以俯瞰小镇全貌。
Sweet Life: 在７街附近Monroe Ave 上的一家甜品店，很别致幽雅，它的Cheese Cake很好吃。
Ｗestmoreland Vegatable Garden: 从我们住的公寓客厅看出去，是一片菜地，据说很多中国学生承租了地种菜。很喜欢看到一家几口在菜地干活的融融景象。
Ｖalley River Center: 雨津downtown附近唯一的购物中心，那里有我喜欢的Barnes & Nobles 书店。
Saturday Market: 由于天转暖，一直在室内的周六集市有到了室外，在Lane County Courthouse 附近，可以看到hippies,　各种工艺品和世界各地的食物。

Technorati Tags: 10placesofmycity

making digital knowledge work visible

2005-04-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

[Enterprise System, March 29, 2005] Knowledge work was visible in the old-style process. In comparison, the digitalization of knowledge work has tended to execute it more invisibly. Is it necessary to bring visibility to the digitalized knowledge work? This requires a conscious effort in preserving/maintaining the visibility of knowledge flow when using technological tools.

This article addresses the issue by analyzing the causes of invisibilty, and providing solutions. A nice quote from the article: "The right starting point is to simply make the flow of work more visible." Read the original article.

LTD strike

2005-03-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

After a marathon negotiation, no agreement was reached between LTD (Lane Transit District) and union workers. March 7, 2005, starting from 12:01am, marked the first day of the first strike in LTD's 35-year history in Eugene, Oregon.

In loving memory of Hatoon

2005-03-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

It is been a week since Hatoon passed away. Hatoon is the name she gave to herself, meaning "mother of all people". She is in the hearts of many many people who know the University of Oregon. May she be happy up in heaven.
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/03/03/a1.hatoon.0303.html

2004-09-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

Marc Prensky has a great article in Strategy in Business on why oldsters (i.e. >25) must listen to the newer generation:

Why do I call these young computer enthusiasts and organizational activists “digital natives”? Think about the extraordinary cumulative digital experiences of each of these future leaders: an average of close to 10,000 hours playing video games; more than 200,000 e-mails and instant messages sent and received; nearly 10,000 hours of talking, playing games, and using data on cell phones; more than 20,000 hours spent watching TV; almost 500,000 commercials seen — all before they finished college. At most, they’ve logged only 5,000 hours of book reading.

This generation is better than any before at absorbing information and making decisions quickly, as well as at multitasking and parallel processing. In contrast, people age 30 or older are “digital immigrants” because they can never be as fluent in technology as a native who was born into it. You can see it in the digital immigrants’ “accent” — whether it is printing out e-mails or typing with fingers rather than thumbs. Have you ever noticed that digital natives, unlike digital immigrants, don’t talk about “information overload”? Rather, they crave more information.

Remember at one Technology-focused exposition, one invited guest speaker asked the audience a series of questions:
Q: How many of you have cellphones?
A: more than half raised their hands.
Q:how many of your have one email account?
A: almost everyone raised their hand.
Q: How many of you have more than one email account?
A: more than half of the audience raised their hands.
Q: How many of you use Instant Messenging?
A: Less people raised their hands, some even asked what Instant Messenge is.
Q: How many of you use mobile technology?
A: evern less hands up.
Q...
A...

What generation do you belong to at this info-rich era?

That is what we do

2004-09-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

If you brought someone from another planet and the person went back and wrote a report of our planet-earth, the report would be like this: People on earth move around, give papes and receive papers. End of the story. That is what we do. The higher you get in society, the more peper you give and the more papers you receive and the more papers you read. Say a university professor. His/her students slide their papers under his/her office door. In the evening, the cleaning lady comes into the office building and open the professor's door, and the lady knows exactly what papers to put into the trashcan and what papers on the professor's deak for him/her to read when he/she comes in tomorrow.

Another fact of our simple life is that we always try to label things with numbers: a seemingly mutual numerical designation. For example, when you go into a sportswear section of a department store and ask to see a, say sport jacket. The saleperson would ask "what is your size?". And don't we always know out shoe size, hat size, shirt size, etc. Don't we number everything? Even computers use the numbers 0 and 1.

New Semester

2004-08-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

New semester starts with taking a friend to the outlet shoppong mall. Good thing about this is that I avoided going to school, especially the pain in the behind problem of parking.

What is RSS

2004-08-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

Dan Bricklin writes a nice piece on RSS.

What can teens wear?

2004-08-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

20/20 yesterday evening was focusing on Teen culture, or to be more exact, teen fashion in America. One snapshot was VERY impressive: a junior high school gal was telling the reporter that the school was asking students to wear shorts at certain length, but she could not find any of those in the mall because shops just don't carry non-short shorts. Sounds weird, but it is the reality. Browse websites and magazines and TV screen, what is showing in front of teen's eyes is the less clothes, the more fashionable. One parent asks a good question: how much skin should you expose? A good questions for not only teenagers. The whole entertaining industry is catering for a wide age groups, including teens with super mini-short skirts, underwears as outfits, body piecing, skin exposing, all the so-called being sexy. What the heck is going on with those role models for teens? No wonder the juvenile depinquency is rising, no wonder teens complain about not finding their true north, no wonder pants are down at the crack, no wonder high school drop-out rate is rocketing.

It reminds me of Bill Cosby's speech given to the NAACP in the commemeration of the 50th Anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education at DC in which he commented on the black community, seriously and relently criticizing some black parents are simply not parenting. Powerful remarks by the American grandfather comedian, not only for the black community, but also for other peoples.

How far could the teens go? Where could they go?

Tom's persepective on Hurricane Charley and its aftermath

2004-08-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

Like to read Tom's perspective on Hurricane Charley.

NBC coverage of Olymptics

2004-08-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

The coverage of olymptics by NBC sucks. Let alone the non-spontaneous coverage, Michael Phelps takes a lion's share of the total air time. I am not auguing against his super swimming skill, but the TV coverage reflects somewhat the American perspective converning an global event. Where stands America in the globalization? TV channels seldom braodcast world news, Radios seldom air what's going on in other parts of the world, music stations seldom or never represent foreign music. One simple reason, not many americans care about other peoples and other corners of the globe.

On the other side of the coin, like many other countries, media is heavily political on this piece of democratic land. recall a movie directed by Michael Mann, "Insider" featureing Al Pacono and Russel Crowe. In the movie, a giant news channel like CBS could not risk losing its market by airing an interview which reveals the inside secrets of tabacco industry cheating customers. Sense of responsibility and integrity proves the upper hand with Dr. Wigand and 60-minute producer Bergman getting the interview on everyone's TV screen finally stripping the dirty, cheating tabacco industry.