Storytelling app bridges language gap
A new iPad app called ScribJab, developed by two researchers at SFU, will allow children to write and share stories in multiple languages.
With a grant from Heritage Canada and technical assistance from SFU Creative Services, education professors Kelleen Toohey and Diane Dagenais have created an interactive multilingual story-telling app and website to encourage language learning and to build writing skills. Both formats are free for users.
“The point of this was to encourage children to write stories and to enjoy them,” Toohey explained.
ScribJab was officially launched at SFU on Jan. 14, when the developers and child authors celebrated the 30 books published to date.
To publish a story, children must first log on with a teacher or parent, then write a story in English or French, draw pictures, or record audio. From there, the story can be translated into another language.
Although ScribJab was originally designed for ages 10-13, younger children, older students, and adults can also use it. “Some teachers have been using ScribJab with teenagers who are learning French,” Dagenais said.
“There are a lot of multilingual and bilingual resources for teachers,” said Dagenais. “But there was nothing that we could see that was for kids to use.”
This research celebrates the fact that children may speak languages other than English and French at home, and allows them to connect with family members by writing stories and translating them into their mother tongue.
The idea first developed during a classroom project Toohey was involved with several years ago. The teacher she worked with noticed that the grandparents of Punjabi children were not attending reading time because they didn’t speak English.
“The kids and the teacher decided they would interview grandparents and get stories, and write them and translate them, so that they could go in the kindergarten and read the stories to little kids,” Toohey described. “They were so beautiful — the stories that the kids wrote — I felt like it was really important we found a wider distribution for them.”
Toohey and Dagenais would also like to see Aboriginal children using the app and writing stories in Aboriginal languages.
Although the researchers have yet to review the statistics on app downloads to date, they hope it will soon gain an international following. This will give children and older users the opportunity to share their stories with people all over the world.
Clan avenge early season loss
After falling to Embry Riddle University earlier in the season, the Clan were able to get revenge when SFU hosted their first dual of the new year, and topped ERU 25–24.
Seniors Skylor Davis and Sukhan Chahal opened for the Clan, and garnered a quick 12–0 lead for the Clan after earning six team points each.
“We had a similar performance two weeks ago when we faced this team on the road,” said head coach Justin Abdou, after the match. “We started strong with Skylor and Sukhan, but the middle guys struggled to get things going similar to last time.”
It looked like the Clan were stuck in that funk after three straight losses from Dillon Hume, Brendan Seppala and Josh Punzo; SFU was suddenly down 16–12, but senior Brock Lamb would get things back on track. An 11–6 victory for Lamb gave the Clan four team points, tying the match at 16 apiece. And after freshman Reid Watkins surrendered four points in an 11–2 loss, Josh Kim rebounded with a three-point win to keep the Clan on pace.
“Josh really pulled through tonight for us,” said Abdou. “We lost points in that match last time and he made an excellent effort to get that win in . . . when he was extremely tired.”
Another six-point win for the Clan at 285-pounds would seal the victory for the Clan, continuing their strong season. SFU will be back on the mats on January 31 when they hit the road to take on the San Francisco Gators.
Super Bowl break down
Two number one seeds from each conference meeting in the Super Bowl doesn’t happen very often, but this year’s matchup not only features the two best teams in pro football, it also pits the Denver Broncos’ number one offense against the Seattle Seahawks’ number one defense. The National Football League could not have asked for a better Super Bowl matchup.
There are fascinating matchups all over the field, from Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson versus the Broncos’ secondary, to Denver’s running game going up against the immovable force that is Seattle’s front seven.
Every clichéd ‘game within the game’ itself will be instrumental in deciding which team wins the Vince Lombardi Trophy, but the matchup that will have the most influence, unquestionably, will be Peyton Manning and his plethora of receivers going head to head with Seattle’s secondary, commonly referred to as the Legion of Boom.
Denver’s offense is a nightmare for defensive coordinators to plan against because of the incredible athleticism pass-catchers Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, and Julius Thomas possess. Add Wes Welker into the mix and with no disrespect to Marvin Harrison or Reggie Wayne — two of the all-time greats — this is the best receiving corps Manning has ever had at his disposal.
That said, Seahawks’ defensive coordinator Dan Quinn has the athletes to matchup with the Broncos’ offense. Richard Sherman, however boastful he may be, is the most athletic corner in the game and he will be tasked with keeping Demaryius Thomas in check.
Safety Kam Chancellor is 10 pounds away from being a linebacker, so he can get physical with Julius Thomas. Free safety Earl Thomas will be all over the field at Met Life Stadium come game day and unheralded corner Byron Maxwell has been solid in filling in for suspended starter and CFL alumni Brandon Browner.
Since Quinn likes to run man-to-man coverage, this game will come down to whether or not Denver can successfully run its controversial, yet incredibly effective, pick plays. These plays require two receivers crisscrossing so one receiver can effectively run interference against the other receiver’s defender. Seattle’s physicality at the corner back position make this strategy the one to keep an eye on during the game.
The question of who has the upper hand in this game within a game is another matter, and one that is incredibly difficult to answer. Seattle’s physicality may allow their corners to get their hands on the Broncos’ receivers before the wideouts can run their pick routes, or the Seahawks can sit back in zone and switch who they’re covering.
The main factor is that Seattle is capable of doing each, and doing each well, giving them a slight advantage in this matchup, despite the NFL being a pass happy league.
Add in potentially bad weather that may adversely affect the Broncos’ passing game and Seattle has the chance to suffocate the greatest offense in NFL history. Also, combine the return of dynamic Seahawks wide receiver Percy Harvin with Seattle’s staunch run game and it’s hard not to choose the Seahawks to win this game.
But, the Broncos have arguably the greatest quarterback of all time in Peyton Manning, so the only thing for certain is that this years’ Super Bowl will be one of the best in recent memory.
University student just not that stressed out
BURNABY — Thor Svenson, a current 3rd year SFU student, is concerned that he isn’t stressed out enough and has registered a formal complaint against SFU for failing to provide him with a basic horrific post-secondary experience.
“People say university is so stressful. I heard stories about people who spent every waking hour stressed out and unhappy about their grades and waning social lives” Svenson explained, shaking his head. “But I’m just not feeling it, I’m totally fine.”
According to Svenson’s account, university life is just not what he had expected. Now in his third year, he claims that he still has never had to spend an entire night eagerly sucking back caffeine while typing frantically to finish a 20-page research paper that was due the next day.
He also has stated that he hasn’t had to turn down even a single week of the best parties ever to study for a midterm. In fact he complains that he has too much time on his hands and is completely relaxed and at ease at all times.
“I have an A average and I have all my evenings free . . . I’ve had so much time to kill that I’ve even started learning to play the saxophone and I’m taking salsa dancing lessons,” he said before pausing to let a single tear roll slowly down his cheek.
“I guess . . . I guess I just expected more from university. I was looking forward to being stressed to the point that my hands would become so slick with perspiration that my pencil would slip out of my hand and clatter to the floor,” he continued solemnly. “I was looking forward to not eating or sleeping for two days because of the finals I have coming up, but it was not to be.”
Svenson then sniffed and wiped a final tear from his eyes and said, “Oh well, I guess I’ll just transfer to UBC.”
Adios Camilo
Just a few months ago, former Vancouver Whitecaps star Camilo Sanvezzo declared how happy and settled he and wife Jessica had become in the city of Vancouver — there was even talk of him making a Canadian national team appearance. You can scratch that.
Camilo Sanvezzo has joined Liga MX Querétaro for a record multi-million dollar fee in what seemed like a never-ending, agonizing process. Here’s the breakdown of Camilo’s not-so-popular exit to the south.
Without a doubt, Camilo earned the right to be named an MLS All Star following his performance in what was otherwise another mediocre and inconsistent Whitecaps campaign. At season’s end he famously netted a hat trick to claim the MLS Golden Boot award with 22 goals and steal the show during Y.P. Lee’s retirement match.
Camilo was also etched into Whitecap folklore after scoring an astounding scissor kick volley against rival Portland Timbers at a boisterous BC Place — a goal so spectacular it won the AT&T Goal of the Year.
In 2013, Camilo earned $247,500, but upon former head coach Martin Rennie’s firing, the Brazilian saw a chance to renegotiate his contract. When new manager Carl Robinson was appointed, he vowed to meet with Camilo to discuss his contract; Camilo vowed he was a committed player.
Fast-forward to three days later and Camilo is seen on Twitter in a medical examination room wearing a Querétaro jersey — smiling, and giving the “thumbs up” gesture.
More and more pictures of Camilio taking part in training sessions surfaced and tickets to a player presentation event at the stadium to announce his arrival were being sold. With Camilo still under contract to the Whitecaps, Robinson and company flew down to Mexico to try to recover their best player, but things turned sour quickly.
Ultimately, Vancouver was forced to undergo negotiations with an apologetic Querétaro president, Adolfo Rios, who was under different impressions of the players transfer status (Camilo’s agent had told his client he was under Free Agent status and could negotiate with other clubs).
Instead of a major dispute, the clubs were able to reach a multi-million dollar settlement. But with Toronto FC’s recent acquisitions of Jermain Defoe and Michael Bradley from top European leagues, the question on every Whitecaps fans’ mind is “Who are we picking up now?”
With the multi-million dollar windfall from Camilo’s departure, the possibilities have certainly opened up. Yet, the Whitecaps faithful can’t help but wonder what this ordeal will do to the clubs on-field success and how quickly it can be recovered.
Reviving Warhol’s Kitchen
Is the best still yet to come? Gob Squad’s Kitchen, a production presented by the PuSh Performing Arts Festival, seeks to find authenticity in a time less optimistic than that of yesteryear.
While the show’s title refers to Andy Warhol’s film Kitchen, artist Sharon Smith explained that the original concept of the show had nothing to do with Warhol. The Gob Squad, a collective of artists from the UK and Germany, wanted to create a show using film that “ate audiences” by involving them so that there was no longer any audience left by the end. During their research they came across Warhol’s work, and that’s when the show really took shape.
“We started to re-enact films,” said Smith, “but the really obvious ones, like Titanic and Jaws, and then we started looking at art films and one-shot films, and of course we thought of Warhol.” These reenactments did in fact take place in a kitchen, with some of the crew watching on a screen in the living room. “We enjoyed the idea of having a screen in one room and a camera in the other — the uncanniness of that,” she said.
“I think it’s very different now. We’re trapped in something so completely capitalist. [Warhol] was beginning to critique it.”
Sharon Smith
After playing around with various ideas and delving deeper into Warhol’s work, they realized how much of their work is really influenced by him. “We were always very aware of Warhol; we’ve always been fans,” said Smith. “As a collective we don’t agree on anything, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say that. He was saying the right things in the right place at the right time,” she explained, “I’m not sure whether he knew it or not, the way it changed our relationship to art.”
“There was the myth of Kitchen,” said Smith, “we were all aware of it, but not sure if we’d seen it. We decided to never watch it, to just go with memory and imagination.” In the end, that plan didn’t follow through; it turned out that a friend of a friend owned one of the four original copies of Kitchen, and the rare opportunity of a private screening was something they couldn’t pass up.
The show begins, as the audience walks through the kitchen itself, behind a giant screen, and then in front of it and to their seats. Seeing what’s behind the curtain doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the work at all, and actually adds a deeper understanding of it. This walk through also serves a practical purpose for the actors: they are sizing up the audience to see who they might pick to become part of the action.
Sharon Smith and Sean Patten are the first to be displayed on the big screen in black and white, describing objects in the kitchen and whether or not they are suitable for the time period.
There are three projectors: the second one shows the film Screen Test, a version of Warhol’s video portraits of people sitting in front of a camera. The third projector plays Sleep, which is exactly that — a film of someone sleeping. Each of these narratives has compelling twists, and Sleep also has some very intimate audience participation. By the end of the show there were four audience members on stage instead of the four actors, and they became the show.
Since first performing this show in 2007, the Gob Squad has toured extensively, performing it over 160 times. “We did a three week run in New York and met some people who were involved in the Factory,” said Smith, “they were in the epicenter of something.” It was a time when people felt like they could start a revolution or write a manifesto, and they had a great deal of optimism for the future.
“I think it’s very different now,” said Smith. “We’re trapped in something so completely capitalist. [Warhol] was beginning to critique it. Now we’re part of the problem, and it’s hard to imagine a solution or real change.”
Gob Squad’s Kitchen demonstrates that even though life is complicated, sometimes living in the moment is the best thing you can do.
Gob Squad’s Kitchen was presented at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Jan. 16–18 as part of the PuSh Performing Arts Festival. For more information, visit gobsquad.com.
Clan down Vikes in final home meet
A day that began with a big splash from Tim Rahilly, SFU’s associate vice president of students, ended with a Clan swimming team victory over the University of Victoria Vikes in SFU’s final home meet of the season.
Before diving into the races, Rahilly led a ceremony recognizing five Clan swimmers — Nicole Cossey, Kristine Lawson, Alexandria Schofield, Jordyn Konrad, and Carmen Nam — who represented SFU at last year’s NCAA Championships.
That championship pedigree led the Clan to an impressive 226–186 win over their BC rivals. Cossey and Schofield started the day with a win in the 200m-medley relay, and with help from teammates Grace Ni and Katie McEvoy, the Clan quartet finished in just 1:57.78. In the same race on the men’s side, Brandon Bronson, Julian Monks, Ciaran McDonnell, and Hans Heyer also swam their way to a win.
Schofield would earn the day’s first individual race — the 100m-butterfly — in 1:03.77, while sophomore Justin Kiedrzyn won the same event for the men. Cossey would win the 50m-freestyle event, with teammate Katrina Sharpe finishing second. Later in the day, Monks would race in his final event with SFU, a win in the 200m-breaststroke, with a time of 2:18.21.
SFU’s women would dominate the 200m-freestyle race, taking first-, second-, and third-place in the event with strong showings from Meghan Quon, Claudia Mathieu, and Grace Ni, respectively.
The Clan put a stamp on the day with a win in the final event for both the men and women, the 200m-freestyle relay. The men’s squad, featuring Heyer, Kiedrzyn, McDonnell and freshman Igor Gasovic-Varga won in a time of 1:35.57. Meanwhile, the women’s first entry, featuring Schofield, Quon, Cossey, and freshman Lauren Swistak won with a time of 1:49.08.
It was a notable finish for SFU’s home schedule, and another highlight on a strong season. Though the team will finish the season at Margaret and Paul Savage Aquatic Centre, there are still a number of events left to prepare for — not the least of which being the NCAA Championships in March.
Freak Out! Five bizarre cases of mass hysteria
The brain is an incredibly powerful machine. It has been proven time after time that our minds can convince us of all manner of things. Throughout our history, there have been many confirmed cases of completely incomprehensible and unexplainable outbursts shared by a large group. We classify these cases as mass hysteria: widespread fear, anxiety, irrational behaviour or unexplained illness shared by a group or subculture of people.
Some are simply coincidental oddities — others seem to confirm that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. Here are a few of the most notable cases.
The Dancing Plague of 1518
In 1518, a case of dancing mania took place in what was then the Holy Roman Empire, and is now Strasbourg, Austria. It all started when one woman began to dance wildly in the streets; she continued doing so for four to six days without stopping. Within the following week, over 30 joined in, and in under a month there were 400 dancers in the streets of Strasbourg. The local law enforcement even set up a temporary stage in the town centre.
No one knows why they danced, and why they would not stop. Local doctors ruled out any supernatural causes, and decided to blame it on the “hot blood” of the victims. They encouraged the dancers to simply continue, with the belief the plague would end on its own. They were right — most of the dancers collapsed due to fatigue, and some actually died from heart attacks and dehydration.
Gives a whole new meaning to dance ‘til you drop, doesn’t it?
The Meowing Nuns
Ever since the Middle Ages, many religious communities in Western Europe held the belief that animals were capable of possessing human beings. After the incident involving the French meowing nuns, you might believe it, too.
One day in 1844, in a large covenant in central France, a nun began to meow. It wasn’t long before the nuns around her joined in, until every single one of them began to mimic the noises of cats, screeching and purring in unison. Every day thereafter, the entire convent would meow in unison for hours at specific times. Eventually folks from the neighbouring houses began to complain, and soldiers were called in to intervene — they threatened to whip the nuns unless they stopped meowing.
Though the nuns stopped cooing in unison, occasional outbursts of animal noises and behaviours continued throughout the region for many years. No one knows why.
The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic
Another case of mass hysteria occurred in 1962 in a small village of Tanzania, known as Tanganyika at the time. Beginning at an all girls’ boarding school, three young girls began to chuckle to themselves. Chuckling turned into laughter, and laughter turned into a full scale guffaw. Suddenly, their laughter spread like contagion, and 95 out of about 150 students began laughing uncontrollably.
With the students unable to do their schoolwork due to their incessant laughter, the school closed down, and the girls returned to their village. Upon returning home, the laughing epidemic spread; over 200 people in their village began to experience the same bizarre symptoms as the girls. Soon, it spread to the surrounding villages.
Overall, it is estimated that a thousand people were affected to some degree, with symptoms that stemmed from the high levels of laughter such as fainting, pain, crying attacks, random screaming, and respiratory problems. The crazy phenomenon took about six months to abate, and 18 full months to die down completely.
The War of the Worlds
A great example of panic before logic can be found in the 1938 Halloween radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel, War of the Worlds, performed by a pre-Citizen Kane Orson Welles. Though the radio play began with a disclaimer, most tuned in halfway through the program — and got more than they bargained for.
The radio play was so realistically portrayed, with no commercial breaks for the hour and formatted as a stream of news bulletins, that 1.7 of their six million listeners actually believed that the world would soon be at war with the Martians. Accurate depictions of real life places led to people imagining that they could actually see the destruction occurring in the distance, and some saying they could smell poison gas in the air.
Historians say that the mass hysteria experienced may have been a result of the vast technological changes of the era. After all, with the advent of the radio and the automobile, who’s to say that Martians can’t land on Earth?
Strawberries with Sugar
Thought you hated soap operas before? Think again. In 2006, a popular Portuguese drama for teenage girls, Morangos com Açúcar (Strawberries with Sugar), aired an episode in which a life-threatening virus affected the fictional TV show’s school. After the episode was broadcast, teenage girls across the country began to experience the same symptoms as seen on their favourite show. Soon boys and schoolteachers began to report similar symptoms.
These included difficulty breathing, dizziness, and rashes. Across the country, over 300 students at 14 schools were reportedly “ill.” When these symptoms were all found to be false, the incident was classified and dismissed as epidemic hysteria. Eventually the symptoms all but disappeared, along with most of the girls’ TV privileges.
