Work
-
Minecraft’s Six Principles of Game-based Learning
The failure dynamic, fail early, fail often. Teach students to take risks in a safe environment- a game. The flexibility dynamic. Provide multiple paths to success. Old school video games had one way to win. Newer “sandbox” games are more open. The construction dynamic. Build something that matters. Students want to create things with a purpose. Minecraft lets them create something difficult and worthwhile. The situated meaning. Learn new ideas by experiencing them. Students learn vocabulary in real-time, as it pertains to playing with others in the game; or learn math as they understand construction. Systems thinking. Learn how all pieces can fit or be fitted. Games help players see…
-
Jeff Goldblum – The Future is on LSIs (Rohm)
When I started out as a copywriter in a medium-sized translation office in Miyakojima, Osaka, I had more translation and technical writing jobs than anything very creative… but in that first year, a huge job landed on my desk, unbeknownst to me. The job was simple, the client wanted a rewrite and “native check” from a random gaijin on staff – me. The original headline was a single sentence, roughly worded. Something like, “We can see the future on this LSI.” Of course, nobody knew (and to this day, nobody knows) what an LSI was, so: “Large-scale integration (LSI) is the process of integrating or embedding thousands of transistors on…
-
New Google Meet Features in Google Classroom
A new dialog popped up in Classroom today with some very welcome changes, the most welcome of which is the first: Teachers or co-teachers are always meeting hosts: This is what has been needed for years now. Until now, unless an admin made some obscure setting changes across the whole institution, there was no reliable way to ensure a teacher would be the meeting host. The biggest problems caused by this was the entire meeting closing when the randomly-assigned host dropped from the meeting, and the ability to record and location of saved video file also being assigned to that person (usually a student). Students will be sent to the…
-
Online Teaching at Thai University
The biggest COVID wave so far spread through Maha Sarakham from a couple months ago, so my university postponed the new term until this week. I’m teaching four Public Speaking classes per week online. This is what a typical class looks like, with about 2/3 the students: I tell them they only have to turn on the camera when they speak because some of them are on weak connections or are connecting through mobile data plans, and it might save them money as well as improving performance. Thailand has good connectivity, though, and a lot of businesses share free wifi, so I use the first week to pinpoint who has…
-
Popanpittayakhom Rajamangkhalabhisek School
The name of my student’s high school as revealed in her self introduction last week. I can’t immediately find it on Google, though. So I guess this post will come up as the first result from now on.
-
Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet (for Thailand)?
Teaching online has been a side hustle for 10+ years and I’ve taught a few workshops along the way, so I get asked about the best platform a lot recently: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet? So after testing and teaching classes this summer on all three, I can say that Google Meet is the best for a university teacher in Thailand. This is based on performance, security, ease of use (for both teacher and student), and features. Price did not really factor into this decision, because my employer enabled free access to Meet and Teams. I will say that the 40-minute limit on free Zoom account meetings probably affects…
-
One of these is not like the others…
She’s older than all the others combined, and will probably still be running after they have all gone. This is my parking lot at work. Our building used to be the administration building, which is why we have a flag pole in front. A military reservist comes to raise and lower it every day.
-
Teaching the New Generation of Chinese Students
I’ve been teaching the new freshman classes of Chinese students from various forestry and agricultural universities on exchange programs with Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University (my workplace and soon to be alma mater) for several years now. They keep getting more and more open-minded about the world, and the most recent group of 35 from Honghe University was the best yet… The groupthink is slowly disappearing and real independence is just starting to show. I used this as an opportunity to accelerate their learning with memrise, YouTube, IG, and Facebook. I’m thinking about writing a paper about how to most effectively stimulate their natural curiosity and independent thinking with only online…
-
Color Theory
Color is an element of art. My kids love this lesson. I wish this website was still up; it looks like it’s being squatted now.
-
Matching Accessories
When I finished my last class today, one of my student’s bags caught my eye. I asked about it, and she produced the phone case she had bought to go with it. I wonder what would happen if…
