As a small group of students and I work to organize a benefit concert to raise funds for Japan, I have been trying to keep them interested and knowledgeable and engaged in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. We’re going to be working on paper cranes and more.

Recently, I brought our classes to a site created by Google called Messages for Japan that allows you to write a message to the people of Japan. The site automatically translates English into Japanese, and then pins the message on a global map. The kids were pretty interested in the language conversion (we talked then about how Google’s technology does that) and in reading other messages from around the world.

Here are some of our messages, and the conversion.

Peace (for the people of Japan),
Kevin