The Halloween Picture Book has been a huge success this week. So in the spirit of “things are better out there rather than stuck on my hard drive” I’m putting up lots of the new picture books in the “Discussion & Genki Community” section of the forum. A few of them are still in the…

Just spent the last week on a fact finding and sorting things out trip into Asia. Taiwan was cool, my first time there, and even though a lot of the country is still under developed, the central areas of Taipei seriously scream out “The Future!”. The whole sense of style in the buildings ( tallest…

Most of my energies over the last few years have been spread all over the country, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. But one place where I haven’t done much, outside of bookstore events, is in the capital Tokyo. So this week has been nice to have not one, but two workshops in real elementary schools. As…

It’s great being back into term time. Summer is cool in that the workshops are lots of fun, but it’s nice to get all the new ideas into action. One project I’m working on at the moment is a book of lesson plans for all the GE themes. All the content is on the site,…

September 11th 2006 – Digital Whiteboards Regular readers will know I’m fascinated with using Digital Whiteboards in Japanese schools. With so many teachers afraid of using computers ( or mice!), the thought of simply touching a picture on the wall and hear it talk is very appealing. The market is still wide open as, unlike…

It’s hot, it’s sunny and I’m on a pacific island and able to take a day off. The teacher who organised this week very kindly offered to let me crash another night and the plan was to do some sight seeing. Unfortunately the planes back to Tokyo tomorrow were all full. As were the ones…