The plan was to do a full day yesterday then today get the teachers to actually do some teaching. The idea being they’d have a nice safety net and I could give them lots of feedback now they were in the “it’s OK to make mistakes” frame of mind. I always knew this was going to be a bit tricky as lots of teachers from other schools had applied to attend, so with 80 people the logistics were a bit crazy. It was made even more difficult as there were more new teachers today who hadn’t had all the basics from yesterday.

But we went through it, and with the help of the other teachers we managed to bring the new teachers up to speed, sort of, and went though a load more stuff. The sessions where the teachers teach themselves went well ( e.g. they came up with some great warm up ideas), but as it took so much time I changed things and just got a couple of teachers to come to the front and use the CDs to teach a lesson. That worked really well, especially choosing teachers who didn’t like computers, and with a touch of practise I don’t think there’d be any problems. In fact the trickiest thing the teachers reported was figuring out how to use the mouse! Actually at yesterday’s school they were telling me how they use the new interactive white boards, so instead of moving over words to hear the words, the teacher simply points to the picture on the board and it speaks! That is such a great use of the GE software, I can’t wait to try it myself!

There were so many people today though that we couldn’t fit in the air conditioned room. So when we played the balloon game, the fans blew the balloons out the window!! : )

But the teachers here were great, it’s going to be so cool to see how they get on!

Then off to get the 3 hour Shinkansen down to Oita in Kyushu!