Japanese culture

Before the fourth project we asked the students to try and look at the videos they had made thus far for the point of view of an overseas viewer with little or no knowledge of Japanese language and culture. They then discussed how they might make the content of their videos more easily understandable.

We then discussed what topics they felt overseas viewers might be interested in. I was a little unsure about this as I had stressed the importance of making videos about things they were interested in rather trying to make videos to appeal to preconceived ideas about what overseas viewers might be interested in. One aim of the course, however, is to try and generate user comments on the videos which might lead to communication opportunities, but most importantly, to make videoblogging "real" to them. I hope that knowing their videos are being watched will be both motivating and make the students think carefully about what they are creating and uploading.

Anyway, here are the videos on Japanese culture. I feel that these videos show that all the students are starting to really get the hang of things. They even got comments!

Japanese Vending Machines



Burgulars, Japanese style



Yamada's Day Off: The Sequel (social hierarchy)



Chopstick Manners

Student Life [daigaku seikatsu/大学生活]

Yamada's Day Off



University Life At Hiroshima University of Economics



Student Life At Hiroshima University of Economics

Hiroshima dialect [hiroshima ben/広島弁]

For the second project, groups of two or three students were asked to use video to explain and illustrate examples of the local Hiroshima dialect.

What's the matter? (What's up with you?)



Taigii (I'm tired of something, I can't be bothered)

First project 2007

After the first session which was to devoted to ice-breaking activities and a short introduction about videoblogging and the aims of course, we had the students go out of the class and shoot some footage to be edited and uploaded to the Internet.

The aim of this class was to show just how easy the whole process is in order to allay any anxieties students might have about what was involved. The only conditions set were that they should take no more than 3 minutes of footage and that the footage should not be one continuous shot, but split into several clips. English input was limited to adding an English title in the editing stage.

This is what the three groups came up with

What is Koudoukan?



Japanese Children's Games



Play tag!



In terms of allowing the students to become familiar with the cameras and editing software, the session was relatively successful. However, it proved difficult to save the video files and upload them all up to the class show page on Blip.tv within the 90 minute class. On reflection, not immediately being able to see what they had made "out there" on the Web for all to see was a missed opportunity to convey the appeal of videoblogging as well as the idea of what it is all about. It also, didn't appear that videoblogging was quite as easy as we had told them it would be.

The course

eigo no bideokyasuto de Nihon o shoukaishiyou or Introducing Japan with English Videocasts is a 13 week hands on videoblogging course held in the autumn/winter semester at Hiroshima University of Economics (HUE) Koudoukan facility.

The aim of the course is to familiarize Japanese students at HUE with videoblogging and encourage them to introduce aspects of their daily lives through short videos to an international audience.

Students taking the course are hopefully interested in media production and/or English communication, but there is no requirement for them to have any prior experience or any specified level of ability.

Video is shot on DV tape, uploaded to laptop computers and edited in Windows Movie Maker software bundled with Windows XP.