OK, OK. It’s not a computer thing. This is a simple board game, one you play at the dinner table after dinner. Did you know Germans are real big fans of board games, instead of TV?
10 Days in the USA is a simple geography game that takes about 45 minutes the first time you play it, but after 2 or 3 tries, you can do it on about 20 minutes. The goal is to set up a travel schedule for a 10-day trip in the USA.
The gameplay is very simple, you play with cards that you replace each turn you get. The first to set up a trip with no gaps in it is the winner.
This is great for student to read the instructions (which are very simple), and sometimes check each other (no real negotiation necessary), and it really helps with the geography of the US.
If you want to give the students a great little electronic (computer based) geography lesson, try Statetris (that’s Tetris with US states…Japan version too.)
The Moth is a podcast of short stories told by amateurs, and a few professionals. They are told at a weekly event in New York or Los Angeles. People are selected to get up on stage and tell their stories, without notes, to the other story-tellers (the hardest audience).
You can listen to the Moth on their website or through iTunes. Nathan Furuya over at Kasai Gaidai recommended the podcast to me, and he is putting together of list of the best ones for teaching. I’ll share it with you when he gets it done. For now, they have a contest every once in a while, and here you can listen to the winners of the StorySlams.
iKnow grew out of a project at Cerego, a company here in Japan that made English language learning software. They moved the content online, made it free, and “socialized” it, made it have more Web 2.0 features.
After that they expanded the content to include more than English, to other languages, and then beyond langauges. All with a simple interface and a few great tools for language learners. The best part, however, is the interaction between learners. Watch the introductory video to get a quick overview. My students like this site as well.
Ogawa-sensei remembered that I had brought Obama’s acceptance speech to Cosmos Festival in November. He asked me if I had a good copy (better than the one on YouTube). Ogawa-sensei, I’ll bring it in on Monday.
Obama’s speeches are legendary now. I’ve been following him since 2004, and he continues to amaze.
President Barack Obama gives his inaugural address. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
The text and video of his speech show initially that his Inauguration speech on Tuesday may have had lukewarm reception at first.
But when you start to look at the speech carefully, his mastery shows. It is a new style of speech, more measured, more exact, and it leads to discussion and interpretation. He is moving the ideas front and center, instead of personalities.
Stanley Fish, Dean of my university (Uof I , Chicago) when I was there (now former) and widely read columnist for the New York Times, looks closely at Obama’s speech, and shows us the intricacies. He thinks we should use this speech in our English classes, because of its
Paratactic prose lends itself to leisurely and loving study, and that is what Obama’s speech is already receiving. Penguin Books is getting out a “keepsake” edition of the speech, which will be presented along with writings by Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson. (You can move back and forth among them, annotating similarities and differences.)
I can’t wait for the new Penguin Edition to come out. After their ground-breaking WeTellStories, I am really looking forward to more experimentation on augmenting regular text. Penguin is really innovative.
My (younger) daughter will be giving a part of an Obama speech on February 14 at the Jr/Sr high school on campus. She picked it out last September, and hopes to take it to the National Finals of the Hachishibu Speech Contest. I’ll put up a video after.
LiveMocha is a social web site, like Mixi or Facebook, or MySpace, but better. This social web site is all about language learning and language exchange. People teach each other or simply interact in foreign languages. The New York Times has taken notice (look at the quote on their home page). I ask my students to sign up and use LiveMocha as part of my Computer Literacy Class. They seem to really like it. You can get points by teaching other people, or helping to create materials in your own language, and use those points for learning. A whole new economics of teaching is being created here.
