Over on the forum there’s a really big list of very good websites building up. One of the links put up this week was for a massive pdf book of games and ideas by the JET teachers down in Okinawa. It’s a really big download, but there are so many ideas for Junior High School…

I actually had a bit of time free today to catch up with emails and blog links and things. One of the good sites I heard about is www.chinesepod.com. This is a really great site with loads and loads of podcasts ( which are actually free), all done in a very up to date style….

I didn’t get the last lot of software done for Monday, it took till four o’clock this morning! Then today was spent checking everything. It’s amazing how things have changed in the last year though. Before I used to have make CDs and have them expressed to the factory. These days I can just email…

You know I’ve never actually had to get a visa to visit somewhere before. Especially having a European passport you forget how easy it is now to travel to so many countries. However next week I’m in China, so have to get a proper visa. It’ll be strange not having my passport for 3 days!

With all the talk recently of reforming or changing the elementary school “English” curriculum, I figured I’d better check up to make sure that there have been no changes to the Course of Study of this year. The Course of Study or “Shidou youryou” ( 小学校学習指導要 ) is the official word on what we have…

This month’s Wired magazine has a great article about how we learn by playing computer games: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html And they also have another great article on “Beijing’s global campaign to make Chinese the number one language in the world.” http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/mandarin.html Be genki,