• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Smith's School of English

To provide English speakers the opportunity to own their own business teaching English in Japan.

  • Franchise Entry
    • Buy a Developed Franchise
    • Start Your Own
  • The Franchise
    • Work Visa & Taxes
    • Franchise Training
    • Franchise Support
      • What Franchisees get
      • SSE Products
      • FAQ’s
  • Testimonials
  • About
    • Coaching Confidence
    • Contact
  • Blog
    • English School Articles
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Blog, English School Articles · April 1, 2010

Electronics – Future???

You are here: Home / Blog / Electronics – Future???

As many of you know, I used to work in the electronics industry. I worked as an engineer and manager for Alpine Electronics, Oki Electric and Mitsubishi Electric in the US and Japan. Recently John Coleman and I have been making many videos and in-class lessons for our students and for Smith’s Schools in general to use with higher level students.

The latest one we did was about Nintendo’s plans to roll out the DS for use in elementary and junior high schools in Japan.  You can see this one at the TOEIC Video List in the Japanese Blog (TOEIC+ Lesson 11). In that article from the Japan times, we found that Nintendo’s game guru Shigeru Miyamoto recently won a special fellowship from BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for his creation of such great video games as Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong.

In that article it was explained that Miyamoto is working hard at Nintendo to introduce the DS as a teaching tool.  I have studied that topic with some of my higher level students this week and when I asked them their opinion of this development, many said they were concerned about it, saying that making education to much like a game could have negative effects: much as we see now with many Japanese complaining that they are having a harder time writing Kanji than in the past.

The problem stems from the use of PCs and mobile phones to write Japanese.  It has gotten too easy to write this way by simply converting ROMAJI (alphabetic character representations of Japanese phonemes) and HIRAGANA (Japanese phonetic symbols for Japanese phonenes) in case of PCs and mobile phones, respectively.  It is so easy to write this way that even I can do it.  See Al’s Room. Of course my Japanese is not perfect and I need help to check it usually.  But the main point is that I can do it.  It’s that easy!

So what is the future of Electronics?  In the long term, electronic transceivers will be embedded into our brains to allow us to connect to the new internet and super computers to do virtually any difficult calculation and solve any problem.  So nothing will be beyond our capability.  But we many not be able to write by hand any longer at that point.  Scary?!

Oh, to see the state of voice recognition,  check out the audio transcriptions on YouTube sometime.  You can turn  it on under the ‘CC’ tab and see subtitles on the videos that John and I made and other videos too  Some of the transcriptions are hilarious!  Enjoy!

Al Bartle (Smith’s School of English – Okamoto)

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • X

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Filed Under: Blog, English School Articles Tagged With: Alpine Electronics, TOEIC, TOEIC 試験, 宮本茂, 英会話

Mark Smith

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. John C says

    April 2, 2010 at 12:37 am

    Al
    I think that the lack of writing practice is not limited to Kanji. I find that my English writing is a lot worse (more untidy) now that a do almost all of it on a PC. I wonder if writing may become a lost art.
    John

    Reply

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search

From the Blog

  • Blog
  • English School Articles
  • Smith's Sustainabilty
  • Sustainability Development Goals
  • Testimonials
スミス英会話メインページ

5 days ago

スミス英会話メインページ
今週のワンポイントレッスンはコチラです★Tell us about a conversation you had today.今日した会話について教えてください。smithweb.co.jp/2025/06/one-point-lesson-7a15/#スミス英会話 #月謝制英会話 #ワンポイントレッスン ... See MoreSee Less
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

スミス英会話メインページ

2 weeks ago

スミス英会話メインページ
今週のワンポイントレッスンはコチラです★What do you think is necessary for a person to grow?人が成長するために必要なものは何だと思いますか?smithweb.co.jp/2025/05/one-point-lesson-7a14/#スミス英会話 #月謝制英会話 #ワンポイントレッスン ... See MoreSee Less
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Blog Posts
  • Discussing Milestones
  • A Common Listening Problem English Learners Have
  • Protected: The Japan Iwaskows
  • Christmas holidays in Germany (part 2)
  • German Christmas (part 1)
  • Autumn in Japan vs Autumn in Canada
  • Unique Japan- Smith’s School of English, Sagamihara
  • Edward’s Language Journey
  • Osaka Higashi Line – Convenient Fuse
  • Small Talk in Katsura
Smith’s School of English Franchises
#101,8-21-5, Hanafuku-building, Fukushima-Ku,OsakaTel: 0120-222-248 (Japan)
Tel: 81-6-6455-8050 (Other)
Fax: 06-6455-8052
E-mail: info@sse-franchise.com

Copyright © 2025 · Smith's School of English, all rights reserved. · Privacy · Log in

%d