Wikimapia's Mokpo

Similar to Flickr's Memory Maps, Wikimapia is a online collaboration that pinpoints locations on Google's Satellite Images and, funny enough, it has an entry for Mokpo.

As previously posted there is no perfect mapping system for the Google Generation in Mokpo. Wikimapia uses Google's outdated satellite images that still hide a quarter of Mokpo under clouds or low resolution images. But the genius comes in the collaboration and completely replaces my own private endeavor albeit without the nice Google icons and whatnot.

More information on Wikimapia is available via the Wikimapia Blog, Matt's Wikimapia Blog and (as always) Wikipedia.

Gook

As pointed out in another post some people may think that waygook is considered a racial slur. It's not quite that, but after some quick research it turns out that the two words are incredibly related. Both Wikipedia and The Urban Dictionary have a similar explanations; here's a brief description from Wikipedia's definition of gook:

An Asian person, especially an enemy (e.g. Koreans or Vietnamese during the Korean and Vietnam wars). By extension, any Asian person. Probably derived from the Korean words “hanguk” and “miguk”. “Hanguk” refers to Korea and “miguk” is the common word for the United States. American troops thought "miguk" sounded like "me gook" (i.e. "I am a gook"). The word persisted during the Vietnam War, perhaps also because the Vietnamese people have a similar word “quốc”, meaning "country".

So the term gook only derives a derogatory meaning in a North American context. In Korea it's the word for country (국) and since it describes a person's nationality everybody in Korean ends up being a kind of gook.

The Korean word for foreign (외국 aka waygook), or foreigner (외국인 aka waygookin) or even foreign person (외국사람 aka waygook saram), all use 국 as a base word and the use of gook in this context is so far removed from North American meaning that nobody recognizes it as a derogatory term. So when you have a website for foreigners in Korea, waygook.org seems quite appropriate.

As for spelling, the competing romanization systems create many transcriptions for 국 including gook, guk, kook, kuk, etc. Even the language tools disagree, making no discernible difference between waygook or wayguk.

Lesson 02 - Classroom Rules

Lesson 02 - Classroom Rules is published over at waygook.org.

Lesson 01 - Introductions

Lesson 01 - Introductions is published over at waygook.org.

Lesson Plans

In some situations, like mine, you are given free reign over what to teach the students. Some people would love this freedom, but for me it’s more of a burden as now I have to plan a 50 minute learning experience for the students. Actually it freaks me out since usually I have no idea what I should be teaching the students.

To the system, I'm not an English Teacher (the school already has a bunch of those). I'm a Native Speaker and I'm supposed to be part of the culture teaching program (not the language teaching program) so I should be teaching something cultural. Of course all that really means is that the students have somebody else to help them memorized some standard dialogues while I have to engage the students in English conversation activities for 50 minutes per week.

I need those activities documented since I'm under threat of having my lessons reviewed. But since my co-teacher hasn't actually reviewed these lessons yet, I (from what I've heard from other native speakers) expect this review to happen on my last day when I hand in all of my lesson plans along with my classroom key. So most of my lessons plans are in Microsoft Word format, using the following template:

Level
The English level of the intended audience and the time length of the lesson.

Rationale
A brief description of the lesson.

Expectations
A brief listing of what the lessons results.

Layout
This is the short version of the lesson, organized in time segments.

Material Required
A listing of what materials are required and what website you can download them from.

Procedure
The three part lesson broken into the introduction, the lesson, and the termination.

Assessment/Observations/Teacher Reflection
Suggestions on how the lesson can be modified based on how the students interaction with the lesson

Board Work
When using one or more boards it’s best to use one as your main board and the other as your scratch board. One contains the information you want to keep up for the students during the class, the other is just for doodling.

Now, my actual process of making a plan is really a thought organizing process that results in a collection of categorized information that, in truth, is rarely looked used during class. That said here are some notes about my lesson making process:

1. I steal other people’s lessons. Other people more intelligent and resourceful and creative and who enjoy making lessons have already done so. People who are lazy can just steal the lessons from the Internet.
2. I have no master plan. There’s no core curriculum so I teach whatever I want, so my topic searching is really limited by whatever I've stolen already.
3. I have one official resource book. Officially it’s the JLP Program Resource Book and it contains many of the activities that I use with the lessons that I steal.
4. I teach in an English lab. I don’t roam from class to class. Instead I stay firmly planted in my own English lab, complete with my 50-something inch TV, a marker board, and my own video projection system with five speaker surround sound. I’m technically literate enough to know how to use them and I usually do; a TV & PowerPoint combo usually substitutes well for one of my boards.
   
5. I’d rather create a PowerPoint file than write something on the board. I’m lazy. That and I know enough PowerPoint to make it an interactive blackboard.
6. I use the concept of Core and Bonus in my lessons. Sometimes I have smart kids who can shave off 9 minutes from a 10 minute activity. For these kids I usually plan a bonus part of the lesson that can be set on continuous loop until the end of class.