Hello to you all,

I am delighted to be on board with this vibrant group and am beginning to settle into the new position of VDMIS newsletter editor with this first issue under my belt. I want to welcome our new chair, Kenneth Chyl, who has served for so long as newsletter editor and will now swing all his energy as VDMIS Chair into guiding our IS forward for the next few years. Laura Ray has also stepped in as assistant editor and will be putting together the 2013 spring newsletter. Thanks, Laura.

I myself am just ending 17 years at Ibaraki University as a tenured professor in Japan in the Department of Intercultural Communications. I have loved this experience and feel I have grown and been enriched by my colleagues and students alike. I am grateful for their ongoing support and kindness to me these many years. I will be returning to Canada and Toronto where I plan to continue teaching. I will also be ending 14 years as coeditor of a four-page column in the Language Teacher, the bimonthly magazine of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT). I will deeply miss my many friends both Japanese and foreign like me. Here in Ibaraki Prefecture, I survived the March 2011 earthquake that hit us hard in Japan, although to a lesser degree than up north. However, as we in Ibaraki Prefecture are 120 km from the Fukushima nuclear plant, it has been an incredible adventure, to say the least. The Japanese people and their ability to remain calm, disciplined, strong, and resilient in the face of disasters of that magnitude have my utmost respect and admiration.

Finally, in this new capacity as newsletter editor, I want to encourage you all to consider submitting longer articles of interest to our newsletter or shorter reports in the form of book reviews, polls, calls for papers, and conferences. Such a conference related to our VDMIS Intersection may be held in your city or region and/or may be where you yourself presented. Sharing your experiences, research, and insights in the areas of video, digital media, art, and music will serve to benefit our group as a whole. If you give presentations in your local TESOL chapters between now and the next TESOL conference, please consider writing them up and sending them in. Both Laura and I are waiting for you and warmly encourage you to do so (e-mail articles or reports for the next 2013 spring issue (deadline January 4^th, 2013) to Laura Roy) August/September 2013 fall issue (deadline June 20^th) to Joyce.

Enjoy the issue and my thanks to all the contributors who worked diligently on the polishing of their articles and reports. Finally, thanks, Kenneth, for all your support and advice as I learned the ropes this first time through.

Joyce Cunningham hails from Toronto and Montreal, Canada, where she worked at Concordia and McGill Universities. She has been in Japan at Ibaraki University for the past 17 years teaching intercultural communication and EFL. At both McGill and at Ibaraki University (the latter in 2009), she received best teaching awards. Her primary interests lie in developing activities and techniques for practical EFL class projects such as class-based newsletters, student-generated commercials enhanced by iMovie2, and celebrations of Halloween and Christmas with her students.