2009年7月29日水曜日

Meeting 15: Global Issues Discussion (Day 2)

Evaluation: Please put your evaluation in the envelope of my door (rm.439) by Friday, July 31.

Issue 1: Rich and Poor
Main Points:
- The reasons that the rich countries are getting richer and the poor countries poorer:
  1. Poor countries borrow so much money from rich countries and they cannot pay it back so the interest on bthe debt increases. Because of the debt, poorer countries cannot afford to spend money on fixing social problems
  2. Corruption of leaders
What can we do to make this problem better?
- Give more money but make sure it does not go into the leaders' pockets
- Donate money ourselves to poor countries for solving social problems
- Instead of money send people who can manage the money
- We can easily give money to poor countries but it is not good.It is better to give money to support the basis of industry so countries can make money (=grow their economy) by themselves.
- We must change the international political and economic order. Every country consumes products made in China because the products made in China are not expensive. Most of the money goes to foreign country investors. Because so mnay products are made in China workers in richer countries cannot find employment.

To learn more, please attend the United Nations University Conference on Nov 21- 23


Issue 2: Global Warming
Main Points:
There is a lot of CO2 and Methane and they cause global warming.
Global warming causes many problems. For example:
1. Ice melting in the North and South Pole causes the sea levels to rise
2. Rise in temperatures causes storms

What can we do to make the problem better?
Don't eat beef.
Don't use cars
Commute by bicycle, bus, train, walking
and much more.....

Issue 3: Children
Main Points
There are a lot of children around the world who cannot receive education. One problems is that many children will not be able to work, they become homeless and are forced to steal food.
Another problem is that children are forced to work instead of going to school.
It's a big problem that they cannot have an education.

What can we do?
We can do some volunteer work. We can donate pens, notebooks and we can go to poorer countries and teach subjects for free.

2009年7月22日水曜日

Meeting 14: Global Issues Discussion Day 1

In today's meeting the Uighur group presented about disease and the Philippines group presented about weapons and war. After the discussion various MMCE members also gave various ideas about how we can make the problems better. It was a very interesting meeting today and I am looking forward to next week's meeting. Please remember that next week we will start MMCE at 10:20 AM.
Below is a summary of the main points of each presentation.

Disease: (By Uighur)

Main Point of the Presentation
Developing countries suffer from infectious diseases such as Aids, cholera, influenza, tuberculosis, measles and malaria. Many people dies from these diseases every year even though these diseases are preventable. The most dangerous diseases in developed countries are cancer and hear disease.

What can be done to make the problem better?
  • Help people change their life conditions such as getting access to clean water
  • .Education about infectious diseases
  • Donate money for vaccinations.
  • "Don't give fish but teach how to fish"
  • Make drugs such as drugs to treat Aids cheaper
  • People should change their lifestyle to prevent health problems (no overeating, etc,)






Weapons and War: (by the Philippines)

Main point of the presentation
There are many wars going on even today.
Ex. Only in Africa there are more than 10 wars.
8 international wars and 25 civil wars in 2005

One problem that results from these wars is land mines
About 2000 people are killed or injured by landmines every month.
It is difficult to remove landmines because it is dangerous and expensive.
Fact:Between China and Vietnam there are 2 million land mines

What can be done?
  • Monetary support for removing mines (Opposite opinion - giving money is not good because they might use the money for other military affairs. )
  • Find the landmines and mark them
  • Don't make new landmines
  • Government should persuade countries with landmines to join the Ottawa Treaty
  • United Nations has the removing mines project and we can give monetary support to the United Nations. It is better than giving it to some government.


2009年7月15日水曜日

Meeting 13: Preparation for the Global Issues Mini Conference

Procedures for Global Issues Mini Conference

Today, July 15, each group will prepare for their mini-presentation.

Next week, July 21, we will make 5 new groups of 5 people. The success of this meeting will depend on EVERY MMCE member attending. One absent member will affect the discussion. Each new group will consist of representatives from the other groups. The representatives will take turns presenting about their global issue. Each representative has 28 minutes to present and the mini conference will last for about 2 meetings. The content of your presentation will be based on the Global Issues in English textbook. An outline of your presentation is written below.

1 Topic Introduction: Briefly introduce your topic by asking one of the conversation questions
2 Pre-presentation activity: Ask a factual question, have your listeners complete a graph, or read the profile
3 Helpful Words: Quiz people on the new words. (5 minutes)
4. My Global Issue: Read the information about your global issue and then ask 5 – 8 questions about it to the other group members. (10 minutes) You can ask the questions before or after your presentaion. Listeners: If you do not understand something you can ask during the presentation!
5. Post-presentation activity: Discussion- Discuss the following (5 minutes)
- Do you have any questions about the presentation, please ask!
- Did anything surprise you about the presentation? What? Did this presentation change your thinking in any way, how so?
- How does this problem affect you?
- Are you doing anything (unintentionally) to cause this problem? What?

6. Solution: Let’s brain storm things that we can do to make this problem better. (5 minutes)

At the ending of the second meeting, each base group will gather again and share what was said in 4 and 5.

2009年7月3日金曜日

Meetings 11&12: Back to Culture and Culture Phenomenon

In this meeting we returned to looking at culture and cultural phenomenon. We did not cover very much new ground, rather, we mostly reviewed what we had learned in Meetings 5 & 6. We reviewed the following:

the Meaning of Culture

Culture Products:
Artifacts
Institutions
Art

Practices
Acts
Operations
Scenarios
Lives
Non Verbal Communication
Kinesics
Oculessics
Haptics
Olfactics
Chronemics
Proxemics

Next time we will study the following cultural phenomenon:

Perspectives
Power Distance
Individualism
Masculinity
Uncertainty Avoidance
High/Low Context

Communities

Persons