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…

OK, another new rule, no Genki English shows in the gym in August nor September! Today’s school was in the mountains and was really, really old with a corrugated tin roof that made things sweltering inside. It was sooo hot! The school had paid for my hotel last night so initially asked for 4 hours…

Last year I taught all the grades here in the “Show” format, which basically means all the Genki English rules and all the basics at a breakneck speed. So that meant today I could simply do a straightforward, by the book, demo lesson that any of the teachers could copy. Of course things don’t always…