With the sudden rush to move classes online, many teachers have to adapt to presenting content in new ways. This presentation will look at some freemium tools, such as Nearpod and Peardeck, that help teachers create interactive slide presentations that enhance learning and students engagement. Teachers will learn how to create, design and deploy interactive slide presentations both synchronously and asynchronously.

Collaboration is fundamental for learners to develop their autonomy, gain confidence in their language abilities, and to actively work with their classmates to achieve a shared goal and interest. FlipGrid and Padlet are two interactive tools that offer learners creative spaces to express themselves both inside and outside of the learning environment. An exploration of these tools will equip educators with more nuanced ways of engaging with students and strengthening classroom rapport.

Instructors using textbooks, especially in large online language classes, often face several difficulties. In particular, it is sometimes difficult to ensure that each student is on the same page and focused on the same task. The presenter realized after years of futile and frustrating attempts to monitor student comprehension of verbal instructions, the obvious solution was a visual one.

In distance learning, it is important to consider how we foster a community in our classrooms to encourage a collaborative and productive learning space for our students. In this workshop, I aim to explore and share some practical group activities and online tools I have used to foster and maintain a strong classroom community in a fully online space and discuss how these elements have positively impacted my first-year university students in Japan.

This workshop focuses on project-based learning (PBL) in a university teaching context in Japan. With this workshop, attendees will be provided with immediate application ideas for how a PBL class can be conducted through a learning management system, without having to rely on excess face-to-face delivery. The shared information can be adapted to individual remote teaching environments, across a range of class topic areas.

Digital storytelling provides an opportunity for students to research, collaborate, and create interactive multimedia products. This practice-based presentation will discuss using the “creation tools” on Google Earth to produce a digital story which includes text, images, and video. The presenters will demonstrate the mechanics of using these tools, including how to add elements to a project, collaborate with other users, and present the resulting story. Additionally, suggestions for assignments using these features will be presented.

Not ready to give up on board games? Then don’t! Come to this workshop to learn how to keep using board games in your online classroom. It’s easier than you might think!

This presentation will demonstrate how to use Line with your students for more immediacy in your communication without compromising your personal Line ID. Making use of the free Line Official system, you can set up direct lines of contact with multiple courses without giving out your personal Line ID. In these times of Emergency Online Teaching, this is possibly the most effective way to push messages to students and be confident they will read them.

Would your students be interested in meeting and exchanging work with another class? In this session see how small groups of students from classes in Oregon and California used Google Slides to exchange weekly writing assignments. This project is easy to plan and maintain. The students were highly motivated and improved both their writing and computer skills. This project is student led and adaptable for students of all ages, elementary school through adults.

Teaching discussion online requires considerations including securing maximum student-student interaction time, teachers’ effective monitoring, and students’ self-monitoring. In this workshop, the audience will first learn how some teachers have overcome the above challenges posed by the pandemic. Then, they will experience a discussion lesson from students’ and teachers’ points of view, monitoring use of discussion skills in small-group interactions. Recommended especially for teachers with less experience teaching discussion in university and high school settings.

Providing interactive communication opportunities to EFL learners with a native English speaking teacher (NEST) has been difficult in many areas throughout Asia until the recent migration to online learning has presented greater opportunities for interactive communication. This presentation provides the framework and results of a course for developing intercultural communications conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown and discusses how the NEST guided students to communicate and express their thoughts and feelings on various conversational topics.

The presenters will highlight reasons teachers tend to resist technology in teaching, explain the importance of training, and then give a workshop showing how the Niigata JALT chapter has been successful in showing teachers around Japan best practices for using technology. We will show participants how to set up a webinar step-by-step explaining needed equipment and giving practical tips. Based on feedback for our webinars, we hope to inspire others to hold online events.

Have you considered using the New CEFR Revisions in developing and accessing your students’ listening and speaking skills especially in time of crisis? What are the new adjustments added to its descriptors? How can teachers use them through online teaching in time of crisis? Join us to learn more about this through different practical applicable activities.

Universities are presently experiencing a paradigm shift as the COVID-19 pandemic forces the closure of schools globally and the introduction of emergency remote teaching and learning. This has generated a need for uncovering new channels of communication and collaboration such as digital spaces like Facebook Groups. This presentation will outline a range of activities that can be performed inside a closed Facebook group to enhance students’ speaking skills in a first-year University speaking class.

In this short workshop, two university English instructors will talk about their experiences teaching similar task-based curriculums online. One course was done using asynchronous instructions utilizing the university-provided learning management system (LMS), while the other course was instructed through synchronous video conferencing. During this workshop, the two presenters will compare and contrast the two instructional methods, as well as the problems and possible solutions for issues related to collaborative task-based curriculums during remote teaching.

Many of us who have tried peer assessment within our classes have found that students pay little attention to how they assess others or lack the skills and tools to do it effectively. Using Moodle’s Workshop activity, teachers are able to set grading criteria, train how to peer assess, and give credit for these assessments. This workshop will introduce the activity, show how to set it up, and provide examples the presenter has used.

The study tour of a Japanese high school to Singapore was aborted due to the current pandemic. In place of it, both schools decided to embark on a 4-month intercultural exchange program where students in Okinawa and Singapore could engage in collaborative projects that promote intercultural understanding. The presenter will explain the implementation of the program, both the synchronous and asynchronous activities, the communication platforms used, and the characteristics of the team projects.

The aims of the Pronunciation Survey Project were to motivate students to take the initiative in conversation while studying abroad, and raise their awareness of World Englishes. Since most of the programs were postponed due to the influence of COVID-19, the students gathered survey participants on social media and analyzed the results at home. Through this experience, the students learned to lead communication in written language and became accustomed to different accents of English.

Students often enter the language classroom with high anxiety and low self-confidence which can impede learning. The conscientious teacher uses tools and techniques to lower this psychological barrier known as the "affective filter," but how can this be accomplished in online classes? This presentation will demonstrate effective teaching strategies for lowering the affective filter in the online language classroom with a focus on university students majoring in English.