Welcome to the ITJ's Professional Resources Office! From this page, visitors and registered students can access resources that we feel will contribute to strengthening the field of Japanese language teaching and learning. Of the six resources listed in the navigation bar above, three are currently available and the others are still under construction. We invite visitors to read about these six resources below and explore the three that are currently available. We also welcome feedback about the usefulness of these resources. The Professional Resources currently available include: The ITJ Virtual Library of World Wide Web Resources This resource provides quick and easy access to other educational resources on World Wide Web (WWW) related to Japan and Japanese. Institute staff, after carefully reviewing different WWW sites, have organized them into categories for easy reference. Each website in a category includes a brief narrative describing what each site offers. From within the Virtual Library, the reviewed websites can be visited by selecting the site's address. The ITJ Current Events Bulletin Board This service provides a convenient way to learn about upcoming events and activities of interest to Japanese language teachers, and to keep informed about developments in the field of Japanese language education. Visitors to this service can also send, from the ITJ website, suggestions for new announcements of upcoming events and general news about the field of Japanese language education. Suggested announcements will be posted on the Current Events Bulletin Board within 48 hours of being submitted (under the discretion of ITJ). The following resources are still being developed and will be available soon. The ITJ Teachers' Lounge The Institute's Teachers' Lounge will provide a convenient means for Japanese language educators around the world to engage in professional networking, meet new colleagues, renew friendships, and share ideas and concerns. The Lounge will enable visitors to use discussion group fora to carry out asynchronous discussions on different topics of interest. Please join our professional discussions! The ITJ Career Bank. This resource will consist of two parts. One part will enable schools to announce openings for Japanese language teachers, and allow teachers to easily contact these schools for more information. The second part of the Career Bank will allow teachers to post their resumes for school principals, who have registered with ITJ, to review. To protect teachers' privacy, only registered principals or other school officials will be allowed access to the database of teacher resumes. Also, teachers will be able to withdraw their resume from the database once they are no longer seeking a new teaching position. The ITJ Book Store. The ITJ Book Store will provide teachers convenient access to carefully selected and reviewed books and other teaching materials that are commercially available. In addition to being able to quickly learn about new and useful books and teaching aids for Japanese language education, you will be able to safely order items you want directly from the ITJ website. The ITJ Educational Resources Exchange (ERE) This service will help Japanese language educators to share and exchange teaching materials that they have developed to enhance language learning. This resource is made up of two critical parts. One part gives you access to a database of resources for your review and evaluation. If a useful resource is found, you will either be able to print it from the screen or down load a copy to your computer. The second part will enable you to submit your own unique resources to be included in the ERE database. Because ITJ is so new, the database does not yet contain teaching resources.

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