Japanese I, News Broadcasting II and Harvard Collaboration

For the past two years, Japanese 1 students have been fortunate to be able to work on a Japanese Hiragana video project with Cyrus Rolbin of Harvard University. These projects have been a collaboration between Professor Rolbin from Harvard, Kurashige Sensei, Japanese Teacher at MPI and Brian Grantham, News Broadcasting teacher at MPI.

Professor Rolbin's current Hiragana video project is an effort to create a website that will serve as a "youth-tube" of Japanese culture for beginning learners of Japanese language. The website will present student-produced content related to one topic for each letter in the Japanese alphabet. This project will provide a means by which students in several countries can contribute to each other's simultaneous study of Japanese language and culture.

During the school year 2008-09, Japanese 1 and News Broadcasting II student Megan Tabata created Norimaki a video of Spam musubi making. Her Norimaki video was the original template video for the Hiragana website.

This past year, Adam Simon collaborated with Professor Rolbin and created a video introducing the Japanese word "Sugoi" meaning "Awesome, Fantastic!"

Adam's video was an integrated project between his News Broadcasting II and Japanese I classes. Adam created his video by combining his outstanding Japanese language and video editing skills using several professional level programs such as Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe's After Effects and Premier.

Professor Rolbin's Hiragana website can be viewed by clicking this link.

http://abcjp.net/

You will find Megan's Norimaki video on the site. Adam's video has yet to be added to the website so you can view it here.

It is Sugoi! Awesome!