I am not political but I am for good design

Here are some good design by a special person who happens to be an artist and my son. Smile.

http://08electiongear.com/


Flash work by Simon
http://wunderpup.com/crackle/HDNA/480X70/v2.html
http://wunderpup.com/crackle/HDNA/test.html
http://wunderpup.com/crackle/HDNA/544X306/

http://wunderpup.com/crackle/AF/gravitySimulation.html
http://wunderpup.com/crackle/AF/AF_Crackle_Overlay.html


http://wunderpup.com/crackle/VOD_Banner/VOD_invideo_overlay_480X70_V5.html
http://wunderpup.com/crackle/VOD_Banner_544X306/VOD_invideo_overlay_544X306_V3.html
http://wunderpup.com/crackle/VOD_Banner_300X40/VOD_invideo_overlay_300X40_V1.html

Weekend Trip to Oregon

We got started on the road to Portland at 4 a.m. Chris was driving and I was sleeping, so it didn’t matter how early we started. Once we crossed the Oregon border, I began to see more greenery. As always I said, “How pretty. I love the green, let’s retire in Oregon”. We are the only Californians in our family. When our parents were alive, we made frequent trips to see them. Now that they are gone, we only head north once a year. This time our purpose was to attend our nephew David’s wedding.

We stopped in Turner, Oregon, about 4 p.m. My sister Nancy owns a grocery store in that small town. As soon as we sat down, she started offering us food. Then she looked at me intently at my face and declared “you need a miracle cream that works wonders”. She brought out cosmetic package labeled “Better than Botox”. She always showers me with gifts. I was really surprised to see that package, because it was the exact same brand that I wanted but I didn’t buy. A few days earlier, I was shopping at Costco. I had a coupon for this wrinkle-removing cream, so I picked up the package. At the check-out I learned the price. My jaw dropped. Who would pay $137 for a tube of facial cream? I couldn’t buy it, even though it might do my face some good. Sometimes God not only supplies my needs, but also my wants. It was too expensive for me to buy, but God supplied my wants through my sister.

We visited Chris’ brother and three sisters along with my sister and two brothers. After a Sunday church service, we held an Africa mission meeting. Many attended to pray and support the team. Seven of us are going this January, and six members were there. We talked about the mission trip. There were many questions and excited hearts as we came together to plan God’s work in Rwanda.

How wonderful it is to have both a blood-related family and a God-related family. It made our journey fun and meaningful. Ninety hours after leaving San Lorenzo, we were back in town and happy to be with our church family once more.

Another conference for my students

If you want to go to MacWorld Conference & Expo, from January 5-9, 2009, sign up now. Here is a priority code CKD31888, you need to sign up before September 26, 2008 for a FREE Expo Hall Pass. Unfortunately I will miss this one. I will be in Rwanda from Dec. 29 to Jan. 20th, providing faculty workshops at the National University of Rwanda.

We are so lucky!

One of my students asked me today how I keep up with the rapid changing field. I read blogs, go to conferences, ask people I know who are active learners. Another words, I net work.
Living in SF is wonderful! Look at these great conferences which we can go to, when others pay $$$ to get here to attend these events. Some of my students in ITEC 830 are going to attend Web 2.0 Summit, Nov. 5-7th, http://en.oreilly.com/web2008/public/content/home Too bad, I can't attend it. I will give talks on "The impact of emerging technology on teaching and learning" in Taiwan.

But there is always another chance to go to another conference in this town. I will be able to attend e-Learning Guild conference.

Time: November 11, 2008 at 9am to November 14, 2008 at 6pm
Location: Fairmont San Jose
Organized By: The E-Learning Guild

Event Description:
DevLearn 2008 Conference & Expo is where the most experienced and knowledgeable professionals in the e-Learning industry convene each year to explore, discuss, and learn about the best ideas and technologies for e-Learning. It’s for learning design, development, and management professionals who are leading e-Learning efforts, and who need to keep abreast of emerging technologies, strategies, and best practices in order to effectively deploy them in their organizations.

Nice work!

Here's the new banner my son did for Amazon and NBC. It's going to run on Youtube, Myspace, Amazon and a few other sites. He is an amazing artist who does amazing work , I have total confidence in him that someday his work will be shown at major galleries. Meantime he has to support his family by creating websites for small companies. He learned tools such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, and different apps on his own. He never took any course to learn software. So there is a lesson. When you have a project that you need to do, you learn the tools to accomplish it. He went to art school and learned design principles. In the similar way, I tell my students to focus on learning principles and instructional design principles in order to become a good instructional designer. You can learn the tools while you are creating your instructional piece.

Instructional Video

The Common Craft Show is a series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. I have used their video in my class in the past several years, and each video is so simple and clear.

1. Wikis in Plain English
2. Social Networks in Plain English
3. Social Bookmarking in Plain English
4. Twitter In Plain English
5. Podcasting in Plain English
6. RSS in Plain English
7. Google Reader in Plain English
8. Google Docs in Plain English
9. Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
10. Wetpaint Wiki in Plain English
11. Blogs in Plain English
12. LinkedIn in Plain English
    

First Day of the school

I love school, especially the first week of the school. With an anticipation of seeing familiar faces and with an expectation of meeting new people, I anxiously wait my class to begin. How many people have a privilege to work with bright, hopeful, intelligent graduate students, and get paid for learning from them?

Here is a sample work which my students did as an icebreker exercise in ITEC 830 last night. I formed five small groups, 3-4 people in each group. Since we will discuss the impact of Web 2.o in education throughout the semester, I wanted to know how much they already know about this topic. I gave them 10 minutes for them to brainstorm about Web 2.0, then make a presentation. After 10 minutes later, they came up with the following poster. Josh who is my TA this semester took these photos with his cell phone, then e-mailed them to me. I put these same photos in the class social networking site http://myitec.ning.com/photo for them to use in their blog if they want.

A Weekend to Remember

Our front sidewalk is bordered by several large rose plants. I often see passersby stop to smell the roses. I happened to be outside when a woman folded her hands toward the sky and expressed her gratitude for these beautiful roses. She said “Thank you!” to me. I have to confess that the one who deserves the “thank you” is our deacon John King. He drops by once in a while and prunes back the bushes. I learned that there is a correct way to clip a rose bush. You cut just above six leaves on a stem to make new roses come up year around. It takes care as well as knowledge to properly care for plants.

I sometimes think about marriage as a rose bush. On occasion, my husband and I are caught up by the busy-ness of life and we neglect to clip our rose bush. In past years, we didn’t know how to tend the garden of our marriage and make the roses grow year-round.

When my son, Simon, was married in 2006, we wanted to give him and his new bride a special gift. For a few hundred dollars we paid their way to “A Weekend to Remember” which is a marriage enrichment conference sponsored by Family Life. Our daughter-in-law, Dilia, called me after their special weekend in upper New York State. They had a great time at a nice hotel and learned a lot about each other. They also learned about being a godly husband and a godly wife. My husband and I were so glad that provided a supportive part in their weekend to remember.

First Southern is now seeking married couples in our church to attend “A Weekend to Remember” in November at beautiful Monterey. I made the first announcement of this conference last Sunday morning. When God speaks, the godly listen. After the service, a young couple came to me, and said “We want a Weekend to Remember.” Do you want to enrich your own marriage, then you can sign up too. Just phone the church. You can also pay the way for children or grandchildren. I know some churches that help by babysitting for the weekend. Chris and I plan to attend. We need to learn more about tending the garden of our own marriage.

We remember stories

Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions? Interesting article about this.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secrets-of-storytelling&print=true

KQED Digital Storytelling Summit

I am at KQED. I just finished my 10 minute talk about what I am doing with DST with my students at SFSU Instructional Technologies. Howard who is a teacher from Urban School is presenting what he is doing with DST--Oral History Project. Authentic doing--doing real world project-- Student project as an accessible product, and contributing to knowledge base.

Erica talks about her organization--Streetside Stories-- and how she trains classroom teachers to use DST in their teaching.

8/24/08
Lynda took these photos and sent them to me. I had a great fun to meet educators who care about what they do and also use digital storytelling as a medium of instruction. I was pleasantly surprise to see so many of ITEC alums, current students, and also incoming students at this event.

I am checking in, and see who is here? Kathleen from our department.

Leslie, who is the queen of DST, is introducing us.

Here are SFSU ITEC people. It is so wonderful to meet like-minded people outside of my class.

Digital storytelling and 21st Century Learning skills.

• Critical and Analytic Thinking, Problem Solving,
• Creativity and Innovation,
• Effective Communication and Interpersonal Skills
  
• Cultural Competence.

Instructional Technologies Program http://www.sfsu.edu/~itec

• Graduate Program for working professionals
  
• Project-Based Curriculum
• Team Work
  

ITEC 800 Learning Theories iLearn site

Goals for DST in ITEC 800

• Learning by Doing
• Meaningful Learning
• Reflective Learning
• Community Building for ITEC program
• Learn Multimedia Tools
  

DST Experience --ITEC 800 Blog site

• Walter http://walteritec800.blogspot.com
• Arl
• Natalia

New semester

If you are interested in Digital Storytelling, there is still room for you to register. I will see you this Saturday.

When: Saturday, August 23, 10am - 2pm
Where: KQED Studios, 2601 Mariposa St, SF
The event is free and open to the public.
Please RSVP to Leslie Rule at lrule@kqed.org

We invite you to explore with us the intersection of Digital Storytelling and 21st Century Skills and Literacies. This event will enable conversations with other digital storytellers: educators and community activists, practitioners and deep enthusiasts. The focus is on education and community outreach, and our panel of experts will share best practices and lead audience roundtables on using Digital Storytelling to support and nurture these 21st century skills: Critical and Analytic Thinking, Creativity and Innovation, Effective Communication and Interpersonal Skills, Problem Solving, and Cultural Competence.

2008 Vacation Bible School

We completed the 2008 VBS last Friday. There were about 60 to 70 people attended each night, from July 27th to August 3rd. This year's topic was God's unshakable truth. The motto for this year was, "Learn the Truth, Speak the Truth, Live the Truth". Sue and I were in charge of the adult class, we had about 20 people each night came to the class. We played games, made wordless books, shared personal stories about spiritual journey, and studied God's truth. On the last day, Ken brought a roasted pig for us to eat. Well, some of us didn't want to eat it--you can see why. It was still smiling!

Kim is saying "Hello" to her pig friend

Al was the winner for this game


Team teaching was fun

Who Will Go?

Every Friday for several months, an outreach team from First Southern has been going to the Villa Fairmont Mental Health Center, just a few blocks from our church. After passing through several locked doors, we arrive at the social room. Leah who has been attending our church greets us with a big smile as we enter the room. She excitedly tells us that she has found a room in Oakland. She is moving out from this place. We have been praying for her and her prayer has been answered.

As we arrange chairs for the meeting, an announcement goes over the speaker system that the Baptist Church is having a Bible study. Braz tells us that she has been reading from the Psalms. She thanks Shirley for handing over her own personal Bible to her the week before. Several residents ask us to provide Bibles and we promise to bring some next time.

We usually read a few verses from the Bible, then talk about what the words mean to us. Participants are eager to share their stories about why they came to this place and how desperately they seek God’s help to get well. We ask the Holy Spirit to guide us to be sensitive to the needs of this group. The residents need our listening ear more than anything else. Sometimes I am unsure about how to respond to their comments. But one thing I know is that they want us to pray for them.

The only qualification to join our mission team is a willingness to listen and to pray. It would be so wonderful to see more people from our church join this ministry group. The residents in this institution need friends who demonstrate the compassion of our Lord Jesus. Here are men and women who are at a low point in their lives. I could be a resident at the Villa Fairmont, but by God’s grace I am not. In the Old Testament, God asks Isaiah “whom shall I send?” Isaiah answers, “Here am I, send me.” I pray that many will say “Here I am, Lord. Send me”.

Chris is back from Africa mission. The team accomplished the mission goals and they have seen hands of God in Africa. Here is the link you can go and see the photos of their activities. http://comeandseeafrica.org/pastmissions/mission2008/index.htm

The mission team had two session of worship leaders seminars; one in Kigali (capital of Rwanda) and another in Butare (where CASA is located). Also they had a VBS with over 200 children for a week and a seminar for pastors. In between seminars, they visited widows and Batwa families. They bought 16 female goats ($28 per goat) and gave them to poor families. You who supported the mission have been great blessings to so many people including our summer mission team. The mission team had experienced great blessings as they deliver goats to widows and orphans. Also, you have helped CASA building project by donating bricks. Frank and Paul are overseeing the building project. This is going to be the future home of Lighthouse for Christian Students in Africa.

Awsome team work!

IMG_8411
Originally uploaded by sean.bang

College students from Western Korean Nazarene church raised funds for CASA. A few weeks ago Anna stopped by and told of her plan to raise funds for CASA. Chris and I were encouraged with their support and prayers. These young people came up with ideas on their own, and raised money to buy 20 goats for Batwa families and widows for CASA morning prayer meeting. They also raised money for the building project--Christian Campus House for Rwanda University students. They sold bricks and goats to their congregation members.

IMG_8430
Originally uploaded by sean.bang

So many people bought goats and bricks. Thank you everyone. You have encouraged us and motivated us to work harder in Rwanda.

Yosemite Fall

On June 2nd, our family went to Yosemite, and we took lots of photos. There will be a photo contest, each of us will enter 3 best pictures from this trip. Here are three of mine.

Yosemite Fall
Originally uploaded by come and see africa

All kinds of e-learning tools

At the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has been putting together a list of tools for e-learning. Here is the directory which you can spend hours and hours.
http://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/index.html

Missing you, Mother

The day before Mother’s day, I saw her in the parking lot at the Bay Fair mall. An old Asian lady was stanidng by a car and waving her hand toward me. For a brief moment, I thought I saw my mother. The lady was waving to her daughter. I watched them embrace. I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. Mother, I really miss you. It has been five years since you left us.

To My Mother

You taught me how to walk
Like a lady
In this world

On our monthly outing to the village market
I would hop and jump ahead of you
Hurrying to get to the bustling market place where
Vendors called to customers with their exotic wares
I was impatient with your measured walk
I would pull your skirts to hurry

Instead, you stopped in the middle of the road
Told me to look at those scurrying people
You whispered to me to watch how they walked
Pointing out how unbecoming
Like a grass hopper, when a woman sway her hip and shoulder
Like a duck, when a woman walk her feet pointing outward
Then you showed me the proper way to walk
“Take your step one foot over another as though you are walking on a rope in the air”

I watched you closely for the first time
On that dusty, gravel road
Lined up with tall poplar trees
You were different even to my seven year-old eyes
You had short curly hair when others rolled their hair to the back of their head
You had a western dress when others had hanbok (Korean traditional dress)
You were tall and handsome
Villagers called you “Modern Woman”
With reverence and envy

Since that day, I practiced everyday to walk straight
One foot over another like a ropewalker
When I am afraid of falling
I think of that “modern woman” who had shown me
A road out of that little village

I'd better save this link here, so I can send some of links to a publisher who wants web sites for ESL learners. Curt Bonk and his students are researching on online language learning research, and I want to keep up with them: http://wiki-riki.wikispaces.com/Online+Language+Learning