It has been a crazy week

For the last month I have been getting back into the swing of things as the summer winds down. It has been crazy busy at work. We are getting ready for a new software launch with training materials, promotional videos, and power point slides all needing language polishing. Before that, the heat humidity, and pollution put a damper on my enthusiasm to do anything.

Not much else to say, but stress motivates me to finish up back burner projects of my own. Thats why the flurry of little projects on my blog. My blog is actually a diary, a place where  can work out things, try stuff out on the offhand idea that someone might actually read it. Writing without readers is next to impossable and I hate to write.

A blog is a soapbox for shameless self promotion, but I prefer action research, working collaboratively with others to produce new knowledge from old or new information.Thats a contradiction I have to live with, but I hope I might be able to connect with others who are interested in collaborative activities. In particular, using web 2.0 tools including mapping tools for action research guided by quatitative research methodologies to create thick description is something I would really like to do with a group of partners.In China, I am lingustically and socially isolated really, and I spend more time than ever online. 

I have a hard time thinking about empirical quantitative data, so I like data visualizations in the form of graphs, charts, and maps. But I  am really facinated about ways in which spatial technologies, Web 2.0 applications and qualitative methods and approaches could be intergrated together with social media to create different kinds of representations of the world around me.The photosynth software, google maps, survey monkey, crowdsource data collection tools, web crawlers, Ucinet, are fun to play with. Most data has some kind of spatial reference and can be mapped, even texts, like Ong`s Biocartography which I translated into a cartographic map.

This week I have been preoccupied with story boards, blocking and scripts for traning videos. But, I am also starting to try out teaching English, using a didactic method to co-construct dialogues from vocabulary gleaned from videos from the web, music, and short texts. I am trying to make it into short games, devising little activities to develop confidence, vocabulary, and contextual understanding.  I am trying to apply Fierian methods. I guess I will see how it goes.I am looking forward to school starting and a new bunch of students at English corner later this week.