Archive for the 'Education' Category

So what’s Baidu been up to?

Published
by
Jason Li
on August 10, 2007
in Education, Portals and Search
. 5 Comments

This caught my eye when I was writing that Google post the other day, and I couldn’t resist:

Baidukids

Baidu 少儿, or Baidu Kids, is beautifully done and reflects Baidu’s understanding of the Chinese market. When I was doing fieldwork in Beijing last summer, one of the teachers we interviewed said that some Grade 1 homework assignments involved running internet searches and bringing some results to class. And there is nothing better than a safe search engine for that end. (The only problem would be convincing kids to goto the Kids site.)

The first row of links (the golden paw buttons above) are: Study English, Play Games, Science Knowledge, Child Songs, Cartoons, Parents’ Links. The first link on the top left being "Study English" again reflects an understanding, this time of the parents’ wishes.

I may be reading too much into this though, since it’s only a beta section, and their "understanding" might have come out of luck rather than strategic planning.

Go see the site for yourself.

P.S. Baidu’s also been up to other things, mainly in the converging mobile and web realms. See China Web 2.0 Review’s post about their new call-in search service (powered by real human operators).

How a traditional Chinese painting looks 3D… and animated!

Published
by
Jason Li
on June 30, 2007
in Art, Commerce, Design and Education
. 19 Comments

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

The video above was produced by the Shenzhen branch of the Institute of Digital Media Technology (IDMT), which is associated with the Global Digital Creations (GDC). The GDC/IDMT group is located in Shenezhen, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. The Shenzhen base is a production house as well as school; the Shanghai base is primarily a school; and the Hong Kong & Singapore are for marketing and operations.

Both the websites for the Shanghai and Shenzhen centers feature demo animations but the Shenzhen site is the only one that carries work with a distinctively Chinese style.

Backtracking to the video above, the questions are: what is lost in the transfer from 2D to 3D, can the style scale to a film (a tv commercial it can surely do), and how long will it take before someone tries doing so?

Original video found over at One Inch Punch.

P.S. 2D animations of traditional paintings have been done in the past, I have a set of DVDs called 中国水墨动画 with a bunch in there — interesting, but it didn’t hold my attention beyond five minutes.

Essay after Grameen Foundation event

Published
by
Nan Yang
on April 22, 2007
in Education
. 4 Comments

Today I happened to see these pictures…

Student_in_the_west1_2

Studnet_in_the_west4

 

Student_in_the_west3

There were many more photos on the blog More photos that reflect those students’ lifes in western China…Very impressive, and as a person grew up in big city in China, I’ve never experienced this kind of hard learning condition, though I’ve imagined. My mind was full of sympathy and I know our government has been trying hard to help them, however, I hope more and more Chinese or even foreigners from other countries can join together to help improve these students’ lives. These photos reminded me of the Grameen Foundation event I took part in this Wednesday, April 18th in Shanghai.

Instead of raising fund,this event in Shanghai was to get the word out about their new Chinese projects.Here’s a link to a report about this event in Shanghai： Grameen Foundation event in Shanghai  And also Grameen Foundation had other events in China.Here’s the summary of one of the events in Beijing Grameen Foundation event in Beijing

It seems that Grameen Foundation would really bring more fresh ideas about helping poor people to develop their lives. At the end of the event, Kate Druschel, Regional Coordinator, East and Southeast Asia expressed her optimistic attitude about Grameen Foundation’s future in the next 5 years in China. While Grameen Foundation or any other organizations are working hard to help poor people, in my opinion, we should call for more social responsibility and more people to involve in these projects. Hopefully in the next few years we would see more excited faces instead of these sad scenes above…

Chinese lifehack website

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 9, 2007
in Blogs, Education and Translation
. 0 Comments

Life_hack

For Chinese folks experiencing information overload, there is lifebang — a Chinese lifehacking site that contains mostly translations of productivity and Getting Things Done literature, such as Networking for People who Hate Networking or Ten More Ways to Create a Breakthrough in Your Life (from lifehack.org).

China’s stem-cell therapy blogs

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on March 13, 2007
in Blogs, Education, Travel and Virtual China
. 4 Comments

A growing facet of Virtual China: Maryann O’Donnell’s Shenzhen Fieldnotes has a great post on her thoughts about finding out that her local hospital in Nanshan is a leader in alternative stem-cell therapies for foreign patients. O’Donnell compares China stem cell blogs and
China adoption blogs. These two sets of online resources are major
contributors to understandings of China, outside of China. In both
cases China is seen as a source of miracles: a child, a recovery. 

So if you want to get a different view of China, check out the growing number of blogs written by foreign patients who have traveled from around the world to get treatments at Nanshan Hospital and at Dr. Hong Huangyun’s Beijing Xishan Institute for Neuroregeneration and Functional Recovery.  You can find a blogroll of such blogs at China Stem Cell News,
a savvy, well-produced English language website that introduces readers
to the companies, hospitals, and people engaged in the stem cell
treatment market in China.

A bit of background on the phenomena.  A June 2006 Boston Globe article describes the most famous of the stem-cell therapists, Dr. Huang Hongyun:

Hundreds of patients from across the United States and around the world
have flocked to his Beijing surgery practice, where Huang implants
cells with what he says are amazing healing powers...Huang says he injects his patients with "olfactory ensheathing cells."
These cells are thought to help nerves repair themselves by releasing
growth factors. The cells have been shown to repair nerves in animals,
but there is no evidence they help people. Working at Chaoyang and West Hills (Xishan) hospitals, Huang’s team
extracts these cells from aborted fetuses and then opens up a hole in
the patient’s brain or spinal cord, injecting the cells.

The first Western scientific evaluation of Huang’s work was published in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, and concludes: No clinically useful sensorimotor, disability, or autonomic improvements were found.

Continue reading ‘China’s stem-cell therapy blogs’

political sustainability of Chinese inequality

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on February 26, 2007
in Education, Gender, Government, History, Politics and Statistics
. 1 Comment

A very smart, balanced, readable report, "How Much Inequality can China Stand?" has just been issued by Nick Young at China Development Brief.  The report relies on Chinese scholarly and government data to give a succinct summary of some of the key areas of inequality in China today: gender, income (including intra-rural inequality), access to basic services and social protections such as education and health care, exposure to "externalities" such as the effects of urban congestion and pollution, environment and proximity to pollution, and land use deals. 

The report argues that market forces are unlikely to create greater income convergence in the short-term, that state involvement is necessary and that it does exist:

…the predominantly urban NGOs that have emerged over the last decade, the “public intellectuals” who have voiced their concerns and the more adventurous media that have reported those concerns, by no means constitute a coordinated, united or oppositional force. There are, to be sure, some angry individuals who denounce abuses in ways that invite confrontation with the authorities.  But the characteristic form of civil society advocacy in China is to call on government leaders to “pay more attention” to this or that social issue, to “hear the voice” of  this or that social group, and/or to consult more extensively with NGOs, intellectuals, and the general public….The central government has recently introduced a number of social, economic and fiscal policy measures to alleviate rural hardship. It is too soon to judge the effect of these palliatives but they do at least appear designed to address what was, by the turn of the century, beginning to look like a crisis in the countryside.

creating successful children: no Internet?

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on February 23, 2007
in Education
. 0 Comments

Check out the great article on Tao Ran’s Beijing military hospital Internet addiction clinic in the Washington Post yesterday.  It’s the best inside description I’ve seen yet.  One thing it does is highlight the pressure Chinese kids are under to perform academically in middle and high school, the pressure Chinese parents feel to ensure their children’s future success, and the perception that the Internet is only about entertainment and not about learning.  An excerpt:

Among the milder cases are those of Yu Bo, 21, from Inner Mongolia, and
Li Yanjiang, 15, from Hebei province. Both said that they used to spend
four to five hours a week online and their daily lives weren’t affected
but that their parents wanted them to cut their computer usage to zero
so they could study. Yu said he agreed to come because he wanted to
train himself. Li said it was because he just wanted to "get away from
my parents."

Another boy was sent by his parents because he wasn’t interested in school and didn’t "have a goal."  Now, with the help of a clinic counselor, "he’s mapped out a life plan from now until he’s 84."  For some kids the problem is not what they’re doing online, or that they’re addicted to games, but that they are doing anything at all unrelated to studies.  And of course, they come from wealthy families.  As this comment on an earlier Virtual China post (see below) says: This guys are all in rich family. The reason is the bad education. In
China,15-18 students have to spend at least 9 hours in classroom
everyday (in grade 3,it will increase to 10-12 hours).  NO time to playing
basketball/football. if you do something else you will be criticized by
teachers and parents

According to a report I wrote on Chinese young people and education, based on 2005 Chinese educational data,

Ninety-one percent of the Chinese population attends the compulsory six years of primary school and three of junior middle school. At the end of junior middle school students participate in their first major academic hurdle— senior middle school entrance examinations—which weed out about 70% of students from the academic track. Those that don’t end their education here will enter non-degree specialized, vocational, or technical senior high schools. Those who enter academic senior secondary schools spend their time feverishly preparing for the national college entrance examinations that will place them in either 2–3-year junior colleges or 4-year universities. Ultimately, only 7% of those who graduate from junior middle school will attend 4-year universities. Over 60% will end their education at senior high school, without going on to college. 

(via China Digital Times)

See also TV Clip on Internet Addicts

Spring Festival: 小处不可随便 don’t forget the small things

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on February 20, 2007
in Education, Food and Drink, Photos and Travel
. 2 Comments

It’s hard to take care of the public commons with a population 4 times the size of the U.S. This is especially obvious when you have hundreds of millions people mixing and milling across the country, going home, and taking vacations during their Spring Festival holidays. Often times it’s not the big issues that make a difference, but the
small things that can make daily life and public spaces habitable–or
not. In this spirit, Moobol/Molive.com has a post on Not Forgetting the Small Things During Spring Festival Travels." 小处不可随便" probably has a better English translation, but for now I’ll go with "don’t forget the small things." [Update: or perhaps, "don't forget the little places."]

Small_things_1

Small_things_2

The story behind the phrase "小处不可随便" "Don’t forget the small things" is also interesting.  According to Baidu Knows, a famous KMT official got tired of people peeing around the premises and wrote a sign saying “不可随处小便” "Random Urinating Not Allowed."  His calligraphy was so prized that someone stole the sign, cut it into individual characters, and rearranged it into "小处不可随便" "Don’t forget the small things."  [Update: Literally, "don't be too casual in small places"]. This has evolved into referring to things that deface little corners of public space, like littering, spitting, and random parking.

language learning drives virtual China experiments

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on February 11, 2007
in Education, Games, Podcasts and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

The desire to communicate across linguistic barriers is driving a lot of experimentation in the online world.  While we wait for translation software to improve, people around the world are studying Chinese in order to get closer to the Chinese people, and Chinese are studying English.  Virtual environments are starting to provide platforms for Chinese and others to learn from one another.  Here are a few projects that point the way forward:

  • IBM’s John Tolva alerted me to the Confucius Institute at Michigan State University, which has two efforts I’m particularly interested in.  The first is an MMO (massively multiplayer online game) called Chengo Chinese . From the game’s design framework, available at the Confucius Institute MSU website: The new Chengo Chinese [will consist] of four virtual worlds: “villages”, “towns”, “cities” and “cosmopolitans”. The four virtual worlds will progress with increasing complexity, advancing from ancient times to modern times and from countryside to cities. Those different virtual worlds represent a variety of cultures and living styles, and teach different cultural contents and language in correspondence with learners’ language proficiency and cultural knowledge. Learners will start with “villages” and advance into “towns” after they grasp a certain level of Chinese language and cultural knowledge and reach a certain point. [In addition,] the players can choose five career paths in this game, which include: scholar, businessman, kongfu master, officer and historian or archeologist. Players encounter different experiences based on their individual career choice. Furthermore, players with different career goals co-exist in the virtual worlds and interact with each other. In addition, the game also contains many artificial intelligence ‘robots” (i-bots) that can interact with the players.
  • The Confucius Institute is also in the process of purchasing an island on the online world Second Life, which they plan to equip as a kind of virtual language learning and cultural experience.  (Rebecca MacKinnon notes here that Second Life doesn’t support Chinese characters as of yet).
     
  • ChinesePod, as most readers of this blog will already know, continues to be one of the earliest and most innovative Chinese language programs using podcasting.  They offer free, daily podcasts with humor and intelligence, backed by careful linguistic expertise and years of experience of living in China as a speaker of Chinese as a second language.  They also offer business vocabulary and a blog to discuss learning issues. 

Chinese industrial design/art works online

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on December 21, 2006
in Art, Design and Education
. 1 Comment

Check out the very cool VisionUnion.com site, which on its English page describes itself this way:

With rapid updated information, the content of VisionUnion covers the
complete designing industry. We have 12 columns — News and
Information, Plane Designing, Industrial Designing, Multimedia
Designing, CG animation, Architecture and Environment, School Union,
Members’ Works, Union Arena, Picture Searching, BBS, and onvision Store
of Designers’ Works. We provide information, work appreciation, theory
and documents, interviews and feature stories. Every channel is
different and we require that every chief editor be responsible for the
achievements of its channel.

Some places to explore: links to 2006 Chinese art school graduate works across fine arts, design, and industrial design schools all across China (scroll down to the bottom of the page), such as these beauties from the Shandong Industrial Art Academy:

Chinese_art_student_works

Individual designers’ works can be found here, making it a browser’s delight. Mark Zhao, for instance, has a piece called "Big Mao".

Big_mao_2