Current Issue

Filmmaking, Podcasting, and Online Radio in Language Teaching and Learning

October 2026

This month’s issue was published in collaboration with JALT’s PIE SIG. Together, let’s contemplate the ways that teachers and students can create digital media to support learning in the classroom. From filmmaking projects to podcast interviews, there are many ways we can design lessons around and with digital media.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller

APA Reference for this issue:

(author). (2026). (article title, sentence case). MindBrainEd Think Tanks: Filmmaking, Podcasting, and Online Radio in Language Teaching and Learning, 12(10), (pages).

Watch before you read...

Once again, we’ve joined forces with the Performance in Education (PIE) SIG. This time, we’re examining different ways students and teachers can create digital media. Our Main video features a podcast project designed to help 8th grade students develop their language skills. In our More podcast episode, Karen Costa gives teachers advice on making educational videos for students. Then, Curtis Kelly and Heather Kretschmer introduce the issue.

In the Think Tank, Ashley Ford-Mihashi describes a project in which students weave poetry, video clips, and sound in short videos. Next, Sean H. Toland reflects on his experience with digital storytelling and gives teachers actionable tips for designing digital storytelling projects. Darren Kinsman explains the essentials of podcasting and what teachers can learn from listening to the PIE SIG Podcast. Then, Gordon Rees writes about how he had his students create videos to help them gain insight into literature they had to read. Finally, David Kluge reports on a special radio program project.

In our Plus, Klaus P. Michelsen shares his short story in which a beleaguered teacher attempts to deal with a student few teachers would enjoy having in their class.

Simple Sustainable Videos

Tea for Teaching

Our Thoughts on Making Media

Heather: I honestly can’t claim to have extensive experience with video creation. In fact, this past semester was the first time I asked my students to make videos. The idea came from George MacLean, an English teacher and Performance in Education (PIE) SIG member in Okinawa, Japan. He proposed trying an asynchronous virtual exchange between one of his classes in Okinawa and one of mine in Germany. So, we gave it a go…

Think Tank Articles

In autumn 2021, my husband and I traveled to the Yotsuya rice fields in Aichi, Japan. We wanted to get out of the city, but COVID-19 restrictions still discouraged us from traveling far. When we got there, it was like a different world, yet a familiar one. The rice farmers were cutting the rice and drying it on hasa (wooden drying racks), the same as they have done for hundreds of years before. As we walked around, I took videos with my camera of the spiders still making their webs, the pretty cosmos still sprouting their pink and white petals, farmers cleaning up after a long day of work, and the handmade scarecrows, still guarding the fields with attitude. The village still felt like the world I knew, and maybe the pandemic hadn’t changed everything…

At educational technology conferences, there are usually a few presenters who have the enthusiastic zeal of an itinerant preacher, moving from venue to venue proclaiming the transformative potential of the latest digital innovation. More often than not, these individuals report on small-scale qualitative studies conducted in their own classrooms, which always appear to be utopian sites of learning. The information and communication technology (ICT) tools they use seem to work flawlessly; the English language learners are highly engaged; and their technology-based initiative produces impressive results. What tends to get glossed over are the inevitable technological glitches, frustrated students, abandoned activities, and projects that simply did not unfold as advertised. Anyone who has spent enough time teaching with technology in Japanese university academic English classrooms knows that things can and do go off the rails quite quickly…

Within the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) there is a special interest group that advocates the use of performative activities like speech, drama, and debate in the classroom. Performance in Education (PIE SIG), disseminates its approaches and activities in peer reviewed articles, forums, presentations, and workshops. When I served as the group’s Vice President, I repeatedly found myself faced with the same questions. How can we make our group more visible online to attract new members? How can we spread and preserve our message more effectively? And how can we reduce the friction of initial engagement with our group?

For the last several years, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Hell Screen has been a regular part of my Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature course at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies (NUFS). Over time, I had built up teaching materials, class activities, and resources. I knew the story well, knew how students were likely to respond, and my preparation was largely done. With a few adjustments each year, the lesson almost taught itself.

Akutagawa (1892–1927), often called the “father of the Japanese short story,” was a major figure in modern Japanese literature fascinated by human psychology and the complexities of human nature. I kept returning to Hell Screen because it offers opportunities to explore the Japanese Buddhist conception of hell and the lengths an artist might go for the sake of art…

I used to listen to AM radio when I was in high school in 1970, WLS in Chicago. The music that I loved listening to in high school was from the 60s and early 70s; in university from the 70s; and when I was teaching in my first job as a high school English teacher, I listened to the music of the late 70s and early 80s. So, the music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s was MY music.

Then I moved to Nagoya, Japan in 1982, and it was good, but I felt homesick. In 2000 while driving to my part-time teaching job, I started to listen to the 79.5 AM radio station, Radio-i, the station where the DJs spoke English and played 60s, 70s, and early 80s music. I felt at home. One day, while listening to Radio-i, I thought, creating a radio program such as the one I was listening to would be a great project for a class!

Think Tank Plus

Baking hot. A historic heatwave. It was the hottest June ever recorded in Germany.

Celeste and I lived in Bremen, a small city in northern Germany, and during the day, it was impossible to ignore the intense heat outside. It was so hot that I thought I should give frying an egg on the cobblestone sidewalk a shot. Whether I was out and about or riding my second-hand bike, the unforgiving sun above me looked like a huge sunny-side-up egg…

Become a Think Tank star! Here are some of the future issue topics we are thinking about. Would you, or anyone you know, like to write about any of these? Or is there another topic you’d like to recommend? Do you have any suggestions for lead-in, or just plain interesting, videos? How about writing a book review? Or sending us a story about your experiences? Contact us.

PIE SIG Podcast Season 2 Episode 3: Interview with Amanda Gillis-Furutaka

Listen to Darren Kinsman interview Amanda Gillis-Furutaka in the latest PIE SIG Podcast episode. Amanda talks about some of her travels beyond the borders of Great Britain, her love of languages, cultures, and music, as well as her drama experiences in school and university. Recounting the BRAIN SIG’s early days, she shares how she became involved in the SIG and how working with other BRAIN SIG members has supported her development as a learner and teacher.

Teaching with Short-Form Videos

In this Teachers Talk Tech podcast episode, María G. Durán and Katie La Storia talk about different ways teachers can integrate short-form videos in the language classroom, including using existing videos and creating new ones.

Emotional Prosody and Online Learning

This Tea for Teaching podcast episode is useful for teachers interested in creating educational videos for their students. The speakers discuss a research project on emotional prosody in instructor-narrated videos and its effect on student learning. Emotional prosody refers to paralinguistic aspects of speech used to convey emotion, such as pitch, tempo and rhythm, loudness and intensity, and pauses.

“Flicker: Your Brain on Movies”

If you are interested in the neuroscience of filmmaking, check out this short article and video on neuroscientist Jeffrey M. Zacks’ book Flicker: Your Brain on Movies.

The JALT CALL Podcast

To explore the intersection of technology and language learning, check out the JALT CALL podcast.

The MindBrained Think Tanks+

is produced by the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Mind, Brain, and Education Special Interest Group (BRAIN SIG). Kyoto, Japan. (ISSN 2434-1002)

Editorial Staff

Stephen M. Ryan Curtis H. Kelly Julia Daley

Afon (Mohammad) Khari Heather Kretschmer Nicky De Proost

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Current Issue

Filmmaking, Podcasting, and Online Radio in Language Teaching and Learning

October 2026

Watch before you read...

Simple Sustainable Videos

Our Thoughts on Making Media

Students and Teachers Making Videos and Podcasts Curtis Kelly & Heather Kretschmer

Think Tank Articles

Video Haiku: 17 Seconds in a Second Language Ashley Ford-Mihashi

Don’t Fall for the “Digital Native” Myth: Lessons from a Digital Storytelling Project Sean H. Toland

Conversations on Demand: Podcasting for Outreach, Preservation, and Professional Development Darren Kinsman

Beyond Reading: Exploring the Rashomon Effect Through Performance and Film Gordon Rees

A Live Radio Show With a Live Audience Project for the Classroom David Kluge