Urashima, Taro with Tecnology and Multicultural Education

Biographical Notes
Tae Kunisawa writes: I came to the U. S., when I was forty years old. I thought that if I am alive up to eighty years, forty year old is a turning point for my life. I wanted challenge for anther forty years. I am very very happy to work in the U. S. I taught English at high school in Japan for sixteen years and have been teaching the Japanese language at high school, middle school for nine years and taught at college for three years in the U. S.

My interests are: Asian puppet shadow show, folktales, computer, TPRStorytelling, micro biotic, skiing, swimming, singing a song.

Abstract

Computer-assisted materials, some of which I have developed, are powerful tools to make learning Japanese very easy. The writer creates computer-assisted materials for Japanese folktales with Hyperstudio. Students learn the vocabularies, sentence structures and check their comprehension with colorful animation, graphics, sounds, original drawings and music as well as texts in Japanese and English.

More importantly, they create their own stories based on the Japanese folktales. We perform the Japanese traditional puppet shadow shows after studying Japanese folktales with computer-assisted materials. An audience of six hundred people came to see our production. Students have benefited from participating in this production both by developing language skills and by increasing their understanding of culture as well as the computer literacy. Please refer to my homepage. http://homepages.infoseek.com/~tkuni/BHS-J-index1.htm

Proposed Target Language Japanese

Method of Presentation: use of LCD projector and VCR

Participants will learn how excellent Hyperstudio is to teach Japanese language and how easy it is to create materials