Ramp Up your English

March 14, 2018

This is not just any day. Students across the United States have walked out today to demand safety in their schools. I’m very proud of all on you! You’re not accepting victim status that would allow you to be forgotten.  Hang in there!  I hope you continue to refuse accepting the lame excuses that always follw tragedies like the murders at Parkland, Florida. It’s your movement. I hope you get a ban on weapons that can kill so many so fast. I hope you continue to press until all kids are safe from this insanity in school. It’s your movement, and I’m proud of you for standing up!

March 14, 2018

The Southern Oregon Television Awards were held last Saturday, and LetzCreate was honored again.  This time, the Best Education Program award was received for Adventures in Education, the “sister program” to Ramping Up your English. In addition, producer John Letz won the Ragland Best Producer of the Year for 2017. I’m honored to receive such praise and recognition from my fellow producers. Of course, I share this honor with all the people who made it possible.  First on that list is my director Denise Ross.  She’s directed all 70 episodes of Ramping Up your English and all but one of my studio productions of Adventures in Education. All those who have been crew members also share in the glory, as does my viewers.  A Big thanks to all who have now made this program an award winner!

We greet the new year with 65 episode completed! I’m eager to add more. Production dates are set for late February and March. We’re getting near the end of the unit on Animals. If you’re not crazy about trains (our first unit), you can start the Animals Unit on the Episode 33 page.
With all the pain and death of 2017, I’m happy to see that year go, hopeful that 2018 will be a better one. I’ll do my bit by helping intermediate English learners improve their English through more episodes of Ramping Up your English. Contact me at LetzCreatePro@gmail.com.

RUE Receives Best Program Award!

I’m excited to announce that Ramping Up your English has been honored with the Best Program of 2017 during the Southern Oregon Television Awards on February 11th. Ramping Up your English also received an award for Best Education Program. I’m especially honored that the votes came from those who inspire me: the producers, volunteers, and staff members of RVTV.  The Advisory Council gave awards in fouteen categories, plus overall awards. RUE won in the Education category.  I figured I had a 50/50 chance of that award. I was pleasently surprised when the MC anounced that Ramping Up your English won the Best Program award. Viewers of the Public Access channel saw the awards ceremony live from the RVTV Studios.  I want to thanks the Public Access Producers Advisiory Council for the tremendous work it took to produce such a classy event.

Kudos

There are many people to thank for this honor.  My director Denise Ross has produced all but one episode.  Her high standards, attention to detail, and calmness are essential to meet the demands of this type of show. I thank every crew member – many of them producers of their own programs – who have ever worked on my program. Then there’s my “core group” who are there episode after episode setting up the set, lighting it, wiring it for sound, working the cameras, audio, graphics and control surface.  I also thank the RVTV crew, especially but not limited to Charles Douglas for making sure producers have what we need for producing a quality program.  They also give it their best.  They’re dedicated to making us successful.  I also want to thank my wife and creative consultant Elizabeth Letz.  Her input results in better production, and her support allows me to succeed. I also want to thank Southern Oregon University for their critical support of the TV station as well as Jackson County government, the City of Medford, and the city of Grants Pass.  Their dedication to transparency provides vital support to making RVTV successful.  All that support results in a state-of-the-art digital studio that’s available to independent producers for making our voices heard.

New Unit a Reality

We greet 2017 with this honor and with 9 episodes in our new instructional unit: Animals. It feels great to be the Best Program award winner from the first ever Southern Oregon Television Awards. Up to this date, there are 40 episodes available of Ramping Up your English.  I’ve learned so much through the process of producing them, and I continue to learn from members of my crew and from producers of other content.  I’m eager to produce more episodes in 2017, starting with Episode 41 about Farm Animals.

Communicating with the Producer

I haven’t been able to make good use of the email through this website. If you want to reach me, use LetzCreatePro@gmail.com.

Thanks for supporting Ramping Up your English and visiting my website: LetzCreate.org.

August 22, 2016

After 32 units on Trains and Railroads, we’ve changed our thematic unit to Animals. Four episodes in this unit have been produced and are waiting to be posted to the website.  The first 4 episodes feature horses and cats. We’ve introduced animal movement by demonstrating the gaits of horses.  We’ll add more when we feature wild animals.  We’ve also offered instruction on ramping up sequencing language, beginning English phonics (the word CAT was too hard to resist introducing the short a sound.), and idioms connected to horses and cats.  I missed one of my favorite idioms about cats when I wrote my script….”don’t let the cat out of the bag.”

So far, we’ve sequenced the steps in preparing a horse to ride, demonstrated walking, trotting, loping, and galloping.  We listed some vocabulary words pertaining to horses and listed idioms and sayings that relate to horses.  We feature an organization named Committed Alliance To Strays  (C.A.T.S.) in episodes 35 and 36.  We interview personnel from that organization and show lots of video of cats and kittens.  All 4 of these episodes were enhanced by volunteer field production crews.  For the horse segments, my director Denise Ross and her daughter Michelle demonstrated their horse craft, while Gary Mark Roberts and Alex McGlasson used their cameras and audio equipment to capture the great elements that went into the episodes.  This same group comprised my studio crew during the taping of these programs.  Gary Mark Roberts came out to CATS to help me videotape the interview and the kitten activity. I’m proud of and grateful to my loyal crew.

You’ll get to see the fruit of our labors soon.  Keep checking this website, starting with the Home page.

It’s already September, and we have produced 8 episodes of Ramping Up your English!  At this time, each episode has it’s own web page, all of which are accessible from the Home Page.  I hope to end 20015 with at least a dozen episodes produced in the Digital Media Center studio at Rogue TV through the Public Access Channel. I also hope to produce several more in the field.

Ramping Up your English can be seen on Ashland Home Network channel 15 and Charter Communications channel 182 in Southern Oregon.  Our series times are 8:00 AM on Mondays and 7:00 PM of Thursdays.  RVTV will soon be 100% high definition.  You can learn more at their website . You can also see the programming schedule there.

Pages are standing by for our first two episodes coming up in April.

RUE Episode one

RUE Episode 2