gunmajet.net

All your pocket protector are belong to us

Yes, I remember practically being bored into a coma last year at this time. I swore I wouldn't stick around for it this year so instead had a wicked time in Hong Kong. I totally know what you're going through, as I also have a lot of "me time" at the school. They are presently creating my schedule for elementary so there's a good chance that your schedule is still up in the air too.
Honestly though, all of the teachers are pretty busy and stressed right now handling all the changes, new students etc. I don't think they even have time to worry about the ALT with nothing to do, much less despise you for it. Unless you are rubbing it their faces and yawning all day lol.
As for your staffroom positioning, lets face it, the ALT is pretty low on the importance heirarchy. I wouldnt sweat it too much. At the least, you are freer to do what you like at your desk, without lots of people being in your space. One of my friends is right beside her kocho, and is constantly stressed over that. I guess you just have to find some positives.
To combat some of the boredom, I create lists of things to do. For example: studying, finding new recipes, making meal plans, finding places to travel to, researching jobs in my field, reading local and news sites from back home, listening to podcasts.
As long as you look like you're doing something, its fine. All of this vagueness will start to lift within the next week or so. Ganbatte!

GAJET Tone Regional Rep
gajet.tonerep@gmailcom

Should probably ask Lyle about setting up so that deadlines don't show up as an event. Problem is, if the side navigation only shows deadlines for writing pieces and other works only a week or two before it's due, it's likely that folks won't have time to work on it.
Lyle, fix this good and fix this now.
Furthermore, I still have your bag...and it's coming with me to China.

The problem is that this is not much different from the normal term time. In general the communication is very low.
I would usually be at a visit school every thursday and friday, the minimum information I would like is if I even have to turn up tomorrow.
That said, I do all those things all day everyday, its getting pretty old. If it was just for a short period like you said it wouldnt bother me, but really, this is kind of all the time. So basically I am a highly paid piece of furniture. Would that make me an office chair or a lazy boy?
I know some of us are wall flowers.
Oh yeh, and I think we jacked the wrong blog too.

It is annoying, (and makes the calendar page REALLY ugly) but at the same time a difficult situation. People are likely concerned that events with a deadline far in the future won't be advertised enough in advance. This is probably the most important for things like essay contests in the like, where a couple of weeks might not cut it for preparation. For other things, it's people just not thinking before they post... and as we know that happens relatively often here.

As for solutions, I don't know if I have any. If you all want me to take ultimate power and impose draconian posting policies of my own writing, I'd be happy to do that. Bar that though, it'll have to go through the sluggardly process of GAJET Council approval.

That isn't of course to say I don't modify posts that obviously abuse the system. Things on the events calendar that are not actual events, or are actually one day events set with a month long duration are certainly subject to modification.

If you really want to be in the know for events though, use iCal or Outlook (or any number of other calendaring software) to subscribe to the Gunma JET Calendar: http://gunmajet.net/event/ical It might not be too much help if you don't already use one of these programs to organize your life, but for those of us who do having all information in one place is great, and the fact that you don't have to do any work but add a feed makes it even better.

I vote that webmaster's decisions for changing/adding/eliminating any item(s)/feature(s) in the website, database, and/or all other technical functions in his/her jurisdiction be final and not require the approval of GAJET council or any other entity, aside from Jen.

Maybe a little disclaimer on the evant submission page to tell people the rules as you, oh mighty webmaster;-), see fit. Just pretty much everyone realize that everyones event is just as important to them as yours is to you, and just as much as you want your event posted and seen so does everyone else. So don't hog it up.

As long as we are on the subject, when you click on the events page to see the calendar, there's a little side bar that blocks Friday and Saturday that goes down the whole page. That's annoying too.

Sorry, I don't mean to complain so much. This is really a good site.

maybe its the computer I'm using. The side bar that has my name and stuff blocks the calendar for me. It could be my schools computer though.

I agree that events being posted prior to the actual event date is a waste of time. I think the calendar would be more functional if when you look at it, you can quickly see that there is something happing on saturday (for example). Not an announcement on saturday that something is happening in two months time!

As the calendar has a listing that gives you the heads up on the next 7 events, pre-advertising is just hogging the calendar and creating an advertising war. The calendar is no longer functional for me, I rarely look at it because of the mindless repitition that something is happening in 6 months time, and I just want to see quickly whats happening saturday (I know, I love saturdays!). I suggest we need to decide a guideline for posting calendar events.

Yes, for example:

The Numata Hanami party is this Saturday (Weather pending), yet its at the bottom of the events list and barely noticible. YET, its only a few days away. I agree that certain people are hogging the calendar with their "events" that aren't events, but rather, deadlines etc. If any of you are reading this, please do us a favour and edit your non-events! KTHXBYE

GAJET Tone Regional Rep
gajet.tonerep@gmailcom

Gomen ne

Well, then we should only allow the event calendar to have the day of the event. When it comes to sign ups we can do it through facebook or just post it on the forum and not on the calendar...

I think the deadline for sign ups should be okay as long it's it's just the day.

It looks like we should probably get 2 different kinds of event posts. One for long term PSA/sign up/essay contest type things and one for short "Hey everyone, swing by this festival this weekend" things.

I just kind of spammed the website (Sorry guys!) with prefectural events and I was wondering if people found them useful. I've heard a few people say that they think the event posts was useful but at the same time I don't want the event posts to become a nuisance.

I've also been trying to cut down on the number of days in the calendar the events take up. Since we're on this topic, what do you guys think? Should I keep posting prefectural events on the website?

Judith
CIR/PA
Gunma

Done! :) Thanks for the feedback Lyle!

Judith
CIR/PA
Gunma

The whole point of the events thing is to give everyone a heads up on events. Some peoples resources are limited and this may be the only place they find out about things going on. I say keep em' coming. If somethings' going on let us know.

Just use good judgment (I'm not saying you haven't in the past or anything, I'm just saying) when posting. If the festival or event is a few days or a week, mark it as so. The original post was mostly directed to people who posted something that was even questionable as an event in the first place (is an essay contest really an event?) and then would have it posted for over a month clogging up the quick view bar on the side.

I don't know, it's everyones site and that's just my opinion. Do what you want. But I appriciate your event postings.