Messages

31

Departments / Re: Majid Majidi: The famous film director

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:49:20 PM »

Majid Majidi is an Iranian film director, producer, and screenwriter, who started his film career as an actor. In his films, Majidi has touched on many themes and genres and has won numerous international awards.

Born in an Iranian middle-class family, he grew up in Tehran and at the age of 14 he started acting in amateur theater groups. He then studied at the Institute of Dramatic Arts in Tehran.

After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, his interest in cinema brought him to act in various films, most notably Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Boycott in 1985.

In 1998, Majidi directed Children of Heaven, which was nominated to receive the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Though it lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni, Children of Heaven is the first Iranian film to have been nominated by the Academy.

Majidi has directed several other feature films since Children of Heaven: The Color of Paradise in 2000, Baran in 2001, and The Willow Tree in 2005 (alternate English title One Life More). He also recently directed a feature-length documentary titled Barefoot to Herat which chronicles life in refugee camps and the city of Herat during and after the anti-Taliban offensive of 2001.

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Departments / Majid Majidi: The famous film director

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:46:53 PM »

This post is about Majid Majidi, the famous film director of Iran whose film " Children of Heaven" has touched me deeply during my childhood.

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Departments / Re: "First why and then trust"

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:41:12 PM »

Just loved this line:

" When we are surrounded by people who believe what we believe, something remarkable happens."

Yes, that is the moment of creating trust between each other.

Thanks for sharing such a lovely video.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

34

Departments / Re: ব্যবহারেই আপনার পরিচয়

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:38:07 PM »

A very compassionate post. Thanks for sharing.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

35

Departments / Re: পানি থেকে আর্সেনিকের বিষ শুষে নেবে শ্যাওলা

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:35:04 PM »

This is very informative. Thanks for sharing.

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

36

Departments / Re: আমেরিকায় যাচ্ছে বাংলাদেশে তৈরি স্মার্টফোন

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:33:13 PM »

A very good news indeed for our country!

Thanks for sharing.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

37

Departments / Re: বাঘা, ছাগা ও যাগা

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:31:19 PM »

খুব ভালো লাগলো লেখাটা. আমিও এই একই ধারণা পোষণ করি:

“স্বশিক্ষিত শিক্ষার্থীকে নতুন করে শিক্ষিত করার তো কিছু নেই?! বরং স্বল্প শিক্ষিত, অশিক্ষিত শিক্ষার্থীকে সুশিক্ষিত করার মাঝেই ত শিক্ষকতার আনন্দ!”

শামসি

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

38

Departments / Re: Tagore's Views on Education

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:16:57 PM »

 Good to read.

Thanks for sharing.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

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Departments / Re: Grammo

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:14:39 PM »

It is an excellent initiative!

Thanks for sharing.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

40

Departments / Re: Subultern Linguistics by Ahmar Mahboob

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:13:16 PM »

Quick recap

Doing Subaltern Linguistics is about learning about strategies that can be used to influence positive change: change identified, designed, and led by local communities in a peaceful and respectful manner. If we learn how to do this using our own material, biological, and social-semiotic resources, and for purposes agreed upon in our communities, then we can gradually begin to harmonise our communities and enable people to prosper and be well where ever they are; instead of having to leave home for jobs and a “better future”.

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Departments / Re: Subultern Linguistics by Ahmar Mahboob

« on: February 26, 2020, 01:12:47 PM »

Example 3: Wawa Dam clean-up

Mona Mamac and her team of young scholars and students is working with the Municipality of Rodriguez, Philippines, to design and initiate a clean-up campaign around Wawa Dam. This project will be multi-thronged and, extending on the PDA analysis of other campaigns, will develop a range of material and resources by relating to all five material senses, and with some understanding of people who visit the area. The team visited the site several times to take pictures of existing signage, as well as documenting garbage and identifying areas with higher concentration of garbage.

After spending time in the region, reading about the native environment, researching what other communities were doing about similar issues, talking to the local government and others, the team has developed a set of new design ideas, as well as of other measures and practices that can influence people not to thrown garbage in public spaces. Picture 3 is an example of one of the new designs.

This is how Mona’s team designed the material to relate to all five senses:

Sight: IMAGE: trash bag with red slash that means that throwing of garbage is not allowed. The dirty water that can be interpreted as river or flood and washed away the house (there have been lots of incidences of flood in Rodriguez). These images can also be interpreted by those who cannot read (e.g. little children).

Sound: the movement of water and the destruction of houses

Smell: the dirty garbage bag and water

Touch: the line “itapon ang inyong basura sa…” throw your garbage into the designated areas. The team is also designing sets of segregated trash bins (biodegradable, non-biodegradable, recyclable)

Taste: First line of the “Alam mo ba?” – garbage chemicals contaminate the fish we eat (appealing to health)
Other senses that are appealing to emotions:

•   Opening statement – water is like you and your crush’s relationship, it gets blurry (catchy. Filipinos like romantic punch lines)
•   The multa at parusa (fine and punishment) is from Republic Act 9275 that gives an idea of what will happen to them when they transgress the ordinance.
The goals of the project are to to catch the attention of the trekkers, educate them about the environment and trash by stating facts, offer alternatives to dumping, and inform them of potential consequences of their actions.

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Departments / Re: Generally there are 3 types of student in a class.

« on: February 25, 2020, 04:58:06 PM »

The information is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

43

Departments / Re: Feminism: The Most Misunderstood and Misused Term

« on: February 25, 2020, 04:55:19 PM »

You are right. There is misconception regarding 'Feminism' in Bangladesh. Thanks for sharing the ideas.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

44

Departments / Re: Short Poems by Shamsi

« on: February 25, 2020, 04:53:25 PM »

My Dear Colleagues,

Thank you so much for your encouragement. I am so happy with your words.

Best Regards,

Shamsi

Shamsi Ara Huda
Assistant Professor
Department of English

45

Departments / Re: Subultern Linguistics by Ahmar Mahboob

« on: February 25, 2020, 04:51:32 PM »

Example 2: “Free Throw Plastic Bottles”

One example of an isolated subaltern project is the design and installation of a disposal for plastic bottles in Pasacao, Camarines Sur, in the Philippines. Using an understanding of how Filipinos love basketball, John Robrigado, a local youth councillor, designed and installed a “Free Throw Plastic Bottles” area to encourage people to discard plastic bottles in a safe manner. This project uses language + understanding of people + some engineering to design a garbage collector for plastic bottles. As such, it is an example of #subalternlinguistics: the application of socio-semiotics for the betterment of people – in this case, the protection of our environment.

In teaching language/linguistics, we should share such examples and encourage others to develop projects for and with the community. Language/linguistics is not really about grammar rules and pronunciation; it is about the use of language to benefit our communities.

While the “Free Throw Plast Bottles” is a good example of how socio-semiotics are used to create a resource, the design can be enhanced in many ways. For example, there can an additional hole in a lower part of the “court”, so that people who are not good at throwing can still discard their plastic waste in an appropriate manner. In addition, there could be signage that educates people about the harms of plastic and pollution. This signage can be in images with supporting text in local languages and can be designed by local communities. Making, placing and maintaining such projects can create jobs for people in local communities; jobs that give economic incentives to people to maintain their languages and to use their languages to empower themselves. In addition to enabling an economy in the local languages, it will also create a greater involvement of the community in developing its own resources and material.

This project can also be expanded and other measures brought into place. The purpose of these measures could be to educate the communities in ways that help them. The current school curriculum in many parts of the world has little to teach children about the places where they live and grow up; and more to do with faraway places and abstract ideas that are not relevant to one’s own context. One reason for this is an over-emphasis on books and reading, and less on doing. And, many of the corporate-published textbooks today, which are considered the “best” in the developing world, are written to train children to work for corporations and endorse the values of the corporate world.

Instead, educational curricula can be conceived as ways of educating our students about doing things. By learning how to engage with communities, they can learn ways to create and do things that respect and are in sync with local ways of being. Such a curriculum would need to be designed with a vision of how the community sees itself to be.

Education is successful when our students develop projects that aid in community empowerment. Such projects raise students’ self-esteem and self-respect, two key goals of education. In current schooling in many parts of the world today, tests, assessments, and exams frustrate many and students leave school (if they graduate) with broken self-esteem and low self-respect; they graduate with a belief that the west has the answers and that living in the west is a desired goal. Their low self-esteem of themselves and their communities leads them to imagine a “better life” elsewhere. If we want to keep our people home, we have to develop economies in and through our own languages and boost the self-esteem and self-respect of our peoples.