Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Well, according to CBC, the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony was SPECTACULAR! Combined with the 8 minutes show provided by London, the hosting city of the 2012 Olympics, it was a magnificent show bridging the east and the west! Here are some shots from the closing ceremony, credit to Xinhua Net. The ceremony started at 8:00 PM Beijing Time, 5:00AM Vancouver Time.

Three years ago, Henry Jenkins introduced Anime Cosplay at the NMC summer conference in Hawaii. It was my first chapter into participatory culture...

Today, August 22nd 2008, UBC is hosting one of the largest Animation convention in Canada - Anime Evolution 2008. The crazy thing is I didn't even know about this until this morning. It's kinda like the beginning of Harry Potter, all of the sudden, "strangely dressed" people popping up out side of my office windows...

Anime Evolution is an annual 3 days event celebrating Japanese animation and Asian popular culture. Many of the participants spend days and weeks preparing complex costume in order to appear as one of the heroes from the animations during the convention. Click here for more "official definition" of cosplay. There are interactive panel discussions, cultural demonstrations, video shows, costume contests and video game competitions! The event used to take place at SFU but due to record breaking number of attendees, this year's event is moved to UBC!

I wish I could know this a little earlier since I am a big fan of Japanese animations. From Dragon Ball to Naruto, you name it! Seeing hundreds of cosplayers walking by my office really made my day. Here are some shots I took over lunch...

An exciting opportunity has come up for us here at the Faculty of Arts, UBC. The Vancouver Olympic Committee has contacted our faculty with a request to contribute expertise from the Language & Literature Departments to assess the linguistic skills of hundreds of multi-lingual volunteers to the Olympic Games in Vancouver-Whistler 2010. What's unique about this initiative is that the language assessment is carried out completely online, which means our support team here at Arts ISIT is responsible to develop an online environment to accommodate the language assessment needs.

I think this is the first time in the Olympics history that volunteers' language skills are being assessed via the web. Including 2008 Beijing Olympics, volunteers have been interviewed either in person or on the phone. Starting later 2008, the Vancouver Olympic committee will use the system we are putting together using voice board and learning management systems, to develop a pilot for the expected 900 volunteers to be assessed in Asian and European language skills.

I woke up at 5:00 AM Vancouver time to watch the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony and I am glad I did. It was a magnificent show! Hope the following images will encourage you to watch it later if you have missed it! I have recommended all of my friends to watch it tonight when NBC shows it again.

This is another back-dated blog post. I just got back from a month long vacation...

Uli delivered a successful keynote at the Diverse 2008 at Inholland University, Haarlem, NL on July 2nd, 2008. He covered a wide range of divergence in the media culture from an educational technologist’s point of view. The keynote was well received based on some of the participants’ comments in the party afterwards. Uli and I also delivered two workshops on Concept Maps and Rich Media tools before and after the conference. This great opportunity came to us through connections at Educause.

This is my first time attending the DIVERSE conference. I find the community has a great operational model. It’s very much like an open source community. There is no complicated administration or organizational structure. But yet members manage to share experience, insights and innovations efficiently using all the media tools available on the web: Facebook, Youtube, blogs, wikis, you name it. Everybody is so friendly and language wasn’t a barrier at all. In any case, this was a great conference! Oh, I forgot to mention it was a FUN conference too! Check out their after-conference sailing trip!!! (Uli and I unfortunately had to miss it due to other commitment... :()