Today was finally the day when the free DVDs for elementary schools finished! It was a huge challenge to fund this project, and in the end it’s sort of had mixed results. The idea initially was for teachers who were really, really nervous about teaching English could just use the DVD as a virtual ALT in the classroom, where I would teach everything and they just act out their parts. Dead easy, they just go with the flow. In this respect it worked great and the DVD format really makes jumping between the lessons and songs and games really easy. But what I didn’t count on, and this is a pretty big mistake on my part, was that these teachers also tend to be totally terrified of technology!! In fact most teachers who I’ve met have no idea how to use DVDs or indeed what they are! So in this sense it was a bit of a failure as the teachers it was supposed to empower were afraid of the medium – and hence it took so long to move all the DVDs! But it did mean a lot more teachers got to know Genki English and also tried out the CDs ( a much safer technology in their eyes!) and hence did manage to introduce English to their classes! So that was cool, and although the free project has run its course, the DVDs will still be available to buy on the site.

Elsewhere today it was just business stuff, knocking up order forms for Osaka on the weekend, recoding the mail forms to stop viruses and getting round to lots of jobs I’d been putting off for ages. Not too fun, and really something I should pay someone else to do, but it’s got to be done!