2012-11-22 Poverty

HI there! Today is Thanksgiving although we don't really celebrate this important holiday in here. Teacher, Abbie, still used her own ways to share something interesting and celebrate it with us.

In the end of the class, Abbie introduced a tradition of her family back to the states that everyone takes turn to express something you feel thankful. She helped us to start with "I'm thankful for..." Not just on this special day, we have something to say to show our gratitude, but we all need some inspiration or a chance to express how we appreciate someone or something! The beautiful words from each classmate were really touching and we never know what our plans would turn out until we put them into practice. Sometimes, something better happens when we really try our best!

Today, Abbie started the new topic "Poverty" with her own personal stories and experiences. She mentioned the life before she came to Taiwan and during some specific times she had to be very careful with the budget. She's learned to cherish what she has already had and to make plans more thoroughly. Because we all learn to be better "we" from mistakes and experiences.

Then, Abbie divided us into three groups of five people to brainstorm some ideas about poverty and discuss the definitions of being poor and being in poverty. She provided several questions for us to think about.

(1) What does it mean to be "poor?"

(2) What does it mean to live in poverty?

(3) How can we draw a line to define or distinguish between being wealthy and being poor?

Here are great ideas from everyone tonight:

POOR
1. not enough money but still can sustain your living
2. can survive but lacking supplies or resources
3. economy/material/mental
4. possible to be rich(physically) but poor(mentally)
5. fewer desires leads to less feeling of being poor
6. living by rations during the war times

POVERTY
1. poorer than poor
2. poor area
3. have nothing
4. not enough on the basic level of supplies
5. no access to medicine
6. can't survive with aid
7. need government supply

Jerry and his teammates brought up a famous theory "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" to help us to have better understanding.

After our second break, Neinko presented her first presentation about the speech "Independent Media" from Nov. 1st. She provided some crucial information that most of the mass media in Taiwan are controlled by some certain political parties and conglomerates. Sometimes we just can't receive the real information about the facts. However, some people in Taiwan are working really hard on developing the independent media to show us there are some other things happening and matter around us rather than the most news we see from the mass media.

Again, we had a wonderful night and talked about some serious issues. We all get to learn more from each other and we all have the power to make the world better when we start to make some changes from ourselves!

2012-11-15 POLICTICS

Dear all, today's our second week for the topic "POLITICS."

Most of us feel uncomfortable talking about politics here but our teacher, Abbie, always knows some ways to inspire us to come up with some great innovative ideas about any topic.

From last week, Abbie gave us several questions to think of and asked those to each other. 

(1) What do you think about politics?
(2) Do people in your family talk about politics? Why or why not?
(3) If you had the chance to be the president of the USA, would you take it?
(4) If you had the change to be the president of Taiwan, would you do it?

During the first class of discussing politics, some of us thought politics was a mess and some of us didn't want to talk about it in public or with family. And some felt disappointed about what politicians have brought to our society. However, today we dug a bit deeper into this topic with a few more questions.

(1) If you could create a law, what would you do with it?
(2) What do you think about voter apathy?
(3) What could we have done if the politics were in the ideal situations that we expected?

Ideas for 10/18: Language

Hello Everybody in C.I. class!  

This week we'll start our discussions of our next topic, Language.  Any presentations you'd like to give are welcome!!  Please just drop me a line by email or text or phone if you'd like to share a presentation on Language with us.  We had a lot of good ideas during our last class brainstorm, including:  

Poetry, "the flower of language"

Body Language 

Language Learning Tips

the History of a Word 

Bilingual Education 

Bilingual, Trilingual, etc. Speakers  

Sign Language (Taiwan's or other countries')  

the Origins of Writing 

Computer Languages 

Language Extinction 

Fun with Language: Jokes, Puns, Riddles, etc.  

an Introduction to French, or Japanese, or Welsh, or Atayal, or any other language!  

Language Families 

Translation 

Mother Tongue Education 

Linguistic Anthropology

"Colorful Language" (= Swearing!!)  

Language and the Brain

Secret Codes 

Oral History

Writing vs. Speaking 

2012-09-27 We're BACK!

Hello there! It's been more than 2 months since we updated our blog with new articles. Time slips away as usual but it's always happy to get back with old fellas and have a chance of meeting new friends!

It was the fourth class in this semester and our topic "history" was still hot. We've got so much to share and learn with each other.

Today, teacher Abbie led us to think of the positives and negatives of history. Here are the ideas from the class.

Positives:
History can help understand the background of people and places.
History is not just written down in books - it's real objects.
History is treasure of human beings, animals and the world.
Studying history helps enrich experience.
History helps us think of things more logically.

Negatives:
The past is over and don't dwell in the past.
Live for now and history repeats itself.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Life will find the way out.
History is not useful for my job and life.
Don't look back, look forward.
You can learn bad things from history.

As for me, life's just like what Abbie described - it's like a mirror reflects who you are, what you've done and where you've been to. We are all equal to have the chance to learn from good and bad experiences. We all get to learn from mistakes and deserve a second shot to make things better in the future. If we hold more thoughts on the positive side, we'll be able to make a better world and help people live better lives. At least help those who we love and those who love us.

2012-07-12 Potluck Party of 2012 Spring-Summer CI class

Donald, Kurt, Ming, George, Hans, Andrea, Chris, May, Taiya, Abbie, Jonas, Barrett, Kafei, Ammar, Jessica, Jerry, Shevin

Ideas about the new topic "Ethics" from Abbie

Hello everybody in C.I. class!

Thanks a lot for a fun and interesting class last week; I enjoyed the topic of Art! 

We started off by discussing art in "A/B"! pairs, discussing the following: 

* Describe a form of art that you love.

* Describe your last trip to an art museum.

* Describe a piece of art that you love.  

* Describe a piece of art that you hate or don't understand.

* What's your opinion of graffiti: is it art or is it vandalism? 

(I had more questions for you, but it was time to move on to the presentations!)