Went to JALT 2022 over the weekend. Great to meet new people and old friends. The Jim McKinley plenary was excellent. Didn’t learn a lot but always leave with a bit of ideas for research.
Personally, I don’t have a lot of publications coming out because I am working on a doctorate, but ran into some questionnaire analysis studies at the conference that I could complete in my off-times for quick kiyo publications using some older data.
More importantly, Fukuoka is a wonderful city. Very lively and fun. Not many tourist attractions in the city but would be very nice to live there.
How about you? Any takeaways, criticisms, comments?
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I really appreciate that they are trying for K-12 teacher content….but I had to work both Saturday and Sunday this weekend😅. (Private jhs-hs) And Saturday morning class is every week. Maybe next year I’ll be able to watch a bit online.
First time JALTer from a university here.
Pros:
* Felt like there was a pretty wide variety of topics, always something available in my area each time slot.
* Got a lot of ideas about how I (we) can adapt our program to improve the curriculum and the student’s learning/motivation.
* Good to see how issues/challenges we faced over the last few years were shared by many others. Was able to reflect on what we did, and how we could do better.
* Got to visit Fukuoka.
Cons:
* Seemed like a lot of the popular sessions were clustered at 11:00 (Sat), so I couldn’t go to a lot that I wanted to.
* The presenter of a presentation I was looking forward to was entirely unprepared, and gave the most boring presentation I’ve ever seen.
Pros:
* I got to catch up with some old friends, and make some new ones which was good
* The city is really nice, even if the venue was a bit out of the way.
* There seemed to be a lot going on, which is great, because it means that the event appeals to a much broader audience.
Cons:
* I did struggle to find something relevant or interesting to me at times. A lot of the presentations I wanted to attend were all scheduled for the same time slots.
* a few presenters on Friday didnt seem very prepared, but maybe that was just coming back after online seminars for two years.
* There seemed to be a lack of younger teachers (under 40).
There were just so many different lectures, it was difficult to choose which one to go to.
Did any of the ones you attended stand out for one reason or another? Anything that really impressed you?
It was great.
Only con I can think of is that the CVent app was really annoying to work with. Trying to scroll through the schedule it would frequently stutter, freeze, randomly send me back an hour or two.
Just my two cents, but I often feel there are just too many presentations and that a lot of them are just poor quality.
Many of them are presenting research results, which is fine in and of itself, but the presenters tend to just show a bunch of slides with numbers and stats, and do it in the most boring way possible. At times I’ve read the description and gotten excited, only to find that the presenter drones on and on without really coming to a conclusion or saying anything new or interesting about the subject.
Really, it’s so often just a venue for those who have never presented before to practice – which is good and bad. Good for those who get an opportunity to practice presenting, and bad for those of us watching who are basically wasting our time when we could be in another presentation that is of interest and real value.
That probably sounds a bit nasty, since we were all new teachers once and we’ve all probably been guilty of cobbling together a paper just to get our quota of publications in, but IMO if I’m going to spend time and money on a conference, I want to see professional-level presentations.
I often go away from JALT a bit underwhelmed. I still enjoy it; it still has value, but there is a lot the organizing committee could improve.