Why Arabian are bad people? 10/12

We watched the movie about the reason why people have bad impressions toward Arabian. Watching through the movie, I was very surprised and shocked because people's perceptions were controlled by media. I am always wondering why am I having bad impressions toward Arabian even though I know there were only one part of Arabian occurring terrorism. Now I know that influence of Hollywood is huge and unconsciously controlled my perception in long terms. It is difficult to gather information which is omitted from media, but recognizing the fact that media is controlling the perception would be much different than ignorance. I would like to have more doubtless toward media's information and make clear what have been omitted and is an true information published to the world.

Categorizing people 10/10

From yesterday's class, we started new ELA topic about the Race. Rab suddenly told our class to categorize people who are in the picture along race. There were  various people such as Asian, European, African. I found it difficult to categorize because there is no clear definition or border which country is Asia or Middle East. In these days, mixed marriage is not rare by development of globalization, thus it is no necessity to categorize people due to race. However, some Asian people wants to dye their hair to blond by having an eager to be European. Therefore, sometimes I cannot understand why they are trying to delete their race's characteristics.

I cannot claim very strong in this topic because I am only having my opinion with my little knowledge about race. Maybe it is good opportunity to have more knowledge about it through my second essay work, although I am not really sure what can I write about the race in essay.

Explaining one side's viewpoint 10/5

In today's class, we did an interesting exercise. Rab separated the class in four groups and gave a task to write good points about his bag on two and bad points on another two groups. Our group got a task to write bad descriptions about Rab's bag. It is necessary to select the information which is not needed to explain the side of the view point we are going to write. What was surprising is our group eventually chose the words of bad discrimination to get the horrible impression and only look at the bad points. It was almost same trick as the British media used the word "kidnapped" in the conflict between Islam and Palestine. Put in mind in one direction often makes the view narrower. I would like to be careful not to have narrow viewpoints.

Using Google Docs effectively 10/3

It is true that Google Docs is not really good in writing essays or any project which needs some graphs or pictures. However, Google Docs has a great function in sharing with others. This ables to look and comment on other people's works easily, which is very convenience for the students who can not bring computers from home. These are all points that Rab taught me in last class.

I did not know why I used Evernote in writing essay. Possibly I used it because Evernote was the most convenience online document for me in spring semester. However, in this essay work, I had to use Google Docs otherwise my partner Eriko could not look at my work. In this class, I realized I was doing essay work only thinking about myself. From now, I would like to work on essays helping each other with my essay partner.

CWT Practice 10/1

The first day of October! I am glad that typhoon has passed Tokyo on midnight.
We did CWT's practice test on today's ARW class. It was different from what I took in last semester's CWT. In this time, I have to read the situation story which is related to Barna, Fisher, and Birk and Birk's article. After reading a situation story, I need to read the question and answer in an essay form. I was very shocked because I almost forgot about the theme of Barna's article. I should read through Fisher and Barna's article again to put the context in the mind and be ready for the next week's CWT. Therefore, today's class was very effective time for me because now I realized what I have to do for the test. Thank you, Rab!

Different viewpoints, different perceptions 9/28

Today, Rab introduced us many types of perceptions. He mentioned that our perceptions would be different by our viewpoints, situation, or environment. The most important example Rab showed us is the movie about Japanese culture. There were many jokes which every Japanese are able to realize but these jokes would be not understood by foreigners. From this movie, I found that having little knowledge is easy to cause trouble between other cultures and be deceived too. It is necessary to have more knowledge to get right view towards world society.

Stereogram! 9/26

We learned many things today in Rab's class.

At first, he taught us how to use Zotero in more useful way. It was surprised that Zotero is able to save various types of files such as movie, article, and newspapers. It is a good opportunity to use movie as a source for a first time in essay work.

Later, we watched some movies and saw many pictures which is calked stereo gram. By watching a movie, I recognized that my brain is using left side usually, meaning my brain is artist type. However, I do not really have opportunity to feel that my viewpoint is similar to artist, or not understanding the common viewpoint of artist. It is interesting to research the difference between right and left brain.