A Merry Christmas to all from K'Brian and K'Alex

perhaps even a Crazy Christmas!

The little guy and I were playing with the 'photobooth' feature.  Here's another:

Christmas at our home isn't particularly Christian, I have to say:

Centred in the first shot is a dreidel, a gift from a coworker.  In the second photo are a Tibetan, um, necklace ornament (centre), and near the bottom, from left-to-right, are an old-fashioned coin, an amber bead and two phone ornaments at the edge of the photo.

If you are in the giving spirit, John Yost and his accident are mentioned a post or two down.  He could use some help (and long-timers should be concerned about more complete health insurance - Korea is cheap for typical visits to the doctor, but too many foreigners have been driven to asking for aid.  I don't begrudge them, but I need to prepare myself better - and so should you!).  Kevin Kim could use some cheering up these days as well.

My kind of Christmas decoration

From Failblog (what you see is a mannequin, not an actual person):

Help a Gangwon Teacher with a broken back

John Yost, apparently working in Pyeongchang, was paragliding recently and had an accident.

BizarroBrian was the first I noticed reporting the accident and request for donations, but Kimchi Icecream also broke the story.  John Yost has his own website, where you can donate.

I donated ten dollars, I think.   The credit card I used was issued in Canada, but the website only accepted American states so I was unable to enter "Ontario".  It seems to have gone through, but I am not sure.

Clownfish

In an interesting coincidence, I received January's National Geographic with an article on clownfish about the same time I read the Dong-A's article on the Finding Nemo star.

The Nat Geo article (which I read in hardcopy- I don't know the exact contents of the online version.  The magazine photos are fantastic) mostly describes the symbiosis between the clownfish and the host anemone., but also mentions how the movie's success has lead to some locations being fished out to supply the aquarium trade.

Beautiful Friendship

 

(image from the National Geographic article)

The Dong-A article mostly describes how the fish are new arrivals to the area, possibly due to increased water temperatures which are making Jeju waters sub-tropical.

both articles are interesting and mostly well written, although the Dong-A briefly reaches Korea Times-quality editing:

A scuba diver said he witnessed a 30-meter long green sea turtle, which is likely to spend winter in neighboring waters.

That's one Hell of a sea-turtle!

updates on e-books

Three of Korea's online English papers discuss e-books today (well, still in the headlines today - the articles could be a day or two old).

The Herald describes how e-books and reader devices have helped the publishing industry:

The year started off poorly for booksellers.

The outlook for the overall publishing market was largely negative in January. The economy was in the doldrums, and readers put off book purchases.

Kyobo, the country's biggest bookstore chain, said its preliminary yearly sales rose 8.9 percent from 2008, helped by the stronger-than-expected revenue from e-book sales. The lackluster figure illustrates that books sold in electronic form were the main drivers for growth.

While offline book sales remain stagnant, publishers and IT companies began to pay attention to the potential of e-books. Even though there have been a handful of attempts to kick-start the potentially huge market in the past few years, writers, readers and publishers have not paid much attention. That changed dramatically this year.

Device makers such as Samsung Electronics and iriver introduced new e-book readers, raising the possibility that Korea might see a boom in the new platform in the near future following the success of Amazon.com's the Kindle in the United States.

The Joongang discusses how Sony has chosen to keep it's reader device dedicated to reading, and not add a variety of other features.

NEW YORK - The way Howard Stringer sees it, Sony’s digital e-readers should focus on the printed word and making reading “comfortable,” even though the consumer electronics giant could turn it into a multimedia machine. Stringer, chief executive of Japan’s Sony Corp, admits there is a lot of “energy” behind Amazon.com’s Kindle, which is seen as the leader in a burgeoning market for portable reading devices. 

As speculation grows that Apple Inc. may introduce a tablet-style computer that could also address the e-reader market, Sony could differentiate itself by adding more powerful chips, displays and media features to the pocket sized readers. 

But Stringer says that, given the nascence of the market, it is smarter to wait and see how consumer warm to the current makeup of the devices. 

“The consumer will tell us if this format is comfortable and helpful and convenient and all those things before you start plowing on a thousand apps or making the ‘Vaio Reader,’” Stringer said on the sidelines of a press conference in New York on Thursday. 

Although I do like the idea of carrying one device that can do everything, in practice it often seems a challenge for me to shift between features or use two at once.  I guess people better at multi-tasking will feel differently, but I don't mind the idea of having a device that only offers books (and magazines and textbooks...) for reading.  If I want to jog or walk with music or a podcast, I won't want to carry a full-size e-book reader, so I'll need a dedicated MP3 player anyway.

The Times describes a serious problem with using e-book readers in class.  Korea has worked to set up electronic whiteboards - that function as a computer screen you can write on -and e-books for the students to carry that will be lighter than a stack of textbooks.  Those textbooks are copyrighted and the copyright holders aren't interested in offering the material in an easily copiable format.

The government plans to have digital devices replace books and blackboards in schools, a transition it claims will open a new chapter in education. However, the ambitious e-learning initiative appears to have been derailed from the start, with a problem that is less about technology than it is with content. 

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has spent 300 billion won (about $255 million) to install "electronic blackboards," or interactive monitors for showing electronic content, in 256 middle and high schools across the country.

However, these neat screens don't see much use in classrooms, as the e-book content to replace printed textbooks is non-existent. 

Critics ridicule the government for putting the cart before the horse, spending lavish money on the e-learning equipment when there has been little progress in plans to convert state-authorized textbooks into digital formats. 

It does seem poor planning to spend all that money to set up the framework and not check up on the content.  Still, there will be no e-book content if there are no e-book readers.  Perhaps the government were attempting to be visionaries, leading the market and the market itself failed in taking advantage of the opportunity.

I've been writing a lot in the last few weeks about e-books but still have no plan to buy one.  Partly, the price is holding me back and partly the range of books and their prices are holding me back.   I don't understand how a paper version of a book is only a little more expensive than the e-version.  There is no need to print the books or store them or transport them; the price should be significantly lower.

What if we create a better world for nothing?

Joel Pett had a thought provoking comic on Dec. 13:

This has really been my point over the past few years.  I think Global Warming is happening and needs to be combatted, but even if it is not, there isn't that much oil in the world and we are running out.  Conserving fossil-fuel based energy and following other proposals set by global warming advocates -and other environmentalists even in the 70's - are good ideas regardless of the root cause.

HT to Pharyngula.

How long a test do you need?

During my first few years teaching ESL at university, my oral exams were scheduled to be five minutes long but always took longer.  When a student had trouble with one question, I would give a different one to offer every possible chance for the student to show that they knew some English.  A coworker, Tom, (and I am talking about events occurring six or seven years ago so, if Tom is reading this, I approved of and admired your methods, even if events were not quite as I remember them) would offer a few questions and if a student had trouble, Tom would offer one more.  If the student was unable to answer it, Tom thanked the student and sent him/her on their way.  He was always done testing faster than I was.

How long do you need to judge a person's English ability?  In my case, I have shortened my tests somewhat but still keep them longer than I really think necessary to let the student feel it was a real test; long enough to be taken seriously.

So, I now think a short test is sufficient.  But is there a minimum length?  Is there a length beyond which you are clearly wasting your time.  And counter-intuitively, if a test goes beyond a certain length does it actually hinder the evaluation process?

Cognitive Daily has had a series of posts on similar subjects lately.

[T]hin-slicing studies ... the idea that a few brief exposures to an individual can give just as accurate an impression of key traits as much more extended interactions. For judging sexual preference in men, a 10-second exposure to pictures of faces isn't any better than a 50-millisecond exposure. For evaluating teaching ability, a few 10-second movie clips are nearly as good as an entire semester in class.

The posts linked above suggest that tests can be much shorter than what feels seemly.

I am live-blogging my research, I guess.  At this point, I have not found any definitive research but here are some possibly relevant links.

This test seems well-thought out and is 3 minutes long with the teacher judging up to four students during those 3 minutes.

Wigglesworth wrote about An investigation of planning time and proficiency level on oral test discourse for Language Testing in 1997.

The inclusion of planning time in semi-direct oral interaction tests adds consider ably to the overall length of the test, and it is important to be clear that the increase in length is justified by the language outcome. Previous research has shown that the effect of planning time in second language can differentially influence the resultant discourse with planned discourse eliciting more complex language on a range of measures.

Wigglesworth seems (I only read the free abstract) to be working to define how long a test needs to be and is focusing on how much time should be allotted to a student between giving a question and demanding an answer.  This 'planning time' appears to be not very important for low-proficiency students.  Again, this means that giving the low-level student time to think about the question does not affect much the quality of the answer.

Other articles found didn't seem to apply and I am too lazy on my Winter break to play with search terms to find more.

I am concluding by saying that a properly prepared test for low-proficiency students can be quite short - which is exactly what I had hoped and already thought.  I should stop now before further research throws my conclusion into doubt!

----
Of possible interest regarding test-takers and test length. Test length and cognitive fatigue: An empirical examination of effects on performance and test-taker reactions  How long a test is too long and is the Soo-Neung (Korean University Entrance Exam) too long?

hiking above hwa-am Temple

I hiked above Hwa-am temple several years ago with my wife and infant son.  It was  a good hike with great views of the ocean-side of Ulsan Bowi.  To start this post, I have included a photo of Ulsan Bowi, but not one taken from the peak.

The reason this photo was not taken during the hike is, the wind was horribly strong and cold.

You might wonder how windy it was and how I could demonstrate that to you.  Look at this photo of the handsome man (click to bigify):

Now, where are his glasses?  He has been photographed begging for help in finding them after they blew right off his face and partway down the mountain.
Back to first-person: I twisted to take a picture and the glasses were pulled right off my face.  I saw them fly through the air and bounce a few times, landing in the scrub behind me in this photo.  I pitifully begged for help finding them, my voice made even more pathetic by the wind filling my cheeks and making me sob.

We found the glasses.  They, and my eyelashes, had a lot of frozen tears on them.

Okay, it was that windy.

Helping me look was my friend Matthew.

Again with the wind, you can see how I have braced my legs to stand still to take the picture.

Actually, the day was plenty bright enough and I'm sure the pictures were at a fast enough exposure that a little camera shake didn't matter.
The temple below was beautiful but we didn't stay long.

I had forgotten how short this hike was.  We started hiking after 8:00am, leaving plenty of time to do the hike.  We were in the car, thawing before 10:00.  We could have taken more time at the top if the weather had been clement.

Matthew also took pictures so more may grace this blog in the near future.

The Korea Times seems a too-easy target sometimes

From today's Times:

12-16-2009 19:33

Bundle Up for Cold Spell Unitl Next Week

(To be clear, I made the pasted section purple, that's not what I am trying to show.)

While there, you might find a link for an article with acceptable spelling but poor grammar and especially poor-filtering by any editor on staff.  A sample:

Extraterrestrial cemetery in Rwanda, Central Africa which is at least 500 years old, was discovered.

According to the Weekly World News, Dr. Hugo Childs, the Swiss anthropologist said, "There must be 200 bodies buried there and not a single one of them is human." 

I found these articles on my own but Korea Beat commented on the aliens-in-Africa' article before I did.

These errors are frequent but I think they pick up around Christmas.  Nine years ago, on Christmas or New Year's Day, an entire article had been typed as if the typist had shifted his fingers one key to the left.  Ur kiijws kujw rgua (It looked like this).