I recently ran across a website that agrees with my theories about the importance of “art” in language teaching. I mean, it’s not a deeply academic site, but it’s nice to see teachers that have the same instinct and approach that I do. Creativity is how to get kids (and even adults) to not just study but to actually learn to use foreign language. Anyway. In that vein, here’s a really good drawing done by an otherwise low-ability and low-motivation fifth-grade student named Ahyeon, based on a story we read about Boe the Frog, who counts feet (as in: “that hen has 2 feet, one, two”; etc.).
Day: May 7, 2012
Caveat: Redemption From Piracy @ 99¢ a pop
Haha. I did something, today, that I haven’t done in about a year: I paid for music. I was listening to KCRW, and there was a track I liked. Normally, I respond to this by doing a youtube search for a posting of the track, and then I use a little conversion utility to grab an mp3 file of the audio part of the video – no questions asked. This is piracy, of course.
I have rationalized this behavior (or justified it, or something) with the excuse that, since having come to Korea, I have continuously run into problems which can be summed up by this paraphrase: “Sorry, [this music-selling website, e.g. amazon etc.] is not authorized to sell this material in your country.” After a few encounters with this type of barrier, I gave up, and became a pirate. It was too easy, not to.
But today, I couldn’t find this track in the youtubes, and so I clicked the “buy in amazon” link in the KCRW track-list; just for giggles, I went ahead and attempted the transaction, and lo and behold, it went through, despite my nefarious Asian IP address.
Damn! I might have to give up piracy. Amazon wants my money, and my poor citizenship in the capitalist machine just lost its backing logic. Ah, redemption.
What I’m listening to right now.
[So I couldn’t find a youtube of it, right? You can get it for $0.99 on amazon.com]
The Baldwin Brothers, “That’s Right.”
[Daily log: walking, 4 km; running 4 km]