Monday, September 29, 2008

So Long Korea and Thanks For All the Squid

It's almost a month now since I left behind life in Korea and resettled myself on the sunny coast of southern Mexico. Settled might not be quite the right word as I shifted to Huatulco after a few weeks in Zipolite and will probably move back there tomorrow even though a nice young lady offered to help me find an apartment here.

These will be the last of my Korean Youtube vids. The first was a fun collaborative impromptu lesson with some of my afternoon students just horsing around in the schoolyard. For reasons that were never explained, the first few of my afternoon classes in the second term were canceled. Meanwhile I had motivated students showing up at the teacher's office door, asking when classes would finally start. They were just as bored as I was so five of us took the trusty little Canon outdoors to make a vid. Everybody was allowed one minute to record whatever they wanted to stitch together later with Windows Media Maker. We were having so much fun that other bored students, just hanging around, who weren't part of my afternoon classes, ended up joining us and our numbers more than doubled. We learned lots of verbs like: "zoom"; "focus"; "cut"; "edit"; "mute"; "fade" and so on. My students are natural hams and I knew we had tapped into an effective interactive educational tool but suddenly it was regular class time again and my new co-teacher had provided us some quality texts and cds to use.

Ah well. It was all quality time. We showed our finished product to the the regular classes and everyone had a good laugh. Fun.


Vid number two is of Science Day at our school. That was loads of fun. Several parents from the community volunteered their help. The students of Jinga and Moga are very special young people and I think this vid captures their infectious happy energy. They were so great to work and play with and I hope their future lives will be just as full of fun and discovery as when I knew them. Goodbye everyone. I'll never forget you.

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