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Issue 06 | Volume 03

December 13, 2011

Find INTO OSU on Facebook! Trip photos, events, and more! facebook.com/into.oregonstate

Explore the INTO OSU Info Depot, a site just for INTO OSU students.

blogs.oregonstate.edu/intoosuInfo Depot

Another year, come and gone...With only two weeks left of 2011, a lot of people will be reflecting on their year and making resolutions for 2012 (assuming the Mayans were wrong and the world won’t end).

We have a big job ahead of us at the start of the new year: bringing in a fresh intake of students! It’s always an exciting time: seeing new faces, meeting eager students, and getting to know a new group. After our first intake in the ILLC, this second intake will be an opportunity to fine-tune our procedures, making orientation easier and even more beneficial for students. For orientation start dates, see page 2.

In this issue:Farewells Page 2Instructors’ near future plans

Reminders/Announcements Page 2What’s new?

Winter School Page 2What’s INTO OSU’s new Winter School program all about?

Cross Cultural Connections Page 3With Melody Slothower

Tech with Katie! Page 4See who’s mastered the Starboards!

Center CLOSED Friday, December 23rd

Center CLOSED Monday, December 26th

Center CLOSED Monday, January 2nd

Orientation begins PW/GE: Tues., Jan. 3rd • AE: Mon., Jan. 9th

Classes begin GE: Wednesday, January 4th PW/OSU: Monday, January 9th

AE: Thursday, January 12th

Students on the recent Holiday Resort Trip throw snowballs in the air near Mt. Bachelor, in the eastern Oregon Cascade mountain range.

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Page 2

Reminders and Announcements

INTO OSU Center closures• The center will be closed on Friday, December 23rd and Monday,

December 26th, and Monday, January 2nd.

Winter term orientation for new students & progressors• Pathway and General English orientation will begin on Tuesday,

January 3rd. • Academic English and Conditional Pathway orientation will begin on

January 9th.

Registration for winter term classes• Academic English students can register on Wednesday, January 11th

in the ILLC, room 250: • Level 3: 9am-11am • Level 4: 11am-1pm • Level 5/6: 1pm-3pm

Winter School is an intensive program that takes place during winter break. For those students staying in Corvallis for the break, this course provides the opportunity to prepare for either the TOEFL or GMAT exams. Limited class sizes and experienced instructors will aid in the student’s test preparation, test taking skills and language development. Three-hour classes will provide intensive test preparation. The programs begin on December 16th and last four weeks.

Michael Witbeck After many terms as an ESL teacher and INTO OSU Pathway program coordinator, Michael will be retiring. Luckily, he’ll remain on as a term-to-term instructor.

Randy Garver Randy has been accepted into a PhD program at Texas A & M University studying Curriculum and Instruction with an ESL specialization.

Johanna Rosten Johanna is off to Europe in search of an engagement ring, then to Florida where her husband-to-be continues his medical training.

Barbara Dowling Barbara has been teaching ESL at OSU since 1978 and has published two books on the subject. She taught in Mexico, Great Britain and Poland. She retired in fall term.

Bill Cherones Bill, who often brought a fun means of learning English with his movie making class, will be retiring from teaching.

Joyce Bryan Joyce has been teaching ESL since 1976 and has worked in many prestigious ESL programs throughout her career. She’ll be retiring at the end of this term.

FAREWELLS

San Fran!

Students just returned from the INTO OSU San Francisco trip! Four days in the City by the Bay were filled with fun activities, like this one in front of the Golden Gate Bridge!

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Page 3

Cross Cultural Connections with Melody Slothower

In this class, students experience the broad cultural diversity that exists here at OSU. Domestic students are paired with an international student as a conversation partner and discover, first-hand, the challenges and rewards of communicating in an authentic cross cultural context. Targeted readings, class discussion, guest speakers, student journaling and field-based research provide the background information for a final research paper on a cross cultural topic of particular interest to them.

“It was truly rewarding to see students as young as 18 “catch the vision” for reaching out to our INTO community and establishing meaningful cross cultural relationships. For the OSU students, their weekly conversant meetings over dinner or coffee was the highlight of the term,” Melody Slothower, the course’s instructor, says.

“I definitely learned some things about different cultures, but actually a lot about the American culture like how other cultures view Americans. It will help me grow good connections with other students and be open minded about things,” domestic student Kelly Baker said of the course.

Indonesian student Irma Suryani, below in pink and blue, locks arms with her peers in an excercise designed to help students bond.

Siqi Chen, from China, and domestic student Connor Carroll both participated in the CCC class.

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T: +1-541-737-2464

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Page 4Connection

Katie Mitchell begins the course with an interactive word scramble.

Susan Beddes shows off how writing on the Starboards works.

TECH WITH KATIE!The old school tradition

of Show and Tell was updated last week with the first (of many) Starboard Show and Tells.

The high-tech adventure allowed instructors to showcase what they have been doing in the classroom. Fourteen instructors attended the meeting, six of whom dazzled us with their Starboard skills.

Graphic organizers were featured in both Susan Beddes and Rebbecca Valdovino’s presentations. These can be quickly and easily implemented using templates in the Starboard software or by importing a document. Susan showed us both of these options and how they were used effectively.

Next, Denise Egri led us through creating and using cloze exercises in class. With a little bit of her technical wizardry, students could drag and drop words into fill-in-the-blank sentences. Her example activitiy showed that Starboard can make simple activities more interactive.

Another simple and engaging activity was using crazy colored pens. Randy Garver showed us that by making his text unexpectedly colorful he quickly reengages his audience. Besides the colorful pens, he likes the added benefit of saving his work on Starboard and using it for review in the future.

The last Starboard show-off was John Lenhardt. He imported some PowerPoints and showed how he made space on them for interactivity. For example, there were slides where students could revise sentences. He also pointed out how useful the Starboard Stopwatch can be.

I wrapped up the Starboard Show and Tell by showing easy activities on Starboard. The first was websites with drag-and-drop, for example on quizlet.com. These sites are fun to use on Starboard and become quick in-class activities. I also showed a few lesson plans from the Hitachi website’s resource center, available by clicking here. There, you can see how other teachers use Starboard and download their .yar files. These can serve as great inspirations.

The Show and Tell ended with a note from Victor Reyes on how to download videos from YouTube and slow them down. He has an informative handout for those who are interested. All in all, the Starboard Show and Tell was a success and demonstrated the increasing creativity and competency of INTO OSU instructors on Starboard.

Written by Katie Mitchell, INTO OSU Instructor & Technology Advisor.

sTArboArd sHoW & TEll