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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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I bought an iPod last night! And it’s great. I listen to a lot of music and recently I’ve really got into having mp3s on my phone. But with only half a gig of space and all the security stuff which makes it so slooooowww to transfer data across ( over an hour for 5 hours of music!!!), I finally decided to get an iPod! Yeah. ( I justified it as it saves up 40 gigs of portable hard drive space, which costs about the same!). And it’s pretty good, it’s sort of like having a computer mp3 player but one that does stuff when you press buttons, rather than waiting and making funny noises for 10 seconds first.
So that was cool, except…. when I went to make a cup of tea this morning, the iPod box had jumped off my desk and had attacked my poor laptop! Bits of plastic were all over the floor!!! Arghh! And without a computer I’m pretty stuck so I had to spend the rest of the day traipsing round the computer stores trying to find a new one! And getting info out sales people who have neither no idea of sales ( the idea is to find out what the customer needs and make them happy!!) or computers is no fun. However this all might have been fate as just today the new Autumn models were released! Thing is they aren’t much different and some machines have actually gone down in spec, you’d never figure that in Japan would you? But there were a couple of good ones, including a Sharp Mebius with a 64 bit processor, very nice! But it’s way too heavy and only has two hours of battery. Or a Panasonic which has 7 hours of battery (!), is very light but crashed when I tested it!! So the one I think I’ll get is the new NEC. The thing is it’s way bigger than my current laptop!!! But it does seem faster so I should get more work done ( good exercise I guess, carrying round a big machine). At the shop I had a look on the NEC website and they have the same model but a lot faster ( 2Ghz) for less money. So I think that’s where I’ll buy it. But as it’ll take a few days to get here, I also bought some super glue to try and fix up my poor old machine.
And I also had to buy a remote control and case for the iPod, all crafty marketing not including them in the box!
This morning was again very busy, going through and translating all the new pages and newsletter into Japanese - it takes a lot of time! I also had to redo the Witch clip art picture as the one I did yesterday wasn’t good enough. At around 2 hours to just draw one picture, a whole new theme on the site is a lot of effort!
When I first started the site I really enjoyed changing the themes and everything for events like Halloween, decorating the site. But now it’s a lot more pressure as even minute changes on the site cause a huge change in the number of visitors and CD orders, which is fine for me, but I have to be extra careful when those orders also provide other people’s paychecks!
But I eventually got finished and sent the newsletters off. Yeah! Now it’s the fun part of sitting back and seeing everyone’s reaction!
At 3 I popped into town to have a chat with a mate ( who’s also a teacher), and that was really good, I have to get my new motivation book finished! I felt really genki after that and I’m really excited about getting the CD5 songs done - they’re going to be killer!
Wow, that was one long work day! But I got a ton of stuff done so I’m shattered, but very happy!
First of was a new updated version of the GenkiJapan.net talking Japanese page. This page is really popular, coming up on the top 5 in google for “learning Japanese” so I figured I should get around to updating it with all the new ideas I have. So there are now the most important dozen or so Japanese phrases, and of course if you click them they talk!
Then it was onto the Hallowe’en update. I had been thinking about putting the Halloween Theme onto the new CD, but that would mean it would have to wait till next year. So what I figured was to put it in the members area of the site, that way people everybody wins!
Recording the vocals was OK ( the music I already had produced), mind you my voice wasn’t quite as genki as it could be! But that’s the great thing about the net, I can put the ideas up there and then get feedback ( most people have said it’s great as it is!) and simply change it if there is anything that needs it. But with a CD once it’s at the factory that’s it, no going back! Which is really stressful!
Anyway, so the other main thing today was to get the clip art done for the halloween theme. Some of the words I already had, and some were new.I was really impressed with how the Vampire turned out, it looks great!
Then to write up the page, do all the links and menus, and the newsletter to send out tomorrow. And now I have to do it all again in Japanese…. I think some sleep is in order first!
Today I was expecting a ton of emails and stuff to do, but there weren’t many emails to answer, but there were tons of CD orders which was cool! Eventhough I was away the orders were still sent off last week so don’t worry.
But even so there was still quite a lot to do with catching up on admin and stuff.
I also bought a new Sound Module today. I’ve been trying to use the computer soft synths, but they just don’t have any “oomph”, so in Hard Off they had a great Korg module at a bargain of only 8,000 yen! So I bought it and it sounds fantastic, and more important than that the sounds are so good new song ideas just flow out - just what I needed!
People have been saying I should head over to Hong Kong for ages and this was my first proper time. ( The only other time I’ve been here was when the aeroplane I was on had an engine fire and we had to do and emergency landing!! But that’s another story.).
I was expecting the English language scene to be great, maybe some Genki Maths could help, but they wouldn’t need any Genki English, would they? Well, the average English level here seems to be as bad as Japan! I’ve been doing a bit of Mandarin lately, but I should have learnt some Cantonese as hardly anyone spoke English!! Although to everyone’s credit they did try. For example where as in Japan people literally run away if they have to speak English, people here would go and ask someone how to say something and then come back and say it. So things could be interesting here after all….
It was my day off today and it was sunny - yeah! So days off in September call for fruit picking. First off we went up to pick some grapes but apparently they’d all been blown away in the typhoon. So we went fig picking instead which was good, although the trees were very low and I had to crouch down to get under the walkways. But that was quite fun!
Yesterday for some reason my girlfriend bought a playstation. I really like games, but figured it’s best not to buy one as I’d never get any work done! But as today was my holiday when we got back I had a go at Socom II. Now my Japanese is quite good, but I haven’t a clue about any military terms. But one of the pieces of advice I give teenage or adult students is to play your favourite playstation game in English. And it really does work, things repeat so often, are an intrinsic part of the game and it’s fun, so after a few goes things like “clear the area” or “activate main weapons” or “undercover agent” become second nature!!
So from tomorrow till Friday I’m in Hong Kong, so replies to emails will be a little late, but CD orders etc. will still be sent off as quickly as usual from Shikoku!
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