Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Learning

  • Classes Day 1

    I started school today. For my third-year students I have an activity where we look at how much each class session costs them. We divide tuition (about ¥1.2 million, or US$14,000) by the number of classes in a year (usually around 400, each 90 minutes). They usually guess pretty closely to the ¥3,000 ($35) price for each session. But then we add room and board (another ¥1 million) and lost opportunity costs. We define those as if they could work their part-time jobs 40 hours a week, instead of studying. That adds another ¥2.4 million, more than tripling the per-class cost to a total of more than ¥11,000. That is about $130 per 90-minute session. For each student. Sure, I explain they also get the office staff, the library, our Boston Campus, and 3 other retreat centers, the Career Advisory staff, etc, etc,. But they get the idea.

    Unfortunately, it didn’t last too long. At the end of the class, I gave the students the option of using their laptop computers in class with our new wireless system, or the other option of a paper-only class. I told them web-based activities would be more  interesting, and that they could learn much more, and more quickly. Most thought that carrying their laptop into school was too much of a burden. So we are using paper. (I have 3 classes where they don’t get the option, they HAVE to bring their laptops. At least they will get some muscle tone.)

    Because of the electric situation, we will be finishing our semester 2 weeks early, just ast he really hot weather kicks in, and the air conditioner usage surges, causing rolling blackouts (but not in our area). I think it may have been that the university saw everyone else getting a late start, and wanted to get in on the inaction. The students cheered when they heard the news. So we have both administration and students working the system to get something for nothing, or, more accurately, less for the same.

    I find it so hard not to just go along.

  • Showa’s Seven Seeds

    Showa Women’s University has a new set of goals for general pedagogy called The Seven Seeds. These are the first goals here in my 20 years which I can really endorse wholeheartedly. Let me list them. I may talk about them in more detail later on. (Japanese in parentheses). I’ve added some notes to each to show how we do each seed in my classes.

    The Seven Seeds in Ryan’s Classes (ゆめをじつげんする七つの力: ライアンの授業)

    1. Live a Global Life (グロバルに生きる力)
    We study using the Internet, and make contacts with people outside of Japan to give you a global viewpoint.

    2. Use a Foreign Language (外国語を使う力)
    English, of course.

    3. Use IT Effectively (ITを使えこなす力)
    We use IT tools in almost every class. That is why you should bring your laptop to every class.

    4. Communicate (コミュニケーションをとる力)
    To learn a language you have to use a language. You have to communicate with it in real situations that are important to you. Follow Ryan’s SMAT system:

    Speak English: You can’t learn if you are quiet. It’s uncomfortable at first, but it gets easier.
    Make Mistakes: If you are perfect, you are not learning anything.
    Ask Questions: This means you have to be an active learner. Always thinking.
    Take Notes: This helps by combining listening with reading, speaking with writing.

    5. Be a Critical Thinker and Problem Solver (問題を発見し目標を設定する力)
    Don’t believe everything you read. If it is to good to believe, it probably is. Solving Problems is the best way to learn. We have many task-based activities in class.

    6. Be Active, keep one step ahead (一歩踏み出して行動する力)
    Always keep busy. Fill up those little 3-4 minute gaps with small learning activities. Manage your own learning. Classroom time management because we have so many activities.

    7. Be Yourself: Understand your priorities (自分を大切にする力)
    Understand what you want to do. Understand what you CAN do. Set some goals. Long term goals and short-term goals. Make a list and check it off. We do a needs analysis for each class in the first session.

     

  • 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.

  • PLEs and learning from life, online and off

    I’m taking a MOOC right now. That is a Massively Open Online Course. There are almost 1,500 people in the class. The classroom is spread all over the world. We all learn (notice I didn’t say “study”) about PLEs, or Personal Learning Environments. This is a relatively new idea. You build your own environment to learn things. The Environment can be your friends, experts, software, libraries, web sites, schools. There are usually six parts. Let me quote from Rita Kop (one of my “teachers”.)

    The components that were formulated in Stephen Downes’ vision for a PLE at the start of the PLE project of the National Research Council of Canada are the following: 1. A personal profiler that would collect and store personal information. 2. An information and resource aggregator to collect information and resources. 3. Editors and publishers enabling people to produce and publish artifacts to aid the learning and interest of others. 4. Helper applications that would provide the pedagogical backbone of the PLE and make connections with other internet services to help the learner make sense of information, applications and resources. 5. Services of the learners choice. 6. Recommenders of information and resources.

    Here is a quick slide show about PLEs that I made for my students.

    Building a PLE

    View more presentations from Kevin Ryan.

  • Translation Party

    TranslationParty.com
    Translate back and forth between English and Japanese until it reaches "equilibrium". See how far that is from the original.

    The site over at translation party is designed to show how machine translation still has a way to go. It shows how, when you translate into from either Japanese or English into the other language, and back again, there are still differences. It continues until there are no differences, and calls that “equilibrium”. The final version it reaches is sometimes very different from the original. You could play games by trying to find sentences that are the most different, or sentences that require the most steps (translations) to reach equilibrium. A good time-waster for translators or language students.