Raising cash at Christmas bash

A Christmas bash in Bucheon is to raise cash for Korean orphans on Friday night. The event at the Park bar in Jung-dong, Bucheon, will see gifts and cash collected for various orphanages in Gyeonggi Province.

Australian varsity forays into India

With India becoming a preferred destination for foreign universities, it is of no surprise that the University of Wollongong is all set to open its campus in India.

UOW Business School a rising star

The University of Wollongong's thriving Sydney Business School has jumped five places in the latest rankings of the top Asia-Pacific business schools. The multi-campus facility bucked the trend of some other Australian institutions, rising from 18th to 13th in the list of schools most favoured by international employers. It placed third in Australia, behind Melbourne Business School and the University of NSW.

You can almost reach out and touch them in NS

Interesting Korean Neighbour

"China's navy has hundreds of vessels at its disposal, among them nuclear submarines and an aircraft carrier, but it still does not come close to the huge naval firepower wielded by the United States.

Chinese President Hu Jintao called Tuesday for the country's navy to "make extended preparations for military combat", further fuelling fears over Beijing's ambitions in the highly strategic maritime area that surrounds it."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/us-navy-still-eclipses-chinas-expanded-fleet-105412801.html

Backwater - Ode to Rural Nova Scotia?

Backwater
We're sailing at the edges of time
Backwater
We're drifting at the waterline
Oh we're floating in the coastal waters
You and me and the porter's daughters
Ooh what to do not a sausage to do
And the shorter of the porter's daughters
Dips her hand in the deadly waters
Ooh what to do in a tiny canoe

Black water
There were six of us but now we are five
We're all talking
To keep the conversation alive
There was a senator from Ecuador
Who talked about a meteor
That crashed on a hill in the south of Peru
And was found by a conquistador
Who took it to the emperor
And he passed it on to a Turkish guru

His daughter
Was slated for becoming divine
He taught her
He taught her how to split and define
But if you study the logistics
And heuristics of the mystics
You will find that their minds rarely move in a line
So it's much more realistic
To abandon such ballistics
And resign to be trapped on a leaf in a vine

STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

DANIEL J. COSTELLO, BA (ACADIA), MIB (UOW)

This statement of teaching philosophy is written to meet general application requirements. The discipline of international business excites me because world trade has expanded more than twenty-five fold since 1950. I believe it is a flexible area of teaching and research due to the nature of its growth and rewards my approaches to applying it in the field of education. My teaching path is permitted due to its growth.

My motivational strategy is assisted by the needs of my students. For example, Korea’s economic growth relies on an export market economy where business English skills are vital and essential to acquiring new markets and trade representatives abroad. So while I encourage students’ innate curiosity and desire to seek out international opportunities, I do not need to “sell them” on its relevancy. One of my inspirational teachers said that a man should carry his business in his briefcase. This impacts my teaching and learning role in international business and willingness to work almost anywhere. So my teaching and lessons are a form of customer designed service.

My lesson planning skills have become more refined over fifteen years and following graduate studies in international business, two key strengths have emerged. First, my experience of teaching English as a second language has been an advantage in international business teaching as a large proportion of students and researchers are English as second language learners. Second, my desire to improve my teaching skills has positively influenced my record of achievement in acquiring further postgraduate certificate education.

In my classroom, the basis of my lessons rely on students’ textbook knowledge preparation with extensive pair work and group work with teacher and student led discussions, short presentations, and brief introductions to general topics, shallow and wide in focus and scope. Over a regular semester syllabus as many as twelve core topics are covered at an introductory undergraduate level. These topics are halved in sophomore and junior level classes all designed with respect for departmental request that students be given an opportunity to speak about and gain confidence in the topic of international business. As a result, while I seek to minimize my focal role, I do give students clear direction in their tasks and classroom activities when they play listening roles. However their core group discussions and classroom discoveries are facilitator led and directed by me. Due to social upbringing, Korean and Chinese students are often challenged by cooperative small group activities and I believe this helps prepare them for the realities of the international business working world.

My learning outcomes are measured in a few simple ways. First, I design and deliver online based homework which reviews the classroom based lesson topics. Then, I give a written midterm and final exam based upon the homework. Midterm exams are reviewed in terms of areas requiring future improvement. Finally, speaking presentations are evaluated to measure students’ depth of interest in self-selected topics as well as public speaking skills with full rubrics.

While rare, I enjoy teaching smaller groups of students because I have more chances to focus on each individual learner that way. I have learned that I am a flexible teacher with good common sense approaches to student and classroom management. I have acquired this self-knowledge through time, trial and error. I encourage students to visit my office for regular visiting hours or appointment or to connect by telephone, by email or through online wiki services. I evaluate my teaching effectiveness by monitoring students’ level of participation in class as well as through general required student evaluations, suggestions, consultation and comments of my working peers.

I have learned that teaching is an evolving skill which requires consistent renewal and good humor. While further education is always helpful, witnessing my students’ successes is also affirming. For example, following one of my lessons about online sales and marketing a Chinese student set up a website selling Skype card accounts. He has since returned to China and joined the Skype China Head Office. Another graduate joined The Import Export Bank of Korea; still another started an auto export business to South East Asia. A recent graduate told me she will soon be locating to China as a regional manager of a global restaurant chain where she started ladling soup in the kitchen as a freshman. Another fellow has been posted to Chennai, India to head up an offshore trade office while yet another handles apparel orders for JC Penny. There is even one enterprising character that spent a year managing a large team on a corporate service account at a five star hotel in Florida on a study break.

While I cannot profess to a record of published research I am not incorrigible in this regard. I work and teach in isolation from my own culture and take my holidays on frequent trips around Asia and the Middle East and I value my free time. Following the high altitude of graduate studies rather than continue to a PhD program, I chose to learn the nuts and bolts of international trade and have not been idle in this regard. It is a form of practical hands on research that I have conducted. Even while a humanities undergrad my weekends and evenings were on call at a local lobster pound scaling, packing, loading, shipping and receiving live seafood for air cargo exports.

The best learning experience I have had so far is my current teaching position rewarded due to diligence and patience in my job search. Here I was kindly managed and allowed to freely grow my knowledge base and my ability to design stimulating courses for my students. But it was never my intention to live in Korea forever. So as the time comes to leave, I am confident, I will attain my next successful teaching post through further diligence and patience and be one step closer to greater mastery of my craft as I am not finished yet. ”For our pupil, a little room, a garden, table and bed, solitude, company, morning and evening; all hours shall be alike to him, and all places will be his study.” Michel de Montaigne

Bruce Cockburn - Night Train

Bruce Cockburn - Night Train

Not a knife throw from here you can hear the night train passing
That's the
sound somebody makes when they're getting away
Leaving next week's hanging
jury far behind them
Prisoner only of the choices they have
made

Night Train...
Night Train...

Ice cube in a dark drink
shines like starlight
The moon is floating somewhere out at sea
On an
island in the blur of noise and color
Alcatraz, St. Alina, Patmos and the
Chateau D'if

Night Train...
Night Train...

And everyone's an
island edged with sand
A temporary refuge where somebody else can
stand
Till the sea that binds us like the forced tie of a blood oath
Will
wear it down, dissolve it, recombine it

Anyone can die here they do it
every day
It doesn't take much effort though it goes against the
grain
And the ultimate forgetfulness of violence
Sweeps the landscape
like a headlight of a train

Night Train...

Ice cube in a dark
drink shines like starlight
Starlight shines like glass shards in dark
hair
And the mind's eye tumbles out along the steel track
Fixing every
shadow with its stare

Night Train...
Night Train...

And in the
absence of a vision there are nightmares
And in the absence of compassion
there is cancer
Whose banner waves over palaces and mean streets
And the
rhythm of the night train is a mantra