2022

The Teaching Younger Learners (TYL) SIG and the MAVR SIG joined forces to co-host an online event in March this year for teachers interested in getting a first-hand experience of the Metaverse. The event was hosted on Gather (https://www.gather.town), a 2-D virtual environment which combines teleconferencing with proximity audio and video. Users on Gather appear as 8-bit avatars and can view the video and hear the audio of those who are in their vicinity. There were about 30 teacher participants joining a Gather space custom-created for this workshop-style event, and they were able to explore the virtual environment and familiarize themselves with its affordances. As part of the event, the participants got to do a collaborative task in breakout areas and brainstormed ideas on how to potentially use Gather in their teaching practice. The event ended with a feedback form.

The MAVR SIG co-sponsored Mehrasa Alizadeh as one of the four plenary speakers at PanSIG2022. The conference was held in Nagano on July 8-10, the very first large-scale JALT conference held face to face since the pandemic. Mehrasa’s talk was on the last day of the conference and was well-attended by the PanSIG audience, many of whom appreciated her presentation in that she skillfully explained immersive technologies for language learning in a clear and accessible manner with reference to theory and practice. The talk was live-streamed on Zoom and the slides are available on the conference platform at https://pansig2022.edzil.la/session/2659