Home     Elementary     Junior High     High School     Junk Drawer     Methodologies     Forum     Links      
About Us について     Contact Us     Submission Forms     Volunteers      

  Coming soon! -->  日本語

 

 

 

 

About Us

 

 

 

 What is The Englipedia Project?

It is the slickest and most slimmed down website on the web for English teachers working in Japan's rigid and English-challenged public education sector.  It broke ground in January 2007 with its main goal to increase the quality of Japan's English education system and hopefully reengage Japanese desire to study English. The idea behind Englipedia is about people contributing a little of their own ideas, and in turn gaining a valuable resource.  Tucked snuggly between the free and cool teaching tools are more than 300 activities and worksheets ranging from elementary to junior high school, with a high school project in the works.

 

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, said it best in a CNN interview: "I believe in free open public participation and information."  In the early stages of building this website, the local board of education (BOE) wanted the site built on their local server, which would have essentially halted the project and effectively taken control out of the hands of the people who really cared about it.  They even went as far as saying Englipedia wasn't 'work-related' and couldn't be built during working hours.  I guess they would rather have their ALTs playing online video games and surfing questionable sites.  Anyways, casting aside my mystified thoughts of an educational teaching website not being work-related, I retained control and decided to embark on this project after working hours, and to date, I have dropped 1,500 hours into this project.  I believe educational resources shouldn't be stored on a BOE server that can only be accessed from within its little clubhouse walls or constrained to the local community.  Instead, like Mr. Wales, education and its resources should not be restrained, rather remain. It should remain in the community for everyone to access, use and change.

 

ALTs often find themselves without adequate training and technological resources needed to effectively do their job. This site was founded by an ALT for the ALT.  However, it's useful for the whole English teaching community.  So, here's to you all, working in the trenches everyday fighting the good fight with little to no ammunition.


 What is the goal of Englipedia

  • The ES Project:  Besides providing an array of fun and exciting games, the primary goal is to bridge the communication barrier via its '1-click button' that enables the user to easily switch between English and Japanese.
  • The JHS Project:  There are two ways you can search for an activity - textbook or grammar point.  There are only seven MEXT-okayed English textbooks  in public junior high schools.  We have found an ingenious way to link the textbooks together so you can search for an activity via the English textbook your schol uses.
  • The HS Project:  Has broken ground!

 

 How is Englipedia unique?

  • ALT Specific:  This website was primarily designed for ALTs, but it doesn't preclude others from also benefiting from the site.
  • Fast-Loading Pages:  The snazziest thing about this website is its fast nagivation through the entire site. ALTs working in Japan's public schools are usually forced to use computers that rival the speed of a typewriter. It's insulting and blatantly pathetic that ALTs who have degrees from colleges that required them to use computers in order to graduate are often forced to use the oldest and slowest computer at their schools. This website was designed specifically for those ALTs. It was extremely laborous and time consuming but every activity/game here at Englipedia has its own page.  Most pages on this site are under 10kbs, which means a fast-surfing website via any typewriter. Do you remember the sluggishly slow speed of the internet 15 years ago? Well, Englipedia was designed to open most of its pages instantaneously using 15 year old technology.
  • JHS Textbook-Specific:  Have you ever wanted to find JHS activities which were specifically designed for your textbook?  Well, Englipedia has linked together Japan's JHS public school English textbooks so you can see all JHS activities on the site while surfing the site via the English textbook at your JHS.
  • No Scrolling:  Many ALT s websites have long scrolling pages. However, not only doesn't every activity decrease the size and speed of which a page opens, but an additional benefit is the extirpation of long scrolling web pages!
  • No Popups:  Popups are cheap advertisements! We hate them! Many websites have so many ads you can't distinguish the website from the distracting ads. There are no ads at Englipedia! Plus, there are no popups! Better yet, all of the external links have also been checked for popups.
  • Easy-to-Navigate:  Extensive care has gone into designing Englipedia's layout. Our goal is to provide you with a tremendously useful resource BUT present it in the most user-friendly way possible.
  • Volunteers:  The people helping out with Englipedia are not professionals. We are just ordinary individuals hailing from 11 different countries, who thought giving a little bit of our free time might benefit Japan's English teaching community. We volunteer because we care. If you would like to help out, contact us HERE.  We are looking for editors, graphic designers, ES project manager and submission uploader.