Adapting Websites and Games for the Classroom Stephen Case Stephen discussed how games, both digital and traditional card games, can be utilized to develop and facilitate classroom tasks and activities that both engage students and encourage cooperative language development. Stephen suggested that teachers should keep an open mind about how...

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Two presentations on vocabulary acquisition Rick Eller; Zack Robertson For the first part of the presentation, Rick discussed how Rory's Story cubes can be utilized to generate a variety of assessment protocols that can be used in a variety of educational contexts. Rick argued that traditional assessment does not always...

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The innovation adoption lifecycle and teaching practice Michael Phillips Michael began by first introducing the concept of an "innovation" as a response of a particular social community to a perceived need for change and then describing the various stages in which an innovation passes through when diffusing throughout society. He...

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Card games and vocabulary building Adam Stone Adam introduced a card game that can be used to both introduce new vocabulary and strengthen the lexical recognition of already learned vocabulary. For the first part of the presentation, the audience was taught the rules of the game and were allowed to...

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Gender differences and literacy Michael Berg Michael began his discussion by reviewing several ways men and women have been suggested to differ physically, psychologically, and cognitively in addition to touching on the extent to which these differences are a result of biological hardwiring, social programming, or a combination of these...

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Assessment for Learning: Dynamic Assessment Joseph John Simpson Joseph discussed different models of assessment in the language classroom, comparing the traditional a priori assessment models that measure student performance in an isolated and decontextualized manner to an interactive model that allows the teacher to scaffold the student during the assessment...

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Creative Variations for Textbook Conversations; Assessing Gains in Extensive Reading Bill Pellowe; J. Lake Kitakyushu hosted two presenters this month: Creative Variations for Textbook Conversations, by Bill Pellowe and Assessing Gains in Extensive Reading by J. Lake. In the first presentation, Bill talked about various methods for adapting English conversation...

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Gamification Markus Yong Markus talked about game theory, what constitutes a game from a theoretical standpoint, and how it can be applied to a classroom setting. He began by introducing the online role-playing Classcraft, a free online application designed specifically for a classroom setting, and explained the rules by having...

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Lightning Presentation Night Various presenters In "The Japanese Languages", Michael Phillips went over the genetics of language/linguistics and the relationship of the Japonic language family, briefly going into the different language groups across the world and the debate of which groups are related or not, as well as touching on...

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Making Money Online Todd Beuckens Beuckens loves teaching English as a foreign language, appears passionate about his hobby, entrepreneurship, and shared lots of information with us from his years of experience. He showed us the basics of starting an online business—from finding something lacking in the vast TEFL field ("How...

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