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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
Like the past couple of days, work started at 7AM today, which thanks to jet lag isn’t too bad! Then everything was finished by lunchtime. Now if this was Japan it would be “oh, finished your work? Do some more!”, but here it’s “got all your work done? Right, that’s it for the day!”. I tell you it’s good to get out of the Japanese mind set once in a while and not feel guilty about it!!
So in the afternoon I went along to the park and did some Italian. That is just fantastic, sitting there in the sunshine ( but no humidity!), with a cappuccino that only cost 1 euro, and having all the people roaming around. Perfect. You just can’t get that in Japan, and I’m loving it!! This is the sort of day I’ve been looking for for ages, I guess it must be a hang up from my student days of being in Grenoble but not being able to afford even the 1 Euro for a coffee! But it’s great, highly recommended!
For the Italian I was going to use Pimsleur series like I did for Spanish in January, but I don’t have the time to rush through the course in a week. So I went with the Living Language series, which I remembered I actually used when learning Japanese. The difference here is that unlike Pimsleur which really makes you think and adds in little bits at a time with lots of review, the Living Language gives you everything in 3 hours and you just keep repeating it till you’ve got it. I think Pimsleur is probably best, but since I did a year of Italian in uni then the Living Language one is working a treat.
I also had a look at the Rosetta Stone software package which allows you to work at your own pace, but mine is the version for learning Thai so only includes the demo version of the Italian one, so not much use!
It’s always good for my job to keep learning myself, Japanese people must get so confused with all the advice people give them, mostly from people who can only speak one language! Once you have the right tools, it is really simple, and one thing I realised today is that now thanks to ipods, DVDs and the net, the difference between EFL ( studying at home) and ESL ( studying in the country ) is really getting quite small. It’s easier than ever to learn English in Japan! The Daily Yomiuri also had a couple of articles today which were quite positive for a change! And taking the time out to brainstorm new ideas for Genki English is really working out, there are lots of cool things to do!!
So things are looking good, and one last cappuccino before I head off to my hotel!
Be genki,
Richard
These last few weeks have been hectic to say the least! I’ve just spent the last few days in Ehime getting everything ready for the CD5 launch. The new worksheets look really good, we’ve just changed printers and they’ve done a cool job. And over the weekend it was packing up all the CD5 orders. It is actually quite exciting seeing all that activity going on, and they have a great system which they won’t let me go anywhere near in case I mess something up!!
It was good being back in Ehime, I miss my old JET job! But it is certainly different from Fukuoka, and in the space of two days a I got all the cliche comments, kids running past shouting “gaijin da”, the women in the post office asking me where in America I wanted to send money to and being offered a spoon instead of chopsticks in the Okonomiyaki shop! I’m glad this wasn’t the part of town I used to teach in!
I also had to renew my drivers license, which was an ordeal in itself. They have to be renewed every three years, and as this was the first time to renew mine I had to talk a half day lecture course! That was the most boring thing ever…. I tell it’s not just English education that needs updating! But it was cool to re-learn all the things not to do in a lesson!
Now that CD5 is done and out of the way, it was time to plan out the rest of the year. To be honest I have spent far too much time on CD5, to the neglect of the other activities! But a few phonecalls to let people know I’ll be ready to do stuff from June and things are filling up nicely. And hopefully I should be able to keep a nice balance between promotional tours for the CDs and volunteer work in schools.
We’ve also extended the free post and packing offer on the CDs, basically because we had to do for the internal orders so it was easier to keep it on for the Japan orders as well! So the new finish date is May 6th.
Otherwise it was good to see Prime Minister Koizumi apologise in Jakarta, hopefully that should go some way to ease the tensions with China. But this sort of thing really makes your work more important, if the kids are actively chatting with kids in other countries then it doesn’t matter what’s in their textbooks as they can ask for themselves! So let’s get them good enough to be able to do that!
And it was crazy to hear about the rail crash in Kobe the other day, just a day after I passed through there myself. But I’d still trust the Japanese trains more than any others in the World.
So now I’m in Milan for a couple of weeks. I’m going to take this week to have a look around and see what other projects need putting in place, and what else needs working on the site. And hopefully over golden week I’ll be able to take a few days off - yeah!
It is nice being here, it just feels like Europe! I just wished we could keep in cleaner, there’s so much good stuff here but it’s all full of graffiti! But Milan is cool, I had a walk around yesterday and the Duomo and everything is great. So after putting some new games up on the site I’m off out for the my lunch now, to find some nice pasta and coffee and a couple of hours learning Italian - I wish I had done more before I came! Still it’s nice to be here, and it’s a lot cheaper than living in Japan!
Ciao!
It’s taken a lot of work but CD5 is finally up on the site! Yeah! Today I uploaded the new lesson plans, picture cards ( all 100 of them!) and got the site all ready to take pre-orders. Going through and changing every mention of the “4CD Set” to be “5 CD Set” was quite a task! And I think people will be quite happy with the new pricing. It’s a big relief that it’s finally out there and people can finally get their hands on the pictures and songs! It’s the first big CD release in two years, and it really adds a lot to the site.
So now all I have to do is to get all the other materials up including the worksheets, minicards and sentence cards, plus photos of the songs and get the Japanese translations proof read!
I also had another look at bringing the forum back tonight, as quite a few people have written in. But there doesn’t seem to be an easy way of doing it securely. I’ll have another look later on, but for now I want to get all the new CD5 back up materials on the site.
Anyway, enjoy the new CD!
This week has been quite good really, it’s nice and warm and on Monday I woke up and for the first time didn’t have to think about the new CD!! Wow! Plus Monday afternoon was my holiday!
Then it was back to work getting all the other stuff ready. The picture cards, worksheets and a huge new update to the website ( some of which I’ve implemented already) all to be done. The forum I’ve had a look at but whichever way I look at it, with all the problems and time it takes up I think it would be better to replace the public forum with pages where people can submit material to the main site. To be honest it has been great this week not having to worry about some weirdo putting something strange up there!
New Japanese privacy laws came into effect this week. That’s another reason not to have an open forum. Luckily the rest of the site is all in compliance, but there’s a lot of Japanese documentation to do!
And I also started going to the gym again. I think I should re-name Genki English as “Genki Diet” as teaching the songs is such a great way to keep in shape!! Unfortunately 3 months sat behind a computer isn’t, so I need to get fit again!
Right, back to work we go!
The discussion board has been taking up a lot of time recently, and I woke up today to find it had been hacked! I can’t believe how some people just get their kicks out of taking down a site’s forum, especially something like the Genki English one. It looks like a common attack and there isn’t a solution available yet, so the board will be down for the time being. But you can still share your games and ideas on the Readers Games page, and of course you can still email me anytime - I still respond to them all!
Dave Stewart once said “You never finish an album, there just comes a point where you have to let go”. Over the past few weeks I’ve been putting more and more in to CD5, and I’ve now come up against another barrier - a CD can’t hold any more! So that’s it, it’s finished! Last week was spent doing the final checks, and everything came out OK. It sometimes runs a little slow on old Pentium 3 or Mac OS9 machines, but it still works OK and on newer machines it is fantastic!! One of the things I do to double check the software on as many machines as possible is to pop along to the local computer store and check it on their machines ( they’re cool as I buy so much stuff there!). On the new big screen monitors it just looks fantastic!!! Doing the graphics in flash makes them look so good when blown up, so I’m very happy!
So tomorrow I’ll get the final checks of the inlays back and then it’s time to send everything off for mastering, and if everything goes well it should be ready for the beginning of May. Hopefully we’ll have a special “pre-order” offer on the site in the next couple of weeks!!
Wow, I can’t believe it’s finished! Getting the CD done is all I’ve thought about for 3 months, it’ll be strange to get back to normal, but then again I have to get all the new lesson plans and picture cards on the site!
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