While I would love to talk about the company new year's party from yesterday, my camera's battery is too dead to load pictures. That will be discussed later in the week when I have fresh batteries in it.
The past few tl;dr posts I posted were about the main branch of the company I work for, Hop Step Jump(HSJ). Today I'm going to finally get around to explain exactly what our other branch, Learn Japan, really is.
HSJ specializes in English, but also offers a total of 20 non-Japanese languages for adults and occasionally the rare child who wants to learn French. We also offer translation services, and last summers I spent several nights at the office until almost midnight translating Japanese marriage, birth and divorce documents into English, as well as a night of translating care instructions for Noritake chinaware. Despite being pretty busy as it is, the owner, Goto-san, has for a while wanted to expand our services.
As a result, we have Learn Japan now. Goto-san saw how reliant on the Internet the world is becoming, and how many of our adult students have had to quit due to not being able to make our class times. Now, Japan is by far much more computer illiterate as a whole, compared to America, and many homes still do not have a home computer or broadband internet. They are increasing, thankfully, and Goto-san is hoping to make a mint out of that. As such, she got it in her head to start up an "online language school" where students who can't make it to our regular class times can surf the available times of different teachers (both English and other languages), and have private lessons at their leisure from the comfort of their own homes.
Learn Japan relies mainly on Skype to do such lessons. Considering we're more of a conversational school instead of grammar, it fits. The ability to talk over a web camera and microphone, plus have a chat window to fix spelling and to explain grammar is nice. Several of the add-ons are compatible with tablets, in case a teacher is like me and likes to illustrate grammar points with horribly drawn pictures. The current set up has us offering classes (beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels) of either 25, 55 or 85 minutes. Technically it's 30, 60 or 90, but displaying them as five minutes less gives both the teacher and the student 5 minutes of leeway to get their webcams and microphones working. Because Skype tends to hate people and not let them use their webcams and microphones sometimes, and we realize that.
Basically, classes are set up according to how the student wants to learn. If you'd like to work out of a textbook, we have a page listing what textbook we recommend using. If you just want to work on chatting it up, that's fine, too. Traveling abroad on business and find yourself without a translator at a business meeting? We can help with that, too. Got into a fight with your host family while as an exchange student, or having trouble with the college you're attending? No problem. We offer it all.
Our current teacher profile set up has been around since last Spring, but we are looking to change it. Recently we've been having all of the teachers create profiles that are more in depth. I think each teacher will have their own page now, instead of just a long list. The new profiles will include photos of our hometowns, our hobbies, explanation about what writing system our language uses, etc. They're actually kind of nice compared to what we have now. Our current set up was created by a Sri Lankan friend of Goto-san who is a programmer/software engineer who recently graduated from Gifu University, I believe. He and his wife are really nice, and even though they now live on Tokyo He still helps out with the backend of the site. My only complaint is that there's no way for us to currently edit or update the site without him. It would be nice if he made a simple way for us to keep up with the backend when he's too swamped with out.
Our HSJ site is the same way. No clue who designed it, but sometimes we have to wait MONTHS for the current teacher page to change after a teacher is replaced.
One thing that saddens me about the whole thing is how much Engrish is on the site. I had gone over the site several times before it was live and pointed out all of the grammar and spelling mistakes, and there are still some. They're not really big ones, but still, we're an English-focused language school. We should have impeccable English on the site, not Engrish. Our flashcards for our kids classes often have mistakes on them as well. (._.;)
I'm not really sure what else to say. It's a great idea that sadly is not grabbing as much of a foothold as it could, but I think there's a lot of reasons why. None of which I will mention here.
If anyone has the time to look through the website and has any feedback, comments, suggestions, feel free to post them here or e-mail me. We could definitely use the feedback.
I think I'm going to take a break from work-related posts and post a few photos next time. Both of the new year's party and of some I've taken here while I've been living here in Japan. Look forward to them! Hopefully I can make a photo post once a week. It's one of my goals for this blog.
The past few tl;dr posts I posted were about the main branch of the company I work for, Hop Step Jump(HSJ). Today I'm going to finally get around to explain exactly what our other branch, Learn Japan, really is.
HSJ specializes in English, but also offers a total of 20 non-Japanese languages for adults and occasionally the rare child who wants to learn French. We also offer translation services, and last summers I spent several nights at the office until almost midnight translating Japanese marriage, birth and divorce documents into English, as well as a night of translating care instructions for Noritake chinaware. Despite being pretty busy as it is, the owner, Goto-san, has for a while wanted to expand our services.
As a result, we have Learn Japan now. Goto-san saw how reliant on the Internet the world is becoming, and how many of our adult students have had to quit due to not being able to make our class times. Now, Japan is by far much more computer illiterate as a whole, compared to America, and many homes still do not have a home computer or broadband internet. They are increasing, thankfully, and Goto-san is hoping to make a mint out of that. As such, she got it in her head to start up an "online language school" where students who can't make it to our regular class times can surf the available times of different teachers (both English and other languages), and have private lessons at their leisure from the comfort of their own homes.
Learn Japan relies mainly on Skype to do such lessons. Considering we're more of a conversational school instead of grammar, it fits. The ability to talk over a web camera and microphone, plus have a chat window to fix spelling and to explain grammar is nice. Several of the add-ons are compatible with tablets, in case a teacher is like me and likes to illustrate grammar points with horribly drawn pictures. The current set up has us offering classes (beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels) of either 25, 55 or 85 minutes. Technically it's 30, 60 or 90, but displaying them as five minutes less gives both the teacher and the student 5 minutes of leeway to get their webcams and microphones working. Because Skype tends to hate people and not let them use their webcams and microphones sometimes, and we realize that.
Basically, classes are set up according to how the student wants to learn. If you'd like to work out of a textbook, we have a page listing what textbook we recommend using. If you just want to work on chatting it up, that's fine, too. Traveling abroad on business and find yourself without a translator at a business meeting? We can help with that, too. Got into a fight with your host family while as an exchange student, or having trouble with the college you're attending? No problem. We offer it all.
Our current teacher profile set up has been around since last Spring, but we are looking to change it. Recently we've been having all of the teachers create profiles that are more in depth. I think each teacher will have their own page now, instead of just a long list. The new profiles will include photos of our hometowns, our hobbies, explanation about what writing system our language uses, etc. They're actually kind of nice compared to what we have now. Our current set up was created by a Sri Lankan friend of Goto-san who is a programmer/software engineer who recently graduated from Gifu University, I believe. He and his wife are really nice, and even though they now live on Tokyo He still helps out with the backend of the site. My only complaint is that there's no way for us to currently edit or update the site without him. It would be nice if he made a simple way for us to keep up with the backend when he's too swamped with out.
Our HSJ site is the same way. No clue who designed it, but sometimes we have to wait MONTHS for the current teacher page to change after a teacher is replaced.
One thing that saddens me about the whole thing is how much Engrish is on the site. I had gone over the site several times before it was live and pointed out all of the grammar and spelling mistakes, and there are still some. They're not really big ones, but still, we're an English-focused language school. We should have impeccable English on the site, not Engrish. Our flashcards for our kids classes often have mistakes on them as well. (._.;)
I'm not really sure what else to say. It's a great idea that sadly is not grabbing as much of a foothold as it could, but I think there's a lot of reasons why. None of which I will mention here.
If anyone has the time to look through the website and has any feedback, comments, suggestions, feel free to post them here or e-mail me. We could definitely use the feedback.
I think I'm going to take a break from work-related posts and post a few photos next time. Both of the new year's party and of some I've taken here while I've been living here in Japan. Look forward to them! Hopefully I can make a photo post once a week. It's one of my goals for this blog.
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