Think different. Do unusual.

 At the last class, we watched a videoclip about education.

We understood that the education system of Japan is out of date.

We students and also teachers in Japan can’t use technologies enough that improve a quality of study aggressively, and even children of elementary school in HongKong can use them. What a shame... We discussed and found some ideas to solve this problem. 

 First, we need more high skilled teachers who go along at this generation of technology. Almost all the teachers in Japan don’t allow us to use our phones, tablets, laptops, or such useful devices for studying. It’s because they have a foolish pride I think. They think that if we are allowed to use them, we don’t listen to them and just wast time, but it’s a teacher’s responsibility to make us interested in their class. And also, teacher’s job is to teach for high motivated students so there are no needs to attract attention of unmotivated students. Teachers always want everyone to listen to his/her lectures and I can understand it, but it’s not the way teaching in high schools or universities because these are not included into the compulsory education system. I want to show teachers this videoclip that Rab showed us during the class.↓

 Second, governments have to stop lecturing useless knowledges that we will never use in the future. What they have to teach are useful, practical knowledges. We students and our parents pay a lot of money for it but not for that.

However, it was really hard to get specific ideas though we discussed a lot in this way.

Then, Rab taught us about a ’20%’ rule of the Google company. The importance of the ’20%’ is immeasurable. All of the employees have to concentrate on their work for just 20% of work time per day and they can do anything they want to, like drinking eating netsurfing and talking with people. But they hit up to new, creative ideas. Why? The reason is simple. The creative ideas that turn our life upside down are almost always born from our daily life. We can’t hit upon ideas with sitting in front of a work desk and just thinking a lot, because the ideas of better things that we need will be laid on our daily life but not laid down there.  So they purposely make time to get daily life experiences with laid-backing for coming up with new ideas.

Rab often says, doing unusual is the key point to be successful. It will make something new that no one has been bethought. But now we know it's really difficult because our blains do 'the limited thinking' we've already learned. So I've continued to be free from it since then.

 I think that the fundamental problem is the government doesn’t seriously try to make the best place for us to learn things. They still have a foolish pride and in a self-defense situation. The first thing we have to change is them, maybe...

I love the catchphrase ’Think different.’ by Apple. 

I want to be a person who can think different and do unusual.

Now we have to try harder to make better surroundings for everyone.
Why don't we do so together?

How to make and edit websites on Google, and share impressions of the videoclip.

 Firstly, we learned about how to make websites on google, also about editing and sharing them. You know the first thing to do when we want to do something on google is clicking the 9 squares on the upper right :-) We can do many many things there and also it's easy to make websites on it. On our websites, we have to try to make them beautiful and effective. There are some keys. Considering colors of each sections is important, because if we make terrible colored websites like this↓

no one wants to see this! The very sight of this makes me feel sick... But by contrast, if we make wonderful one, people will be interested in it and read it just because the appearance is great. And we know how to make it great because we learned the same thing on google slides!

 Next, we watched the rest of the videoclip we saw at the class before last.
The topics this time were about chemical danger, pathology of commerce, and energy needs. All of them are difficult for me to think in English, but I tried hard to understand them. Bad chemicals are destructing our environment for many years and it’s one of the baddest conducts related on selfishness that corporations and countries have. 
And it's a part of pathology of commerce.  Managers of companies always think about making profits and how much they get from there, I know it's natural but they also have to think about the lovable Earth that provides everything we need. If the earth will be died, our beloved children in the distant future can't live on such a great place Earth. Isn't it a pity? Isn't it a shame?
 Rab also said we use too much energy now and he don't have any air conditioners in his house because he can stand it. And he said, we can start cutting down our energy use easily by doing this way. I think it's a good idea but the point is how many people want to cut down energy use by going so far. I think we have to realize that we have to bear the responsibility of the big mistake we humans made. 
We are going to make groups and discuss the most memorable topic together. So I want to make ascent of my understanding of these topics from now.

 I was surprised at Rab's Email address that he got from Hosei because the address was very old type. He said it is 1990's! He can do nothing except Emailing on it and off course he can't do his job in our class with it. What a mess..! I was so sorry to hear that.

Do '3B’s check' and understand better!

 Rab taught us that we have to do the 3B’s check at first when we read books and texts.

What is the 3B’s check?

1.Background→subject : range point : argument

2.Biography→writer : position

3.Bias→book

No.1 is for understanding the writer’s point of view and the theme of the document.

No.2 is for knowing better about the writer.  It’s very important because the information of his or her position and the background are necessary to realize the reason why did he/she think in the way.

And the most important one is  No.3. When we read something, we must find and understand biases that the writer has, because all the people have at least 1 bias. Off course we have some, too. So if we don’t understand it, we can easily swayed by the idea or just criticizing it and miss 'the truth to me'. There are lots of ways to think about something and also many collect answers can be existed, so we have to think neutrally and try to learn some new things from there.

Rab gave us an example. He said 'There are about 780 universities in Japan and 30 are good, others are crap.’ He continued and said, 2 teachers think about it differently. TeacherA says ‘Japanese universities are all crap because the students are lazy and untidy.’ because he has taught in universities the students don’t listen to him or just sleep in his classes. TeacherB says 'All the university students in Japan are great!' because he has taught in very high leveled universities the students are motivated.

 And I understood that all of them are truth to them because they had different experiences so it’s natural that they think differently. That’s the bias Rab said.

 Next, he told us how to find good books. One easy way is that search the book on Amazon and see the reviews.

Great books have the C shape reviews on it because almost all the customer’s opinions are divided on 2 sides. Someone agree to it very much, or, conversely, disagree to it very much. The reason why such a thing happens is that the opinions the book says is logically correct. So the people who like the opinions give good reviews and others who dislike them give opposite ones.

 At last, we watched a videoclip about corporation. People in the movie said differently because they have biases and I could understand either of them.

 I've got confused after we finished watching the videoclip because there was a big issue to solve. Now we are familiar with corporations and we can't do without them. But there are some questions. What is corporation? What is the aim of corporation? What is the right corporate philosophy? 

 The definition of the word corporation is, making profits as much as possible with obeying the low. So it is no matter how much the corporation pollutes the environment if they keep the low. In fact, most companies prior the benefits at first. I know it's natural and they have no choice. But I can't stand it because I think they have to consider the quality of lives and environment around the company. Also they have to give us some benefits, too. Moral actions are important in this era of the destruction of the environment. This is the ethical way of thinking but there are other ways, too.

Rab said 'The truth is somewhere in the middle.' But I understood that sometimes it's so hard to find it because 'the truth' is different between people.

But now I'm happy to realize the bias of people, and also of me. I can think more neutral than before.

How to use Feedly, Google Slides, and functions of sharing.

 In the last class, Rab taught us how to use Feedly for noticing new posts to us and sharing our blogs easily with other’s.

The application will give us notice who posts a new one and how many posts are there that I haven’t read yet.

 After he told us about Feedly, he taught us how to make Google Slides for presentations.

We can make and share good slides on it easily.

He told us we should find some wonderful photos and it must be 800✖️600 at least because if we use photos under this size, the slides will be f*cking quality. It’s just boring.

Further more, the font of titles have to be changed to a appropriate one, it must be put on dead space, and we have to arrange them along the objects in the photo. 

We can make better slides with just keeping them on our minds.

And also we can comment to other’s and share them, so we can have common slides if we make slides in a team.

 Recently, I’ve realized how great and useful the apps are that Rab taught us in the OC classes.

One of the greatest points of using them is that we can login to both of them with google ID. Once we login to them with it, the whole things we use on many apps are synced. It’s wicked! But I’m a little bit scared of the security, because if our private properties are leaked, the whole information on us will be available for bad people. But except this, I’m really happy to know a lot of new apps and functions that are useful for studying.

Now I got used to this class and enjoy listening to Rab and classmates, thank you so much!

The limited thinking of us.

 2 weeks ago, Rab taught us about the concept of limited thinking.

He said that our creativity depends on our ability to break away from limited thinking. 
Our blains usually want to make limits when we think about things, but he taught us how 
to overcome this limit. 

 At first, he asked us to draw 9 circles on a piece of paper and arrange them into a square shape. Next, he asked us to connect the circles by drawing a designated amount of straight lines.

 There were only 3 rules. 

1. All the circles must be arranged into a square.

2. Lines must be straight.

3. We must keep our pens on the paper until we finish covering all the circles.

 After drawing our circles into a square shape we then had three lines to connect all the circles.  It was difficult. Almost all of us couldn’t find the answer. Another challenge with 2lines, and only one line resulted the same. The cause was our limited thinking. Our blains made our own rules. For example; the circles must be large to some extent, 

the lines must go along the center of the circles, etc.

He told us that what was missing for the Japanese students was creativity. We are good at making something better, but bad at creative something new. We have to think more freely if we want to be creative. 

 After the class. I was surprised and a little shocked that how much our blains think limitedly and miss the chances to make good results.

Once I heard the answer I thought, what the hell, how easy it was! I could find the answer, why I couldn’t! But I understood it's the dividing line between creative people and people who are not. So now I'm trying to think creatively, everyday.

 I hope I'll become a creative person someday.