For my ETEC (Education Technology) class, I will need to make a Powerpoint presentation incorporating different elements, like video, images, sounds, etc. Also, trying to make it a nonlinear format. We're supposed to do one about ourselves... This will be fun!
In fact, ETEC is probably my "fun"-est class... I've always wanted to have a class on technology, just a bit ahead of where I'm at, so I can explore my capabilities at expressing myself through software, etc. I would recommend it to anyone who "has ideas," but is just not savvy enough with the computer...
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Unfortunately, I'm pretty blah right now regarding everything else... Just existing. My classes (the ones I am attending as a student) are actually all pretty cool, even the one I complained about earlier (the textbook and conversations with other graduate students, and a softening of my initial impression, have saved the class). I am fascinated by the complexities of the teaching profession; also, of course, slightly daunted and intimidated. But at this point, I still am naive enough to be optimistic...
The classes I teach, I'm okay with. Been discovering formats that the students seem to enjoy and learn a lot from. There are some students who bring up critiques (of me and the school in general) that I am not certain that I can address adequately... For example: there is one student who has apparently apprenticed below a Japanese practitioner of the Toyohari method... Our school teaches primarily TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine... which, as was pointed out by David, our school librarian, is actually a misnomer, and a "marketing label..."). So this student critiques the TCM approach, and our clinical procedures, stating that we are not "philosophically consistent," "we never tonify, we only disperse," and other things.
She has valid complaints, of course. BUT: we are expressly supposed to be a TCM school; AND clinic is NEVER a perfect, ideal situation... Interns are limited in time, supervisors have varying perspectives on the application of TCM (or even whether TCM style is appropriate)...
I offered an idea to the student interns on Wednesday. I told them that we could attempt to offer students the opportunity to practice different styles of acupuncture (Korean, Japanese, etc.). But I made clear that this will be a difficult thing to enact. We will have to create clinic manuals for each particular style, and if an intern decides to practice a given style for a period of time, they MUST commit to it. What I want to avoid is "haphazard" acupuncture, where points from all manner of context are "thrown into" a treatment, without any consistent philosophical basis... Of course, there are "empirical" points, or points that individual practitioners "discover..." but even so, there must be some philosophical basis upon which a given treatment depends, or else patients become nothing more than pin cushions...
This will be a difficult thing to do, unfortunately... And there are several questions that must be answered prior to the actual work. Questions like, what constitutes an acupuncture "style?" How is a style different from an individual interpretation of a style? Is there such a thing as an eclectic, or META-style?
I have distinct ideas of what I consider to be styles. TCM, for example, is a vast style with several "interpretations," but there are basic consistencies that hold across interpretations... There is no one Japanese style, however... There is the Toyohari school, various Five Elements "styles" (like Shudo Denmei's), and, of course, the eclectic Kiiko Matsumoto... Then there are all the microsystem "styles," like Koryo Hand Acupuncture, Auriculotherapy... I could go on near forever...
... anyway, that's the big concern in clinic, for me, anyway. Haven't even discussed this with other supervisors, or the president of the school. It might even be considered SUBVERSIVE that I bring such topics up... I mean, implying that there are other legitimate styles out there questions the TCM backbone upon which the school is founded... BUT: I feel we are doing students a disservice if we imply that there AREN'T other valid styles; when they go out into the marketplace, their competitors will be using a whole slew of styles. At the very least, we need to acquaint our students with some of those styles, so they don't feel completely overwhelmed...
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... Another idea I've been thinking of is trying to "computerize" the whole intake analysis process... I've been thinking of this for myself as well. I would like to write a program that would allow students/patients to enter information off an intake form (perhaps even replacing hard-copy intake forms); the info would then be entered into a datasheet. The datasheet would then be compared against various databases (one for TCM style, another for Kiiko Matsumoto style, etc.) and results would be printed as percent matches with different patterns; for example, patient A matches 97% with Liver/Kidney Yin Deficiency, 50% with Spleen Qi Deficiency and so on... Again, this may be seen as blasphemous or subversive, but I think it helps to QUANTIFY information, if only to help clarify a practitioner's thinking... AND it could be used as a teaching tool, because students would actually be able to SEE why a given diagnosis could be interpreted as more likely than another, SIMPLY based upon the AMOUNT OF MATCH... I want to learn how to program (perhaps in html????) in order to construct such a intake analysis...
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I have other aspirations for finishing Marsilani... Ideas are stewing about, and sometimes upon re-reading old material, I discover that perhaps things aren't half so bad as I imagined... (maybe I'm just in a generous and uncritical mood of late). I have ideas of radically rearranging a few stories, like Kipapa, Distance, Exit Stage Right, Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, etc... Mainly the stories in the second section... Also: the whole Moth-Eaten story needs to be drastically reworked; maybe even the incorporation of a filthy dirty (I mean it) sex scene (first I've ever written, at least publicly).
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I've got to register Willow and Aiden for school; Willow will be attending Mililani Ike (hopefully), which is just around the corner from where we live; Aiden will continue attending Children's House...
I need to work harder and more consistently with Aiden on such things as letter recognition. Willow is doing well, but I have to really get her up to speed on reading. Kindergarteners these days are doing what I think I was doing in the second grade!!!
Also: we will have Willow and Aiden take violin and percussion (snare) classes with this high school kid who lives nearby. He's an expert in the Suzuki method, and comes highly recommended... What's more, get this, he will only charge us $30 for each of them per month!!! I couldn't believe it myself... Too good to be true. Hopefully, they have the attention span for it...
Something this teacher said was interesting... He said that kids this age don't know what they want; if you ask them to "choose" what they want to play, they will only go for what is shiniest, or what parents want, etc. It is reminiscent of something I discussed with other students about in our Educational Foundations class, something related to Plato's Allegory of the Cave... In the initial stages, guidance is vital, because students are "so blind" that they don't know that they don't know... Also, with regards to "freedom;" freedom is NOT unconditional (or cannot be in a society)...
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Lynn has a new hairstyle, her hair is cut short... Don't know why, but it is particularly attractive to me... Is it something "boyish?" Ugh...
Speaking of which. I ate dinner at Kent's over on River Street. River Street, if you don't know, is a sort of dirty nasty place. There are a bunch of Chinese gamblers playing Pai Gao, and a lot of "tweakers" (crystal meth heads), and homeless people, and REALLY unattractive hookers. And there are also a few transvestites... So anyway I was eating eggs, portuguese sausage and rice (what I ALWAYS eat there, don't ask me why) and I was sitting across from three gay men, two of them transvestites, one ALMOST looking like a homely skinny girl. As I was on the way out, one of the transvestites said, "Excuse me, can I ask you a question?" I was in a pretty open mood, so I hung around, said "Yes." And the transvestite asked, "What are you? Are you Chinese?" "No." And (s)he ran through the checklist: Korean? Filipino? Hawaiian? Finally, "Japanese?" "Yes." And then (s)he said: "Well, you are very attractive." I smiled briefly, said "Thank you, so are you." And I left the place, trying to not grin too ridiculously...
Not the first time I've been accosted and complimented by (gulp) a man. I wish I'd had that kind of luck with women... And I wish I'd had that kind of luck with women when I was single and desperately lonely... But that's all in the past. I've got my (now) boyish looking wife. And I'm happy...
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