Author: Alex Stark

Today the class worked on exponential mathematics. This involves the meaning and the use of exponents. Most of the issues I assisted with was what the exponent truly meant. To accomplish I explained the meaning of exponents as successive multiplication the extent of which is outlined by the value of the exponent. First I had students write out the successive multiplication then count the number of times the base of the exponent appeared in the multiplication.

Overall I am loving the environment of the class. To monitor progress the teachers assistant, a french man named Charles, conducts progress tests and reports the results on a spreadsheet. When the students improve the teacher gathers the class’ attention and congratulates the student. I love this as a teaching technique for adults especially because it reinforces the idea of progress.

2/13/20

Today the students worked on science which involved the water and carbon cycles. I helped my assisting teacher with one student. Her name was Cece at least that’s what she called herself. She was preparing for the mathematics exam in which adult ed students are required to demonstrate proficiency with basic algebra and arithmetic. She was struggling with fractions/division, inequalities and single variable algebra. The biggest problem we found was that she needed a better understanding of her multiplication tables. We talk about my interest in math and science and I explained to her what got me interested in science. After I explained it to her she appeared deflated saying that she would never get as good as I am with math. I explained to her that she doesn’t need to be good at math to make it and that everything takes practice to excel at. We parted ways and I encouraged her to continue working on her times tables and not to stress about the test. Overall I say it was a good session

1/30/2020

Today was the first day of my ICR experience/opportunity/volunteership. Today we went around and introduced ourselves, there was one other person from a high school around here and got a warm welcome from the class. The class worked on the quadratic formula via worksheets that the teacher, David, printed for everyone. I went around the room and assisted people who needed help. One of the biggest problems I saw was people would often separate the addition in the numerator after they evaluated the radical into two separate fractions rather than the addition and the subtraction. I tried to use a cooking analogy, but this had limited effectiveness. I look forward to the next topic the net time I volunteer here.

Hey guys for today’s blog post I wanted to talk about the Chinese influence on the video games industry. Late last year the gaming company Blizzard received quite a bite of public backlash for the way it handled a Political statement at their October 6th Hearthstone Grand master’s tournament. The TL;DR version of the story is that the champion, @blitzchungHS had his title and prize money stripped for supporting the Hong Kong protests. For people who would like to learn more the video produce by Inside Gaming elaborates into more of the specific.

As for the reason this happened it is speculated that the companies share holder Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, had influence in the decision to ban Blitzchung and act the way that blizzard did. Gaming, especially mobile gaming for hearthstone, is a huge market in china. A point cited by the video, in order to exist in this ecosystem companies have to appease the Chinese government.

For all its faults I believe that the situation is much more convoluted than it lends itself to be through this video. Taking common business practices outside their own individual cultural contexts it has inherent value clashes between what the Chinese people think is normal and what the western world think is normal.

Hey Everyone! today I’d like to talk about the BBC documentary Genius of the Ancient World Confucius. This documentary was really interesting because it filled me in on the life and teachings where I wouldn’t have been filled in otherwise. Confucius had a very top down architecture for governing both families and societies. “It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered” (The Great Learning 14). Confucius’ ideals spoke of mutual respect between young and old and it’s through this ideal is how a just society functions. Confucius also valued education and merit as a basis for leadership. This ideal requires the leader to be an expert in their trade in order to lead. This is not how modern day society is run. Compared to Confucius’ ideal modern society  today’s society is often governed by people who don’t have the educated background.

This documentary, as well as the reading on  was very interesting because it allowed me to brush up on the aspects of Confucianism that I had learned before. This material also taught me more about Confucius background that I never considered before.

Hello everyone it pleases me to discuss the reading Tao Te Ching today. In Tao Te Ching, the reading for today, poems are use to elucidate the values of the Daoist school of though. While reading these poems you can see many similarities of modern American ideals. For example, using clear and unbiased judgement when making decisions. We see this discussed in poem 3 of the reading, “Therefore, the True Person governs by emptying the heart of desire and filling the belly with food, weakening ambitions and strengthening bones” (The Tao Te Ching 7). While this doesn’t align perfectly because too often time we let anterior motives govern our actions. This conjunction between these two tell us that daoism can be used to describe a good way to govern our country.

The take away i got from this reading is daoism is a philosophy of balance. We as Americans prefer to govern and judge with balance an this have parallels with the Daoist school of thought.

Most of what we think of culture is based in what bind us into groups of people. What we will primarily learn about is the cultural differences between us, the american culture, and the rest of the world, specifically China and the Islamic Middle East. When we think of these places culturally we think of the mainly food and relations with the United States. In terms of China we think of manufacturing and trade. In the Middle east us, as Americans, often think of armed conflict. We often neglect the other aspects of their culture such as music and how they govern. I expect to learn a great deal about these cultures in this course.