Last semester I had the chance to be in the classroom, and it was great. Most of my students passed and overall I felt like I did a good job. Then… a surprise. One of my students gave me the acrylic with my picture in it and a very nice message. These are the things that make me stay awake late, working on materials and classroom preparation. Many people say it is not worth to be a teacher. I completely Read More …
Since my arrival at Lakeland University Japan I have been so busy with administrative duties that just imagining being in the classroom was overwhelming. Well, it seems that life does not wait for us to be ready. From May I will be teaching two courses, and I am very, very excited to be back in the classroom. The course will be something new to me, but a course that I have been planning and thinking about for a long time: Read More …
For the last 13 years, I have been teaching in the classroom. True that during the “with corona” times we were all shifting between online and face-to-face here and there, but essentially, the structure of my courses did not change. Now that we are all back to face-to-face classes things were supposed to settle down, but with the lab changing locations, I am unable to be with my students every week. Yes, I changed jobs but I am still supporting Read More …
It looked like this was not a possibility… but it happened. In the past 13 years, I have pushed myself to provide students with all the support they needed at the expense of my own personal life. Education slowly replaced my interest in the IT field, and I am now on a stage where TECH and EDU walk hand in hand. In this new chapter, I doubt I will have any extra time, but the challenges and the possibility of Read More …
A while ago I was consulted about tools and methods to evaluate students online. It seems some of my ideas are going to see the light of the day in a new program backed up by the Miyazaki prefecture aiming at developing IT human resources. I am very happy for being able to contribute to this initiative and looking forward to the promising outcomes. The website is here:https://www.sparkjapan.co.jp/LP/hinata_d_academia_2023/
Once in a while I have the chance to talk about my country, Brazil. This time, I was asked to talk about the Brazil in the MIU satellite office. The lecture covered a little bit of the history, people, places and food. We did not talk about politics :-). It was nice to see that some community members have an interest in knowing more not only about Brazil, but about other countries in general. The questions were also nice and Read More …
The 2022 academic year came to an end. From a professional point of view, it was great to graduate so many students and it felt good when I realized how well all those little scripts I made years ago worked well. Yes, you read it right: scripts. The thing about management is that usually there is no such thing as one system doing it all. Information is often managed in one system but the reports and data analysis have to Read More …
The first time we prepare a course is always difficult. Is this text appropriate? Are students going to engage in the discussion? If they don’t understand, what other examples can I give them? The preparation is always plagued with doubts. Luckily for me, I got an amazing group this time and things went much better than one could expect. We had only eight lessons in the semester (1 credit course), but every lesson was full of discussion and questions. It Read More …
Today we had our poster presentations. All students submitting a Senior Thesis (or graduation thesis) have to do it. I was very happy to see massive attendance from faculty and from junior students. To be honest, we were not expecting so many visitors, and the rooms felt crowded at times. Well, with only 25 minutes for presentations and all windows open, I believe we did a good job keeping it safe in times of corona. To all students who participated Read More …
Every year in my ICT class we have a mini research project where students create a questionnaire and interview their colleagues. This year I had a big surprise when I found out that some students were using Google forms to create the questionnaire and posting it on social media in order to get more answers. So far, so good. The problem with this approach was that, due to the educational nature of the task, we are skipping many steps there Read More …
