7.

In the class yesterday, we started using google slides to start woking on our final project presentation focusing on C.R.A.P.

About a week ago, I had a group presentation for other class and it was pretty difficult to decide what to put on the slides and what to just speak. Although, through talking about that with my classmates who also takes the same class, I realized that the class had the handouts so that the listeners will be able to easily listen to what the presenters are saying. In R&P class there are no handouts so I decided to just put a few words and a picture. I made it as simple as possible. Black bold letters and pictures. That's it. I am a little bit nervous since it looks a little too simple but I am pretty sure that it is along with the C.R.A.P so all I have to do is make my speech as simple but detailed as it could be. 

To be honest, I am enjoying this presentation work pretty much. It is fun to imagine how the presentation would be and revise the slides. I also like presentations, which are like too simple and at first we can't really assume what the presenters will talk about but through listening we are just into the speech. I think how Apple presents their new devices are quite like that. 

To make the audiences interested into the presentation, we shouldn't put too much informations on the slide. I think just a really few words that is like a hint to what we want to tell is enough and best.

I have only comment one one of the blog in my group but I will add comments to each of them when they are ready.
It felt really convenient to be able to comment on slide using google because it looked so easy to review. In that way it would be easy to revise the slides like after we do peer reviews on our papers. comments, which appear visually is really good and the more it is added in the paper, slides or whatever we want it to get checked, the easier it would be for us to make our thing better!

We only have a week and a bit left for this project and I am so excited and nervous at the same time. Good luck to all of us!

6.

EVERNOTE
Today we learnt how to use Evernote. This was really interesting and I thought it would be a huge help for the presentation I will have from now on. It was fun to add our texts, highlights, drawings, etc to the note we clipped. I even wonder why I didn't even try to use it even though I've heard of it plenty of times. Evernote will allow us to easily access to the websites that we became interested in and to review on it quickly. Also we can obviously improve our presentations by using each of the tools Evernote has.

What is C.R.A.P?
C.R.A.P stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignments, Proximity. By focusing on these, we can make a better presentation.
Contrast: The way I made the sub titles for each topic in this blog entry is one of the way to make contrasts. It's a way to make difference in colours between the words and the background, size of the font so that there is much impact in the slides.
Repetition: I didn't really get this but I think it is about repeating the keywords and the pictures that relates to the words so that the listeners will know what we really want to tell.
Alignments: This is to organize the words and pictures to connect to each other. For example, if we are using the word forward, we should try to add it in the picture where people can feel "forward".
Proximity: This is the idea to organize the position of the words to make it easy to understand. If we just squash all the words above the sheet of the slide, the information will be a bit difficult to understand because there are no space and it is almost like notes rather than presentation.

Through listening to the explanation of these words, I thought that it is really important to consider the organization of each slide and make it simple but has enough of the basic informations we want the listeners to know.
I am now working on a presentation in other class and I am trying to make it simple but informative. However, I find it quite difficult to do so. I think I have to select more of my information I have collected.

My Final Project Theme
I am going to discuss about euthanasia in my essay and final project. I have started my research recently and i sometimes feel really devastated because it is such a serious and heavy topic. However, how we cannot easily decide whether it should be legal or not is really interesting. I hope I can complete my final project by convincing the listeners as much as possible. I also find it interesting how the general perspective toward euthanasia is different in each country.

I hope we can make the best presentation by using Evernote and C.R.A.P.

5.

I wrote about "racial profiling" for my first essay in this term.

Today's homework is to search about it on Wikipedia. The first thing I was aware of when entering university was that I should not use Wikipedia because it is not reliable. So I was so surprised to have being able to use it for my homework. How it has the rating to offer better articles to the user is amazing.

Unfortunately, racial profiling is not properly rated yet and is currently  "Rated Start class". I think this is because the topic is a modern issue and is still being discussed in its early stage. I wonder how the page will be like in the future so it might be interesting if I check it out periodically.
Next, I searched on "geographic profiling" and this too was in its "Rated Start class". So I searched on "Japanese Americans", which I used it as an example of racial profiling that was done after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was in its "Rated B-class". I was like, finally! when I found this being at least rated.
Through doing today's homework, I thought that if we want to use Wikipedia, it is likely to use it when our topic is discussed for a pretty long time. Otherwise, the article is not still rated and would not be reliable. Hence, it wouldn't be a good source like we were told not to use Wikipedia for our papers.
(I searched almost every keywords I used in my paper but all of them were bellow B-class. I will revise this blog asap I find FA rated word. I am sad that I couldn't find almost any. Will keep trying though.)

The second homework is to write a review of using Zotero today. We learnt how to do in-text citation. To do in-text citation, all we have to do is to push "command", then "shift" and finally "A" to copy the in-text citation, which Zotero is ready for us, and "V" to paste it on our paper. This is really simple and will help us finish doing our citation as quickly as possible. When I used my own source, some how when adding in-text citation, the title of the book was also included. I wonder what was wrong with what I did... I hope I can find it out.

Six months have passed since I became a freshmen in university and I feel really necessary to just cut all the unnecessary part I am spending my time on, so that I can finish other tasks sooner with better quality. Finding out how to use these tools always cheers me up by making me realize that I have so many great tools!
Recently I am so devastated at my results for my exams, quality of my essays and the way I use my time. I MUST get used to the techs we learn in this class and also enjoy it so that I can make better out of my school life.

4.

Today we had library orientation and it was really stimulating. We reviewed the databases we learnt last semester and how exactly we can use them. I felt so lucky to be a student in ICU once again since the amount of database we can access is incredible. It is just so mottainai to spend our college life without using this. Unfortunately, tomorrow is our Course Wide Test and I don't have much time to use the database to revise my essay so hopefully I will use it after I finish the test.
The more I learn about the academic tools we can use, the brighter my view becomes. I feel pretty excited to write essays now because by using the tools I can get more and more knowledge that are so high level.
I also thought that it must have been really tough for college students to finish their assignments decades ago so we are such a lucky generation to have both the Internet and the books. Since there are so many tablets (?) being used these days, I can't deny the possibility of the amount of paper books to decrease. I actually saw that kind of situation in a TV drama and it was about a magazine. I love to turn the pages and I love the smell of the book. So yes. we are all so lucky to have both. Maybe 20 years later, there won't be any paper books that are out there.
Lastly, I thought that library in ICU is such a caring and incredible place. I hope i can plan to visit the place where gives us advice for our report assignments.

3.

1.“Michael Brown Shooting, Protests Highlight Racial Divide.” CNN. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014. Alvarez, Lizette, and Cara Buckley. 
This is about the protest against the police law, which legalizes racial profiling. Racial profiling that was done recently was the Michael Brown case. He was shot by a police even though he proved he was unarmed. 

2.Spickard, Professor Paul. Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group. Revised edition. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Print. 
This book is written about the discrimination that happened to Japanese American during WW2. I think I can get some historical facts that will support my statement from this book. 

3.“Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Trayvon Martin Killing.” The New York Times 13 July 2013. NYTimes.com. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
This is about the case that happened in 2012 and the article is about the court rejecting the claim that said the shooting was done just by the assumption Mr. Zimmerman had made. 

I am currently working on my essay and it is going to be about racial profiling. Through having a research through news websites, I have found out that there are lots of problems about it. I am pretty shocked to know that there are still many serious racial issues that also affect human life. I am facing difficulties in completing my essay since it is tough to organize the ideas and sources to support my opposing statement against racial profiling. However at the same time I am also being stimulated by acknowledging facts that I didn't know. I think that is what is enjoyable about writing academic essays.

Using Zotero was amazing. I have been having so many troubles to list the sources in MLA format so the I felt the tool very useful. I hope I can control myself and avoid to rely on it too much since we were told that these tools might make so mistakes sometimes too. Tool is a gift that helps us and not something that does everything completely for us. I have to keep this in my mind.
By saving my time using this tool I can also spend more time on researching and reading. This will definitely make my essay a better one. I am looking forward to getting used to Zotero.

2. How we feel about life in Tokyo

Hello! This is my second blog entry and is about the survey I took.
Since ICU is in Tokyo and we spend most of our time in here than at our home these days and I just moved into Kanto region in March, I wanted to know how my classmates are feeling about Tokyo! SO, I took a survey of how 2D feels about Tokyo and got some hints about interesting places in here. (I got 17 responds)

Here are the results!
1. How many of my classmates like Tokyo.
Most of them seems to like Tokyo! Although I can kind of imagine why there are also people who do not like Tokyo so this was close to the result I had imagined.

2. Where my classmates have never been to in Tokyo
I am pretty surprised at how all of them have been to Shinjuku but a few have never been to Kichjoji, which is only 2 stations away from Musashisakai, the nearest station from school. For Shinjuku, I have had the image of only business buildings standing and almost no place to go shopping. I might have to walk around there some day.

3.What my classmates like about Tokyo.

 From this chart, we can see how people feel convenient in Tokyo. In fact, a train comes in almost every 5 minutes in Musashisakai although, for example in Kobe, train comes in every 10 minutes and they do not have other lines that can be used instead.
 "Convenience" includes how easy it is to find food. "People" includes the busy people and foreigners. I think the answer that said "busy people" meant that it is stimulating to see how people are all looking busy here in the city. For "excitement", there are indeed lots and lots of events that are held in Tokyo every month and recently we can get the informations through Twitter,  Facebooks and so on.

4. How many of my classmates buy clothes in Tokyo.
For this, I was expecting a lot of answers that will say "often" since I heard that there are so many cheap and good clothes here. Lets see how it actually is in 2D...
Surprisingly, one said never! Actually I also have never bought my clothes in Tokyo. Instead I buy them in Yokohama. I might want to visit Tokyo to get my clothes sometimes!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH 2D FOR YOUR RESPONSES! These results made me want to know a lot more about Tokyo, the city that has lots and lots of amazing things!

Hope you enjoyed reading! Thank you.

1.

Hello! This is my first entry.

I am so excited about R&P. I am not that good at doing research and summarizing the results or having presentations so I am eager to improve those skills through this class. This blog will definitely make my writing skills improve! As we grow up we will probably get a lot more opportunity to share our thoughts with someone else and we have to do that properly. We'll probably have lots of chances to share opinions through presentation, research and entering blogs. As you can see, my first entry is a horrible one but i want this blog to be a super interesting one by the end of the term.  These are the things I expect in R&P.

Technology.... hmmmm. Now we can't live without our laptops or email devices even if we're still students. In the beginning of my college life I felt it crazy because it felt like being so depended on those tools. But now, I feel it convenient to have almost everything I need to study in a tool. Currently I am using Moodle on Internet and electric dictionaries if that counts. These are part of me  because I really do use them often(I think). and Also I am interested in Kindle now, which sounds really nice because it prevents people from carrying heavy books.haha

I hope this autumn semester will be a meaningful one for me.