Message from the Coordinator (October 2018)

Dear MW SIG members,

The autumn semester has been flying by and the JALT International Conference will soon be here. I’m sure that it will be a great conference for professional development. Hope to see you in Shizuoka! In the meantime, here’s what has been happening in your SIG.

Best,
Adam Murray
SIG Coordinator

 

Officers for 2018-2019

Are you interested in becoming more active in YOUR SIG? The SIG needs your help. All JALT SIGs have five “core” officers: coordinator, treasurer, program chair, publication chair, and membership chair. In addition, the MW SIG has other officer positions such as publicity, Japanese language coordinator, website editor, and member-at-large. If you like to read a basic overview of this positions, please check out the officers’ page on the website: http://materialswriters.org/joomla/index.php/officers To express your interest in stepping forward and running for one of these positions, please contact me < murray @ gec. lab. u-ryukyu .ac .jp > (Spaces have been added to avoid the spam-bots) by October 31, 2108.

MW SIG Annual General Meeting (AGM)

MW SIG Annual General Meeting
Saturday, November 24, 3:45 PM – 4:30 PM; Room 907

At this meeting, we will elect new officers, report on our activities over the previous year, and discuss ongoing SIG matters. Please plan to attend the AGM – we need your support! If you are considering becoming more active in your SIG, this is the perfect opportunity!

Between the Keys

We are hard at work on the current issue of Between the Keys and we anticipate that it will be published early next month. Got something to share with your colleagues in Japan and around the world? The deadline for submissions for the next issue is November 10th. We publish a wide range of articles including reviews, and “My Share”-style articles. For more details (and the style guide) take a look at http://materialswriters.org/joomla/index.php/publications

MW SIG Forum

MW SIG Forum: Diversity and Inclusion in Teaching Materials
Saturday, November 24, 5:50 PM – 7:20 PM; Room 904

Diversity is becoming an increasingly important issue in today's society. It is therefore in our students' best interests for us to include a wider range of voices in our teaching materials. In this interactive forum hosted by the Materials Writers SIG, a panel of writers will share how they incorporate diverse voices and related topics into the teaching materials that they create. Both theoretical approaches and practical considerations will be discussed.

Message from the Coordinator (February 2018)

Dear MW SIG Members,

The last issue of Between the Keys has been emailed to you and is available on the website. If you are interested in making a submission for an upcoming issue, please see the Submissions Guidelines and Information on the SIG’s website: http://materialswriters.org/joomla/index.php/publications 

Presentation opportunity

Plans for the MW SIG Forum for JALT2018 are already underway. This year’s conference theme is “Diversity and Inclusion”. In alignment with this theme, the forum will be titled Diversity and Inclusion in Teaching Materials. The description is here:

Diversity is becoming an increasingly important issue in today’s society. It is therefore in our students’ best interests for us to include a wider range of voices in our teaching materials. In this interactive forum hosted by the Materials Writers SIG, a panel of writers will share how they incorporate diverse voices and related topics into the teaching materials that they create. Both theoretical approaches and practical considerations will be discussed.

 If you are interested in joining the forum, please contact Lindsay Wells (Our Program Chair) at < wells @ meijiro . ac . jp > by February 9th.

Professional Development (PD) opportunity

iTDi Scholarships

In collaboration with the International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi), the MW SIG is offering 10 scholarships ($69 value) to current members of the SIG for an upcoming course titled “Creating an ELF-Aware Classroom with Katy Simpson” starting February 4th. For more details, see http://itdi.pro/itdihome/advanced-skills/creating-elf-aware-classroom-katy-simpson/

Upon completion of the course, we will ask each of the scholarship recipients to write a short report about their experience. The scholarships are first come, first served, so don’t hesitate! Send me a message < murraysensei @ g mail . com >

Call for guest blog post (From IATEFL MW SIG)

The IATEFL Materials Writing Special Interest Group would like to invite you to contribute a post to our regular blog spot at https://mawsig.iatefl.org/. We are commissioning a series of blog posts about the current state of play in ELT materials writing in various locations around the world. Quite a few writers based in the UK have talked recently on our blog page about trends that seem unfavourable to writers, but we are aware that the writer’s lot varies widely in other regions.

We’d LOVE to hear YOUR take on what’s going down in the world of ELT materials publishing in Japan. Would you be interested in writing something for us? If so, would you be able to send us something by the end of January?In terms of a brief, we used to send out a page of guidelines but I’m not sure it was ever that helpful. Instead, why not read the first in the series written by Tania Pattison about her experiences as a writer in Canada to get an idea of what other people are saying. You can see a preview here https://mawsig.iatefl.org/?p=4213&preview=1&_ppp=e00a075ccc. We are looking for 300–1,000 words and are really interested in reading about your own experiences as a writer in Japan. There’s no need to talk about rates of pay or terms (royalty vs fee), it’s more of a general flavour we are after. We also ask bloggers to send a short bio, and a hi-res head and shoulders photo. We would like to include your post in our annual e-book compendium and hi res works best for this.

 

Until next time,
Adam Murray
SIG Coordinator