    On December 13, Hamamatsu had its annual My Share presentations and year-end get together. Gregg McNabb led off with a Canadian version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" to demonstrate how learners can use Quizlet and Moodle's quiz plug-in to do review or self-study (in this case listening and vocabulary). Next, Sue Sullivan shared with us in some detail how she has flipped classrooms by having student-led lessons to empower them -- interesting stuff! Then lively Abbi Spencer told us what we already knew, use YouTube. Or at least this is what we were thinking until she exposed us to a variety of informative and extremely well-designed short videos, such as the effects of caffeine on our system. Awesome! Batting clean-up, Jon Dujmovich brought his children in to perform a heartwarming Canadian version of "The 12 Days of Christmas." Toward the end we were really believing it was "10 salmon leaping, 9 Mounties riding...5 ho-ckey sticks...." Turning more serious, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa was ready to deliver an entire lecture on gender-balanced poetry armed with her copious and detailed handouts. We learned that there are indeed many accessible and appropriate poems we can introduce into our classes, so some of us (this reporter is one) should try to do that more often. Then, Adam Jenkins also talked about the flipped classroom from several perspectives, but mentioned something that we tend to overlook, which is that we need not flip an entire lesson (we often think in whole-lesson blocks), just 15 minutes is enough or for as long as seems appropriate. From consideration about which poems to use to an actual poetry recital, Dan Frost (no relation) recited three seasonal classics from memory: Poetry "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost, the first and last section of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" also by Robert Frost. Nicely done, Dan! Finally, Serena Samsel wrapped up the evening with a brief demo lesson to encourage beginning speakers to become more active. Secretly, some of the advanced-level participants may have been speaking out of turn, which the presenter graciously allowed to go unpunished. |
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