Setting up a High-Tech Language School?

Bakerybob writes "My wife and I are currently setting up a small Japanese language school, and I am in charge of all of the technical aspects, with a small but not tiny budget. What would Slashdot recommend as technologies we could use to improve the student experience (and hopefully to interest more students in the school!)? We have the easy bases (free Wifi access for students, a stunningly poorly designed homepage, and a few cheap computers lying around for them to play on between classes) covered, but I'm sure there are a lot of better ideas out there. Has anyone used Moogle? What about online lessons via webcam? Give it your best shot, revolutionary thinkers!"

Ask.Slashdot: We'll do your work for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

BakeryBob [mailto] writes "My wife and I are currently setting up a small Japanese language school, and I am in charge of all of the technical aspects. I haven't done a lick of homework so I thought to ask all you slashdotters to do my work for me. What would Slashdot recommend as technologies we could use to improve the student experience? Has anyone used Moogle? What about online lessons via webcam? Give it your best shot, revolutionary thinkers!" There, that last bit of brown nosing will get some answers. I hate work!

PDAs

[b0lt]

Give/rent the students iPaqs running Linux. They have a huge "awesome" factor, and are useful too :)

How about a disappointment booth?

[greenmars]

How about a big disappointment booth for your students after they spend all that time and money learning Japanese and then they find out that Japanese companies don't want to hire them (they hire Japanese) and non-Japanese companies don't want to hire them (they'll hire Japanese)? (from bitter, bitter experience and many wasted years in college)

Computers and education

[bludstone]

Do yourself a favor. Dont waste your money on computer stuff for a LANGUAGE class. Most of the language programs out there simply wont help the kids do any better.

I know there has been this massive rush to get computers into everything-education, but its simply not needed.

The tech you need is a good language teacher, some dictionaries, and maybe a few textbooks/workbooks.

Maybe a japanese->english english->japanese dictionary could be useful, but even then it could make for some seriously lazy students. But I imagine those kids already know about babelfish.

Maybe I'm being shortsighted, but I feel that, in this specific case, computers would be more of a distraction then a benifit.

More details, please

[YrWrstNtmr]

setting up a small Japanese language school

Is that a school in Japan, or a Japanese language school in the US (or elsewhere), or a school where all the classes are taught in Japanese?
I 'think' youre talking about a school where Japanese is taught as a second language (spoken? written?), but it's not entirely clear.
Define 'small'. 10 students? 50, 100?

small but not tiny budget

Define 'small' budget. $500, $500, $50,000?

What about online lessons via webcam?

What kind of classes? Some types work better, some don't. Teaching Japanese might fit into the "don't" category (resolution and frame rate).

It's not entirely clear what you are trying to teach, or what problem the 'high tech' solution is supposed to fix.

Oh sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows the only reason to learn any language is to make money. I'm sure they're fleecing every one of their dedicated and greedily idealistic young pupils.

Are you insane? You opened up the door to an entire world of culture, literature, games, movies, and people, and you're saying you wasted your years? Also, I mean, come on, how much of those years did you actually spend studying japanese? About a fifth of each, right? One class out of five.

Check out the Hippo Family Club

[idealord]

Check out the Hippo Family Club! No kidding... they're a radical group from Japan who learn 11-17 languages simultaneously. Their books on FFT and Quantum Mechanics are outstanding also.

Transnational College of LEX - Hippo Family Club [lexlrf.org]

Re:Computers and education

[nkh]

Most so-called educational software suck, be it for japanese, polish, chess or cooking. A computer is a fast calculator and to me it should only be used as a very fast electronic dictionnary.

My dream would be a japanese class where I could speak for hours (I'm serious!) with real life people. Speak and practice! that's what I miss the most because in the end, it's always some guy speaking alone (and this guy doesn't really care, he's the teacher, he has nothing to learn...)