the vocabulary list is down the right side, so if you wanted, you could fold it over or cover it up.

we also found little things like, when david noticed you have to refresh the webpage you’re getting the world times from, otherwise you’ll be saying the same minute all the time.

i want to make it look a bit cooler and make some corrections & i still have to get a native speaker to check it over- but it should be ready by net week!

illustrations are a major bummer… but i used to have some copyright-free clip art CDs. i gave them to a friend and might be able to get my hands on them.

know anything about copyright? can i use copyright-free images in GPL documents?

one minor glitch! i’ve thought of ideas too, where they are illustrated “in rich detail”… are you an illustrator? me neither.

small problem.

i’ve sketched a worksheet too, maybe we can try alll these things out. i was thinking it should have ‘all you need’ for that lesson. and i started sketching, putting the vocabulary down the right hand side, so you could cover it if you want.

it’s easier to see this in the drawing i made, but i don’t have a scanner. i’ll put this out there, and do one up and send it to you.

the basic idea is that you’re given the structures, and vocabulary, and have some kind of activity, like your ‘box ticking’ activity, then some kind of online activity to maximise the fact that you’re both online doing these chats… and then maybe one kind of advanced activity that you could try the next time you use the sheets?

Sheet 1:
a) structures
(read through these with your partner)

b) Q+ A
partners take turns asking questions and answering

c) fill in the blanks guessing activity
(partners fill in times, and when they read them out, partner has to guess)

Sheet 2:
d) online activity- using internet resources with partner
go to worldclock.com and ask what time it is in which country; use katakana to name cities…

e) advanced activity- producing language
using online resources to look up schedules in japan.
reading schedules, when is the next train to …
when is the next flight to …

– An A4 sheet divided into boxes, say 4 boxes by 12
– Each box contains a unique time (on a clockface, or written in kanji or hiragana?)
– With 48 combinations, each hour and each 5-minute time would be used 4 times.

You each have the same sheet.
A says: いまなんじですか
B picks a time at random and reads it. Both tick it on their sheets.
Then A asks and B answers, etc., until the sheet is finished.

I’ll mock one up before Thursday’s chat, and we can give it a try.

Boy. Let’s patent this before someone nicks it!

When we get good enough to describe people, that would be a great game to play!