Education for All: A World To Believe In

Every children in the world should have the opportunity to access to knowledge. Educaiton should serves for every one in the world.

Road Signs

Did you ever lost yourself in a foreign place? Have you ever wondered why you appear in a certain place at a certain time? Have you ever thinked about all the little and large events that crop up in your life or the seemingly random coincidences that appear everyday? Have you ever wondered if these events mean anything? Do you ever take time to stop and consider the patterns in your life?  

We always busy with work, study or even hang out with fridends, but we don’t really have opportunity to stay peacefully and reflect. It is just like we cross our paths in hurry everyday without ceasing and looking at where we are except for when we are getting lost. The result is we limit our opportunities for self-discovery; we fail to cherish and celebrate the many gifts we came into this world with; we deny our sense of purpose or personal mission. Road signs are always neglected by people unless the place is foreign to us. However, they can help us to find our ways and tell where we are, even where we should go.

I like to observe the local road signs when I get to a new place. It is really fun and because of them, I can always tell where I am.

This pic is took in the first time I went to downtown Vancouver with Tiffany and Bowen. At that time, we were lost, but we found our location on the map afterwards according to this road sign…

 

 

 

 This was took in the trip to Bowen island. This sign looks very different from what we can see in Van. Seems like we were coming to a peaceful and natural place.

 

This is pic of a busy street in Hongkong. It is billinguial….

 

 

 

 

These two pics were took in the trip to Victoria. The two streets are in the China Town.

 

It is interesting to see the Chinese translation of these two signs. Both of them are transliterated from English (Cantonese). However, the first one also counts for free translation. And both of the Chinese translations represent the good wishes from people.

 

 

 It is a quiet street of a small city called Frederiction located in East Coast, Canada. These two typical English words remind me the memory of people’s peaceful and slow life there.

 

 

 

 

I took this pic in Quebec City. See, it is French only….

 

 These are the road signs in my hometown, Nanjing. First one, Chinese only, second one, billingual, third one, even with four languages. (These signs locate in different places, and serve for different people’s needs.)

Equity in Education

This video was shot in Gansu Province, China. It is a rural area located at Northwest of China. The population there are mostly depend on agriculture and have poor living conditions. Not all of the children there have the equal opportunity to go to school, especially girls. The Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) has given a lot of children opportunity to study in school. This project helps to buy education equipments, and  also empasize equity in education no matter students’ family background and ability.

I can see some progressive educational concepts in this rural school, such as cooperative learning, interaction among students, and  equal opportunities of access to knowledge for students with different abilities. This project helped children in that village step toward the mordern civilization. However, it still has a long way to go since the most important thing is to raise people’s awareness of those equity issues in their life and change their old mind towards education.

007: Quantum Of Solace

Last night I went to see “Quantum Of Solace” with my friends. We spent a big chunk of time on lining up for entering the auditorium, so crazy…. Thinking that it would be the same amazing pictures as Casino Royale, unfortunately, it wasn’t. It still has the action, the girl and the explosions that everyone expected, but it still could not cheer me up. The intro car chase made me dizzy since we sat too close to the screen. Its fast paced action was somehow lost by the camara set too close to the action and the flicking between camera shots. After a few seconds I was totally lost.
However, the most thing matters is the language. All the actors speak fast and have strong Brith accent. I tried to follow up all of their conversations, but I still lost sometimes, it is hard. The scenes keep changing all the time which made me even more confused. I fell asleep and was awaken by my friend’s shake. I feel bad and waste of time. It was primarily an action film that I couln’t feel and identify anything for the characters.

“Bond” film like other Hollywood mainstream films, is bearing a great deal of expectations from the audiences. It is no longer just one film, it becomes a culture that goes along with one or two generations’ spy dream which is still passing on.

I am a fan of all kinds of Hollywood movies which always has great scenes, rich plots and gadgets, and also dulcet music. However, I know that those films which embeded western values and culture are counted for objectified cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986). When I watching these movies, I absorb culture, language, value system even the accent unconsciously. Those things conveyed by films are of course unneutral. Moreover, each person’s intepretation of the plots and meaning behind the plots are different. Those different intepretations are also influenced by different “habitus” within certain “fields”. In other words, the same movie can be intepreted differently in different social context even to different individuals.

(This is the pic we were doing the group work on Bourdieu’s “symbolic capital”)

Equity and Literacy: The Challenge of the decade

Some of my comments on “Equity and Literacy: The Challenge of the Decade”, wrote by Enid Lee.

This is a passionate article closely related to “equity and literacy” which we are exploring this semester. The author brings this issue to the educational realm and gives some recommendation to teachers about how to teach literacy. She argues that literacy should be viewed as a tool to bring about equity and be put into a historical context. According to Paulo Freire’s idea of critical literacy, we should not only read the words but also the world. Thus, while students are learning how to read, they should also be taught how to ask questions like, “Who is missing? How can we make a difference?” In this means, students awareness of equity could be raised. Another important thing the author mentioned is students’ prior knowledge should be respected. Everyone can read some codes even if they are not print. Literacy could be something presented when people break into the codes. Everyone has the ability to make sense of the codes. Teachers should try to access to the knowledge exist in students’ head and help them to make sense of the codes. She also shared her thoughts about language and students in classroom. She believes that language diversity in classroom should be appreciated, and student should see language as a smorgasbord from which they can select and create their own identity.
(To see the whole article, pls click below)

Début

This is my first English blog which is not completelyfor fun. But writing sth. down can always help us to keep the memory accessible and leave some trace for ourselves to retrieve the past events. Hope this would be a platform for us to share and learn…