Searching for Accurate Maps

Image via CrunchBase In a good example of journalese, the JapanProbe headline screams: Aoyama Gakuin University forcing students to carry tracking devices with a picture of an iPhone. At least one of the commenters is alert and informed, and effectively counters the title’s hyperbole: Comment by jikku 2009-05-17 18:34:27 The title of this article is [...]

Image via Wikipedia Been finding a few articles on the end of universities recently. 1) Universities will be “irrelevant” by 2020, says professor. This doesn’t say much that is new (“institutions that do not adapt will will out to those that do”), and I’m still waiting for all these universities to go belly-up and for [...]

The other day, I took part in the 8th Immediate Method workshop at Kobe University. I gave a very brief report on how I’d been using IM in a couple of different university contexts. (A more detailed report was published in the Conversations in Class newsletter #3 (pdf), which can be downloaded from the Alma [...]

(Photo credit: Limbo – “How Low Can You Go?” by sidneysealine3 on Flickr) The other day, I met an acquaintance who, like me, teaches English at a Japanese university. We were attending a wokshop, and at lunch he asked me: is very basic EFL really suitable for university students? Isn’t the bar being set too [...]

Last Student Loan Originally uploaded by here_for_now In my basic EFL Writing class last week, students created simple questionnaires, then asked each other, collated the results and made a brief report. A couple of students chose part-time jobs as their topic.They then posted their reports on their blogs. One of the purposes of having students [...]