I work for a large, multinational organisation which teaches English in every country of the world. My last posting invovled establishing a showpiece teaching centre in an Asian capital city with a fairly large budget to spend on ICT. This is how we spent the cash
1) Interactive whiteboards in every classroom with good internet connectivity - we ripped out the old whiteboards to give the teachers no option but to use the new technology. IWBs are fantastic language teaching tools, allowing teachers to get away from their keyboard and mouse and work from where they are most comfortable, near the board. The wealth of authentic, real examples of language available via the Internet is endless: video, audio, flash-based animation, text, chat bots and simulated environments all act as valuable and authentic input into a lesson. This variety of input caters to different learning styles and unlike the low quality, pavlovian CD ROMs with their dull grammar exercises and inauthentic language, present real contexts for language work. Teachers kicked up a storm about the change at first but very quickly warmed to the creative possibilities invovled and made good use of other functionality - saving and reviewing board work, integrating sound and video seamlessly in their classes (without the usual TV, OHP, video recorder set up). Fabulous teaching tool 2) We ditched the awful language lab in favour of sets of wireless laptop computers which could be wheeled from classroom to classroom, to allow for language work in pairs and groups. The work being done on screen which acted as a stimulus for oral communication and written practice in pairs and groups, could be pulled onto the IWBs and corrected on the spot. Fabulous. 3) Moodle is very popular but the design of these sites leaves me cold. They look and feel like 'school' rather than feeling as is the participant is engaged in a real, communicative project. Students rarely manage to master all the features and simple act as forum fodder - that is to say, they are participants in a site, rather than the creators of it. This is very de-motivating. Personally think a well designed blog/community website, along the lines of Slashdot is a far better tool, which hands power over to the users (students)and leaves communication in their hands. A considerable body of research is emerging to support this feeling. The blog site was exceptionally 'sticky' especially when teachers uploaded board work from the lessons and used it for review at home and when students themselves cretaed stories and mini-projects online. d) don't invest in CD ROMs - I've rarely seen a goodone (except for dictionaries) and everything you need is already online. e) Provide a cafe style area for students to use those old PCs in - relax with a cup of coffee and complete tasks done in class.
It's easy to miss the wood for the trees though isn't it? Alex Kerr may have lived in Japan a long time but he ehibits the chief characteristic of every other gaijin I meet here - they spend so much of their time looking for things to criticise. I'm also a foreigner living in Japan and the are a lot of things which wrankle with me too - but there are a hell of a lot of things which are right about the country.
Tokyo certainly isn't the most beautiful city on the earth but it is certainly one of the most interesting and lively. Hardly surprising that aesthetics matter little in a country where people live and work so densely - not much room for architectral masterpieces! Nevertheless, I rather like the sight of downtown Shinjuku at night and Akihabara fizzling with neon. I love the glassy office buildings sitting incongruosly with tiny old wooden shrines. I like the architectural follies dottered around the city.
I greatly appreciate that it's the only city I've ever lived in where I feel safe walking home at night and where women are happy to stroll home at 3 in the morning through darkened streets and where young kids can walk home from school rather than having to be shuttled to and fro in bullet proof station wagons. Not much of that elsewhere.
And as for business culture.... well I don't much like the thought of settling in for 50 years in the same office cubicle myself, but in a country where the unemployement rate shames the rest of the advanced world, I don't criticise the Japanese who DO opt for that secure route. After all, much of the advanced world is living on their credit cards. The Japanese are still managing to save huge sums of money, even during this time of recession and most of the economic problems in Japan stem from their unwillingness to spend those savings too freely. This might explain why Japan is still a very equal country, without the sickening extremes of wealth and poverty seen elsewhere. And this despite the fact that Japan was right in the firing line when the Asian tigers around them started sinking at the end of the 90s. Considering the level of Japanese investment in their neighbours economies, I think the country has done pretty well.
A little tinge of rascism in all this I suspect. The same people who were bemoaning the fact that the japanese were buying huge chunks of America's economy not so long ago, are now sagely shaking their heads and critiquing the weakened business climate now as if it was symptomatic of a diseased culture.
How very wrong they are.
Got to forgive my ignorance on this one but did MO drives ever make it to the states? Up to 1.3gb of storage, all totally re-writable, not terribly fast and very popular over here in Japan. Bought one for $200 and wouldn't even look at a CDR/W or zip after using it. Think the basic idea was to create a mini disc for data storage although MD and MO are not compatible. If all of this is old news, just write it off to not having left Japan for the last three years.
Is the outside world still out there?
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a large, multinational organisation which teaches English in every country of the world. My last posting invovled establishing a showpiece teaching centre in an Asian capital city with a fairly large budget to spend on ICT. This is how we spent the cash
1) Interactive whiteboards in every classroom with good internet connectivity - we ripped out the old whiteboards to give the teachers no option but to use the new technology. IWBs are fantastic language teaching tools, allowing teachers to get away from their keyboard and mouse and work from where they are most comfortable, near the board. The wealth of authentic, real examples of language available via the Internet is endless: video, audio, flash-based animation, text, chat bots and simulated environments all act as valuable and authentic input into a lesson. This variety of input caters to different learning styles and unlike the low quality, pavlovian CD ROMs with their dull grammar exercises and inauthentic language, present real contexts for language work. Teachers kicked up a storm about the change at first but very quickly warmed to the creative possibilities invovled and made good use of other functionality - saving and reviewing board work, integrating sound and video seamlessly in their classes (without the usual TV, OHP, video recorder set up). Fabulous teaching tool
2) We ditched the awful language lab in favour of sets of wireless laptop computers which could be wheeled from classroom to classroom, to allow for language work in pairs and groups. The work being done on screen which acted as a stimulus for oral communication and written practice in pairs and groups, could be pulled onto the IWBs and corrected on the spot. Fabulous.
3) Moodle is very popular but the design of these sites leaves me cold. They look and feel like 'school' rather than feeling as is the participant is engaged in a real, communicative project. Students rarely manage to master all the features and simple act as forum fodder - that is to say, they are participants in a site, rather than the creators of it. This is very de-motivating. Personally think a well designed blog/community website, along the lines of Slashdot is a far better tool, which hands power over to the users (students)and leaves communication in their hands. A considerable body of research is emerging to support this feeling. The blog site was exceptionally 'sticky' especially when teachers uploaded board work from the lessons and used it for review at home and when students themselves cretaed stories and mini-projects online.
d) don't invest in CD ROMs - I've rarely seen a goodone (except for dictionaries) and everything you need is already online.
e) Provide a cafe style area for students to use those old PCs in - relax with a cup of coffee and complete tasks done in class.
Just my thoughts.
It's easy to miss the wood for the trees though isn't it? Alex Kerr may have lived in Japan a long time but he ehibits the chief characteristic of every other gaijin I meet here - they spend so much of their time looking for things to criticise. I'm also a foreigner living in Japan and the are a lot of things which wrankle with me too - but there are a hell of a lot of things which are right about the country. Tokyo certainly isn't the most beautiful city on the earth but it is certainly one of the most interesting and lively. Hardly surprising that aesthetics matter little in a country where people live and work so densely - not much room for architectral masterpieces! Nevertheless, I rather like the sight of downtown Shinjuku at night and Akihabara fizzling with neon. I love the glassy office buildings sitting incongruosly with tiny old wooden shrines. I like the architectural follies dottered around the city. I greatly appreciate that it's the only city I've ever lived in where I feel safe walking home at night and where women are happy to stroll home at 3 in the morning through darkened streets and where young kids can walk home from school rather than having to be shuttled to and fro in bullet proof station wagons. Not much of that elsewhere. And as for business culture.... well I don't much like the thought of settling in for 50 years in the same office cubicle myself, but in a country where the unemployement rate shames the rest of the advanced world, I don't criticise the Japanese who DO opt for that secure route. After all, much of the advanced world is living on their credit cards. The Japanese are still managing to save huge sums of money, even during this time of recession and most of the economic problems in Japan stem from their unwillingness to spend those savings too freely. This might explain why Japan is still a very equal country, without the sickening extremes of wealth and poverty seen elsewhere. And this despite the fact that Japan was right in the firing line when the Asian tigers around them started sinking at the end of the 90s. Considering the level of Japanese investment in their neighbours economies, I think the country has done pretty well. A little tinge of rascism in all this I suspect. The same people who were bemoaning the fact that the japanese were buying huge chunks of America's economy not so long ago, are now sagely shaking their heads and critiquing the weakened business climate now as if it was symptomatic of a diseased culture. How very wrong they are.
Got to forgive my ignorance on this one but did MO drives ever make it to the states? Up to 1.3gb of storage, all totally re-writable, not terribly fast and very popular over here in Japan. Bought one for $200 and wouldn't even look at a CDR/W or zip after using it. Think the basic idea was to create a mini disc for data storage although MD and MO are not compatible. If all of this is old news, just write it off to not having left Japan for the last three years. Is the outside world still out there?