Event Report, Ibaraki Chapter September 2020

IBARAKI: September — Motivating English learners through the Voluntary Reading of English Picture Books to Children – The Influence upon University Student Volunteer Readers by Rika Otsu. Otsu presented the project in the aspects of background, methods, results, showing videos of the volunteer students who could read aloud as the evidence of improvement of their skills such as pronunciation, reading text with emotion. According to her survey, the volunteering experience at a local elementary school made the involved students much easier to deal with children and changed their attitudes towards learning English more positively, which enhanced their confidence about their future plan, such as becoming an elementary school teacher. This research has been published in the Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities, Ibaraki University in 2020. Lost year, or the year of the learning boom, flipping the classroom to bridge the digital gap by Joël Laurier. In the presentation, Laurier categorized the topics into three areas: educational tools for online classes, group discussion about the change of educational system after coronavirus pandemic and the possibility of Schoology as the platform to bridge the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants. Laurier conducted an activity of Quizlet Live with his original flashcards, which produced community feeling even if it was learned remotely. He suggested that Schoology, when detailed rubrics were embedded, could create a flipped classroom, where students could study by themselves or through peer-learning in the time of paradigm shift.　
Reported by Naoko Ochiai