A Mid-Summer's Day Micro-Conference

On July 4th Osaka JALT, in association with JALT's GALE SIG held a mini-conference in Namba Shimin Gakushu Center. The presenters discussed a range of topics and opened several interesting dialogues.

Samuel Sorenson - Cultivating Creativity through Video Sharing Projects

Creating videos on topics of students' choice to share with an audience promotes collaboration and autonomous learning. It provides the opportunity for students to express their personal voices through the creative process, while resulting in a finished product that is relevant, meaningful, and something students can be proud of. This presentation will discuss the presenters' experience implementing such projects at two elementary schools in Shiga.

Samuel Sorenson came to Japan in 2010 on the JET Program and taught four years at two small elementary schools in Nagahama City, Shiga. In 2014 he moved to Osaka and is now teaching at two high schools through the Osaka City Board of Education. He is in the MA-TESOL program at Temple University Japan and is interested in motivation as well as task-based and project-based learning.

Michael Iwane-Salovaara - Using Quizlet in the Classroom

Quizlet offers another tool for language teachers by providing a low cost for testing and learner self-study. This presentation will focus on set up and implementation as well as various issues that have arisen.

Michael Iwane-Salovaara teaches at Momoyama Gakuin University. His interests include how technology interfaces with learners, spoken discourse, pragmatics, and poetry.

Cameron Romney - I hate my textbook! What can I do?

Many teachers are required to use a textbook that they had no say in choosing and many choose to make supplemental materials that better address their students’ needs. But how do teachers go about creating supplements? How can they determine where their textbook is deficient and what their students need extra practice with? This presentation will introduce a systematic approach developed by the presenter called ACoPE (Analyze, Consult, Produce and Evaluate) to help teachers create supplementary materials.

Cameron Romney has taught EFL in Japan and the United States for more than seventeen years. An avid presenter, he has twice won the Best of JALT award for his presentations and will be a featured speaker at the JALT International Conference in Shizuoka this fall. Currently he is a Lecturer at Kyoto Sangyo University in Kyoto.

Gerry Yokota - Beyond the Binary: Anime, Gender and the Multicultural Subject

Japanese anime and manga are fertile sources for prompting classroom discussion and critical thinking. But educators are justly concerned about their frequently problematic representations of gender, sexuality and violence. Professor Yokota will introduce recent examples from three prominent subgenres (mechas, cyborgs, and beautiful fighting girls), propose a few ideas about how to address such concerns, and invite participants to share ideas about possible approaches, pitfalls, outcomes and alternatives.

Gerry Yokota is Professor of English and Contemporary Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at Osaka University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English and Gender Studies as well as courses on Contemporary Japan for the G30 program. She was a plenary speaker at JALT2014 in Tsukuba, but the large audience made discussion and interaction difficult, and many Kansai colleagues were not able to attend, so we are pleased to have this opportunity to share her talk again as a workshop.

We look forward to continuing these discussions and many more in future events. Thank you to the presenters and attendees for making this event a success.