Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Author: tokyokevin

  • More worries, but still distant

    We got our electricity back in the middle of the night last night. I went to work today. When I returned, I finally was able to see the devastation.

    A new worry comes today, but it is still at a significant distance, about 300 miles away.

    Radiation in Japan
    One of the six power plants next to each other in Fukushima exploded at 4 PM this afternoon. The authorities are still “measuring”, but have expanded the area of evacuation from 10 km to 20 km radius.

    Currently the radiation emitting is about 1,000 microseiverts, or 1 seivert, per HOUR. Normally there is about 1 seivert per YEAR. Each Seivert is equal to 100 rems. That is about 10,000 xrays. (1 chest xray = 10 mrem, or .01 rem)

    There is a long history of the authorities massaging the data and outright lying to the public in cases like this. We are all watching carefully.

    They may have to cut our electricity about 3 hours each day because they have closed most power plants. Nuclear accounts for about a third of electric power in Japan. Gas and water are also rumored to be under discussion for rationing, but those are only rumors.

  • Everybody OK here in Tokyo

    It is just past midnight, about 10 hours after the earthquake. We just got our electricity back, so are able to make phone calls and send emails. It is still wobbling every once in a while.

    This was the scariest earthquake of my 26 years here in Tokyo. I had just finished skyping with Anri. It started off like any other earthquake (we get about one a month), but then didn’t stop. It started building and the lamps in the front hall started swinging from the rafters. Whoops…another wobble…maybe things aren’t done yet. We have had at least a dozen smaller aftershocks.

    But no real damage. We had a mirror and a couple of pictures fall off the walls, the computer walk toward the edge of the desk (and later back in the other direction), and lots of stuff knocked from tables onto the floor. The electricity went out, but I had daylight enough to get things in order.

    Julia was in Nagoya visiting her grandmother. No problems there. Anri is safe in Loveland. Maki was in the basement of a 40-storey building downtown Tokyo. The quake swayed the whole building and made her seasick. Whoops…another wobble…. She took the bus to the nearest big station, and the aftershock make all the cars tilt and whirl. The trains were all stopped, and tens of thousands of people were waiting for a half dozen busses. Maki and her friend walked about 4 miles to the river border between Tokyo and Kawasaki.

    I finally found her phone number on a telephone bill. I went to the local store to call on the pay phone. I rendezvoused with her in the car, and took her friend home. Huge traffic jam, took us 2 hours to go about 8 miles. We returned to a cold dark house, lit some candles and read books (well, kindle for me). Maki was tired but not sleepy, and nodded off about 10. The electricity came back on at 11:45.

    What did I learn? I will go out and get a cell phone tomorrow. Update the backpack with the survival stuff in it. Check for cracks in the new old house.

  • Komaba Cafeteria

    Here is another look at the Cafeteria in Komaba for the University of Tokyo.

    pod22cafeteriaZ from TokyoKevin on Vimeo.

  • Digital Storytelling begins

    I am so excited to learn about Digital Storytelling, a way to express myself on the web using all of its capabilities. Since I teach English in Tokyo with technology, I am looking forward to integrating this into my seminar class with my best students in our new academic year starting in April.

    Just a quick note, I have two other sites where student work is regularly posted. ShowaELC is for news about our university (Showa Women’s) and our English Department (ELC, or English Language and Communication). LanguageJapan is for student input from my (and my friend’s) classes. These are mostly audio and video podcasts, with the focus on explaining things about Japan to people who speak English, from the point of view of a university student.

    The Digital Storytelling MOOC (Massively Online Open Course) is my third in a row. I collaborated with 1,300 other teachers online last fall in a great course on building a Personal Learning Network (PLE) called PLENK. As that ended, I started a much smaller, simpler collaboration (most would not call it a MOOC, but an online book discussion) centering around Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The Rose in Winter has been a bit of a disappointment as the interactivity level could be more robust, but it did allow me to bounce my thoughts off others, and for me to learn other viewpoints. Still, with such a rich book for discussion, it has been a whole new way for me to read fiction.

  • Digital Natives, Immigrants, Residents and Visitors

    This course I am taking about Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) has me rethinking how I use the Internet for myself and my classes. The Digital Native vs. Digital Immigrant of 2001 (Mark Prensky) has carried us far, but the youngsters who grew up with the technology were being compared with people that grew up with outdated technology. That eventually warped into a generational falsh point, which it is not, really. I am old, but often use more technology in more different ways than my younger students.

    Now we have David White from Oxford with a new way to look at the difference. First, the Digital Resident, a person who “lives” or at least puts some of his identity online, and a visitor, who uses the internet like a set of tools to get things done. This is a much better dichotomy.

    Let’s watch David White. The 20 minutes are well worth it.