Note the sender and the subject of this particular piece of spam.
via TweetDeck
Christmas Songs…Just feeling in the mood
Here’s a growing playlist.
Repudo
Digital Objects on the street! Pick Up & Drop them.With Repudo you can drop all kinds of multimedia like a text, a photo, a video or an audio message at any location you like. Repudo is the world’s first platform to handle digital objects in the real world!
For example: Someone can drop a Repudo which contains an image or text for you at the central station. You have to go there in person to pick it up and get the message. Once the Repudo is picked up it is gone from the map. It is now on your phone and only you can decide what to do with it. You can’t copy it.
Keep it or drop it for someone special on a special place. Imagine all the amazing new possibilities!
Repudo brings perception of physical interaction with digital objects in the real world.
Get started and enjoy!
via repudo.com
I can see a lot of potential for this service/app for teaching as well as commerce. After looking at the app, it’s obvious that they mean it to eventually be a location-aware ad service. They are trying to build a user-base through a kind of geocaching-lite activity.
For teachers, especially university teachers who don’t have to worry as much about sending students off into the city or large campus, this could be a lot of fun and very useful. The accuracy (or lack thereof) of the GPS means that you have to be working in a rather large area.
I envision a semester-long activity that mixes Repudo, SMS/Twitter, and/or QR codes stuck around the area. These can be used to assign tasks and guide students to the location/content of the next task. Most importantly, these are context-embedded tasks that take advantage of the area in which they are placed. In an EFL context, that doesn’t mean that you can go into a store and order in English; however, it does mean that you can have students look for/record things like English errors on signs or even shirts in the area, Do translation of something in the area, do interviews with someone in the area, and so forth.
I think that your imagination (and the extent that your students will be willing to do this) is your only limitation.
Fatburger, Seoul
Interested in being like Ice Cube and heading to a Fatburger? Â Here’s a map.
South Korean parents told: pre-school English ‘harmful’ (Good goal, bad approach)
via guardian.co.uk
This is an interesting article. It’s one of those articles that I both agree and disagree with. It is one of those many times in which an organization uses emotional, yet undersupported claims in an attempt to get people to pursue a beneficial change.
The argument that early language learning is harmful is laughable. They are basing this on a couple of studies that run counter to piles of research finding no significant difference or even positive outcomes for early childhood language learning. I’ve seen this many times in my writing classes. I have students take a position on this topic and they do pretty good research papers. Those who write papers opposing this always bring out the same “evidence” that is buried in low-quality journals, or more likely, from blogs and newspapers.
However, with the intention of strengthening public schools and reducing the drive for private institutes (hagwons), I wholeheartedly agree. Children don’t need 12 hours of schooling a day. They probably don’t need half of that in elementary school and I’d say they need much less than that in pre-school. At younger ages they need time to play, socialize, and experiment with the world around them. This forms the foundation for intellectual growth later in life.
This group (WWW) really seems to have this as their mission. I just disagree with the evidence that they are presenting against early childhood language learning. It’s simply weak evidence that has no business of being represented as “fact”.
The job shunners – Timely article talking about graduate job-seekers
[Viewpoint] The job shunners
Part-time workers now number more than 6 million. And yet, small companies have trouble filling their permanent job openings.
Nov 14,2011
Decent-paying jobs are hard to come by. Few expect them to fall from the sky anymore. We can no longer afford to value our worth in jobs. Mature people know how tough life can be and are able to be practical. But people in their 20s and 30s are not ready to compromise for any job. They don’t want to work in minor, satellite operations of large companies.
But physically able and intelligent, capable youths who choose to be idle over having constructive jobs are a burden to society and the nation. They are frittering away their youth. They argue they have nowhere else to go.
They protest that they can’t settle for any job with their hard-earned college degrees. But who said a college degree ensures a job? If they cannot get into their first choice, they must settle for less.
Academic inflation and the hiring culture of our society are the reason many shun mid and small-sized enterprises. Advanced societies like the United States recruit employees based on career experience and references. Experience is usually the top factor in recruitment. Our society hires people through competitive recruitment practices.
I find this an interesting article, not because I agree with all of it, but I agree with some of it. The author here is obviously telling young people to settle. This part I don’t believe in. I don’t think that settling is the right thing to do. However, I do think that getting one feet wet in the workplace is a good idea. For this, you might have to settle temporarily.
The author does point out in the same article the most salient reason for this issue. Job hopping is not really the norm in Korea and even when one does get hired based on their experience elsewhere, they might not be welcomed into the workplace. Companies tend to do mass, competitive hiring that results in cohorts of new hires each year. If you don’t come in this way, you are unlikely to get in at all.
With this in mind, can you blame young graduates for wanting to wait a while to build their resumes in the hopes of getting one of these coveted jobs rather than lower-paying, lower-prestige jobs? I certainly can’t blame them.
With that said, I eagerly await the time when experience-based hiring is more of the norm here in my adopted country.