Ideas for 12/08/2011 C.I. class:Sports from teacher Abbie

Dear C.I. class!  

Last Thursday, we talked a lot about the different learning styles, and how they affect learners, and finally we discussed whether high school entrance should be test-score based.  Thanks everyone for your participation!!  

This Thursday, 12/8, our topic is Sports.  

I look forward to all of your presentations!   

Here's a brain storm on the topic...  in some cases I'm including links to interesting articles, but don't feel you have to read them all; just choose the ones that interest you!  

* Sports and Ethics!: 
Here's an article about soccer and ethics: "Is it okay to cheat in football?"  (Here, "football" means "soccer!!"  :D )  http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/singer64/English
This article asks whether the only ethical rule in sports is "win at all costs."  

*  Sports and Money 

Related to our discussions of Occupy Wall Street and capitalism, here's an interesting article comparing soccer to politics and economy!  (In this article, again, the term "English football" means "soccer!")  It's about "an unsustainable system where the rich win and the poor go to the wall;" you can also find it in the Taipei Times under the title "Soccer reveals rampant capitalism."  (The term "go to the wall" means "fail.")      

* Paralympics and Sports for the Disabled: 

The Paralympics are Olympic style games for athletes with a disability. See http://www.paralympic.org/Paralympic_Games/  for more details on the paralympics.

Here's a story about a wheelchair bound woman who competed internationally in hand cycling, until a cycling accident caused her to regain the use of her legs.  She has been an outstanding Paralympic athlete, and now she wants to go to the Olympics.  

Here's a shorter article about this athlete: 

And here's a longer article about her: 

* Sports and the Brain


Sports (watching or playing!) can enhance language skills...!  

* Introduce an Unusual Sport... 

... such as Kabaddi, a 4000 year old game from India!: 

In recent headlines:  "Kabaddi World Cup Hit by Doping" 

... which brings us to: 

* Sports and Doping (Drugs in Sports) 

Other possible topic directions include... 

* Team sports vs. individual sports

* Martial Arts

* the Olympics

* Sports in Schools

* Track and Field; Swimming; Ice Skating; Gymnastics; Archery; Basketball; Skiing...  
your observations or stories about any sport!  

* Great Athletes, past or present  

* World Records in Sports

* Masters Games (where people compete by age group) 

* How to Play Ping Pong (or Basketball or Hockey or any sport!) 

* Sports and Games from Childhood 

* Your Own Sports Experiences 

* Spectator Sports 

* Popular Sports in Taiwan 

I look forward to seeing everyone on Thursday, and I'm hoping for a wide variety of presentations!

CI Class 12/01/2011: Education: Learning Styles and various debates

It was a great class this week AGAIN although some of our classmates couldn't make it to class this time. The temperature dropped down below 15C but the atmosphere was warm and relaxed. We all got something to share!

Teacher Abbie started the class by helping us discover  what type of learner we are and talked about the features and differences among these 4 types of learning styles. Each of us got to contribute our own special learning experience and then Abbie offered us a question to think about. How do you learn to use the computer with visual, auditory, tactile and kinetic ways? After that, we concluded that learning always comes along with a combination of methods.

At the second half of class, Abbie brought up the topic about the efficiency and fairness of the test-based high school entrance examination. Tests do help to push us to study for not being flunked but it doesn't guarantee that we can learn something from it. Most of us burn the midnight oil the night before the test and what we cram into our brains usually doesn't stay in it for a long time. Jerry mentioned that we're supposed to be like "live to learn" but we're going on the opposite direction on the contrary. Most students in Taiwan learn or study just for tests and they're not having fun learning. However, some of us still got something to talk about, but unfortunately we ran out of time.

Here are some websites to help you find out what type of learniing style you use:
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CI class 11/24: Information about Education from Abbie

Hi everybody!

I'm still waiting on a couple more people's opinions on the survey; I'll let everyone know the final decision soon.  Meanwhile, here's our next topic! 

Next week, 11/24, we'll be discussing Education.  

Here is a brainstorm of ideas for possible presentations on this topic:   

* Learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinetic 

* Language learning 

* Ideas for improving English 

* an Unforgettable teacher from your past 

* Tests : pros and cons 

* Competition in education : pros and cons 

* Alternative education systems (such as Waldorf / Steiner schools or home schooling) : pros and cons 

* Baby sign language

* Mother-tongue education 

* Bilingual education 

* English Only policies 

* Mandarin Only policies  

* Cram schools 

* Education methods: past and present 

* a Story from when you were a kid in school   

* Personal learning experiences 

* Education reform 

* History textbooks 

* Academic Opportunities and Performance: Girls vs. Boys, 
or City schools vs. Country schools. or Rich kids vs. Poor kids 

* Dyslexia 

* Attention Deficit Disorder 

* Teacher education 

* Special education 

* Sports in schools 

* Music education 

* Deaf education

* Education for the blind 

* Great teachers 

* Learning outside of school 

I look forward to all of your presentations and to some interesting discussions!  

In closing, here's an interesting (and short!) article about how and why therapists were able to use music to help a wounded woman relearn how to speak!:  

See you on Thursday, 11/24!  

Sincerely, Abbie 

CI class 11/17: the food we eat (or don't eat!!): from Pesticides to Starvation from Abbie

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for a lovely Food class last time; we had some interesting and fun presentations, thanks to all of our presenters and everybody else too!  

Ray introduced Jane Goodall's book Harvest for Hope: a Guide to Mindful Eating; in which the author "encourages us to consider the significance of our daily food choices." I'm planning to read it too now, and maybe some of you will consider checking it out as well.  Andrea shared information about a healthier way of eating, based on the diet of people who live around the Mediterranean Sea: heavy on grains, vegetables, and fruit, and light on meat, and she shared the positive effect it's had on her own health.  Then Taiya plunged us into the joys of beef and told us exactly where the different beef cuts come from and what they're best used for; she gave us a diagram and we even learned why meat from the "loin" is so juicy, while the meat from the "chuck" and "round" is so tough.  Jerry finished up the night with a presentation on the first time he made Chinese meat pies, complete with photos, and everyone was very interested in his recipes, and also interested in persuading him to give us a taste of his cooking!    

Next Thursday, I'd like to continue with the theme of food, and delve into the darker side of food, if you will...  Why we do things to our food that makes it unhealthy for us, and why so many people on our planet don't have enough food to stay alive.  

"According to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single gravest threat to the world's public health."

"Some sources estimate that 20 million people die each year of hunger-related causes. FAO estimates that at least 435 million people are seriously undernourished in the world today. Other estimates, which use poverty as an indicator, suggest that 800 million people are threatened by hunger, either temporarily or in the long term."

"Amartya Sen won his 1998 Nobel Prize in part for his work in demonstrating that hunger in modern times was not typically the product of a lack of food; rather, hunger usually arose from problems in food distribution networks or from governmental policies in the developing world."

"Both of the world's leading authorities on food distribution (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] and the World Food Programme [WFP]) are very clear: there is more than enough food for everyone on the planet. The FAO neatly summarizes the problem of starvation, saying that "the world currently produces enough food for everybody, but many people do not have access to it." Food is a lot like money: just because some people have none doesn't mean that there isn't enough of it--it's just spread unevenly."

So the topic of the first half of our class will be Hunger and Starvation:  if there's more than enough food for everyone on the planet, why are there so many hungry people, and what can we do about it?  

Then for the next half of class, I'd like to continue the discussion of pesticides that we touched on last time.  I'd like to hear more of your opinions about pesticides, and I'm hoping we can experiment with a debate as well.  Please come ready to talk about both the pros and cons of pesticide use.  What do you think:  do we need pesticides?  

Some information against pesticides can be found here: 
"Because pesticides are selected for their ability to kill living things, whether plant, insect or animal, it's perhaps not surprising that they can also harm unintended targets such as people, wildlife and in general the environment."

and information against them can be found here as well:

Information supporting pesticide use can be found here:  
"Although often taken for granted, without these important products (pesticides), food production would decline, many fruits and vegetables would be in short supply and prices would rise. Far more of our parklands and natural habitats would have to be turned over to food production to meet the demands of a growing global population. Insect-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, and west Nile virus would proliferate unchecked."

Here are two sources which have nice outlines of both the pros and cons of pesticide use:  



And if we have time, I'd love to discuss some of the ways we can improve the ways that humans produce and distribute the food we eat, so please bring all your ideas to share with us.  

See you on Thursday!

Sincerely, Abbie 

CI class 11/10: Ideas about Food from Abbie

Hi Everybody!

I was happy to see everyone two weeks ago on 10/29!  We almost had a full class!  Thanks for everyone's participation!  Our theme was Occupy Wall Street, and like the Occupy protesters, our class expressed a wide range of viewpoints.  Some interesting ideas and topics were touched on, including the size of the US debt, the Robin Hood Marches, the US banking crisis of 2008, the ongoing evolution of the system that runs our society, the relationship between democracy and capitalism, and the fact that "what goes up must come down!"  

Thanks, everyone, for coming!  It was lovely to see all of you again and to hear what everybody had to say.  It's great to see so many people taking part in the class discussions!  

Last week on 11/3, I was really happy to find Tony and Jerry at the Community College community lecture.  The speakers gave their viewpoints on the direct train line from Taipei to Yilan County.  The lecture was in Taiwanese and Chinese...  so I have to admit I'm a little foggy on a lot of the details!  It was good listening practice for me, but if you want to know what we learned that night, it would be best to talk to Tony or Jerry (and not to me!!).  :D  

Can we live without money?  Maybe...  Can we live without food?  No!  So this Thursday, our topic is Food.

I hope that you'll all once again feel free to explore this topic and take it in whatever direction interests you.  

Once again, I'll ask that presentations are kept in the 8 to 10 minute range (or under!), and I look forward to hearing from everybody!

Here's a brainstorm of some possible topic directions, if you haven't already come up with something you'd like to talk about on Thursday 11/10!

* Organic food 

* Free-range meat 

* the Local Food Movement 

* a Healthy diet 

* Vegetarianism: reasons for (and/or against!); how to be a healthy vegetarian

* Heirloom seeds and heirloom plants 

* Genetically modified food

* the Svalbard Global Seed Vault  

* Gardening 

* Farming

* Farm subsidies 

* Pesticides: why are they used?  what are the consequences? 

* Cooking 

* Favorite foods 

* Yilan specialties 

* Recipes 

* Food distribution on our planet 

* Famine and starvation: causes and solutions 


See you all in a few days!  I'm looking forward to our next class!  Make sure you eat before you come...  !!  

Sincerely, Abbie 

PS.  "The belly rules the mind."  ~ a Spanish Proverb   :)  

CI class 10/27 Occupy Resources from Abbie

Hello CI class!  

Here are a few internet resources for you as promised, to aid you in your search for information on Occupy Wall Street!  

A google search for Occupy Wall Street will take you to any number of newspaper and magazine articles... you might try the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, etc.!!...

Here's the Occupy Wall Street website:  

Here's a greeting posted on the OWS site at the end of September, just a few weeks into the protests, about their response to police violence:

Here's an interesting article I hope to discuss together in class, written by someone who went to visit the protesters about a week ago:


Some people have spoken out in support of the protests; an example: 

"The protesters have started a national conversation about our country’s priorities and values, one that many of us have been having for months: a conversation about jobs, budgets, wars, and corporate greed."
(from a Sojourner's email) 


Other people are against the protests: 

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed," the ex-Godfather's Pizza CEO declared.  (This quote from Herman Cain, a possible presidential candidate and someone who's against the protests; taken from the article at: 

Finally, here you can read about a billionaire who thinks he should be taxed more:

There's a sea of information out there!  Learn what you can and we'll all discuss it together tomorrow!  See you soon!  

Sincerely, Abbie 
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