Duet No. 5

I was shocked by your proposal of no contact today.

I was upset.

But, if you speak out freely, as you said,
I heard it....
I am glad.

testing? teaching? learning? _2

N. Postman's (1992) remarks on a measurement's ideological prejudice--
___________
…. The procedure [the seemingly harmless practice of assigning marks or grades to the answers students give on examinations] seems so natural to most of us that we are hardly aware of its significance. …. If a number can be given to the quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, even sanity itself.

I shall not argue here that this is a stupid or dangerous idea, only that it is peculiar. What is even more peculiar is that so many of us do not find the idea peculiar. …. …embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.

…. … To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image. To a man with a computer, everything looks like data. And to a man with a grade, everything looks like a number.
__________
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books. 12-14.

testing? teaching? learning?

I unexpectedly met a new comer while meeting with JM. It’s nice to meet new students because most of them are young, energetic and full of curiosities. This new student seemed very confident by telling us his educational background-- which university he graduated from—it’s a very special arrogant attitude compare to the students here internationally. (This is, however, the other issue of human’s proud and prejudice.) JM told him my study is related to education. He was very excited and told us that he finished 教育學程 and had one year student teaching experience. That drew me more then…, although I don’t really know what教育學程 about! :P

However, then, he told us he is very good at “designing the test.” That sounded unclear, but interesting. I asked him what kind of test exactly. He explained that that is to test students’ ability for their abilities and learning results, the examination for it’s simply term. Too bad I told him that I am not interested in measuring students’ abilities and learning results by examination. “I am not interested in testing, either,” added by JM. Then I quickly switched the topic of our conversation because I didn’t want to embarrass him. While we were moving on, I was wondering what subject matters are taught in 教育學程, what kind of K-12 teachers are trained recently, and, most importantly, what teaching philosophies are developed throughtout these years.

-----
Without knowing the system of examinations/measurements has been developed in Taiwan, I looked up the updated SAT measurement and tried to get a glance in it:
(For college)
The SAT reasoning test
is a three-hour-and-45-minute test that measures critical reading, mathematical reasoning, and writing skills that students have developed over time and that they need to be successful in college.
The SAT Subject tests
are a battery of one-hour, mostly multiple-choice tests that measure how much students know about a particular academic subject and how well they can apply that knowledge.

March of the Penguins (2005)

As its tagline says, “In the harshest place on Earth, love finds a way,” the documentary March of the Penguins (also known as Marche de l'empereur, La in France; and The Enperor’s Journey for its international title) tells a truly remarkable journey of Emperor penguin’s passions for love and life.

Emperor penguins clamber onto the frozen ice and begin their journey. They head for their traditional breeding ground where the ice has to be solid enough for not falling into the water before the baby being independent enough for their own lives. When the penguins march to the ground, guided by the radiance of the Southern Cross, they pair off into monogamous couples. The females are exhausted after laying a single egg without gaining nourishment for weeks, and begin their journey again back to the sea. During about two months period for the females go and return to the ice-field from the sea, the male emperors guard the hatch the eggs, which they cradle at all time on top of their feet.

The males eat nothing, and the chicks can only survive from the limited food the males reserved until the females return. They find each other by sound, as the filmmaker says. Then the roles reverse. The exhausted and starved males are able to head back to the sea for the food. The arduous journey was repeated countless times. The adult penguins march back and forth many hundreds of miles away between the sea and their breeding ground until their baby are ready to take their own lives-- diving into the sea, the deep blue water of Antarctic.

This lovely and beautiful film makes me wonder how the single penguins find their mates; how they can recognize each other by sound; do the return female penguins who lose their chicks feed some chicks who lose their mothers; and why the adult penguins don’t aggressively protect the chicks when the petrels attempt to attack the chicks. The answers will be interesting to find.
-----
To view the trailer:
CineMovies - French trailer
Warner Independent Film - USA trailer

Warner Bros Official Site (http://wip.warnerbros.com/marchofthepenguins/)

Watermelons

As my vegetables are continuously growing and I am enjoying their tastes and nourishment, I found the little watermelons are popping out! That’s exciting and encouraging. I had three little watermelon plants on the way to the ballpark at Appleton at the time with my tasty and healthy Kales. I bought the little watermelon plants for fun because those little guys were so cute that I hardly can refuse them. While I found myself accidentally pulled them out together with the weeds few weeks after I planted them in the garden, this little guy was survived. It grows faster and faster, and then the flower blossomed into little balloons. Those little watermelons incredibly enlarge themselves day after day….

the little guy 1


the little guy 2

Duet No.4

那
一抹斜陽
除卻蕭索滿身

這
萬點星空
換盡照日風塵

幻影遨遊蒼穹
執子之手
盡
道古今之事
付笑談之中

tsl (081205)

Finding Neverland (2004)

How to go to the Neverland? “Belief, Peter. Just belief!” said James M. Barrie(Johnny Deep) –Finding Neverland (2004).

The world is where you believe; the scene is what you imagine; and the person is who you perceive. Finding Neverland (2004) is a lovely film for its final scenes as Sir James Mathew Barrie talks to Peter that, by belief, he is able to find the Neverland and to visit his lovely mother. Directed by Marc Forester, this delightful film biography adapted by David Magee from Allan Knee’s play, “The Man Who Was Peter Pan,” The historical reality between lushly imagined expeditions to a fictitious Neverland brings the audience into James M. Barrie’s fantastic world, both the real and the imagined world.

The real James Mathew Barrie was influenced and inspired by the adventurous stories of Robert Louis Stevenson of pirates, Indians and kidnapped boys. As a young journalist in London, in the peak year of the Gilded Age, Barrie’s vivid imagination took him from novels to stage-plays.

Solo_No. 2

一道銀白劃破夜空的寧靜
在遙遠的水的那一頭沉溺
隨著趾間的輕點滑曳
水珠在荷葉上盤旋 尋覓
歲歲年年的旅痕陳跡
點點滴滴的奪魂銘心
其實稍縱即逝
祇在記憶中刻劃印記

輕巧的躍進 小心翼翼
不讓水珠離心
請讓美麗繼續

我
在平舖水面的荷葉上
跳躍
幽遊行進

tsl 080705

Solo_No. 1

划過那一抹萬紫千紅
我在清閒中擺渡
向浪漫無度需索

tsl 080805