[Luis Camacho]

China will play a leading roll in education by Luis M. Camacho

As mentioned by Chen Baoseheng, education minister, speaking at a news conference on the 19th CPC National congress. China will play a leading role in education worldwide, which means that the standards of education in China will become the standards of the world. The education minister estimates that this plan could become a truth by 2049. This is a clear example of how to plan at long term. That is an important discipline for teachers to transmit to students. 

For more information visit:

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/19cpcnc/index.htm

 

[Luis Camacho]

Readings for session #5 by Luis M. Camacho

To know more about modern history of Korea will be very helpful to my Physics class.  It will be very interesting to hear students’ opinion about the continuous threat our country faces by North Korean’s H bomb project. We will explain briefly how is the Hydrogen bomb scientific principle, the expected consequences after use of this destruction technology. We will compare how the modern reaction of the American people to this threat compares with the reaction on the past with The Red Scare situation, back on the fifties. I will like to hear about the students personal opinions about the same situation. We will continue the lesson in a more positive way talking about the importance of South Korea and the great contributions of this country to the development of the automobile and the electronic industries worldwide.

 

 

[Luis Camacho]

Readings for session # 6 by Luis M. Camacho

This session described different points of view that intersect at the same point, a group of people feeling in control to decide who is or who is not white enough to be considered an American citizen. This topic is very useful in my class to explain the difficulties for inclusion for Asians as a different group of people since back of early XX century. Since then, a small group of people has been trying to regulate, select and control immigrant communities to be or not qualified to become American citizens classifying them based in the color of the skin and stereotypes. As same as Asians, Irish, Italian, Latino, and recently African refugee communities, all of them have been suffering the same kind of segregation. This is noticeable in some of our schools nowadays.  We are lucky to live in such an amazing and progressive state as California. Personally, I consider this topic essential for my students because for us, living in Los Angeles, this knowledge is something that we can acquire in the classroom and apply immediately in our daily life.

 

[Luis Camacho]

Readings for session #4 by Luis M. Camacho

It is important for my students to learn that hard work, perseverance, and consistency are very important to achieve success in life. It will be a good example to talk about the war time in Japan, when people suffered in different ways. Kids were separated from their families and sent to a camp where the lack of attention was bad but no comparable with the lack of food.  Even in the middle of desperation women were preparing themselves for the final battle. They were practicing war techniques to defend their country in their own soil. Even tough Japan lost the war, and the country finished destroyed, the brave people of Japan worked together to bring back their country to the first places worldwide in a relatively short time. It is admirable how the Japanese people worked united for the love their country. This love gave them the strength to recover and placed Japan again in the top ten powerful countries in the world. It will be a great lesson to learn for my students specially with the actual situation we are living in our country dangerously divided by the ignorance, intolerance and bigotry of some small part of our society.

 

[Luis Camacho]

Session #7 by Luis M. Camacho

In this session we watched the documentary “We the Workers”. A film made with original footage from the time when the workers were organizing to make public demonstrations pursuing fairness and a way to improve their work conditions.

We had the privilege to have the director of the film in our classroom to extend and confirm some of the most important details of the documentary and listen directly from him about this important part of the history of China. The direct conversation that Mr. Hondong, the director of the documentary, had with the class was extremely valuable to give us a closer and more accurate perspective of the situation of workers in China just few years ago.

I personally had the experience of spending five weeks working in a textile factory in the city of Ningbo, back in the year 2000, the year of the Dragon.

Since the first day at the factory I noticed a huge difference in the labor conditions that the Chinese workers had compared with the workers on the US. But at same time, I was amazed about the pride and dedication that the Chinese people place at performing their work. I learn to appreciate the nationalism that they reflect in every single activity they do. I feel glad that all these positive changes had become for the Chinese workers after all these years of fight.

 

[Luis Camacho]

Session #9 by Luis M. Camacho

 In this session we had a lot of fun with the activity we developed about splitting the class members in three different groups to “recreate” important moments in the Chinese History.

We became in self strengtheners, reformers and rebellious groups.

Professor Dube conducted the activity assigning the main character roles in advance. Our group leaders made an excellent performance (with the direction of Professor Dube) and made us feel as members of the historical group.

In this session I was double happy because besides learning in a different way the history of China, I found it an extraordinary idea that the students can portrait important people on the world of science such as Alexander Graham Bell, Nicholas Tesla, Thomas Alba Edison, Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, etc. I am planning to use this activity in a near future.

 

 

[Luis Camacho]

Session # 10 by Luis M. Camacho

The Cultural Revolution brought a series of important changes to China. The selective memory of events that could damage the image of the people in the high positions of the politic is just a regular tactic of manipulation of ideas. Same way that Chinese government forgot about the thousand of people persecuted and murdered in the way at the time when Mao Zedong was becoming stronger, the murdered students in 1989 at the Tiananmen square has been also ignored. It is scary to think that nowadays the same information manipulation is present in our country in a very similar way.

 

[Luis Camacho]

Session # 11 by Luis M. Camacho

China in the screen.

China has been taking an important prestigious place in the film production industry in recent years. Some Chinese companies have been associating with important studios such as 20 Century Fox, Sony Pictures and AMC Entertainment. The potential market for these companies it is very promising, as proved in the first decade of the XXI century, considering the large population of China, the main idea is to get into the movie business and at same time display to the world the beauties of the modern way of life in China.

Disney Industries is one of the most important associated to the Chinese Entertainment, giving an important space to China on their Parks, celebrating Chinese festivities such as Chinese New Year celebration all around the world.S

 

[Luis Camacho]

Session # 12 by Luis M. Camacho

It was a very interesting session that helped us to understand in a closer way some of the important facts of living in Asia, especially in China. Doctor Dube exposed in a perfect way for us to check and compare some of the differences between living there and here in America such as the high cost of apartments in the big cities. The property lease law for commercial residential use that need to keep paying a fee to the government for use of land, after property is already fully paid.

 

From my personal experience, I had the opportunity to be working for along 5 weeks at South Korea back on 1999 and 4 weeks at China in the year 2000. I always feel privileged for having those opportunities in my life working as an Engineer. This seminar helped me understand the History of these countries, the important events that formed their political movements and the contribution of important people such as Mao-Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek with the development of their nation.

 

I enjoyed particularly the use of timeline information to compare the development of the nations at important moments of the history. I have great plans to use this technique to connect great inventions and discoveries with the needs of the people along different moments on the human history. As a teacher I will have the possibility of share this valuable information with my students, specially with the Physics class, connecting the concept of development of technology with the people needs at different stages of the history.

 

[Luis Camacho]

Session #8 by Luis M. Camacho

This session was in some way a wakeup call for the material people; “Things about America and Americans” expose in some way a large group of our society here in the US. We became in participants of a nonsense race to reach many material goals that most of the time, has not meaning but inflate our ego. In Asian cultures it is important to ask a new person what is his /her name, occupation, age, and some other personal characteristics. For some people here in America, the success and important characteristics of a person are the total of square feet of the place they own, the name of the store where they shop, the brand of the car they drive, etc.

Some of the best memories I had of my time working in China are directly connected with the simplicity of the people’s lives. They can find happiness at a picnic on their day off (at that time in year 2000, were only four days per month), a visit to a museum or a park and some other activities that the people in Ningbo used to do and enjoy.

I think that this little touch of simplicity will be very useful to talk about in our classrooms. Let’s inform to our students that it is fine to enjoy their life, with simple things it is more important that all the “likes” in the social networks.

 

[Luis Camacho]

In late 2012, China's solar industry was on "life support". This warning was made for Li Junfeng, deputy director of the energy research.

Only five years later,  after the intervention of US Department of energy and the goverment of Germany, China create a plan of development of renewable energy, China went from "life support"  to global industry superpower. As the global prices plummeted, China's domestic demand started to ramp up. Partly as a consequence of the low prices and ready availability of the technology.

This is only one more example of the genial Chinese planning work. Chinese goverment visualize solutions to their society problems, develope  plans and follow them step by step. This is a great example of how to reach the sucess, not only in a science classroom but in our daily life.

[Luis Camacho]

This session we had the opportunity to see several images of Chinese Propaganda and it was amazing. I think that Mao Zedong had great ideas of how to deliver his ideas to the people, in an easy and simple way, using images that describe important aspects of progress of the nation by the three main groups of people, peasants, soldiers and farmers, working all together .

[Luis Camacho]

Some of the most important countries developing technology today include the three East Asian countries Japan, China, and South Korea. A great number of inventions and technological discoveries has their origins from these legendary and amazing cultures.

            As we all know, in the last decades China has been developing technology in a great variety of fields, such as worldwide communications systems. Japan has been developing the efficiency, durability, and speed to create the state of the art solid circuit devices, just few years after the end of the WWII. South Korea has been competing with a diverse development on technology since the last 50 years.

The reason of the actual development of these three countries is not a coincidence. Reviewing their story and political and social events that happened in the past are directly connected with the development of these area of the world.

I noticed that my students are easily engaged with the topic of technology, if they can see effects and results in their daily life. A simple example is the millenary invention from China, the compass, contribute to my class as a nice introduction of the existence and use of the magnetic fields.

The knowledge acquired in this seminar will provide me with tools to explain and connect in a better way the development of technology along the history and how they are related with social and political events such as the development of weapons after China invented the gunpowder, the contributions to the world welfare from Japan and their development in robotics and cybernetics that consist in several areas of the Physics applied to the needs of the society, the actual contribution of Korea to the automobile industry around the world.

Technology development will give me the opportunity to expose to new generations the importance of the East Asia countries applying basic Physics concepts to discover, create and improve science at service of the humanity.

 

[Luis Camacho]

I watched the video, it is fun and catch my eye the great color combination on the custom of the super Asian girl. The video it may have not a great effect in adults, I think that this video will be more effective in little kids that ride the bus. They for sure will get the message.

[Luis Camacho]

It is interesting how are these cards designed in a way that a simple visual can manipulated the mind of the viewer engaging it with the idea of prosperity just working peasants, soldiers and farmers guided by the little red book.

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