Ganem TP-10

After tutoring Tugba, I had another tutoring session with Dongsoek on Friday, June 24^th. This was at 3PM at the CIES building. Dongsoek had just gotten out of a listening class and wanted to practice listening. He brought his iPad with him. We went on to TED Talks website to look for lectures Dongsoek could write dictocomps for. He wanted to practice doing this so he can become ready to take university classes in English.

The first TED talk we listened to was about how a team of scientists were building a car that blind people can drive on the road. It started out as just a project to build a computerized car that didn’t need to be driven by human beings. It then developed into a system of sensors and software that blind people can use to maneuver and navigate independently on the road. As he was writing the dictocomp I asked him what some of the changes were in the project. From the lecture,he answered it was originally a project to build a computerized, automatic car with no input other than the location from the driver. Then it was changed to build a car that can be driven in real-time by the blind. I asked him what some of the challenges were after to meet the goal. He answered the first prototype was designed to complete an obstacle course that a blind tester would drive through. However the obstacle course was too limited to simulate the conditions of driving in real traffic. The scientists and engineers had to redesign it so blind people can drive on the road.

I asked him how he felt about the lecture. He said it was really interesting but the speaker spoke really and there was a lot of information covered. He told me it was long and a little overwhelming for him to follow. So we looked for a TED talk that had a slower speaker and was shorter. We found one that was about the nature of news and looking at world events in the long run.

We listened to this TED talk and it lasted for about three minutes. It talked about what world events form recent history would be remembered thousands of years from now. Will people remember September 11^th? Will people remember the uprisings in the Middle East? He also talked about how millions of news stories are published and broadcast every year. Then he asked how do you know what matters?

Dongsoek wrote a summary of his ideas. He wrote the lecture was about how individual news stories can be measured as part of the big picture in life. Dongsoek told me this lecture was more interesting to him and the lecturer was exciting. We then ended our tutoring session.