We had the 1st Video Conference with Walter Payton College Pref. See our a wonderful time below.

(Local Newspaper Reported, Image written by Japanese. Photo is a scene of another Video Conference on the same day )

(1) Date/Time : Thursday, DEC.16, 2004   /  7:30 - 8:30 Japan time (Wednesday, DEC.15, 2004  /  16:30 - 17:30 Chicago time)

(2) System and Equipments : ISDN(128kb) / Phoenix mini, Camcorder, Projector & Screen

We have been collaborating  "Dream School project" and "the Chopsticks & Forks project" with one of Illinois International High Schools, Chicago, USA through internet since 2002. There is Walter Payton College Pref. in
those schools and Ms.Lu, who is Japanese class teacher there, asked us to have a Video Conference (VC) via e-mail. Then we decided to realize it.

So far we have kept class to class culture exchange program for long time, but in this case, we did not have enough time to prepare to do the VC. So we tried to ask all students at school volunteer to participate in. Though the day came very soon without participants' meeting, our students did it well smoothly under their leader Maho, 12th grader. Because a half of them have ever experienced VC.

To tell about language, Ms.Lu wanted her students to speak and listen to real Japanese and so we needed to speak Japanese as much as possible. In the discussion, our students began to speak in English naturally, then there were filled with Teen's English and Japanese between both students.

At 7:30am promised time, After Ringing from Chicago, it was connected and something appeared on the screen. It made us very happy, to tell the truth, we have failed on connection test! We could see students and teachers at Chicago site had already sit down in front of Polycom. Our VC started after simple adjustment of equipment. (Written by Sugimoto)

1) Self-introduction
At first, we got started and each student introduced by him/herself with holding a card which Hiragana-Japanese, Kanji-Japanese and alphabet for name put on (top to down). Next was Payton's turn and they also did with showing name card which written in Katakana-Japanese. It seemed both of them were a little bit nervous at the first meet.

2) Questions and Answer
Both sites timely asked about teenager's daily life, how to spend holidays, favorite music, school uniform, boy/girl friend and so on. It was a time each answer made them impressed, had big laugh and little confused.

3) Quiz and Magic
Our students gave quiz about Japanese traditional life, Toshikoshi-soba (buckwheat noodle for the end of Year), Kids playing in New Year day, Otoshidama (special pocket money form parents or someone), Hinamatsuri (Celebrating for girls) and so on. Then they went ahead to talk about St. Valentine’s Day and White Day which is also an important day to Japanese men?  It made us clear to understand that both teenagers share common interest about the special days between boys and girls.
Beautiful Magic Show! On topic of hobby, our student who likes to do magic asked there is any Magician at Chicago side. Will raised hand and did magic with his hands and coins just in front of us. it was really funny and great. We gave him big hands to his beautiful technique.

4) Singing “Jingle Bells” together and say “Sayonara”
On talking about how to spend Christmas, they were naturally going to sing a Christmas song together. It was a wonderful chorus on the biggest stage over the Pacific Ocean.
Chicago students gave a presentation about their school “Walter Payton College Pref.” with PowerPoint. It was too bad that time was over and> both side said Sayonara with waving hands. After that, our students went to their each class at 1st period.