Slideshow of Back to School presentations

Thanks to everyone who helped to make Back to School 2013 a success. We had around 80 people in attendance. And thanks to everyone who came out we were able to raise 60,000 yen at the door for Minna no Te (http://www.minnanote.com/) plus another 20,000 from the sale of Fresh Currents, books that were donated by Kyoto Journal.

 In case you missed it, our Back to School website has a slide-show of what happened. http://bts.osakajalt.org/

Thanks to our webmaster (and future paparazzi) Bill for getting pics of EVERY single presentation! Great job, Bill!

Here's the report for the July 2013 issue of The Language Teacher, for the record:

OSAKA: April -- Back to School 2013 was our fourth annual spring mini-conference aimed at helping everyone start the new school year on a positive note. Held on Sunday, April 14, at Osaka Gakuin University, it was by all accounts a big success, with 38 presentations to over 80 attendees, and ¥80,000 raised that was donated to the Minna no Te NGO to support Fukushima disaster victims.

The day started with a plenary session by Minna no Te founder and Fukushima native Yuko Nishiyama and OGU Associate Professor Stephen Dalton, entitled Two years since 3/11: Where are we now in the healing process? Subsequent concurrent sessions ranged in topics from hands-on EFL classroom activities to the more research-oriented and esoteric, with computer skills presentations, social issues awareness raising sessions, and even an energizing line-dancing session following our lunch break.

Presenters included recent university graduates, teachers of kindergarten through university level, and several graduate students as well. OGU’s International Chat Lounge <http://tinyurl.com/cdbooc6> was open for much of the day for participants to freely sample a variety of language learning games and activities that have been popular and effective with many OGU students. Poster presentations by the volunteer organizations Free the Children Japan, and Hato, as well as by the General Union and teachers and researchers alike added another lively dimension to the day’s variety of activities.

In addition to the many Kansai based participants, attendees came from as far as Kyushu, Shikoku, and even Gunma. Special thanks are due to officer Stella Maxwell for coordinating and to webmaster Bill Hogue for photography.

For a complete listing of presenters and presentations and a slide show of the day as well as archived info about our past years’ Back to School events, please see http://bts.osakajalt.org/. And for more about Yuko Nishiyama and the Minna no Te organization, please see http://www.deepkyoto.com/?p=7886.  

Reported by Ray Franklin and Bob Sanderson