podspress.com

In Laos, there are many festivals every year. The biggest festival, and everybody is waitting for, is called SONG KARN (water festival).
The festival lasts three days. The first of the three days is the last day of the old year. Houses and villages are  cleaned properly on the first day. Perfume, water and flowers are also prepared for the Lao New Year. Water is used for washing homes, Buddha images, monks, and soaking friends and passers by. Students first repectfully pour water on their elders, teachers, then monks for their blessings for peace long life, and last of all they throw water to each other. The water is perfumed with flowers or natural perfumes. Some people prefer flowers in the water to give a pleasant smell, as well as adding perfume. Many people enjoy soaking water on Buddha images at the temple. Parents prepare traditional food such as: fried chicken, bamboo soup, green papaya salad and beer (beer lao). So most people in Laos enjoy having the traditional food, beer, soaking each other and passers by with water.

Today we decided that teams should have four weeks to complete their podcast shows. The shows should be:

• 8~10 minutes long
• be interesting for students
• be connected to Oberlin
• be varied and contain 3 elements (interview, survey etc)
• have a worksheet to teach new words and give listening practice for classmates
• have jingles and an Intro / Line-up and Goodbye

The second mini-task was to write a 100~150 word blog post on podpress.com on ‘My Culture’. This is homework and should be finished before next week’s lesson.

Have fun and work hard!

Yuuta is kept waiting when Naoki has a problem with the bus…

On this show, we hear about an International Camp in Kanagawa and discuss wishes and dreams in the opening interview.

Our two presenters talk about part-time work and have some interesting news about Oberlin Club in Izu.

On the show, Aya and Mio talk about breakfast and why it’s important.

In lesson four, we continued to build our podcasts adding a Campus News section. We had discussions, ‘concrete facts’, humour and lots of interesting news. Next week We’ll add these audio tracks to our interviews to make a longer podcast.

This week’s podcast features Naoki Z and Yuuta’s Campus News added to week 2’s podcast.

Enjoy the weekend!

In this class, we started to edit a podcast show using our interview audio files, stingers and music with Garageband. If you use a Windows OS it is possible to use Audacity to edit audio files. Our next element for the podcast show is ‘Camus News’. Find some interesting events, news or information that is related to J. F. Oberlin University and prepare a 2~3 minute report. We will add it to our podcast show next week. Thanks for your hard work!