2012-03-29 Review of the class: Space, the Ocean, and the Orchid Island

There's no doubt about the amazing evening with lots of sparks among our discussions in today's CI class!

CI Class of 2012

It was another great class although it was a bit cool with the blowing wind, but the heat generated from the class made me warm and electrified.

Today, we continued to discuss more about the topics that we didn't finish last week. Teacher Abbie provided us with three big topics(Space junk, the Ocean vortex, and the nuclear waste in Orchid Island) and we formed three groups to talk about them individually. Abbie also helped us with a clear direction to think through the topics from different angles: problems, reasons, consequences and solutions. 

2012-03-22 Class Review

It was a wonderful evening! 

Jerry, Chris, Ammar, Taiya, Helge, Barrett, Jonas, Humor, Tina, Ming, Zaili, Hans

Hans, Kurt, Tony, Jonas, Michael, George, Donald, Kafei, Vita, May

I was late for class as usual but I was also really amazed by the number of the CI students. Again, there were more than 20 students joining the great night and I had to find a seat really close to the blackboard. However, don't take this wrong. I've loved sitting close to the teacher since I graduated from college. It's weird but true.


I missed most of the introduction part so I could only get to write down everyone's names when I arrived. It's a long list! NEAT!! In today's class, we had five brave hearts to give presentations. Ammar was the pioneer to share a piece of news about how many plastic bags are used a year in Europe and the total weight is 800,000 tonnes! Although some countries have banned the very thin plastic bags, there's still a big gap that we have to work on.  Right after that, I(Jonas) added some more information about how many tonnes of plastic bags we use in Taiwan annually - the figure is estimated to be 105,000 tonnes. Italy was the first country to ban the non-biodegradable plastic bags and some other countries like China, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh followed. Ireland was the first country to introduce a charge of 20 US cents per bag in 2002. It was raised to 22 cents in 2007. It did help to reduce the plastic bag litter and push the shoppers to use the long-life bags. However, here comes to an dilemma - if a plastic bag is used just once, then a paper bag must be used three times to compensate for the larger amount of carbon used in manufacturing and transporting it, a plastic "bag for life" must be used four times, and a cotton bag must be used 131 times. I also mentioned that it's also a tough call to choose between the disposable diapers and the cloth diapers. The previous ones consume lots of trees and other materials, but the latter ones require most water, electricity or other powers when the users clean them. 

2012-03-19 Before Class: Information about Trash and Pollution from Abbie

 

Hello everybody in C.I. class, spring semester 2012!  

It was great to see you all last Thursday, and I look forward to many exciting classes over the next semester.  

Next class, we'll take the time to go around the room and make introductions, so that we can all start getting to know each other more.  

As we mentioned last time, our topic for this Thursday, 3/25, is Trash and Pollution.  

In class, we brainstormed some directions for possible research, including:

2012-03-15 We're BACK!

Wow! It's been a long time!


Tonight, I was amazed by the new faces at the first class of this new semester. There were more than 20 students in the classroom and the atmosphere was boiling.


Our teacher, Abbie, set a great schedule for us to follow and during the mingling, everyone was trying their best to know each other with those thought-provoking questions written by Abbie.


As usual, I(Jonas) was half an hour late for the class, but THANK GOD I made it. Donald is back and I couldn't be happier and more touched to see him in class. He's my role model and he really is living without stopping learning! Barrett, Zaili, Taiya, Kert, Jerry, Andrea, Tony, Hans and Ammar all returned to the CI family, and no doubt it's always wonderful to see all the family members again. I didn't get the chance to know every new friend tonight, but next week, I'll share our CI blog with all of them.