Perhaps I joined at a good time? If there’s anything I can help with regarding Japanese, feel free to send me a message. I’ve been learning Japanese for quite a long time. I think it’s a wonderful language. At any rate, joining because I certainly tend towards the nite owl description.

did you find a japanese partner? what level? i am a beginner. but willing to help.

hey everyone! im going to need help with japanese! Anyone interested to being my partner?

hi all

Thanks, Quinsy…this is very helpful.

Thanks Francisco, I’ll be checking it out too as soon as I have time. That’s in short supply tonight.

http://jbstrategy.blogspot.com/2009/11/addressing-popular-misconceptions-about.html

But I did get that up.

Francisco, though I think you greatly misunderstand the content, you have given me a great deal of motivation to use that blog to explain some things that are indeed in need of explaining, so I thank you very much.

I’d hoped to advertise my classes at eduFire, yes, and in the future, my eBook for Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” (based on my PowerPoint series) but, the content requires more explanation. I’ll keep you posted.

I tried to understand how to put Disqus onto this Wordpress blog but, that seems confusing.

Anyway, glad it’s good questions – I’m still working my way through this.

Baby steps. I’ve begun this:

http://suntzublog.wordpress.com/

I’m focusing this on Sun Tzu and “The Art of War” alone. Besides, if I deal with only dead people, it can’t upset many people. (Half joking.)

Koichi, that’s a lot of help. I’m going to have to sub your blog back. :) I’ll let you know how it all goes. In fact, if I’m going to study a blog, I’ll have to look yours over and see a bit more about how you’ve done things.

With Blogspot, there are nice things, but the basic limitations seem heavy enough – and I’ve tried working around them without much success – that basic things like appearance and aesthetics seem too limited. If I do move to Wordpress, or rather, if I create new niche blogs – which is also a BIG issue I am seriously pondering – I’ll announce it.

Thanks to everyone who’s commented!

Honestly, the notion that I’m mixing politics with education bothers me. Even just the appearance of it bothers me. The problem with strategic thinking is that it’s hard to make it work while being blind to current events. Unfortunately, even mentioning the names of people alive in the present area is certain to strike people as political. If that’s the impression that was given, that’s a shame, and I cannot allow that to continue.

Anyway, I don’t mean to make that sound like a long term problem. It’s actually quite a simple issue.

I have such a hard time blogging about this because there’s no known field or industry that successfully covers what I’m trying to cover…. with the strategy blog. (Indeed, this is the very reason I said at the top, “this is not an advertisement, I’m not satisfied with it (as it is).”) The business model I’m seeing other people use amount to crowdsourced analysis of isolated passages from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” general strategic-sounding gobbledygook trading off his name, and selling flash cards and ebooks that have very little to do with the old classics except tugging on Superman’s cape. To the extent this field exists, it is comprised of websites and owners who don’t talk to each other much. That makes the traditional blogging promotion method more difficult.

Totally besides the strategic thinking angle, which I view as a long-term thing targeted at professionals, I need to separate my pure educational stuff (maybe time for a fresh blog for that then?) to wall it off from other things…. which as I said, I’m not sure is anything but the appearance of politics where I didn’t want it to begin with. I don’t care about politics; I study human behavior wherever I find it. Anyway: I’m doing two big fields from here on.

- English (incl. English as a Second Language, but not exclusively so)
- Japanese (I’ve just started laying down the foundation for teaching that on EduFire)

What I want with the English side, for instance, is pronunciation and speech coaching. Blogging may help but, I may need to resort to podcasting and YouTube before getting far with it. If people are limited to the written word, I can’t teach pronunciation all that extensively.

I’ve been delayed getting back to the Internet today, but I’ll need to find out if there’s a blogging community for that, too, which I can communicate with and work with. But, I think that helping those learning English as a foreign language to speak better American English for maximum usefulness in a global economy is a good long-term approach for me.

….One last thing, is there a counter-argument to weighing a page down with applets and gadgets and audio and video, or is that just how the Internet works here? Because, once I get podcasting and YouTube video making mastered, I’ll have a lot of material to push.

Thanks for the comments so far. I’ll check out those two sites and well, I’m definitely searching for how to efficiently provide samples of my work so that more people will see it. But, that’s partly what my upcoming foray into podcasting is meant to solve.

As for converting the slides to .jpg, I have a concern that this would be a bit unwieldy. But, I’m not ruling anything out.

Thanks, Wren, I really appreciate it.

I’ve already had one individual ask me if I’m going to be teaching Japanese on weekdays. I’m looking forward to that, but I’ll need to hear from prospective students what times work for them so that I can schedule wisely. EduFire messages are just fine for that. Thanks, and I’m really looking forward to bringing my knowledge to the masses. I didn’t have someone like myself today, helping me ten years ago; I know how big a difference it would have made.

Good advice

Congrats Jeremiah, I’m excited for you! I especially like the follwing line on your class description ;D

I will not settle for a class with the Japanese out of context and without sufficient explanation. You can have confidence that I will maintain a laser focus on a rich educational experience.

Fantastic!