Blended provision for our students - announcement

With the re-closure of schools in Nagano prefecture, and the increasing nervousness of some of our students and parents (as well as us!) we have decided to do two things as of Monday, April 13th:

1. Continue to teach small classes in the school with even more enhanced care over disinfecting surfaces, sanitising visitors'/teachers'/students' hands on entry/departure etc, and making sure students are seated as far apart as we can manage without being 'weird'! We are avoiding activities which require students to share things, and encouraging YLs to wear masks (prevent fingers going in places more than bugs!). We are obviously asking anyone who has a temperature or who is feeling unwell to avoid coming to the school.
2. Offer students who are concerned about using public transport, or who not keen to be here in a group, the opportunity to join their class in real time via Zoom. We are all new at this, but we can all try and learn something new together :) We will also record the lessons and share them within our class members on Edmodo (an LMS we have been using for years but has hitherto been very under exploited). We will continue to do this for as long as needs be.

We will be making an effort to also share with students and parents more than ever, additional resources/ideas/apps/activities withing Edmodo. Any one can join that 'class ' but you do need to join. It's free :)  Join here >> https://edmo.do/j/fgcrjx

Matsumoto Castle - not recent!

As ever we will do our best to keep you up to date - check your Edmodo class regularly please?

We will continue to share via our Facebook page - click here

Of course we will also be answering the phone! 0263-34-4481 & talk to Rinka, Emi, Yukari, Yuka or Eri.

We can also look after students who want to 'observe' a lesson (but don't want to physically come!), or even students not in our neighbourhood. Tell us which level/age, and we'll put you with a suitable group as a guest.

We are looking forward to making sure our students can continue to get the best English language education we can provide...just going to have to do it a bit differently for a while. Don't panic!

Jim

Saturday Night Live! Luna goes to town (again) - Bon Bon slideshow

And now we bring you a super-funky slideshow from Bon Bon!

Like it? Download it for yourself & show your friends right here - or just subscribe to Jim George on Youtube and keep up with all our audio-visual delights!

Keep up with us on Facebook too - right here

Some fantastic place for a photo shoot - after reading What Rose Saw

I recommend to visit one mountain several time a year. You can see/enjoy nice view of contrast of green wood and lingering snows in spring, of verdant wood in summer, and of autumn leaves in autumn. Even if it is same day, you can see very different view in a bit difference of temperature, weather etc. I experienced every time that the view utterly changed in a few minutes.

Also, I recommend to see alpine plants which are very tiny and tough and can not see them in areas near human dwellings. It is alarmed not to collect and damage alpine plants, so most of people can't see them until their lifetime end.

I want to ask photographers to take photos of alpine plants and upload them to social network like Facebook, twitter etc. to show them to many people.

Posted for Ritsuko

Slideshow from September

Remember back when shorts and t-shirts were the way to go? Long evenings lingered a bit past 6pm and the weather was nice?

Just in case you can't, here's a lovely compilation of photos from around the school as we made ourselves at home in our new surroundings. We finally got the car park sorted out, which has been a very welcome addition (thank you Yukari); Takeshi produced an awesome new sign for us; and all the children helped us make a new garden with lots of lovely little plants, herbs, flowers etc in it.

Enjoy the slideshow - you can also find it on our Luna Facebook page or Jim's Youtube channel



Stay tuned for October's installment...

Lifestyles - results from a Google Form survey via Facebook

This graph shows people got bitten by animals and insects. Mosquitoes have bitten everyone. Ants and dogs have bitten 4 people. Nobody has been bitten by a lion.

This graph shows the different blood groups people have. 25% of people didn't know their  blood group.  Most people have  A blood group. There were no AB blood group.

These graphs show that most people haven't had a bad  illness, a serious accident, donated blood, or received blood from a donor

This graph shows how many people have been to a different continents. Everyone has been to Europe. Most people have  been to North America and Asia. Nobody has been to Antarctica.

This graph shows how many hours of sleep people get at night. Everybody gets more than 6 hours. One person gets 9 hours. The average was 7.4 hours.

This graph shows how many vegetables people eat every day.

The average was 3, but one person had 7, one person had zero

 What do the results mean?

The average number of vegetables is 6, the recommended is 4. I eat 8, I'm very healthy. The average amount of sleep is 7 hours/night, the recommended is 6 hours/night, but I sleep 8. Blood group A is most common in Asia. We don't know where the answerers from, but maybe Asia, like me? Maybe I'm unlucky , because I had pneumonia, but only one person also had a bad illness . I also had a serious accident , when I was little I banged my head in the car, because I was playing in the car without my seat belt. Like most people , I haven't donated or received blood. I've been bitten by the same thing as most people have. Most people have been to 3 continents . I don't know how old the answerers are , but I've been to 3, and I'm only 13.  

Thank you to the people who answered my questionnaire.

WordFoto - now you can read a photo

 To be perfectly honest, I was scratching my head in a one to one class recently, with a very bright young lad wading through his (not ours) phonics book. It's a very dry affair; each page unimaginatively the same as the last, minute line art pictures as mysteriously unfathomable as they are hard to see.

There has to be a way to make this a bit more interesting, I was thinking to myself. I didn't want to make a list on the board (lazy, and just the same thing again). I thought about a mind map, but we've done that before.

Brainwave: WordFoto (find it here) app

I wrote the big 'ph' in fat chalk on the board + 'sounds like /f/' & took a quick picture. Then opened up the picture in the wordfoto app. There's a grey toolbar across the bottom.

• crop the pic if necessary; I wanted it nice & tight.
• words - tap this and then select "add a new wrod set >". add each word you want to see in the image as a new item
• style allows you to find a treatment of your picture you are happy with - pre-set transformations of your image as well as adding your word list in different fonts (compare ph set vs wh set below)
• finetune - does exactly that!

When you are happy with that, you can save to album or export to Facebook or by mail.

NB The images are not intended to be definitive lists of all the words in the English language with ph spellings as /f/, or wh with a silent h.  What posting to FB did was generate a blizzard of suggestions though (and some nice exceptions - shepherd & haphazard).

Now I can save these images to my YLs Evernote dossier too, for future reference. How have you exploited WordFoto? Would love to know!

.

Sharing classroom work: In-hand tech solutions

Image via CrunchBase

As soon as I can figure out QR codes, I will be doing more with photobabbles to give our parents a bigger clue about what we get up to in class. I have a one-on-one class with a very able young lad once a week and we can tend to munch through material (too) quickly. He is my (willing)  guinea pig at the moment, as we try to do the same stuff differently (ever the language teacher's millstone?).

Some of our efforts have ended up in spectacular giggles as things didn't work out; often we both learn more (he that I'm a bit of a pillock, me that I'm more of a pillock than I thought possible...)



I deliberately chopped off the vocabulary items from the top of the text book page (and covered the target structure once we'd had a go with it "How do you/they go to school/work?" / "How does he/she got to school/work?") but used the original picture as it was too small on my phone (craving an iPad!). I want to be able to share our students' great work with parents (I think very few read this blog, tragically, nor access the stuff we share in Edmodo) at an interface they can cope with (around the stove downstairs while they wait & gossip, phones in hand. Hence, the QR codes, which will take them to the recording. Update once I get that sorted out.

Edmodo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, how: Use the online portal to open up Fotobabble & set up an account (free). Open up the fotobabble app on your iOS & take a picture (or import a picture if you are prepared - you can crop/edit in advance then too). Hit the record button when you are ready to go, and get cracking as you have only 30 seconds or so on the freebee. As I have said about other free apps, I actually like the time stress as it hurries everyone up/necessitates re-recordings (students demand to have another go, not forced to be teacher!). Fiddle with the settings to share or hide to your own desire. You will find your fotobabbles created on your iOS on the fotobabble site, which you can then share again as much as you like - Facebook, twitter etc or embed as I have done with this one.

Image via CrunchBase

An 'extra' save I intend to do from now on with students' solo work is to add items to individual folders within Evernote. I saw a blog posting about doing this yesterday & it makes absolute sense. Down the line I will not remember who did what, when & where; will want to be able to share/give to them. Think we might do this prior to open week - certainly as a leaving present. ePortfolios is a significant part of how I see teachers empowering students (they can take their classroom & work with them) - after all, I am laying the foundations for their journey of lifelong learning.

Final thought - students always need to be able to ask questions, don't they? Here is the tables-turned recording :)  http://www.fotobabble.com/m/bjUvS3g2VWl1RGc9

Bon Bon Photos - request

This is the address for the "set" on flickr we shall be using for tonight's Bon Bon photos - please share yours with us as well?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saint_george/sets/72157630868528122/

If you like, you can share with us through Facebook instead

 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Luna-International/125002814212039

If you are tweeting, pls mention @luna_intnl and use the #Luna & #BonBon

Shinshu JALT and apps for the classroom

 As Programme Chair for Shinshu JALT, I had asked Cambridge

University Press to sponsor an evening

of professional development for our chapter on Saturday evening.

You can find a full description of that presentation by Asia Senior Sales

Manager Rob Habbick right here. As I have personally known Rob for

over 15 years, it was a pleasure to finally get him up to

Matsumoto again in his professional capacity and to share his wealth of knowledge & catalogue of
online tools with us (Rob & Ritsuko Nakata presented our very first Cambridge YLE certicates to
our children back in 2000 - a very good friend of Luna's!). Rob gave everyone plenty to think about, as
well as codes to access some online tools for free over the next fortnight.

The second half of our evening was given over to mini-presentations. I had intended this to be a mostly

local effort from new speakers; few answered the call despite Tonya Kneff's best efforts to rally the ALT

crowd. However, we had interest form further afield - Andy Boon came all the way from Tokyo to tell us

about Facebook...as he explains:

 

"As a global phenomenon, Facebook has established itself as the

de facto Social Networking Site. With its various utilities to connect
people via the Internet to  post messages and comments, start
discussion threads, upload photographs and videos, and chat

via IM or video, the pedagogic potential of this tool to encourage
and facilitate language learner  use of the L2 outside of the
classroom setting is being realized by educators worldwide. In this 

short presentation, we will provide an overview of how setting up a Facebook group with a 

2nd-year intermediate university class in Japan has enabled group members to interact with one 

anther by posting and responding to comments to work on course assignments or just to say hello 

to classmates in English. Data from the Facebook group will be provided to highlight activities 

that may be of use to other educators wishing to set up Facebook groups with their own classes."

Mike Honywood teaches at Shindai in Ueda, and awed us all in 

presenting an app he developed to help second language learners. 

Obviously a labour of love and a lot of fun, Mike's presentation 

explained not only how his app works but how he got into making it, and

the technological changes that are making that challenge less 

complex/more exciting and accessible to non-programmers.

Our Chapter President Mark Brierley went retro with an egg timer app

and a quick round of "Just a Minute" - audience challenged to avoid
hesitation, deviation & repitition
on the topic Spain v Italy. Yours truly won, leaving a late challenge with 3 seconds left to talk about the

football tonight!

Fred Carruth (our Membership Chair) explained what an EBM

(Executive Board Meeting) is & what happened at the last one in
Tokyo,  last weekend. Fred is retiring as Chair of the Presidents' Liaison

group after 4 years, where he has helped keep Shinshu on the map.

Dave Callaghan demonstrated an app (SayHi) that claims to
automatically translate
between about 45 different languages. Given Dave's demonstration there is very little
chance that any of the participants will be using this or any other auto-translate app any
time soon.

Me? Of course I have loads of ideas of apps & iOS solutions for classroom hiccups! I
demonstrated two which I had to use earlier in the day. Snapguide and Sock Puppets. I used Snapguide for the first time earlier this morning, when a student asked me for assistance in preparing for a video conference call she was to be involved in next week. This is what we came up with.I think you will agree it is clear and simple? It was very easy to make, with the app on my iPhone following a simple template, with photos very easy to incorporate and annotate. The voice recorder is a cool tool if you are not hands free eg hands covered in chocolate or something! I love to use Sock Puppets to enliven dialogues - there's a 30 second time limit (on the free version) which is just fine...encourages students to hurry up & allows us to have to have another go! Students also tend to let go of their books to touch (activate)/move their character around the screen.  You have a choice of characters & backgrounds, props. I think it's great, and our students love using. Check out this sample - it has lost some lustre in rendition :(

Facebook in an offline classroom

Gaumont-Columbia-TriStar Films logo (2004-2007) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 This is an activity I found worked really well in a high school class last year. Students there are not allowed to use any phones or tech at all at school...and in my opinion being denied the kind of inspirational impetus learners need in this country (Japan) if it is ever going to climb out of the financial and educational mire it is in these days...

I digress. Younger learners obviously shouldn't be going anywhere near facebook, and my oldest nephew seems to be terminally addicted/spending his life there - rather too public a growing up in my opinion. The classroom caveat is that I want my sparkling students to share themselves a bit, and get some (supervised) feedback. To avoid too much embarrassment, we used a couple of different iPhone apps to come up with avatars/disguises (Toca Boca hair salon, face in hole, Facegoo) and quickly printed them out to much mirth.

The content is very gentle stuff - favourite books, films, pet hates etc. Imagine my surprise when three students (of seven I have started this with so far) did not have a favourite film! Not just that they couldn't remember, but that they had never seen one. That can't be a fluke statistic, I think - but it is a tragic one, don't you think? By their age I was spending whole days of half-term holidays at the Gaumont in Sheffield watching the Star Wars trilogy (as was). Saturday night was movie night. My brother and I would have top ten Western film lists to argue over; whistle the tune and name the film; who was the best in "The Longest Day"?

In a similar vein, I noticed there seems to be a serious lack of 'quality' reading going on. Holidays for me were all about reading (when not at the Gaumont, playing football or cycling to Netherthorpe airfield for a bit of plane spotting - I have never heard of Japanese kids cycling anywhere to pursue a hobby - certainly not much further than line of sight). If somebody had asked me for a favourite book, I would have found it a hard question to answer being spoilt for choice. My group struggled to remember a book they'd read at all. One though, will only read English books which is superb, and very rare!

So there are a couple of blank spaces in these analogue FB pages! We had fun making them, after initial bashfulness, and I found out a few interesting things obviously. I am looking forward to the comments they are now going to be leaving for each other, as they check out everyone elses' pages and update their statuses.

Facebook in the classroom

ZZZzzzz

I whinged a while back about the situation I found myself in which resulted in the dismal classroom experience which the image (left) illustrates...not much happening. Nothing to see here. Move along. Bell will ring in 45 minutes. Avoid getting noticed or saying anything. Just scribble in the spaces, it won't get checked or corrected - or even read. This is the before picture.

It was explained to me that the students here were 'all failures', so don't expect much. For a moment that shocked me, but then I remembered my context. There are other schools around with bigger reputations, and there is a definite pecking order in this country. This is reinforced by the ridiculous nature of the entrance exams system, and the 'educational' infrastructure of jukus etc that hover around the honey pot. What an awful realisation to be presented with before you even start HS that your prospects are in tatters. Not very hard to understand the "Why bother?" mood in the room then.

Breaking the ice

I went to a really crap school in Worksop (Nottinghamshire) in terms of academic results - mostly as a result I'd say of the socio-economic background of the catchment area. The two other schools which shared our playing fields were worse. I had good teachers who gave a rat's arse though, who had not given up on us. They certainly didn't fob us off with the helper (there wasn't one). The PE teacher helped me overcome the bullying and gave me opportunities I'd never had before.

So, I don't think schools are crap here...I just think they are stuck in the slow lane, hazard lights on with a flat tyre and a dodgy radiator. Is this going to change anytime soon? Well, it hasn't done so yet in the 20+ years I've been here, so why be optimistic? The system does not motivate teachers, after all. To continue the banger analogy, keep to the kerb, don't do anything sudden and you'll get there in the end.

Now we're talking

Unfortunately, teachers have never been given any specialised pre-service (or in service) training to teach English professionally/competently. Plenty is available, I hasten to add, through workshops constantly put on by publishers, ETJ & JALT etc, but this is not formal and given short shrift. It is also too late. Modern EFL instruction should be dealt with in colleges & universities by default, and preferably with a work experience in industry or even better, overseas. And while you are at it, promote a formal qualification to prove competence in core skills. And why not boost those English language skills too? Win win? Re-boot the AET/JET program to be a formal job exchange for novice foreign language teachers with study time & performance improvement expected. Come back culturally aware, linguistically competent and professionally fit for purpose.

In the last few weeks I have been 'left to myself' in my particular classrooms. This actually means my oppo has relinquished all responsibility, but that is a separate (and serious) issue. From a practical point of view, I am unencumbered and the students likewise freer to express themselves a bit.

This is the 'after' photo

• We have managed to (mostly) escape from from 'eraser hell'
• standing up does not induce vertigo-like chair clutching
• boys actually talk to girls, and vice versa
• sleeping is no longer 'a hobby'
• Japanese is not L1 teacher talk

Our last classes together this term (I am not invited to the school festival, school trip, etc) was a rewarding break through kind of a day. The maths teacher was still in his chair in the teachers' room five minutes after his class should have started with 'my' lot...I'd already said 'Cheerio' and formally left the room (no team bow, at last), but I wandered back in because they were still on task, working hard and having a giggle.

The idea came from a couple of sources, including the frustration that we are not allowed to use mobile devices...for example, I am thinking that a 140 character limitation is an excellent 'ceiling' for shy/unconfident learners. Previous classes had revealed that some 'surfed the internet' as a hobby (besides generic 'sleeping', for crying out loud!). One student nearly fell over when I said I did know what 'twitter' was. The actual plan comes from Cambridge University Press, the excellent multi-level photocopiable resource "Teen World" - 2.1 'Teenspace'. Not very achievable in 45 minutes but worth a dab. As I said, we ran over (mostly because getting started with hangman took forever). By the end, the students were very keen to see what their friends had produced as an analog 'Facebook' page, and were jostling to get their comments scribbled and glued up on each others' 'message boards' (they had 8 slips to get rid of, signed, one per page). They were tasked to react to something different, so first come first served. eg "I live in Hata too", "I hate AKB48 and shopping too", "I'm also hungry".

On task, motivated and achievable

Useful teacher tip regarding the 'friends' section - suggest banning names of people in same class or even school - makes it less cliquey/room to upset those less popular.

Given the chance, I would like to continue this exchange on a 'safe' SM site such as Edmodo...

Coping

Folks,

I am finding useful links which you will find very handy.I have blatantly copied these from
http://asiajin.com/blog/2011/03/15/after-the-quake-a-variety-of-web-mashups-collecting-wisdom-of-crowds/
Recipes with not many ingredients (like now the shops are empty)

This website was launched on DropBox and shows you realtime public transit-related tweets sorted by railway operator and line.   Working on a keyword basis, this could be a better option as to learn which lines are out of service more quickly than the operator’s official announcements.

ThumbApps scraps fee for their iPhone app (Tsubueki) that aggregates transit-related tweets. (original price: 230 yen)   This helps you find better routes and avoid traffic confusion.

Download "Helping children cope after a major earthquake" www.sjsu.edu/cdm
(In 9 languages)

Save fuel. Don't hoard. Don't panic. And check on the old lady next door?

Stay safe.

Romance fills the air - Luna's little Valentine's party

l Luna's re-jigged Christmas Party y was a great success! Thank you Yukari for organising all the food and generally being organised!

We had a super turn out, but no way filled our nice new classroom. Students and parents had a good search around our building, looking for hearts to mend their broken big hearts - great way to make random pairs! Quite a search was required, as they were deviously hidden in drawers, on table-tennis bats, under tables & chairs, behind flowerpots etc! Sho & Rui won this little game. They obviously know Jim quite well!
Once we had plenty of love in the room, we tried to pin our hearts on Cupid - more romantic than a tail on a donkey? There was a lot of interference/unhelpful 'help' from friends as all the boys and girls took turns. Michiyo refereed the final outcome - Rei got the chocolate winner's prize.

Actually, chocolate featured a lot during the party. Too much, perhaps, as I am sure someone barfed (on my painstakingly laid nice new carpet!). Smarties for bingo tokens, as we got to know each other better - everyone was asked to sign everyone elses' cards. Everyone was a winner; eat the game when you finish!

Gorgeous Nanako won the cup race for her team - twice. Daddy Twister was a dead-heat between two of our doctor dads, who proved to be very flexible. Well done dads!

A full-participation reading of the Farmer & the Beat had everyone trying to pull up a very big beat indeed. With a well-earned hunger, Yukari's catering choices proved very popular.

We made sure Daiya & Masanori had clean hands after wards, as Jim presented them with their Cambridge YLE certificates. Both boys took Starters for the first time late last year, and got a big round of applause from everyone for their achievements. Well done boys, and well done all our YLE candidates who will be getting their certificates in class this week. Proud of all of you.

Find all the photos from the party on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saint_george/sets/72157625912404359/

"Like" us on Facebook  
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Luna-International/125002814212039

Successful YLE candidates

More Bon Bon pics (Yuki's)

First day back at work after the summer holidays. "Yada!"
 
Jim stole Yuki's camera and uploaded her Bon Bon photos to his Flickr photosharing site. Here is the address to the set http://www.flickr.com/photos/saint_george/sets/72157624553391681/
If you would like an original copy, please email us & tell which one(s), we'll gladly send you them. You should be able to download directly from flickr, though!
You will also find copies on Facebook - "Like" us and "join" us?!

Exploring guide to Azumino/Hotaka launched

Avid readers will remember I taught a few classes very early in the spring, up the road in Hotaka, for the Azumino City Tourist Association. I was not the only one! There were also classes given in Chinese & Korean - younger, prettier, better teachers they were too...

Wednesday evening was the wrap party, but actually a lot more importantly it marked the launch of the English, Chinese & Korean language Exploring Guide. While the teachers hogged the limelight, the very hard work of a few local people seemed to go largely unnoticed. Step forward Whitney Conti in particular, who I know has been burning the midnight oil getting maps properly annotated, photos properly proportioned, full stops in the right places (been there done that, with Matsumoto & Norikura already!). Check out the good work here

Now, no matter the hard work of well intentioned volunteers & neo-natives, if the locals don't get their act together & get the basics sorted? I mean, the super simple stuff like menus, credit cards, sign posts? After that, even a little bit of imagination would go a long way - you know the social media dimension...get a fan club on Facebook, or Twitterise themselves? Think about Google maps & Doublesquare...

Something better than nothing? Yes, for sure. Late entries? Absolutely. Shinshu's best kept little secret for discerning travellers? Could be.

Facebook | Luna International

Facebook | Luna International

Yes, Luna has a group on Facebook. Please come and have a look, join the group? Informal and friendly place for teachers, students, parents and friends to keep up to date with our local activities and events. Please post pictures to the wall, leave your messages and everything else you like to do on Facebook.

Jim

Summer holidays!

We're all going to be having a holiday next week, so please remember to take your towel to the beach, put on the suncream, and to take an umbrella (it's pouring with rain today - the ducks in the river are having a ball!)

Hijiri and Eleanor made a go-cart out of the Lego cupboard this morning in Pre-School, and my back still hurts from pushing them around, 'again' and 'again'! Big turn out today and we had fun trying to cut things out of our colourful play dough - still plenty to go around. We think Jim enjoyed mixing the food colouring into it rather too much yesterday!

HOpe you all have a great Obon Holiday - read an English book if you've nothing else to do? Send us a postcard if you go somewhere nice - or share a picture here or on our Luna International group on Facebook?!