Feedback on Palaygo

"It's really brought the study of language alive for my students. It's been really engaging for all the students. " 

(Therese Sakamoto, Japanese Teacher, Derinya Primary School, Victoria)

Government

"You are certainly to be congratulated on your efforts to create cultural and language links between students in Australia and Japan." 

- The Honourable Prime Minister Kevin Rudd after visiting a school using Palaygo

"The Minister wishes you every success in your endeavours to expand your business and connect Australian and overseas students". 

- The Honourable Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard (former Prime Minister)

Educators - Primary School

In terms of what I like about the program
- Caroline Gray, Japanese Teacher at Hawthorn West Primary School, Victoria 

• very easy for students to navigate through and use
• numbers make it possible for all students
• engaging, incudes the pictures and avatars 
• makes learning more meaningful for students, as they are actually sending an email to students overseas
• makes learning engaging in the classroom 
• Helpful when teaching verbs and word order, makes it fun to apply their knowledge
• Handy for students to learn Japanese punctuation
• Also great for cultural understanding, as we discuss what the Japanese students have written about.

"The language support has meant that my children, who are just beginning to learn Japanese, can actually compose emails themselves." - Dianne Collins, LOTE Teacher at Sale Primary School, Victoria

Educators - Secondary School

Personal Encounters with Palaygo
- Chris Graham, Teacher in Charge of Languages at Kelmscott Senior High School, Western Australia

Making language learning relevant and engaging for students, whether they are starting at a primary, secondary or tertiary level, is a basic mission statement for all second language teachers.

Research conducted by the Asia Education Foundation in 2012 suggested that ‘personal encounters’ is one of the key ingredients for building student demand in the language classroom. Creating opportunities for our students to have ‘personal encounters’, is now an integral part of developing a clear purpose for learning another language and continuing it beyond the initial compulsory years.

The interactive platform of Palaygo provides students with exceptional opportunities to communicate with other students in the target language Japanese using a unique palette system which clearly delineates Japanese word order and compliments the growth of productive language skills.

The Palaygo community also encourages students to build friendships through regular communication facilitated by networking technology, both in the classroom and at home.

The links to The Australian Curriculum Languages document are clear in both the General capabilities and Cross-curriculum priorities and explicitly addressed in the Japanese Sub-strands of 1.5 & 2.1.

The most promising outcome of students utilising Palaygo and enhancing their language communication skills, is that they will themselves become wonderful second language advocates over time.

(Chris Graham is the Teacher in Charge of Languages at Kelmscott SHS and has been a passionate advocate of Japanese language teaching in Western Australia for 20 years. He is a past President of the Japanese Language Teachers’ Association of WA and has a special interest in language acquisition. Currently, he is the Chair of the Course Advisory Committee for Japanese: Second Language.)