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 Printable Lesson Plans Genki English CDs:  Volume 1  Volume 2  Volume 3  Volume 4  Volume 5  Volume 6   New CD Vol. 7   MP3 Songs |
Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
whilst I'm away, the office staff are always ready to send off your CD orders just as soon as you send them in!
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Previous Entries are here
I’m now back in the UK, I’ll still be working on GE all through until March when I get back to Japan, but for now the shows, tours and seminars are over.
2002 was just a crazy year, what with being jetted off to Hollywood and everything, and although 2003 wasn’t quite as glamorous it’s been very busy and it seems we’ve moved on quite a way. Highlights have been the Tokyo Bookfair (with the VIP passes), the Key Note Speech at Kobe and all the tours. We have taught thousands of teachers and 10s of thousands of kids, probably more than anyone else in Japan. We also did a lot of work with JALT and I had the first presentation in Korea which was great. Products wise we’ve only had the Picture Card packs and the DVD out this year, but I have spent an enormous amount of time on the website. To be honest I probably shouldn’t have put so much on the site, as that’s not what pays the bills, but for the people who support us so much I really want to give as much back as I can.
But next year will see a whole new range of products and hopefully a bigger step on the road to making GE a household name in Japan. One big problem this year has been that teachers use Genki English loads ( just about everyone has the CDs) but the average person on the street doesn’t know yet. Plus the fact that lots of people use the ideas eventhough they officially teach for the big English companies who then take the credit!! Parents are the key to success of any education project, so one aim for next year is to let everyone know about GE, and to motivate your average guy and girl on the street to be genki about English and the World. Hopefully the DVD will play a big part in this as it’s the first product where you can really feel the genkiness.
And of course you, the teachers who use Genki English, are the key to the future and I want to do all I can to help you out. So keep your comments coming in on the surveys and let me know what you want.
2004 is going to be a wicked year, let’s make it as fun, as Genki and as successful as we can! Confidence is the key; if you think you can do it, you can!
Be genki,
Richard
Pretty much as the title says!
OK, the Nara JETs rock too much, I was feeling decidedly ill this morning. But still had work to do, so put on my best genki smile to talk to the national press about the DVD release. And seeing as I was in Nara, decided to take a 20 minute break and have a look round the temples, they are after all World heritage sites, but all I’ve been doing here this week is work!! They were cool, then more work after nightfall.
Today was another JET day, doing a presentation sponsored by the Nara Prefectural Board of Education and the Ministry of Education. They had Kip Cates doing the morning seminar and he was great as usual, taking about World issues. It was great to hear the JETs saying “yeah, after his speech last time I really decided to change my whole teaching style”.
Then I was on in the afternoon. The room was packed and as there was also another seminar at the same time I only got the Genki JETs, which was really cool. So we started off (after I tried to speak in English and failed many times) and for a warm up did “What’s your name?” but the CD player was way too quiet for these guys and impossible to work with! And that really threw me, how to do an elementary school presentation without songs??? But I improved a bit and also did some question and answers. And these guys asked some really cool questions, great stuff. Usually JETs just moan in Q&A sessions, but today we got some great questions. They then loved the games (mingle and hammer) and I final got a new CD player for How are you?. The difference in using the songs or not really shone through, games are cool, but the songs make a world of difference. It was also good to see how even just a little bit of Japanese could make all the difference for the Japanese teachers. In English they understood very little ( I speak very fast!), but just a couple of little “dekiru, dekirus” or other motivation lines in Japanese and they got really into it.
So that went well and I finished on a mini-Genki speech and everyone seemed very happy.
Then it was out for dinner with AJET, and again JETs are the most amazing people. I had a really, really cool night. You guys rock!
Spent the day sending out the press release of the DVD and making the DVD pages on the website live! It’s official, the DVD is now available to order!! It’s been a lot of hard work, but if it makes Japanese kids genki and positive about the World, it’s worth it!
We’re staying in one of the cheapest hotels in town ( 5,000 yen a night at the “Superhotel” ) whilst at the same time we’re going to be giving away 1,000 copies of the DVD to elementary schools. We must be mad.
So to publicise the fact we’re sending out press releases, so today was spent at Starbucks preparing the first set.
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