E-Texts   Tags: creative commons, downloadable, freely available, open source  

NCC"s Workshop at the 2013 AAS Annual Meeting "Open Source, Open Book, Open Classroom: Opening Internet Resources for Teaching About Japan (Friday, March 22, 2013, 3:15-5:15, Session # 158) will feature Professor Ken Ito discussing his use of Aozora Bunko in teaching his course at the University of Hawaii.  

Chair:

Members:

During 2012-13 NCC began developing online instructional guides to using Japanese language open source content for teaching about Japan across the curriculum. The E-Texts Website will concentrate on open source materials freely available to all via the Internet. Initially the site will focus on using Aozora Bunko and the Japanese Text Initiative to create lesson plans and course materials to best take advantage of these resources in teaching Japanese language, literature, history, and other subjects. Individual faculty members who have used these resources in their teaching will collaborate with NCC and with members of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) in developing these resources. 

Major components of the Website will include:

• Lesson plans, course syllabi, and other teaching materials;
• Technology tips to ensure uniform downloading, pagination, and footnoting across platforms (laptops, readers, cell phones, etc);
• Tips for using Ruby and other transliteration or translation platforms;
• Links to recommended online dictionaries, relevant bibliographies, and other reference resources for course use. 

Aozora Bunko, begun in 1997, is an online collection of thousands of Japanese language works of fiction and non-fiction, including out-of-copyright books or works that the authors have made freely available. It is widely regarded as the Japanese equivalent of Project Gutenberg.

The Japanese Text Initiative is a project of the Electronic Text Center of the University of Virginia developed in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh that provides online versions of important Japanese texts, whenever possible, linked to English translations, and other supporting materials.

NCC will welcome suggestions of other open source resources to include for the future. NCC's Workshop at the 2013 AAS Friday, March 22, 2013 from 3:15-5:15 will feature discussion of using these resources in teaching.