July 2003 -1-

Saturday, July the 5th, 2003
It seems I should make up my mind to keep this diary basically in English. I seem to be supposed to make English writings. Nonaka Ikujiro's writing is always cool. They challenge my brain a lot. Cognitive science and Knowledge Management at school. I have approached Cognitives through Linguistics. I came across Knowledge Management via Social Science and School Management. The two streams seem to have come to meet. Development of Cognition, or Cognitive Development of an individual human and that of a group of humans. The word 'group' refers to companies, local communities, nations, NPOs, and so on. How do the development of individuals and that of groups interact? ...communication or dialogue is the key word, however,...
Sunday, July the 6th, 2003
Sada Masashi. It is a cool way of mentioning the problem today's youth hold. They have not been raised by speaking to much and listening to much. It has caused them to lack the ability to making a dialogue with the others. They often just throw their words away, and never care where the words go. It is something like a wild pitch. "Ask the ball where it goes." I watched the video "AI", which I found very moving but my elder daughter very confusing. I am likely to be moved by anything which expresses persistency. My daughter regrets that the film implies Martin and his father are bad. The character, Professor Bobby (Was the man Bobby? I cannot remember his name.), was hard to understand. Some scenes suggests his loving son, 'David' has died. How has he come to love to have so many Davids? We agree that the movie should have ended where David and Teddy sank in front of the Blue Fairy. Aliens are just needless and disappointing.
Monday, July the 7th, 2003
Today is Tanabata. Every year, Tanabata Day reminds me of the difference between the Gregorian (solar) calendar and the lunar one. I made a contact with Mr. O at BOE of Kishiwada City, via Ms. M there. We would meet at his office around 17:30. On the phone, he mentioned that an AET who is going to leave after 3 years of teaching in Kishiwada is going to leave some information on and around Kishiwada. I might be able to get the information. He even suggested the possibility of our and their ALTs' having contact via e-mail. The suggestion match my intension to put up Izukoh_ecom including ALTs living in Kishiwada. Tomorrow's meeting will be surely and certainly benificial. After lunch, H, K, Y, and I had a chat over the new ALT and the next year's Writing at the second grade. K's information on the difficulties they had in the previous Writing classes was worth knowing. The difficulty lies in the lack of knowledge both JETs and ALT. Her information suggests the present ALT does not have enough writing skill herself, which I agree. The shortage of JETs' writing ability is inevitable. The lack allowed me to move from A to A. So I am supposed to facilitate the realization of profitable Writing classes. Tuesday, July 8th, 2003
　 I had an interview with Mr. O at Kshiwada City Bord of Education. He advised to have ALTs communicate each other, while I asked him to help us to have their ALTs join Izukoh_ecom. I asked him if we can visit junior high schools to experiment some kinds of English classes, and he suggested me we could do it via the principals in each school. He asked me to instruct junior high school teachers how to teach English in new style, and I asked him to let me take part in seminars for them so that I can learn something. In general, communication itself was a little bit of monologues rather than of a dialogue, but in Japanese standard, it was beneficial, even if it was not productive.
Thursday, July the 10th, 2003
This summer, I am going to be involved in two thesises:1 to Daiichi-hoki on the International Exchange Team, 2 to WTO on outbound tourism for high school students. The former will deal the issues as Knowledge Creating Management, how departments in a school can be knowledge creating fields. The structure of a school consists of three kinds of departments. The first is subject departments like the Japanese department, the Math department... The basic field in school is a class, either it is a HR class or a subject one. There meets teachers and students. Students develop their cognitive abilities through the communication with teachers. How about teachers? Do they develop themselves or not? If the education there is only based on the information gap between teachers and students, the teachers do not have to keep developing themselves. If, however, the education there is to utilize the learning abilities of students, even if the gap between a teacher and each student is almost the same, the solution for each students should be different. Each student has special and unique themes or tasks imposed on him/her. The solution is surely different. To meet the difference, to offer the varieties of different solutions,