High-school friends

I recently spent a weekend in Oregon catching up with lives of my old high-school friends. One friend flew in from Korea, another from Canada, another from LA, and I came from San Francisco. Two of them I had not seen in over 40 years. After I came to America, I was too busy building my career, raising kids, and moving around the country. I lost touch with these dear friends. The internet is a wonderful thing. With diligence and determination my friend from Korea first found my sister, then found me.

Their wrinkles and grey hair shocked me at first, but within a few minutes, my eyes got adjusted. I only saw faces of my 15-year-old friends. We talked, laughed, and ate Korean food for three days and nights. My mother’s grave is near Salem Oregon, so all of us went to her grave. We sat in a circle and talked about our old days. I learned a lot about my mother and the influence that she had on my friends. My mother was the first Christian lady they ever encountered. They equated her kindness with Christianity. All of my friends became Christians. I am not sure how much my mother influenced their choices, but the way they talked about her, she seemed to be their first and most significant Christian example.

As adults we play an important role in the lives our children’s friends. Without realizing it, we may be the only Christ they ever see. They may decide to follow Jesus because of the kindness that we show to them. We exchanged many gifts during this reunion. The greatest gift that I received was the testimony of friends about the Christian witness that my mother showed to them through her life.

"You Can't Do That"

We had a VBS preparation meeting on Saturday morning. After the meeting several of us distributed flyers to advertise the event. Linda, Edith, and I were a team, and went to Bayfair Farmer’s Market to pass out flyers. I saw three kids with two women in the parking lot and I offered a flyer while telling them about our church VBS. The younger woman said “No.” While walking away I overheard the older woman saying, “VBS is fun.” When we arrived at the entrance of the outdoor market, a lady came out of nowhere and shouted at us “YOU CAN’T DO THAT! You know the rules for free speech right?”

When I am in Rwanda I don’t need to pass out any flyers to invite kids to VBS. They come joyfully. When I go for a walk, kids join me on my walk. We hold hands and walk down a dirt road, communicating with smiles, giggles and laughs. Pretty soon we start singing “Jesus loves me”. Adults smile at us. I don’t have to prepare a VBS program as we do here in order to entertain kids. Just simple songs and hugs are sufficient for them.



Linda, Edith, and I found few people to invite to VBS at the farmer’s market. I felt like I had committed a crime when we were stopped and told “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” I can see why so many Christians here are discouraged to reveal their identity, let alone mentioning of the name of Jesus. If we stop telling others about Jesus because the world says “YOU CAN’T DO THAT”, indeed we are committing a crime to our faith.

Church Parking Lot Sale

For several months, we collected used items for our church parking lot sale. On Friday, with Caryl’s masterful guidance, we sorted and priced items. On Saturday morning at 7 am, volunteers began arriving at church. The weather was nice and the breeze was pleasant. I counted 9 workers from the Korean church and 17 workers from our church. Throughout the day, many church members came and encouraged us as well – 32 in all. This year, we even had a food booth. Stacie and John were in charge of the bakery stand. Mrs. Hahn sold kimbap (Korean style sushi) while Steve and Shirley ran the hotdog stand. We enjoyed working together, eating, and having fellowship with one another.



The Youth group from the Korean church helped the event to be fun and successful. Girls were in charge of clothing sales and boys were helping out wherever they were needed. Once in a while, these young people would go to the main street with the “Yard Sale” sign and welcome drivers to our parking lot sale. They were such a delight to work with. A Korean girl asked “when are you going to have the next one?” She was having lots of fun. Indeed, it is fun to serve God with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Every penny we raised is going to equip students at the University of Rwanda as they serve their local community with open Christian hearts. When I heard that we raised over $1500, I was surprised. It is almost miracle to me. Many items were sold for only a dime or quarter. I learned that every penny counts, and that God can multiply our dimes and quarters a $1500 miracle.

Create and share

Here is a video about Creative Commons

He was a great artist - RIP

MJ was the first American singer I liked because of this song.

 

Books for Children of Rwanda

I am proud of my sister-in-law, Lelia. She went to Rwanda with Come and See Africa a few years ago, she saw the needs for books for schools. Lelia loves to read, and she wanted to share joys of reading books with kids in Rwanda. Her dream was to put books in the hands of kids in Rwanda where most kids never have an opportunity to hold a story book in their hand. Lelia collected thousands of children's books, many of these were bought from Ebay, then last summer she packaged them and shipped these books to Rwanda. All these works were done by herself with her own resources.

Those books arrived in Rwanda a few months ago, and now they are being distributed to schools. As Rwanda is changing from French speaking to English speaking, these books are going to be more valuable to schools.

We can dream, but the dream can be realized when we take an action. I know, Lelia opened doors to so many students in Rwanda with her heroic effort.

Please read about this activity in the NEWTIMES of Rwanda.

My grandson - How precious he is!

First day of instruction

Today is the first class for Teaching with Technology (ITEC712), and I came to the lab to check the condition of computers. I am pleasantly surprised that we have brand new computers, and they work. I miss teaching teacher training courses. I have been teaching ITEC core courses such as Advanced Multimedia (ITEC 830) and Learning Theory (ITEC 800) as well as serving the department as the chair. Now that I am stepping down as the chair, I can do more teaching.

Teaching with Techology (ITEC 712) is the first course I taught at SFSU when I came to SFSU in 1988. In fact, this is the very room that I taught. I taught this course almost 15 years, then I took on a extra duties for the department. The last time I taught this course was in 2003, at the time my students in that course learned Microsoft Office applications. Here is the old ITEC 711 course site, here is the course site for this summer. Quiet a change! Students in the past used to spend hours to learn the software, thus less time to learn about integration ideas. Now, tools are much easier to learn and better yet, most tools are free. Teachers can organize resource matrials and share with other teachers using online tools, and they can provide their students with an opportunity to be engaged in learning in a rich learning environement.

It is a truely an exciting time to be a teacher. I am so excited about my own teaching lately. I can now do so many interesting things in my course with Web 2.0 tools. My students are using blog, wiki, Youtube, Google apps, and many more Web 2.0 tools, and more importantly they get excited about their own learning, thus they become better teachers. When students learn to express what they learned, they become empowred learners. When students communicate their ideas to the world, they are empowered. When they collaborate with others, they learn to value others.

Where did time go? They are graduating already

I had a great time at our graduation party last night. What a great bunch of smart and creative people. I am so blessed to do what I do...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I am sorting things out, packing, transporting belongs in my spare time I have. On top of my regular work of teaching, interviewing new students for Fall 2009, supervising thesis projects, giving workshops, attending conferences, we are in the process of moving. So, I need two of me. Every time I move, I promise myself I will not accumulate more things. But I don't keep my promise. Since we moved to the parsonage in San Lorenzo about two years ago, I bought more things to fill the house. Now we have to move them. My husband begged me not to buy these heavy, big rosewood buffet table and a wardrobe cabinet that are imported from Vietnam. But they are so pretty, I said, and insisted that we need to buy more pieces to complete the sets. Our house now looks like a Chinese furniture warehouse. I have to find a way to move them and find space to put them.

Keep my eyes on the path I am on

Last week I had an early morning meeting in San Francisco, so I rushed into my car and drove off. On a stretch of Highway 101, near the SF airport, my mind wandered off. I found myself on an unfamiliar street. Instead of exiting onto highway 280, I went straight on 101. I tried to get off at the next exit and reverse my route. “Simple”, I thought to myself, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t see the highway entrance. The more turns I made to find my way out, the deeper I got into strange corners where I had a harder time getting out. Eventually, I found my way to the university, feeling stupid and anxious about missing an important meeting at work.

Afterward, I considered my getting lost experience. It happened in a split second. My mind was not on where I was going. As a matter of fact, I was replaying in my mind an unpleasant incident that happened the day before at work. The more I replayed the incident, the angrier I became. Instead of giving it to the Lord and forgiving the person, I was trying to figure out the person’s motive. My mind [and my car] ran off in a wrong direction.

During our Christian walk, we often lose our way, if we are not careful. Just as I knew my destination perfectly, most Christians know where we are going. And yet, if we are not aware every minute during our walk, we could miss our exit and turn in a wrong direction. As soon as I learned of my mistake, I turned around. It still cost me an hour to get back on track and I missed an important meeting. I caused other people to wait for me and several meetings had to be rescheduled. If we take our eyes off from the path we travel, we may end up in a wrong place and bring grief to ourselves and cause problems for others.

Web 2.0 conference

I had a great time at the conference. I attended sessions from 9 am to 5 p.m, and yet I had to miss many interesting sessions. Also, I enjoyed observing behaviors of people. There were so many young, bright people on stage and off stage. I met two Korean women, one from Canada and one from SF area, we hung around for three days together. This year's theme was "Power of Less", and more people talked about humanity than technology, which made the conference more interesting. I even heard Lev Vigotsky was mentioned in a presentation. One person based his presentation on Pink's book, and noticed many of these innovators are artists. Almost every presentation started out with a story, and they used well designed PP to tell their stories. The most often used words were like "relationship", "community", so Facebook won over Flash this year.

When my relatives who never used e-mail are now on the Facebook, and they update several times a day. One smart person saw the power of Facebook, and wrote a book. Her name is Clare Shih who made an excellent points about doing business utilizing Facebook power in her presentation.
There were many interesting presentations, if you are in itec 830, check out presentation files and video from the conference in this site.

The president of RISD talk was very inspiring and also interesting, so I am posting a video of his talk here.

David Weekly's PBwiki Web 2.0 Expo Talk

View more presentations from David Weekly.

W3C Geolocation API - Making Websites Location-aware

View more presentations from rsarver.

WWCMD?

View more presentations from Mickipedia.

Long Obedience In The Same Direction

A Long Obedience In The Same Direction

Today is our 35th wedding anniversary and our marriage is strong. At first our union was so fragile that many friends and family members advised us not to get married at all. Many predicted that we would not even celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Chris and I faced so many barriers: cultural barriers, language barriers, and racial barriers. I look back on our marriage, and I see God’s hand all over us. Without God in our marriage I know that I would not have seen today, a wonderful day when I am happily packing to go to New York to see my first grandchild.

The road to this point has not been smooth. I encountered big boulders crashing down on me that almost killed me. Big rocks blocked the road; gravel made the journey tiresome and difficult. Sometimes, I wanted to give up, and take the easy road out, but God was with me. He carried me when I was exhausted and lifted me up when big burdens fell on my shoulders. With his help, I was able to run the marathon, which requires a long obedience in the same direction.

Chris and I have been going to Africa for nine years, to the same place to the same people, year after year. One Rwandan pastor shared publicly this summer, “Many missionaries come and help, but they don’t come back. There are only two groups come back again and again to us. They are Foremans and Rick Warren”. I took this as a complement because we are running a race that requires a long obedience in the same direction. When God called me to go to Africa, I answered that call. The first few years were exciting. I appreciated meeting new people, learning new languages, and experiencing a new culture. However, establishing an on-going mission requires more than excitement. It requires commitment and perseverance – just like a marriage. God calls us to be faithful in all we do. Faithful means that our actions are worthy, dependable, and enduring.

Women's retreat

I had a great time at Mt. Hermon last weekend. Some brave women walked on a rope (30 feet high from the ground) and ate bugs (edible, chocolate covered) in order to take points to win. I was not one of those brave ones. I took lots of pictures for their walks. There were 15 small groups, and we challenged each other with different activities, counting lamp posts in the camp ground, or counting the number of bleachers. My team didn't win for the easy tasks, but we won rope walks and bug eating activities. At the end, we were all winners.

This year's theme was "The Amazing Race: God's Way". I had a time to reflect my life, I can say how grateful I am for His mercy and blessings for my life. I also got to meet ladies from a Nigerian church in Oakland, when they sang, I missed my Rwandan friends so much. Here is a slide show from the weekend. I put a music to spice up the slide show, it is little loud.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

What a great time to be a teacher

It is so good to work with roomful of bright students. I read their learning blog, and learn so much from their learning. Here is what Alex shared with us, and I am sharing with you. We are living in an exciting time-- Look at what we are going to use soon. I don't have to squint my eyes to find keys on my phone. Here is a talk about MIT media lab work: http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html




Also, Alex found this great site for us:

"NEWSFLASH: My favorite blog, information aesthetics, just posted about Sixth Sense. Here's a four-minute video. Imagine the implications! This is soooo cool, and it's very much what Dr. Wagner was discussing in class about Web 3.o (3D).
http://www.kwfdn.org/map/map.aspx"

This can happen to your grandmother

I don't have digital TV conversion problem since I don't own a TV. But most of our church people (there are more than half of our congregation members are over 70) have to convert their TV. I didn't even think about asking how they are managing this conversion problem.

I got this wonderfully funny video from Dr. Ellen Wagner's site. I have to ask her if the lady is her mother whom she talked about in our class. I thought this Youtube video is so funny. But it is not so funny when it is a reality that our seniors have to deal with. As we use more technology tools to connect with each other, we need to think about accessibility issues.

Video story

Since I asked my students to create a less than one minute story using a web 2.0 tool, I should do it too. I asked them to create a video story to highlight the points which were made by my friend, Curt, who came as an online guest speaker from IU. I confess, I didn't do "WE ALL CAN LEARN" thing. Here is my story about my grandson.

I will be going to Brooklyn in a few weeks, during my spring break, I can't wait to squeeze this bundle of joy. Till then I squeeze pixels of Lorenzo.

Make a Smilebox postcard

ePortofolio conference

It is raining outside. I took a Bart to get to the downtown SFSU center for the CSU ePorofolio conference, Guess who was greeting at the registration table. Angie and Alex from ITEC 830 class they work for SFSU Academic Technology. Our ITEC program is trying to implement ePortofolio, and I noticed there were other department chairs came for the conference, so everyone is trying to implement.

I thought presentations that made by people from UK and other countries were interesting. Their approach for using a portofolio is more process oriented and student-centered than product-oriented.

During the day, I thought about several things that I want to remind myself often.

1. I don't want to call my student blog as a ePortofolio. Once we call it an ePortofolio or something like that, teachers expect students to showcase their work rather than using the tool to think with and to think about their learning process.

2. When a teacher gives more freedom to students to explore their own interest, they become more responsible learners. I experience this all the time in my class.

3. My job as a teacher is to empower my students, not manage their learning, they manage their own learning. I want them to learn more on their own than what we discuss in the class.

4. Modeling is important -- If I expect students to write their blog, I need to do it for myself too.


Alex and Angie are going to write about the conference in more detail in a wiki page.

Using Web 2.0 in Business.

My students and I have been discussing about the potential use of Web 2.0 in business last week. I thought this article is a good addition to our discussion with Eugene Lee.

Six ways to make Web 2.0 work in the McKinsey Quarterly, FEBRUARY 2009