Geoffrey Carr
OneNote: A Platform for Student Interaction (With Management Tools!)
OneNote is ubiquitous, largely free, and extraordinarily flexible. Join us for a workshop that will show teachers how to create, manage, and troubleshoot a collaborative online workspace for students using the Office365 Teams/OneNote environment as a foundation.
Jerry Talandis Jr. & Theron Muller
Two Online Tools for Facilitating Student Autonomy and Self-Evaluation
This workshop features how the free online tools Etherpad and Vocaroo facilitate learner autonomy and self-evaluation. Classroom activities covered include student self-evaluation of speaking and sample dialog expansion. Student reflections and feedback showed using these tools increased engagement, a sense of ownership, and consciousness of the learning process. Participants will gain hands-on, practical knowledge on how to apply these tools in their classrooms and share thoughts about adapting them to their own contexts and students.
Lisa M. Hunsberger
Presentation Design Ideas for Maintaining Students’ Attention
Let us explore together a few ideas on how we can design more attractive slides that will help capture and keep our students’ attention. I will share activities that you can incorporate into your presentations that help increase engagement, and wi’ll show examples of how I have done this in the classroom. This talk will be ideal for intermediate PowerPoint and Keynote users, but beginners and advanced users are welcome.
Robert Cvitkovic
Low Effort—High Return: Auto Graded Quizzes That Make Themselves
Use Google Sheets and Google Forms along with built-in functions to make auto-grading quizzes, which students make for you. After a quick 5-minute set up by you, students can review, practice, and create vocabulary and sentences from their lessons. By using existing Google features and functions along with the students’ work, you can automatically make question pools for quizzes that are instantly graded, which provide low effort and high returns for the students and teachers.
Branden Carl Kirchmeyer
The P-CHAT: A Tool for Building Communicative Confidence and Ability
The P-CHAT is a free online tool that supports English language learners (CEFR A1 to B2) as they prepare for, record, transcribe, and reflect on English conversations. Following a brief introduction of the tool itself, attendees will have the opportunity to create their own P-CHAT activities (<pchat.poodll.com>) as the presenter walks them through each step of the process. Activities created by workshop attendees will remain useable for the attendees after the workshop has concluded.
Stephen Paton
Vertical Lookup Tables for Organizing Imported Data in Spreadsheets
Many teachers keep a spreadsheet to record and calculate grades. With much score data imported from sources such as Google Forms and quiz/testing sites, matching scores to the right student can be troublesome. The Vertical Lookup Table function (VLOOKUP) searches through disorganized data, for instance, a student number, and then returns data from a corresponding cell, such as that student’s score. It is a magical time-saver. Come explore the many affordances of this wonderful formula.
Paul Collett
Improving Quantitative Data Analysis
In this workshop, we will consider problems related to the use of statistical significance testing in quantitative data analysis. Solutions such as confidence intervals, bootstrapping, and data-rich graphical plots that can improve the explanatory worth of quantitative research will be discussed. An online application designed to enable researchers to easily carry out data analysis incorporating these methods will be introduced and demonstrated. Those less experienced in statistical data analysis are welcome.
Masda Yuka
Brain-Friendly Study Skills for Teachers and Students: Mindfulness
Supported by findings from psychology and neuroscience, this workshop, composed of tried-and-tested sessions on various intriguing themes, proposes a bottom-up, holistic approach to learning for you and your students. This session focuses on mindfulness, its benefits, and ways to achieve it. Do you ever catch yourself daydreaming aimlessly? The human brain wanders by default, often resulting in low productivity and well-being. Pick up the science involved and basic skills through fun experiments for daily mindfulness.
Nathaniel Carney
Automating the Creation of Teaching Materials and Assessments
This workshop introduces how Excel VBA and Google Sheets—both freely available—are used to automate the creation of teaching materials and assessments for classroom use. I will demonstrate how VBA macros are used to score speaking tests, create vocabulary quizzes, and analyze student writing. During the workshop, attendees will practice syncing an Excel workbook to a Google Sheet, manipulating the data via VBA macros, and printing the output to a PDF file.
Chhayankdhar Singh Rathore & Eucharia Donnery
Power Dynamics, Classroom Struggles: Learning From and for Students
One reality of teaching English in Japan is that of the frequent change of teaching context due to the contractual nature of many jobs. This includes teaching a new and diverse group of students and demands that teachers adapt through reconfiguring teaching practices to best serve these new students’ learning needs. In this workshop, the participants engage in process-drama assisted self-reflection with the aim of arriving at a multidimensional understanding of students.
Louise Ohashi
Machine Translation: An Effective Teacher if Used Well
These days Google Translate, DeepL, Reverso, and their machine translation “colleagues” are teaching language learners in diverse ways. However, their full potential is yet to be fully exploited in many language courses. In this workshop, participants will try using machine translation for writing development, reading support, speaking practice, and listening activities. The workshop also explores the importance of setting usage guidelines within courses to reduce academic misconduct and maximise learning opportunities.
Julia Kimura
Writing Motivation Strategies for Second Language Acquisition Researchers
Though universities hire foreign language instructors primarily to teach, publications are becoming an increasingly important factor in hiring and promotion decisions—even with adjuncts. In this workshop, I will first introduce strategies and software that can help increase and maintain teacher efficacy with respect to writing for publication. Next, participants will be invited to share writing motivation techniques that they are familiar with.
Jarwin K. Martin
Simplifying Your Grading, Planning, and Classroom Management Using Additio
Are you tired of using bulky paper gradebooks? This workshop will demonstrate how to take advantage of Additio, a grading platform that allows you to simplify your planning and grading in an easy-to-use app. The presenter will cover the main features of the app, including attendance, planning, and grading. The workshop is suitable for educators who would like to try online gradebooks and those who are interested in platform alternatives.
Daniel Beck
Principles and Practice for Designing Data Graphs for Presentations
Presentation design has improved in recent years thanks to influencers like Garr Reynolds and his Presentation Zen approach. However, many teachers are still uncertain about how to design data graphs that are both attractive and effective. This workshop will help teachers to design their own graphs and teach their students to do the same.
Mike Mural
iPhotography 2.0
There are many great ways to use photography in the classroom, especially with iPads. Images, photographs, and videos help to illustrate and make words and ideas more complete. This workshop will provide you with photography tips and apps, as well as ideas for activities that you can use in your classroom.
George MacLean
Building Your Own Grade Sheets: Transparency & Accelerating Learner Feedback
In this workshop, I will show how to build and post spreadsheet gradebooks that permit students to monitor their progress, access teacher feedback, and submit incomplete assignments. Based on a provided template, participants will learn how to (1) build a grade sheet with basic functions that reduce grading work, (2) link assignments in their grade sheets for transparency and second chances, and (3) include critical syllabus guidelines and overall class workflow.
Erin Noxon
How to Use Free Apps and Websites Online to Make Your Own Listening Lab World
Monitored read-alouds, listening practice, answering questions—all things you would love for your students to be able to do in the language lab. However, do you have the time, budget, and software? How do you get feedback on their learning? I have created my own language lab activities out of free online tools, such as Google Forms and Docs with voice recognition. In my presentation, I will provide you with my materials and also show you how to do it.
