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Webheads chat logs are posted on the Internet to assist language learners with comprehension of our conversations and to strengthen our sense of community through shared familiarity with one another. All are welcome to join us, but your participation in our activities implies that you approve of our posting on the Internet interactions in which you take part. Please address any comments or concerns to Vance Stevens.


Webheads Chat Logs from 2001

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January 7, 2001 - wfw010106.htm - The chat this evening took place in Hear Me. (Someone dropped by Homestead and said 'hi' but left before I had a chance to respond; if it was you, come back!). We talked on the usual wide range of topics. These included: Ying Lan's terrible day, Maggie's desire to go to Tibet and the relationship of China to Tibet, relations between Japan and Taiwain, what we did New Year's Eve, and the Milky Way. Just before Ying left for the evening, she asked us about the lyrics to the old song, 'Let's call the whole thing off.' This got us on a subject that voice chat is ideally suited for, since the song is about American and British pronunciation. Not only that, but we all had to sing the song. We were having so much fun that by the end of the chat, Michael and I had decided to attempt a virtual guitar jam using one of our hands-free voice chat clients next week, and Ying Lan can sing (turns out she has a great voice). Think we'll do it? Stop by next week and find out!

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: John in Puerto Rico and Ying Lan in Taiwan

January 14, 2001 - wfw010114.htm - We talked on the usual wide range of topics, and because Gloria was with us without mic or sound card, we did a lot of our chat in text. We talked about how to distinguish like, love, and passion, what we eat for Christmas dinner, and John's difficulty with maps (you can see an example here). Michael came on just as I was telling the class about his email wondering why more students don't come to our Sunday chats. He thought perhaps we should start a separate session each week for different level students, and we got on the subject of what Webheads want out of our class, more formal lessons, for example. Maggi thought we could just ask them, but John has been interviewing students and he told us that one had suggested we include more directed reading. So we talked about reading and how to read effectively in a second language. Ying Lan was most concerned about vocabulary, and we talked about research suggesting that we can remember only 7 things at a time. By comparison, this got us on to the topic of Stephen Krashen's i+1 hypothesis, where he suggests that second language input should be just (+1) beyond comprehensible input. Michael was by that hour in Australia comprehending at a -1 level, so he and Vance quickly planned their guitar jam next day, and John prepared to leave as well, saying he had to finish painting his house. Meanwhile Nicia had arrived, and we found out things about her recycled-paper business by using search engines on the Internet. Nicia and Maggi are both single mothers, and since it was time for me to leave, I left them talking together.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: John in Puerto Rico, Arif in Turkey, Gloria in Paraguay, and Ying Lan in Taiwan

January 15, 2001 - Michael and Vance got together to make Webheads history: Webheads have on this date once again made history. Michael and I have carried out what may be the first ever synchronous-chat guitar jam in history. We had sort of agreed to do it when we met for our regular online Writing for Webheads class, noon GMT each Sunday, but we needed to have time to ourselves to experiment, so we decided to do it on the next day, Monday, Jan 15, 2001.

We tried it first using Yahoo Messenger, which you can get at http://www.yahoo.com, and click on Messenger to download and install it. If you get the latest version, and then pull down Friends and activate voice chat, you can click on the microphone icon to talk to someone who also has a talk version of Yahoo Messenger. You can also click on 'hands free' to talk without having to press anything. AND you can both talk at the same time. It was in this mode that we attempted our first ever distance guitar jam.

Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as we'd hoped. I could hear Michael and I could play along with him, but there may have been a delay in the time it took Michael's music to reach me, and another delay for Michael to hear the result, so I'm not sure if we were playing together. The reason we didn't know is that although Yahoo allows duplex chat, two people talking at the same time, it seems that a lot of talk coming from one end cuts off talk at the other, so when one guitar was playing, bandwidth was flooded, and we didn't really get more than one guitar coming down the pipe at any given moment. I could hear Michael and jam with him, but he couldn't hear me.

So we tried again at our Excite chatrooms, which Michael and I had both set up independently of one another. To get there you visit http://www.excite.com and then find in the middle of the page where you can Voice Chat. Then you type in the name of a room. Our rooms are called 'webheads' and 'efiwebheads'. You are welcome to go there at any time if you would like to try them out.

There we could again talk to each other, and almost simultaneously. The systems works in duplex, but again, bandwidth appeared to be overwhelmed a few seconds into a duplex chat, and one voice was cut out to make room for the other. Also, this was not hands free, so we couldn't play our guitars. The sound quality was good, and this venue would accommodate audiences as well as instrumentalists, but the instrumentalists would have to have assistants, or play one-handed or hold down the control key with their toes, so we left our shoes on and went on to the next experiment.

We both happened to have Qtalk, http://www.qtalka.com/. Our versions of Qtalk only allow 5 min. of synchronous connect time, but in that time, we were able to communicate hands-free, and to get a few riffs and licks in, in synch this time, and thereby become the first ever musicians in the history of the universe (to our knowledge, a major qualifier there) to accomplish a guitar jam in synchronous time using today's budding technologies. At last, something useful you can do with voice chat!

January 21, 2001 - wfw010121.htm - This was, sadly, our first chat where we would have to do without HearMe, our favorite chat client, since its producers decided not to support it after January 19. Furthermore, the Virtual Schoolhouse at the Palace was again down, so it seems that an era of free use of compelling online chat clients may be ending. Fortunately, we had tested alternative sites, and before Ying Lan came Maggi, Vance and John all went to the Webheads Excite voice chatroom. It seemed to work alright, except that John's sound card gave errors, and we were not able to text chat all together (for some reason, Excite only allows text chat one-on-one). During this time, we were joined by Steve Chadwick responding to an invitation to join us posted on Teaching for Webheads, but he declined to voice chat with us. Michael had also joined us in both Homestead and Excite, but had to work next morning after six weeks holiday, so he turned in early. It was only then that Ying Lan had arrived after sleeping most of the day. After that, we spent the rest of the time in the voice chat. The client is fine for casual conversation, giving better sound quality than Hear Me, but it lacks a hands-free mode and a group text chat.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: John in Puerto Rico and Ying Lan in Taiwan, and Steve Chadwick from the Teaching for Webheads group

January 28, 2001 - wfw010128.htm (<-- if you visit this link, you can click on topics here and jump to those places in the chat transcript) - Four of the Webheads in the chat today had been trying to start voice chat rooms at the Telcopoint 'hearme' site before they joined today's chat. But Telcopoint had been apparently overwhelmed by the demand for chat rooms, and the site was not allowing creation of chatrooms. So as the chat began, and many other places in the chat, we talked about our frustration at not being able to voice chat. In fact today's chat was unusual in that it took place almost entirely in text. Only at the end of the chat did we manage to connect in voice chat via Yahoo! messenger.

At the beginning of the chat, John and Ying Lan were asked if they would like to act as 'tutors' in the group. Vance, Maggi, and Michael have been 'tutors' for almost three years now (we tried to figure out exactly how long, but couldn't remember exactly). Tutors in our group have to above all show a long-term commitment to the group. John has been with us only since last September, but he is a teacher in Puerto Rico with keen interest in the group. He is using the Webheads class as part of his PhD research, and most importantly, he's been in the live online chat class nearly every Sunday since he joined us. He likes the group and has demonstrated his commitment by being with us each week, and we wanted to show our appreciation in return by regarding him as one of the tutors. Ying Lan has been a student in our group since 1998, and an EFI student for a year or two before that. In that time, her English has improved a lot (her spoken English in particular!). She has written advice to students wanting to join our group, and most importantly, she has demonstrated her commitment to the group by attending almost every live online chat each Sunday for as long as we've been having them. So again, we wish to recognize her commitment to the group and also to invite students who would like to have any information about Webheads from a student's perspective to get in touch with her, since she is as familiar with the Webheads concept as any other tutor.

As we were reminiscing about the start of the Webheads (reminisce means to talk about what you remember) we started talking about another first-member of our group, Felix. And as we were talking about him, speak of the devil! (that's an expression we use when someone we have been talking about appears) he came on ICQ, and we soon had him with us in our chat. Nicia and Michael joined as well, and in response to a question Ying Lan asked us, we started talking about who wears the pants in our families (that means, who's the boss). This got us on to the topic of divorce, whether it is possible to divorce someone you love, and what it's like to live with a soulmate. Meanwhile Sergei had joined us from Belarus. Sergei is another teacher interested in how chats can be used in teaching, and (like John) he knows about us from the Teaching for Webheads group.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present:Nicia and Felix from Brazil, and Sergei from Belarus from the Teaching for Webheads group

February 4, 2001 - wfw010204.htm (<-- if you visit this link, you can click on topics here and jump to those places in the chat transcript) - The chat began with Aum, a new student since last December, talking with John about what we do in the class, how many students we have, and that sort of thing. Once Ying Lan appeared she and Maggi and Vance went into the Excite Webheads voice chat room. We also talked about Firetalk and Delphi, our new threaded discussion site, and when Michael arrived, we talked about how we could thread discussions with voice with Wimba. Meanwhile, our conversation skirted John's new diet (where the doctor cut him back from one to four meals a day - read below to figure that out), Groundhog Day, new movies such as Castaway, and what Ying Lan was reading (fantasy). We also discussed the hardest part about learning a language, our Webheads writing topics , and singing English, which Vance says everyone really must try. Finally we asked questions about Aum so we could put the answers on her web page.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present:Aum from Thailand

February 11, 2001 - wfw010211.htm - The chat began with John telling Vance he'd read that an undersea cable had been cut and China and Taiwan were cut off from the Internet world. The situation proved not so drastic when Wendy and Taiwan both turned up, from mainland China and Taiwan, respectively. While the participants talked about food and music, several of the participants were trying to get into Vance's Telcopoint (HearMe) voice chat room. Everyone has been having problems reaching there but Vance managed to get the applet running that placed him in the chat room, and while he was there, Peter from Japan dropped by as well as John, Maggi, and Michael. However, no one could hear anyone else there, and we were only able to learn how the text chat worked, and how awkward it was for our purposes. Its only advantage appears to be that you can save your conversations fairly easily. Meanwhile, people had been popping in and out of the Homestead chat 'like toast' as Maggi said, when suddenly Vance was tossed offline. In Vance's case it turned out to be a server crash, so Vance packed his bags and went home to drink his Kilkenny.

One interesting thing about this chat was that we were joined by Wendy, from China, who was sent to us by Dave Kees, a Webhead teacher working in China. Wendy politely left a message in the Homestead Guest Book, so I was able to get in touch with her to tell her where these chat logs are. Maybe she'll join our group.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present:Aum from Thailand, Peter from Japan, and Wendy from China

February 18, 2001 - wfw010218.htm - Tonight was mostly teacher talk, with a long appearance by Felix (also a language teacher in Brazil), who was looking forward to Carnival in Brazil the following week. Ying Lan was away at a wedding, and Michael had been away at a 3-day music festival, so neither joined us, but Rif in Turkey and Sergei in Belarus were both online, and both agreed to join Vance at his trial Telcopoint chat room at http://www.vancestevens.com/hearme.htm. And, EUREKA, it worked. After several attempts with disappointing results, we finally got the chat client to let us HEAR each other. However, sound quality was very bad and almost incomprehensible.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, and John in Puerto Rico (Michael had been at a 3-day music festival and sent apologies; Ying Lan was attending a wedding celebration)
Friends and students present:Felix from Brazil, Rif from Turkey, Sergei from Belarus, and Juanide, a guest from Brazil

February 25, 2001 - wfw010225.htm - Tonight, Maggi and I met and chatted in ICQ until Ying Lan appeared online and called us into the Homestead text chat room, where we were soon joined by Naeem, who had attended one of my recent presentations in Abu Dhabi, and Michael. Ying Lan told us of an eventful week, not only attending a wedding, but also the premature birth of a new infant in her extended family. She was just saying how Felix must be enjoying his carnival, when Felix himself appeared. Those present were not particularly adventurous tonight, with only Michael joining me at Tapped In, and my attempting to launch Paltalk, which I have so far been unable to register, but Felix did get us watching videos of Carnival at http://app.uol.com.br/tvuol/tvuol.php?titulo_obra=uol+carnaval+2001. As people were saying goodbye, I was exploring the Wimba discussion sites at both EFI http://study.com/voicemessage.html and Webheads http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/wimba.htm and leaving a few messages there. We're hoping we can get Michael to start us off on some discussion topics there, and I would like to have every Webhead leave a voice message on our site; what a great archive!

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present:Felix from Brazil, and Naeem from Pakistan, living in Abu Dhabi

March 4, 2001 - wfw010304.htm - We had a fine chat, low tech, all in Homestead (though Vance was monitoring Tapped In and the Excite voice chat room), and more or less the usual crowd (Vance, Maggi, Michael, Ying Lan, and Felix, who is starting to be a regular again). We were talking about our reading when Pon dropped by, and we were happy to see him and thank him for his logos which are at the top of many webheads pages now (like this one). And Felix had recruited a couple of Webheads-to-be from Juani from Chile and Cougar from Canada and had them drop in. Juani is a teacher who does class email projects with Felix. We hope to see more of them more often.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Puerto Rico, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present:Pon from Thailand, Felix from Brazil, Cougar from Canada, and Juani from Chile

March 11, 2001 - wfw010311.htm - .We had a friendly and wide ranging chat tonight. At the appointed time, noon GMT, John in Puerto Rico told me via ICQ that Maggi in Germany was in the Homestead chat room, and Ying Lan joined us about the time that I got there. Ying Lan was having a bad day at her job in Taiwan because her boss is a little Caesar. Meanwhile Moral had appeared in the Excite chat room, all the way from Kunming, but he couldn't get to the Homestead one as well, so he and I talked about his hopes to work for Save the Children, and the job interview he had with them which didn't go so well because of an Australian lady who asked him questions he didn't quite understand. Felix soon appeared in Homestead from a morning in Brazil but he couldn't stay long because he was at his sister's and she's an Internet freak and needed to go online. Juani came into Homestead from across the continent in Chile just after Felix had left. Meanwhile, Michael had arrived from Brisbane to join us in the Excite voice chat room where he and Moral discussed the cultural aspects of the abortive job interview and how well suited to her job the Australian woman could possibly have been. By then, Naeem had joined us; he is from Pakistan, but lives in Abu Dhabi where Vance had met him at a conference last month. Naeem had to leave when some friends appeared at his house.

The chat was quite hectic with Michael and I struggling to keep up with both voice and text chats, and Juani losing her Homestead connection each time she tried to join us in the Excite voice chatroom (she never made it). Moral suggested that next time we all chat on ICQ and those who can join us in voice chat as well. The goal is to find a combination of places that work like Hear Me did for us, where we can all talk and / or write to each other in the same chat. We hope we will soon find a single client that gives us this capability. Meanwhile, to test what other clients he could reach, Moral made his way into Tapped In via GMUD and joined Vance in his office. John was able to meet him there and hold a conversation, but Vance had been inactive for two hours and couldn't revive his connection (I could see John and Moral in my office but had no chat window and, since it's on that window, no way to log out - closing the browser and reconnecting put me in the same, inactive condition). So Vance gave up and went home, as did everyone else.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Puerto Rico, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present:Felix from Brazil, Juani from Chile, Naeem from Pakistan, and Moral from China

March 14, 2001 - http//www.vancestevens.com/papers/tesol/arabia2001 - John, Moral, and Michael came online during the conference presentation. John was in Homestead and Tapped in, and Moral and Michael spoke to a room packed with people. I just turned the sound up and everyone listened intently. It was a great performance by Webheads. Moral's English was clear and sincere, and Michael knows exactly what to say to explain Webheads to a room full of people. The medium is the message, but it helps to have a message. Mics weren't working in the room so I couldn't talk back but everyone could hear the conversation, and it went VERY well. We all got a hand at the end (they clapped).

March 18, 2001 - wfw010318.htm - My day online began in conversation on ICQ with Rif about his work surveying and promoting use of computers in education in Turkey. Eventually I joined John and Maggi in Homestead where we started talking about how we could find Palaces still alive and well. Soon Moral appeared at Vance's office at Tapped In and we went from there to the Excite voice chat room. As is often the case, due to connection problems in different parts of the world, Moral has not been able to join us in our Homestead chat room, and Maggi has not been able to join us at Tapped In. However, once Ying Lan and Michael appeared, we were able to bring everyone but John (no sound card) together in the Excite chat room, where Ying Lan played us some music created by an elderly family of blind musicians. By then we had became quite comfortable working the Tapped In and Excite text and voice clients together. Moral from mainland China and Ying Lan from Taiwan conversed in English and a little Chinese and wanted to know how each had developed their spoken language skills. Both made use of online movie scripts, it turns out, and this sent us to Google in search of some suitable sites. Finally, when all the students had gone, Maggi and I went off in search of Palaces and found one we think we could visit next week: plantation.chatserve.com on port 9998. Perhaps we'll see everyone back there then.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Puerto Rico, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present:Moral from China, and Rif was chatting with Vance in ICQ before the class started.

March 25, 2001 - wfw010325.htm - Clocks in the northern hemisphere had just sprung forward and those in the southern hemisphere had just fallen back an hour, putting those affected two hours apart from one another, and this could have affected attendance at our weekly session. Ying Lan and Vance were not affected and appeared at what was for them the normal time. For Maggi it was an hour later than usual, while Michael joined us an hour earlier in the evening compared to when he usually did. However, Webheads is not affected by clocks going forward or back; Webheads meets at noon GMT, which does not fluctuate during the year.

I was alerted to the start of our online class by Ying Lan's voice calling from my computer. Most of the chat took place in our Excite chat room, and was therefore not recorded. However when Ying Lan left, Michael and Vance and Maggi tried to get into the Palace at plantation.chatserve.com but it wasn't 'up' at the time. We therefore tried another Palace Maggi and I had found the week before, xsia.com. This Palace doesn't let you hang out for long at its gateway, but hurries you down a path to a village where the first three huts on the right are hot-linked to other areas. Michael and Vance decided to try the Waterfall and Hang Glider rides. The Hang Glider ride is expecially recommended, and Michael and Vance got to where they could do it together (whiile Maggi waited at the village). Michael questioned the pedagogical value of these rides but nevertheless wanted to have a second go. Meanwhile, Juani appeared in Homestead and on Yahoo chat and gave us the good news that she had been acceped for a Fullbright Teacher Exchange Program, and would be spending a year in Mississippi while an American teacher enjoyed a year in Chile (lucky American teacher, Vance said -- great opportunity for that teacher and for Juani!!) By then, Vance had to dash off to participate in a running event, so if there's more, Maggi or Juani can tell us about it.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present:Juani from Chile

April 1, 2001 - wfw010401.htm - Today's chat was one of our best, with enthusiastic participants tuning in from six continents. After John sent a voice message on Wimba saying he would be along after breakfast, Maggi and I met in ICQ. Maggi had heard from Tomas, one of our ex-Webhead students, and she tried to forward me a picture he had sent her. We were discussing the picture when Larry Keenan, who is selling access to HearMe-like chat rooms, came up on Maggi's ICQ, so she went to see the rooms and chat with the salesman.

Sue had meanwhile appeared in Homestead but Maggi and I didn't notice her, so she got Vance's attention on Yahoo. She asked where to join us and we asked her to choose, so she chose Excite. However, when she arrived there, we discovered she was in hands-free mode and recycling our voices from her speakers through her mic. She managed to get out of hands free for a few minutes and hold a conversation with Moral who had by then joined us, but when her computer went by itself back into hands free, she decided to leave Excite so the rest of us could voice-chat there, and we decided to all go to Tapped In and text chat with Sue there.

By now Vance, Maggi, Michael, John, Ying Lan, Moral, and Sue were all in Tapped In and all of us but Sue in Excite. We found this to be a good way to chat, typing in Tapped In and talking to each other in the Excite voice chat room. Ying Lan discovered how to send us all what was written on the whiteboard in my office (there was a note from Jerry Bicknell there), and John reminded us how to flash web sites on each other's screens. He showed us the Tower of English site, and Vance displayed the web site of the language center where he is CALL coordinator.

We were having so much fun that we again didn't notice a visitor to the Homestead chat room until she had already left. It was Sophie, and fortunately she came back at about the time that Juani showed up. Juani's news was even better than last week's: she is now going to Colorado instead of Mississippi. The teacher from Mississippi didn't want to go to Chile! Can you believe it? All those lakes!?? She'll never know what she missed, and Juani will have a better time in Colorado, where the climate and mountains are more like those of Chile. Sophie said she had come along because of Vance's voice message earlier, and she talked about the conference she's holding in Cyprus in May where Vance will be a plenary speaker. Michael might even come up if he can get funding. Vance thought it would be a good idea to broadcast the conference in a voice chat medium like Excite while flashing the graphics he plans to use in a chat medium like Tapped In, as we had just been doing in the Webheads chat. We were discussing it as all the Webheads one by one took their leave.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present: Sue in Japan, Moral in China, Sophie in Cyprus, and Juani from Chile

April 8, 2001 An odd day in Webhead-land: for the first time in almost all our history, and certainly in recent memory, there were no students present in the chat today. Three tutors arrived faithfully and chatted away. Michael was not there because his computer had crashed and he was putting it back together bit by bit (byte by byte would have been a little more efficient). We'll be back next week of course. These things happen in cyberspace.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, and John in Puerto Rico

April 15, 2001 - wfw010415.htm - In this chat we had Ying Lan from Taiwan, Moral from Kunming, China, and Vance and Maggi, American expatriates (living away from their native country). As usual we talked about a lot of issues concerning our respective countries:

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, and Ying Lan from Taiwan
Friends and students present: Moral in China, and Felix from Brazil

April 22, 2001 - wfw010422.htm - No students appeared tonight, but all the teachers were there, so we used the time to hold a little staff meeting. Dave Kees had joined us and wanted to bring his students to our chats when we weren't using them (but any time is fine, even if we're in the chat areas). When Michael arrived we talked out how he destroyed his laptop and what he's doing to repair it. We also talked about the pros and cons of giving English lessons free on the Internet (someone had written one of our lists to say we were in competition with already poorly paid teachers). And we discussed how we might all participate in the plenary talk that Vance will be giving in Cyprus on May 5th, and which will be audio streamed live from Cyprus thanks to a little help from Eric, a Webhead in UK. Finally, we had a look at GroupBoard, which is a chat room that allows us to draw pictures as well as chat. We examined its capabilities and its ability (or inability in some cases) to log chat, and we decided to ask all the Webheads to create a picture in using GroupBoard, and save it, and we would retrieve it and put it on each person's Webheads web page.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and John in Puerto Rico
Friends and students present: Dave Kees in China

April 29, 2001 - wfw010429.htm - We had a nice chat as usual. We discussed what Ying Lan had been reading. Vance talked about the plenary address he's giving in Cyprus next Saturday. He explained how it was due to Webheads that he went to Barcelona and met Sophie from Cyprus and got invited to give a talk there. And because Eric Baber was in the live Webheads chat in Barcelona, he offered his server so that we could audio-stream the presentation from Cyprus. So it's because of all the people in the Webheads group that very productive things are happening. And Webheads can hear the presentation and join in the chat as well. I'll send more information by email.

Two mysteries occurred during the chat. See if you can read the logs and figure them out. First, there were some very strange people in the GroupBoard chat room. Can you figure out who they were? And John had to leave the chat abruptly. He said it wasn't an emergency but he had to fix it in the next 30 min. Now we're all trying to figure out what you would have to fix in half an hour's time. Any guesses? But you won't find the answer to that one in the chat logs tonight! Send your guesses to efiwebheads@yahoogroups.com!

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan

May 6, 2001 - wfw010506.htm - Our regular online class today coincided with online presentations given at the conference on "Implementing Call in EFL: Living up to Expectations" at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia: http://www.paddocks64.freeserve.co.uk/CompSIG2/cyprus.htm. If you go to that website you can find links to listen to presentations which were streamed live: http://www.nll.co.uk/cyprus. As this conversation was taking place, Vance was assisting at a presentation in Cyprus where the audio was being streamed and online participants were interacting in the chatroom at the url given above. Vance was interacting with them as well as talking to Webheads in the Homestead chat room. Eventually he told the participants in the Cyprus conference that there was a Webheads class on at http://www.homestead.com/vstevens and some of them went there in their browsers. Ying Lan and John meanwhile had gone to the conference url and were listening to the presenter and interacting with those present in that chat room.

I sent an email about from Cypris to the Webheads class. Here's what I said:

"Michael and I both did presentations at the conference in Cyprus recently, and our presentations are archived at http://www.nll.co.uk/cyprus . I haven't heard mine yet but I don't think the archived version is complete. I was the first to go on and there was someone at the controls who was unfamiliar with them and I think he had to reboot in the middle of my presentation. But Michael's should be there. I'll check them both when I'm back home on Saturday.

" The audience for mine were pretty responsive. When I said I was going to sing, someone in the audience pulled out a harmonica. We were accused later of prearranging that, but it was completely spontaneous. Several of the presentations were streamed worldwide out from the conference, but Michael in Australia streamed one IN. He had been on the program but had not traveled to Cyprus, but because we had set up the technology for broadcasting on the web, he was able to give his presentation anyway.

"Michael, your presentation was oppostite Sophie's. She had a room packed with people while our presentation had only half a dozen. But those who were there agreed it went well and was an interesting demonstration of how silly we all are to feel we have to gather all in one place to hold a conference. Presentations can be easily viewed and heard by people at their computers wherever they are in the world.

"Michael's talk also took place during Webheads' weekly online chat class. Michael, I don't know if you went to the Webheads chat afterwards, pretty late for you in Australia, but several people listening in on the conference did go there and talk to Ying Lan and Felix and the others in the chat. And Ying Lan was present at Michael's presentation.

"So Webheads are having more and more fun online and we continue to become better known worldwide. I can't thank Webheads enough for being such a great group and helping to make our online events possible. Technology helps but 'people' is the most important ingredient."

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Felix from Brazil, Juani from Chile, and Chris Fry and David Smith from the Cyprus conference

May 13, 2001 - wfw010513.htm - The Internet was acting up this Sunday night. Michael in Australia and Ying Lan in Taiwan were both having more difficulty than usual making and keeping contact with the usual Webheads sites. Ying Lan was able to reach us only in ICQ, and even that kept cutting out on her. We tried to chat all of us there, but ICQ was not letting Michael or Maggi into the chat with Ying Lan and Vance. Neither of them could get into Homestead either, though Maggi and I were able to get there from Germany and the Middle East, and later Juani arrived there from Chile. GroupBoard too was working for only Maggi and I. Our Excite voice chat has not been working since May 1st. In the end, I suggested the Palace. I was able to reach two Palaces, one at plantation.chatserve.com and the other at mycorner.xsia.com, both on port 9998. But by then, Maggi had gone for a nap, Ying Lan had decided to give up on the Internet, and Michael had not restored the software to his laptop after the curiously caused disk crash he had last month. When Michael couldn't reach http://www.download.com to get the Palace browser, he decided to give up too. I was collecting the logs and preparing to go myself when I noticed that Juani had come to Homestead, but we had missed her! So it was a bit frustrating for us, but we did manage to talk about the big fire (burning for 30 hours!) in Taipei, a seminar Ying Lan had attended <http://www.cmw.com.tw>, and the conference that Michael and I presented at in Cyprus <http://www.nll.co.uk/cyprus>, Maggi wondered if it was Mothers' Day in Taiwan, and Michael and Vance agreed to "nicely hassle Sophie for the goods." (Now what can that be about? Sophie wonders ... will she have to read the logs to find out??)

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Juani from Chile tried to join us

May 20, 2001 - wfw010520.htm - The chat tonight was taking place in Homestead, with Maggi and John in converesation when I arrived there around noon GMT, and Ying Lan popping by shortly after. Moral meanwhile found us on ICQ and made his way to Tapped In, where he feels most comfortable at his connection speed. Michael and John joined us at Tapped In while Juani appeared in Homestead.

I tried asking John why he left his last chat with us so suddenly. His last words on April 29 were that whatever the reason was, it was something that had to be fixed in the next 30 minutes. But John preferred to deepen the mystery rather than answer the question. So Webheads, this and another MYSTERY still remain UNSOLVED. You can still visit the chat log at http://www.homestead.com/vstevens/files/efi/chat2001/wfw010429.htm and see if you can solve the TWO MYSTERIES given there.

At the chat this Sunday, we found that all three students present, Ying Lan, Juani, and Moral were all experiencing changes in their lives sure to bring them opportunities for a better future. So another challenge to you is to read these chat logs, find out what happy event has taken place or is about to, and then write a note of congratulations to each of your three fellow webheads.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Juani from Chile and Moral from China

May 27, 2001 - wfw010527.htm - A lot went on in the chat this Sunday evening. We started early with Rif in Turkey gathering his education students together in his office for their first online session with Webheads. Rif got in touch in ICQ but soon moved to Homestead. John and Maggi arrived and we all went to Tapped In for convenience in keeping logs. Rif's students were very interested in our method of teaching, and they took turns asking questions from Rif's laptop. They sent pictures, and we showed them GroupBoard, and Rif tried downloading and installing the Palace, but in the end couldn't connect to one. Ying Lan had by then joined us in Tapped In, but Rif had to log off just as Michael appeared, soYing Lan showed us a video of an author speaking about his new book, The Invisible Continent (about the Internet). We all had to go a little earlier than usual, which is a shame, because according to the time stamps on all the messages, Juani came to see us just minutes after we had logged off. She did manage to catch Rif somewhere in cyberspace though, and find out what she had missed.

The mystery tonight is: read the logs and find the joke that Ying Lan told. Once you've read the joke, tell us, was it funny? Ying Lan wants to know!

Here's what we wrote about the class to prepare ourselves for it:

Arif Altun is a teacher and academician (assistant professor) at the department of computers and instructional technology in the Department of English Language Teaching at Abant Ýzzet Baysal University in Turkey. He completed his dissertation work on Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) at the university of Cincinnati.

You can meet Rif and see his picture at http://www.homestead.com/vstevens/files/efi/rif.htm

Rif has a class of students who want to learn more about CALL. The students are particularly interested in what Webheads do in their weekly live online class. So I invited them to join us at noon GMT tomorrow.

Rif's students have made a list of questions they would like to ask us. I don't think our conversation will be 'formal' but we can discuss some or all of the questions they would like to ask us. Here are the questions:

Q1. There are some advantages and disadvantages of learning a foreign language in one’s own country. How can a learner decrease the disadvantages of learning a foreign language in his or her own country?

Q.2 We learned various methods and techniques in our Methods course. However, we are still questioning which method to follow? Or, should we have to follow a method? Is it useful to use a method, or should we compose our own method by using different techniques?

Q.3 As learners of English, we mostly think in our own language while speaking in English. What would you suggest us do in order to avoid thinking in the native language when we deal with the target language?

Q.4 Our biggest problems are intonation and pronunciation in English. How important do you see pronunciation and intonation? What should we pay attention to –an accurate pronunciation and intonation or fluent one?

Q.5 Language is a social phenomenon. Teaching methods and techniques do change as well. As prospective teachers of English, what should we do in order to be up-to-date and follow the recent developments in the field of language teaching and learning?

Q.6 We believe that personal factors are important in language learning process. Do you think there is any ability so-called “the ability of language learning”? Also, do you think this can be considered as an important factor in language learning and language teaching?

I look forward to seeing as many Webheads as would like to join us at our usual meeting places at noon tomorrow, Sunday.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Juani from Chile, Arif from Turkey, his students Habibe, Nilgun, Zeynep, Hacer, Demet, Gonul, Neslihan, Emel, Turkan, Esra, Dilek, and Kadriye; and ShakiFanatico™, who happened to be in the Palace

June 3, 2001 - wfw010603.htm - Webheads continued to enjoy meeting online again another week. Eight hours before the class was due to begin, Juani was about to go to bed at midnight in Chile and Vance was just getting to work in the morning in Abu Dhabi. Juani noticed Vance on Yahoo and we talked about Rifle, Colorado, where Juani will be living for a year in the USA. We had intended to talk more about Rifle during our regular chat class, but that chat was almost too busy for Vance to participate in, and the topic for the night had already taken root when Juani arrived. But Vance did look it up while it was on his mind that morning, at so in the first part of the chat logs, there is a url of an Ask Jeeves page with lots of links about Rifle, Colorado.

When it was time for our regular class,Ying Lan was first to join us, and we were talking about her waning prospects for marriage and her trip to New York when Aum arrived. We were welcoming Aum, whom we hadn't seen in a long time, when Maggi noticed Juani on ICQ so Vance contacted her on Yahoo. Meanwhile Michael and Rif had joined us after first passing by Tapped In. By then the conversation in Homestead was getting into differences in male and female attitudes to sex, so when Moral arrived in Tapped In he was disappointed not to be able to join us in Homestead. Moral is using IE5 but somehow it's not supporting the Java applet needed to run the Homestead chat (either that or it could be a firewall problem, which could also be blocking Java chat applets). Moral got us talking about the 1989 Tianenmen Square incident and about the Chinese government's suppression of the students there and of the present-day Falun Gong sect. Vance tried to get the Homestead chatters to move to Tapped In, where it is easier for him to participate in the conversation because he doesn't have to constantly cut and paste the logs there, but Aum wasn't sure about how to get into Tapped In and the conversation there was too interesting for the participants to want to move it. Just as it was getting most interesting, Rif's wife made him get back to work on his paper, and Michael's decided she had better take over the Internet connection herself, so both men retired leaving Vance alone to argue the male perspective in the battle of the sexes with Maggi, Ying Lan, Aum, and Juani.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Juani from Chile, Arif from Turkey, and Aum from Thailand

June 10, 2001 - wfw010610.htm - It was a wild yet productive day in the Webheads online classrooms. The teachers Maggi, John, and I were in Tapped In and Homestead at the appointed hour, with Michael and Ying Lan joining later. In Tapped In we were discovered by Phil Benz, an online teacher of some repute (Maggi and I are both participating in an online workshop with Phil as facilitator). The first thing that Phil noticed was that my office needed sprucing up, so he determined to teach us how to do it. First he took us on a tour of his office, which is where Ying Lan found us when she came to /join vances. Phil has developed a virtual maze of nooks and crannies in his office which he creates first in ASCII and then produces the graphics for them, and he delighted in showing us all the way to the bar where we could sample his rums and coffees. Then it was back /home to Vance's office, by way of /reception where we picked up BJB to assist us. Phil was projecting tutorials on office maze creation on all our screens when Michael appeared and wondered what was going on. Ying Lan meanwhile had moved out to ICQ where she was telling Vance about her weekend adventure hiking in the mountains and staying overnight with the local people there, which is when Felix appeared, also in ICQ. Due to these distractions in addition to recurring demands from the night-class teachers at his real office, Vance was having trouble concentrating on the exact and exacting instructions for creating his new office layout. Actually things would have worked well except that the instructions included typing a dot or full stop and pressing return, and Vance took this to be a bullet or a spacer, which must be a common error (funny they didn't choose some other character to be a significant portion of the data-entry routine). Meanwhile Felix had joined us at Tapped In, and some other people had arrived in Vance's office with whom I was unable to talk at all while trying to interact with the Tapped In server in the course of following instructions to revamp my office. In the end Ying Lan got sleepy and left, John had to go to church, and Phil departed right as I was having another go at trying to figure out what the server was trying to tell me which was preventing me from following directions as given in the instruction sheets. The two newcomers left as I was trying to get back to the conversation, but Michael stayed on to figure out how to create his own icon or avatar to represent him at Tapped In. With Michael talking to Maggi about her new learning node at KIKO (Knowledge In Knowledge Out) I had a bit of a breather and was able to concentrate on task and install my new office drawing in a few seconds and keystrokes.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Felix from Brazil, Phil from France, BJB from Pennsylvania, SusanneN and DiaLog from the Tapped In Help Desk, Renata from Germany, and IvanHernandez-Romero from Mexico

June 17, 2001 - wfw010617.htm - Today's chat, as usual, took place in not all the usual places. Sue started my day with Webheads when she found me hanging out on Yahoo at my office, and I prepared her for the class by walking her through logon to Tapped In. Sue asked if we were still doing voice chat, so we tried the Telcopoint site, and to my surprise found it working. I emailed Webheads the good news, and eight hours later, dashed back from a meeting at work to find Maggi, John and Sue in John's office at Tapped In. They waited till I told them via ICQ that I had reached my Tapped In office, still under construction despite the efforts of the week before, where they joined me shortly. Ying Lan soon arrived at Homestead, which we were all watching, and she too joined us at Tapped In. Michael appeared, enroute almost to his WebCT conference in Vancouver, and mentioned that he'd read from my email that my Telcopoint voice chat room had worked for Sue and I earlier, so we all tried it. Michael was unable to access it, but all the others were eventually able to enter, though John didn't have a microphone. Our final surprise of the day was to find Mark there. Mark was a teenager from Denmark who had somehow discovered our site through a search at a Danish chat portal. Mark didn't have a microphone either, but he turned out to be a nice fellow, and he left a record of his side of the chat in a Telcopoint text chat window, which I saved, adding what I could recall of the voice part of the chat.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Sue from Japan, and Mark from Denmark

June 24, 2001 - wfw010624.htm - There wasn't a lot going on at Webheads this evening. Michael was away in Vancouver for the WebCT conference. Ying Lan was feeling tired, so Maggi recommended remedies. Vance was freezing in his office despite 38 degree heat outside, which got him talking about Abu Dhabi before a/c. John told us he had talked to Nicia the evening before, but had to leave early to go to church. Our meeting broke up earlier than usual and I was about to log off when Juani appeared. It was her birthday and she was expecting her family to come by and spend the Sunday at her house.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Juani from Chile

July 1, 2001 - wfw010701.htm - The chat today was one of our liveliest ever, with people dropping in from all over the world (we had participants throughout the day from Chile, Venezuela, Mexico, USA, Puerto Rico, Germany, Denmark, France, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, China, Taiwan, and Japan). Antonio started my day by dropping by nine hours before classtime, just to say hello and tell us about his plans to visit Dublin. Closer to class time, Vance found BJB in Tapped In. BJB is organizing a sort of online conference August 8, and Vance paused to write a 'blurb' for the Webheads presentation (or short description of what our session would be about). Meanwhile, John had arrived in Homestead , and he and Vance stood by there to catch people coming there and help them reach us in Tapped In, where the main chat was.

All students who joined us by way of Homestead were able to move over to Tapped In, and with so many guests joining us, The Tapped In chat was very lively. While we were waiting for others to arrive, SusanneN showed Ying Lan, John, and I how to create virtual pets and drop them into the chat. Juani joined us just as we were cleaning up after our pets, but when Dave Kees appeared, the mood got technical, with Dave asking how he could create forms and a CGI bin. Peter happened along about that time to answer Dave's questions with insights into PHP and a sample British Council web page. Peter then got us back on personal matters with a projection of his family homepage, but Dave couldn't see it, which got us talking about the Great Firewall of China, which blocks access to many websites (such as all Geocities ones). At about the time that Maggi and Aum arrived, Peter projected an interesting chat site with 24-hour a day streaming video, where we met Zaratustra and discussed the potential of streaming video chat for Webheads. We broke up after two hours of satisfyingly wide-ranging interaction.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Antonio from Mexico, Juani from Chile, Aum from Tailand, Dave Kees in China, Susanne from Denmark, Peter Williams in Japan, Philip Benz from France in a cameo appearance, BJB from the USA and DarioJ from Caracas who just happened to be in Tapped In, and Zaratustra in the video chat

July 8, 2001 - wfw010708.htm - Tapped in was down today, so we met in Homestead. Felix was there early looking for urls he could use in his reading comprehension class, so John and I made a few suggestions. Webheads were mostly thinking about their summer plans, so we talked about our vacations, coming up for Vance and John, with Michael just back from Victoria and British Columbia. Michael showed us his pictures at http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/Vancouver/pix.htm. Ying Lan has an upcoming trip to New York, and Maggi has a summer project developing a learning center at KIKO. We talked about Webheads participation in the online Tapped In Summer Carnival August 8, with more information at http://www.tappedin.org/info/sc/sc01.html, and Vance reminded everyone that our present Homestead chat site was due to work only through Sept. 30, and after that we would have to use the copy of the site at http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/ (the chat will look the same, but the url will change).

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Felix from Bahia

July 15, 2001 - wfw010715.htm - Vance was in Houston visiting his parents this Sunday, but got up at 7 a.m. to meet the Webheads as usual at noon GMT. John was also on vacation but still in Puerto Rico. He was waiting in Homestead and Tapped In, where Ying, Maggi, and Michael appeared shortly after. Vance's cat Muscat was still there from July 1st, but was so hungry it ate John's recorder.

We had an interesting discussion of China's recent success at securing the Olympic concession for 2008, and Ying Lan expressed relief that the mainland would therefore not attack Taiwan before then (but we reminded her that Russia attacked Afghanistan just before the Moscow Olympics of 1980). We also had a discussion of vocabulary in context, especially collocations, and Vance brought up the concordance tool at http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/scripts/concordance/WWWConcappE.htm to look for what words commonly follow 'overly' and 'dear'. Ying Lan needed a template for an 'agency contract' and Maggi helped her to locate one on the Internet. Toward the end of our chat, Peter Williams dropped by from Japan, and we also had another visitor in Homestead whom we missed because we were all in Tapped In. But who was that visitor? Was it you?

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Peter in Japan

July 22, 2001 - wfw010722.htm - My second Sunday on annual vacation, I was away in Big Bend National Park, in a remote part of Texas near the Mexican border, in a comfortable lodge without phone or TV. However, John Steele did make it to class, and he was kind enough to send me his record for our logs. - Vance

Tutors online today:Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Sue, briefly, and Juani from Chile

July 29, 2001 - Still on vacation, I was out walking in the Swiss Alps at the time of this chat. John and Michael were also occupied elsewhere that day. When asked about the logs, Maggi had this to say: "met in reception at tapped in, just Ying and I. Felix tried but couldn't get threre. There were others there <in the reception at Tapped In> so I didn't keepa log."

Tutors online today:Maggi in Germany and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Felix tried to join them from Brazil

August 5, 2001 - wfw010805.htm - After a slow start to the day, the chat rapidly filled. Rif was busy at work, but wanted to use Webheads as a part of one of his projects, and he expressed interest in joining us at the Summer Carnival August 8th (live, online at Tapped In). Phil Benz popped by and got us talking about designing Bots to automatically converse with students and other users in Tapped In. Michael is about to do a presentation on online moderation, and Phil, who has moderated 25 Tapped In sessions, was a source of expertise for him. Juani dropped by freshly arrived at her new home in Rifle, Colorado. Sue came with questions about language schools in the USA, specifically Texas A&M. Sue has never been to the USA and so we talked about how we might get people like Juani and Denilson and Ying Lan, who have all been there, to share information via Webheads for the benefit of those who were thinking of going. I suggested that Sue start a conversation about travel to the USA on our Webheads eclass list. But Sue's great contribution for the evening was to get us all TALKING again, using Yahoo Messenger's voice client. We had tried Yahoo Messenger before, but now you can do conference calls using Yahoo Messenger, and it includes group text chat, and even allows web cam access (someone mentioned that it might not be a free service for long, either). Finally, as I was leaving the chat, Felix appeared and said he was packing for yet another job in a different city. Good luck Felix!

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Sue from Japan, Juani from Chile, Rif from Turkey, Felix from Brazil, and Phil Benz of Tapped In fame, living in France

August 8, 2001 - wfw010808.htm - In an ex-officio session, Webheads were participants in a Summer Carnival hosted by Tapped In. Webheads have recently begun using TappedIn (http://www.tappedin.org) as a home base for its Sunday chats. TappedIn is a supportive community of educators whose chat-enabled website and overall synchronous communication environment are highly appropriate to Webheads. TappedIn held its latest annual "Summer Carnival" on August 8, 2001, and invited Webheads to participate. As you can see from reading the transcripts of our presentation, participants in the event were keenly interested in Webheads and found their views compatible with the principles and methodology of the Webheads learning community, so much so that we have been invited as a result to be listed on the monthly TappedIn calendar at http://www.tappedin.org/cgi-bin/calendar/calendar.cgi. This event, like our participation in the conferences in Barcelona a year ago and in Cyprus in May, appears to be another milestone in the continued viability of Webheads as a credible model for at least one mode of online learning. Each of us should pat each other on the back for being a part of this learning experience. Through events such as this we are becoming more appreciated the better well-known we become, and this is due to the participation of each of us. Thanks to all of us Webheads for that.

Tutors online today:Vance in Abu Dhabi and John in Puerto Rico
Friends and students present: Juani from Chile, Rif from Turkey, and Bridget from Jamaica in the wings, as well as a welcoming sampling of denizens at Tapped In

August 12, 2001 - wfw010812.htm - After our presentation at the TappedIn Summer Carnival, Webheads are becoming more recognized at TappedIn. Rif and John were the first Webheads to arrive, and they talked in Homestead with Susanne, back for her third visit with Webheads. Rif had left by the time Vance had logged on to Homestead and TappedIn, where everyone gathered from then on during the session. Today's chat was especially informative because Susanne and BJB both know a lot about the TappedIn environment. Since we were sitting in Reception at TappedIn, we got to 'listen in' on their advice to newcomers who dropped by while we were there. When Vance had to go, Maggi, John, and Moral moved up to John's office for a short chat, and when that broke up, John went back down to Reception to get more advice from BJB, which I've included here for three reasons: (1) it shows us a few tricks readers of these logs might want to know about; (2) it conveys something of the comfortably supportive flavor of TappedIn; and (3) Webheads kept coming up in all the conversations recorded here.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Rif from Turkey and Moral from China, and friends from TappedIn Susanne, BJB, and Eleanor

August 19, 2001 - wfw010819.htm - We started out this evening with a tutor's meeting. It so happened that only the 5 'official' Webheads tutors were present, so we talked about the upconing ELToc conference and Webheads' part in it (I have been trying to arrange for all 5 tutors to co-present so that they can get credit for their long-term commitment to Webheads and also get to attend the conference for free; other Webheads will be able to attend our presentation for free, and also an hour each side of it, which includes a keynote address from Dave Sperling, who runs Dave's ESL Cafe. Meanwhile, talk centered around Ying Lan's experiences in the recent typhoon in Taiwan, and Michael's own presentation on e-moderation for the ELT0c conference. When SusanneN arrived, we granted her wish for a tool she could use to draw us a picture, and she used our GroupBoard chat toolto draw us a picture of a stunt she had seen recently in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. After the tutors had left, we hung around hoping Rif would appear so we could wish him a happy birthday, but when he didn't show up, we sang Happy Birthday to Rif anyway (Susanne thought it logical that he should NOT be spending his time online on his BIRTHDAY). Susanne and I were discussing Active Worlds and its availability on Macs when Phil appeared, and we wound up the discussion talking about why we were interested in online communities such as Webheads, on concept mapping tools such as Inspiration and IHMC Cmap Tools.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Puerto Rico, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: friends from TappedIn Susanne, BJB, and Phil

August 26, 2001 - wfw010826.htm - The chat tonight was a freewheeling session held, in typical Webheads fashion, in two locations simultaneously. We were gathering in Reception at Tapped In when Sue and Ying Lan decided that they wanted to try the Yahoo voice chat. As we went about setting it up, Lian and DavidW dropped by reception and decided they'd like to try too. It was a little complicated keeping the conversation going in Tapped In and trying to listen to the voice chat, especially as the newcomers were downloading and setting up the program and had to be added to our buddy lists. I tried to stay involved at Tapped In while Michael moderated a very active voice discussion on Yahoo. Moral meanwhile got ICQ voice going, but only one way (he could hear me). Ming slept through it all but caught Vance next morning.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Susanne from Denmark, Moral from China, Sue from Japan, Lian and DavidW (who happened by Reception at Tapped In and stayed), Heiach (who just wanted to play fantasy games), BJB (who hqngs out in Reception at TappedIn), and Venny, Carolyn, and Ariol (who had come for a Webquest session). Ming was online but asleep.

September 2, 2001 - wfw010902.htm - It was another freewheeling, active, and experimental night with Webheads. I caught a glimpse of Ying Lan on Yahoo on my way to class and engaged her in voice chat before joining her and BJB at Tapped In, where Lian, Maggi, and Michael soon joined us in a discussion of expressions in English. Meanwhile I noticed Rif on ICQ and invited him along, and he in turn invited Gulsen, at which point we projected the URLs, with pictures, of the Webheads present. Christina dropped by and started a discussion on conferences and texts for CALL.

Michael was just inviting us to join him downloading (15 meg) and trying out a new chat environment he seemed to like from http://groove.net/ when I was dumped from Tapped In, and by the time I had clawed my way back in everyone else was either gone or going. The moment Maggi left, Susanne arrived followed shortly by Sue, who was connecting from Osaka on her way back home to Okayama after visiting her newborn neice in Kyoto. Sue and I tried voice chat, but with disappointing results (connectivity not so good tonight). By then Venny, our newest Webhead member, had joined us from Taiwan. He and Susanne started exploring the Webheads site and ended up in Homestead. It was getting late for me though, so I had to excuse myself in the middle, it seemed, of a thoroughly enjoyable chat.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Susanne from Denmark, Sue from Japan, Lian from China, BJB (lives in Reception at TappedIn), Venny from Taiwan, Rif and Gulsen from Turkey, and Christina and hi who passed by at Tapped In

September 9, 2001 - wfw010909.htm - The commentary this week is by Susanne Nyrop:
I was unable to attend the Sunday class today because we had some guests for lunch, but as I got the script in my mailbox sent by BJB, I spent some amusing time reading the conversation and following the links in my after dinner break :-)

First of all I enjoyed the wonderful photo tour of Abu Dhabi following in the footsteps of Vance. I liked it, both the interior and the outdoor sceneries. And the way you set up the follow of pictures was very easy. Thank you for sharing your private life surroundings, Vance! http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/apt2corniche/balcony.htm (I have neither a digital camera nor a scanner yet. But some day, I may prepare a virtual tour using some of my digitized photos from a travel to Vancouver Island last year. Especially I was impressed by the rainforest at Tofino. I also enjoyed the whale watching, but you can barely see them on the photos :-))

There was an interesting discussion about what to bring for Ying when she will go to the US for a year of studies. Will it be possible to find a second hand rice cooker in New York area? JohnSte (usually in Puerto Rico but currently studying in Pennsylvania) Peter (in Japan) and Maggi (in Germany) all agreed that rice tastes better when steamed while Phil (in France) told us he need hot spicy sauces to enjoy rice. I can add from my Danish kitchen that my husband does NOT like rice or pasta so we are mostly potato eaters. Some days ago I cooked a great chicken soup with fresh veggies*, and today I added some mealy potatoes. Yummy!**
* veggies is American and/or Canadian slang for vegetables.
** Yummy is American slang for delicious!

Next stop I went to visit the virtual village of Ardèche (in France) created by Phil and some of his colleagues for EFL learning purposes http://www.ardecol.ac-grenoble.fr/viva/boulangerie/index.htm I actually joined the café table discussion with Michael about the refugee scandal in Australia. I did not get the necessary inspiration for getting deeper into the local gossip in the bakery about that greasy large packet the mysterious mad painter Bob was carrying around, so I hope for someone else to take up the thread Peter has so brilliantly spun. Phil expressed a hope that more international people will join the party to impress his students on Friday. Go have a look! There is no fancy 3D virtual reality tricks here, just a low tech slow connection friendly interface with clickable drawings of a typical French village. It looks like a great idea, full of imagination and open ends. I enjoy this kind of online playgrounds. I guess your students will enjoy this site, Phil!

Last but not least I followed the link to the amazing cave paintings of the Chauvet grotte in the Ardèche, not far from where Phil lives. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/fr I cannot believe there has been artist Neanderthal painters 30.000 years ago. But at least that is what the archaeologists say. They may have been a cave bear clan. As the cave has been closed carefully and no vsitors are allowed, it is great to have some pictures online, But unfortunately I did not get into the National Geographic source also mentioned. I wonder how come?

As you can see, I joined the party long after you all left. And I really felt inspired to go on with my next writing task. See you, probably, next Sunday!

Yours,
Susanne

PS
Suddenly I realize that this groupmail might even go to my Webhead homepage. At least, the mentioned links may be available from there, until Vance has edited this class transcript! So yes, I feel good about that idea although this text was not meant to be publicized :-)))

PPS
You may not believe this but today I remembered to check my spelling in the email feature (I usually never do, as my version of Eudora email cannot handle Danish text) Now, I don't know if the suspicious few words and names underlined with read will eventually show up in the mail? Better try and see how it works! (It didn't catch 'read' in the sentence above - Vance LOL :-))

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, John in Pennsylvania today, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: BJB (lives in Reception at TappedIn), Phil (often at Tapped In), Peter (joins us when he can), DaveW (frequently drops by Tapped In), Florence (happened by), and Ming (awake early out in Oregon)

September 16, 2001 - wfw010916.htm - Understandably, the chat tonight was a lot about the disastrous terrorist destruction of lives and property just 5 days earlier. Sue was concerned about her plans to study in Texas, and Ying Lan told us of the survival of her colleagues whose offices in New York were near the World Trade Towers. Much of the chat cannot be recorded here because it took place in the Yahoo voice chat area. The connection was good for a change, voices were clear, and we had as many as 8 people in the voice chat: Sue and Peter in Japan, Ying Lan in Taiwan, Vance in the UAE, Michael in Australia, and Moral and Lian both in China. We were also joined there by Hoang from Vietnam, whom Ying Lan had met online and invited.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Sue from Japan, Moral from China, Juani from Chile, and BJB (lives in Enchanted Forest at TappedIn), Peter (joins us when he can), Lian (who Vance found on Yahoo), Hoang (from Vietnam), and Dario, Redy, two Bills, and Walter (who all happened on us at Tapped In). Gloria, Felix, and Susanne all got in touch shortly after the class.

September 23, 2001 - wfw010923.htm - The chat was the usual spontaneous Webheads adventure in global communication through various chat clients and modalities. As I wrapped up my work at my office at noon GMT (4 p.m. in Abu Dhabi) I saw Felix appear on ICQ so I said hello before joining the others at Tapped In. I told him we were planning to experiment with Groove from http://www.groove.net Michael and I had connected using Groove a few days earlier. It lets you do in one single space what we do now using a mix of programs such as TappedIn, Groupboard, and Yahoo voice chat. In Groove, you can communicate with others using microphone and text, you can show pictures or urls instantly on each others 'Groovy' browsers, and you can share a drawing tool without having to multi-task in many different windows. At least that's how it would work if everyone was on Groove and in the same shared space. John and BJB had both downloaded Groove but none of us could figure out how to connect with each other, so we waited for Michael to appear and invite us to the Webheads shared space. But when Michael arrived, we had confusion over Groove user names (two Vances, and BJB in Groove was not our BJB) and then it took so long to download the Webheads shared space.that Michael had to leave before it was done. Maybe we'll try again later.

Meanwhile Ying Lan appeared. She had two serious problems. First, the typhoon that had just pelted Taiwan for 2 days had flooded the Taipei metro and seriously disrupted train services on the island. Her second serious problem was that she had to clean her room (many people say, "So many books, so little time," but for Ying Lan, it's " ... so little space."). She had to get rid of some books so she could make a place to sleep.

Lian appeared and asked to start a voice chat. Felix had rejoined us by then, and he decided to try and project his web cam over Yahoo. It worked, as you can see in the graphic here. So in typical Webheads fashion, some of us were at various times, and with varying success, chatting in text at Tapped In, talking in Yahoo voice chat, distractedly trying to get Groove running, and at one point watching Felix talk to us from his place in Brazil. The latter was indeed an interesting success (I'm thinking of getting a web cam now for my laptop!).

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Pennsylvania, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: BJB (lives in Enchanted Forest at TappedIn), Lian from Wuhan, and Felix from Brazil

September 30, 2001 - wfw010930.htm - The chat today branched into many cyber-locations as usual. Sue found Vance in Yahoo and got him into Tapped In by telling him people were talking about him there. While Rif in Turkey was preparing for a videoconference with Claire Bradin, Phil B was showing us around http://www.stuffedincommon.com where BJB and Susanne started their own chat classes, and Susanne even explored further into Sonexis, starting a class there and enrolling anyone who would provide an email address. Paolo from Italy appeared after many months away and in he voice chat, explained the secrets of pizza, which Ying Lan was very interested in. Lian and Moral chatted mostly in the Yahoo Voice area, where they suggested we have a topic for each class, and Lian convinced Moral to try inviting foreigners to his house in order to make friends while practicing English. DavidW had just been to Manhattan, which he said was returning to normal, and he suggested a web site with pictures of someone who lives in the area. Gwyneth appeared and said some nice things about Webheads, and BJB helped out whenever asked. Last but not least, Michael emailed that he'd been at a music festival.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Ying Lan in Taiwan, and Michael emailed from Australia
Friends and students present: Rif from Turkey, Sue in Japan, Moral from Kunming, Susanne from Denmark, Paolo from Italy, Lian from Wuhan, BJB in Pennsylvania, James from Reading, Phil in France, and DavidW and Gwyneth (denizens of Tapped In)

October 7, 2001 - wfw011007.htm - As Webheads met, Global Learn Day was halfway through its day-long journey round the globe. Vance had given a presentation earlier which Moral had attended. As we started our meeting in Tapped In, those present drifted over to the online presentations and listened in. Dianne was interested in Help Desk portals so we asked Michael for information on TAFE when he appeared. James is interested in learning more about Webheads for his PhD studies, so he talked to John about the research he is doing and which he has nearly completed, and we looked at the YahooGroups site for statistics on the drop-off in email to efiwebheads@yahoogroups.com. When Felix arrived, we talked about his new job in the treasury of a company in Bahia. Toward the end of our chat, Ebony arrived. Ebony is a student with an assignment to complete on Tapped In and she got us talking about the subject of disrespect of unworthy teachers toward their unfortunate students. Ebony promised to send us a copy of her reflection paper for EDU 111 and if she does, we'll publish it on our website.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Pennsylvania, and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: Moral from Kunming, Sue in Japan, BJB in Pennsylvania, James from Reading, Phil in France, and Dianne and Ebony (visitors to Tapped In), and Susanne from Denmark, who left a message

October 14, 2001 - wfw011014.htm - The chat this week was an unusually good one, with a wide range of participants expressing themselves on topics ranging from the current world crisis to how best to conduct Webheads, and how to maintain passion for what we are doing no matter what the state of the world or where or how Webheads interact.

The success of this chat was due in no small part to Susanne, who was caught a few days before our meeting cat-napping in Vance's office. But while there, she prepared a surprise party for Webheads, sent out invitiations, and perhaps set a pattern for us where Webheads might in future meet in Reception at Tapped In and then for the last hour go up to Vance's Office for a more focused activity. The focus of Susanne's activity, which she had prepared in notices laid out around the office, was to get feedback on how Webheads was serving its online community through its website, YahooGroups list, and weekly online Sunday noon chat sessions.

Meanwhile, Vance, enjoying his trademark Chaos Navigation, was dragging willing participant Webheads off into voice chats where, following on Felix's lead a few weeks back, he was able to successfully broadcast his web cam. Even so we were able to channel much of our text chat into Tapped In and with Susanne's preparation, come together in Vance's Office for a party with virtual food and beverages (Ying Lan couldn't resist the pancakes), and complete with virtual pets (including Mus-cat who was returned safely bearing only minor psychological scars).

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, John in Pennsylvania, Ying Lan in Taiwan, and Michael checking in briefly from a hotel room in Australia
Friends and students present: Susanne from Denmark, BJB in Pennsylvania, Sergei from Belarus, Venny from Taiwan, Lian from Wuhan, Phil in France, Moral from Kunming, Yaodong from southern China, Paul in the UK, Donna in California, Dianne from Tapped In, and Peter and Sue in Japan.

October 21, 2001 - wfw011021.htm - It was a pretty tame Webheads class tonight, with the chaos browsers pretty much behaving themselves. Phil dropped by just to tickle Vance's ribs, Aum joined us after a long absence and asked some very deep questions about Webheads, such as who supports Tapped In and who the teachers and learners and lurkers were (to which Vance replied with some constructivist theoretical mumbo jumbo). She promised to send us a description of the festivals taking place in Thailand soon. This also led us to a discussion of our Wimba voice bulletin board at http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/wimba.htm (and after the session, Susanne, Michael, and Vance all left messages there, so visit the site to see and hear them). Meanwhile, Ying Lan's brother had deleted the browsers from her computer so he could play computer games. She couldn't join us at Tapped In, but she talked to Vance in voice chat and to Michael in ICQ about existential malaise and her concerns over her move to New York. After Ying Lan left, Juani arrived from Colorado and described snow to Aum, who has never seen it. Susanne and Vance indulged in some fun chaos navigation in and out of Vance's office at Tapped In, causing almost everyone else to leave, so we decided to move down to Reception to meet with Yaodong and his student from Liuzhou, China. James and John didn't actually join us for any of this, but sent excuses in email, so we forgive them.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, Ying Lan in Taiwan, and John sending email when he finally woke up in Pennsylvania
Friends and students present: Webhead members Aum in Thailand, BJB in Pennsylvania, Yaodong in Liuzhou, China, Susanne from Denmark, Juani from Chile/Colorado, and James who couldn't find us but sent email, plus a cameo appearance by Tapped In groupie Phil in France

October 28, 2001 - wfw011028.htm - Ever the organizer, Susanne had declared that today's Webheads class would take the form of a Halloween party. She announced the event in advance, some emails were exchanged, and Webheads were encouraged to arrive in Halloween costumes. John the 7-headed monster won the prize for the most imaginative costume. While waiting for all the guests to arrive, some of us went into the voice chat, where Vance ran his web cam as much as his computer would tolerate the drain on its resources. This and the fact that someone had spiked the cider (that is, put 'virtual' alcohol in the drink we were serving) distracted us from properly warning newcomers to our group about the party that was getting started. We were having so much fun enjoying ourselves in chaos navigation that by the time we moved up to Vance's office, not everyone in our group was acting strictly academic (apologies from yours truly). Thus one newcomer left us without being able to properly assimilate what he was experiencing, although others who remained on to the end praised our creative fun-making and agreed that it might have some application to language teaching and learning.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and John in Pennsylvania, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: An-Lian from Wuhan PRC, Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, Rif from Turkey, Peter in Japan,| Felix from Brazil, Susanne from Denmark, BJB [Webhead] in Pennsylvania, and visitors to Tapped In Dan, Fan [Luisa], Chris, Matthew, and Fan, and Sue checking in the following day

October 31, 2001 - wfw011031.htm - We held a pre-conference practice session bringing together Yaodong's class of students in China with Rif's in Turkey in 'intuitive chaos navigation' voice and video enhanced chat.

This was a practice session for the live conference event coming up November 7, 2001, 12:00 GMT, at the Teacher to Teacher conference in Abu Dhabi, Concurrent Session #1 at http://www.mli.ac.ae/conference/t2t2001/schedule/default.asp. In its most ambitious endeavor to date, Webheads managed to connect two classes half a world away from each other using live voice and text chat, and 2-way video web cams. Using his co-presentation as a catylist for the event, Rif got his class of computer-assisted language learning students in Bolu Turkey interacting with Yaodong's English language class in Liuzhou, China. Each side took photos, and some of these and other records of the event are presented in this web page.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi
Friends and students present: Webheads Felix in Brazil, An-Lian from Wuhan PRC, Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, Rif from Turkey, Susanne from Denmark, BJB [Webhead] in Pennsylvania, Sue in Japan who caught our video cams, and students in Rif's and Yaodong's classes in Turkey and China.

November 4, 2001 - wfw011104.htm - Vance's comments: Today's chat favored the chaos navigators. There was plenty for people to talk about in Tapped In, but in a parallel universe, Sue, Vance, and Felix were broadcasting their web cams (which one of Vance's colleagues at work saw by chance, prompting him to say hello). Yaodong had a class of students in voice chat taking turns at the microphone, and the voice chat filled with Webheads as well, including James who persevered through downloading the software and joining us, to his own amazement and delight. Dan seemed pretty amazed and delighted just watching from the sidelines (will Dan be the next Webhead to buy a web cam?). Susanne's comments: Don't you think we stopped todays' marathon session just because you had to leave for lunch! Dan and I had a great exchange of his first expressions of Webheads and my research ideas, our visitor Joanna from Malaysia (who talked to you about coral diving) stayed for another while, and later a guest from Greece introducing himself as "Press" which made me alert just in case it would mean a kind of journalist or reporter. DavidW came back for just another chat, too.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: An-Lian from Wuhan PRC, Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, Susanne from Denmark, BJB in Pennsylvania, Sue in Japan, James in Reading, Phil in France, Dan in Wisconsin, and David in New York; and visitors Paul in Abu Dhabi, RongG, ShunL, M.E., Marianne, Joanna, Leah, and Press, and 30 students in Yaodong's class in China.

November 7, 2001 - wfw011107.htm - The logs record interactions taking place before, during, and after a Webheads presentation at the MLI's Teacher to Teacher Conference in Abu Dhabi on November 7, 2001. The logs record preparations for the chat including last minute attempts to get Yahoo Messenger working and on-the-fly fallback on Netmeeting and MSN Messenger. The text chat during the presentation alludes to talks broadcast live to the conference audience from Rif in Turkey and An Lian in China. The logs record the reactions of others who could in some cases neither see nor hear what was going on. Participants agreed however that the presentation went well and was worthwhile despite technical glitches, which should not cloud the thrust of what we are doing, bringing global communities together for peaceful and scholarly purposes online.

Participants: Vance in Abu Dhabi, John in Pennsylvania,Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, Susanne from Denmark, Peter Williams in Tokyo, David Weksler on the Eastern Seaboard, An-Lian in Wuhan PRC, Rif and his students in Turkey, Fan and David Xiaofeng presumably from China, and a late checking from Dan in Wisconsin

November 11, 2001 - wfw011111.htm - The chat log we were able to capture here is interesting in the way the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is interesting. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the two gentlemen sent to accompany Hamlet on his sea voyage to make sure that he would be arrested when he reached his destination (but in the end, they were themselves killed). Many of us are quite familiar with Shakespeare's play Hamlet from the point of view of the audience. Tom Stoppard depicted the action behind the scenes, backstage, where two gentlemen who have minor roles in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, become the stars of Stoppard's play, discussing what could possibly be happening on the front side of the drapes. Similarly, the transcript for today reveals the backstage dialog taking place in Tapped In which allows us to infer what was happening as I was speaking via streaming audio at the ELT Online Conference, and while John and Michael were copresenting along with many Webheads helping take questions in the simultaneous text chat. Meanwhile some people were coming to Tapped In from the ELT Online Conference to see what it was that the presentation was about. You can download Vance's talk from this location: http://lightning.prohosting.com/~vstevens/webheads/stevens.wma

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Pennsylvania, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present:Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, Susanne from Denmark, BJB in Pennsylvania, Dan in Wisconsin, James in Reading, Sue in Japan, An-Lian in Wuhan, PRC, Rif in Turkey, Aum in Thailand, and drop-in guests Colin, KeniK, DavidWar, Geoff, Nora, Ang, Mmoley, and DavidW

November 18, 2001 - wfw011118.htm - For most people in the chat today, the navigation was not too chaotic. Only Vance was under any kind of pressure, meeting with Yaodong and his students in China via MSN and Yahoo instant messengers, and joined in Yahoo by BJB, Ying Lan, and James, where we were able to hear voices and broadcast webcams. Other than that, we met in Tapped In, where we met Roslyn from Tasmania, who joined Webheads soon thereafter. Ying Lan had a problem with a teacher in Taiwan who did not behave professionally toward her, causing a lot of discussion among the teachers present. BJ showed us her picture (at last) and Arthur McKeown, whom you can find out more about at http://www.arthurmckeown.com/ (now I know why he greeted me in Arabic). We also discussed the ratio of native speakers to non-native speakers in our class, and how people benefit from Webheads whether native or non-native speakers of English.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, John in Pennsylvania, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, Susanne from Denmark, BJB in Pennsylvania, Roslyn from Tasmania, Dan in Wisconsin, James in Reading, Sue in Japan, Arthur from County Donegal, Phil in France, and Nicia checking in later from Belo Horizonte in Brazil.

November 25, 2001 - wfw011125.htm - The chat today was not too chaotic, and we had a good mix of native and non-native speakers. Once participants had gathered, we talked about business English, and we discussed how we could deal with ethical issues arising from our posting our chat logs on the Internet, possibly without the knowledge of all participants (see the notice added to our heading from now on). Marina whom we hadn't seen in a long time joined us for voice chat, and we showed her our video cams. Most participants preferred the relative safety of Tapped In on this one, and stayed there.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, Maggi in Germany, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present:David in Rochester, Sara from the UAE, Sue in Japan,Yaodong and 30 students in Liuzhou PRC, Susanne from Denmark, BJB in Pennsylvania, Dan in Wisconsin, Sue in Japan, Arthur in Belfast, Lian in Wuhan, PRC, and Joanna from Malaysia, Rif from Turkey, and Marina joining us after a prolonged absence from Italy.

December 2, 2001 - wfw011202.htm - Of the chat today, Susanne said: "it was a very quiet day because nobody seemed to be playing around with other fun communication webtools." I (Vance) was on a break for national day in the UAE, but BJB dropped a recorder and left it for me to find in my office and James sent in his Tapped In logs, so from the two, we have the record below. Yaodong had proposed a topic but it turned out he was showing his students another MOO at this time, so the discussion was led by James and Roslyn. James was interested in the ethics of posting our transcripted Sunday meetings on the Internet, and those present agreed that the disclaimers on our web site and in the Tapped In calendar would probably head off misunderstandings, though it was suggested to possibly hold meetings in my office, where further notice could be posted as well (but BJB said she thought this wasn't necessary due to low traffic at Tapped In when we meet). There was also discussion of the literature on synchronous communication, particularly its various modalities, and the transcripts contain some interesting URLs referring to resources on these topics.

Tutors online today: John in Pennsylvania, Michael in Australia, and Ying Lan in Taiwan
Friends and students present: Susanne from Denmark, BJB in Pennsylvania, and James from Reading, and Tapped In visitors Roslyn from Tasmania, MHecker from Berlin, and Arthur in Belfast. Sue in Japan had had a chat with BJB earlier.

December 9, 2001 - wfw011209.htm - Susanne I had to stay offline today but she went to Vance's office that evening and mailed the log recorders to herself. Then she wrote this summary (Thanks!! Susanne:-)): John told us that Maggi had to stay offline because she has hit her back, please recover soon, Maggi! And John has got some pains in his fingers because of his way of handling his mouse. Take care, John! Your finger powers are precious - did you try to use the mouse with the other hand; I have trained myself to change between right and left to reduce the repetitive stress injuries that may follow excessive use´s of mouse and keyboard. Vance, Yaodong and Marina were busy experimenting with webcams and voice chat. Arthur said he's delighted with the Wimba voiceboard. Vance's computer slowed down several times because of all the tech stuff. Ying initiated a longer conversation on how shopkeepers selling fruit on each side of the same street may compete for the same customers. This topic became even more intereting when Vance added that in the Arabian souk, similar shops in the same neighborhood would sell the same kind of goods, while in Australia, Michael meant that you need a public license to open a shop saying it is not too close to another shop selling goods of the same kind. Ying lan discovered that in her city, she could count eight banks in the same street. Also, thre were some questions about the mystery of the disappeared load of merchandise in Ying's company that we discussed in an earlier session. Later, Juani from Chile who is currently staying in Rifle, US, told us how strange it was to drive in snow for the first time, so the differing weather conditions around thw world made another topic. Mathias, Marcel, Sonja, RoyStar and Eva from Berlin, Germany visited us, asking the same question as all their fellow students of psychology; How do you use Tapped In for teching? BJ was trying hard to make these students do this in a separate room where she joined them, I think this particular class has spent a lot of time in Tapped IN lately, logging in one by one and all asking immediately for personal interviews with teachers. Probably, the regular Tapped In helpdesk would have liked their teacher to lead some kind of session instead.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi, John in Pennsylvania, Maggi in Germany, Ying Lan in Taiwan, Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: BJB in Pennsylvania, Arthur in Ireland, YaodongC and his class in China, Dan in Wisconsin, David in New Jersey, Juani in Rifle, Colorado, Marina in Italy, Rif in Turkey, Sue in Japan; Mathias, Marcel, Sonja, RoyStar and Eva from Berlin, Germany, and RobertBY, passerby

December 11, 2001 - wfw011211.htm - Yaodong in Liuzhou China has been very active / energetic in exploring online synchronous multimedia tools for bringing his English language students in contact with others in the English-speaking world. He announced to the Webheads list that on Dec 11 he planned to demonstrate his skills in online connectivity to an audience of peers in China, 6:30 a.m. GMT. He asked me if I would like to appear online at that time. Since it would be during work hours, I replied yes, if I could involve our students at the MLI, http://www.mli.ac.ae. Meanwhile I spoke to teachers here who thought it would make an appropriate activity for their classes. A class of nine students was thus chosen to appear in my office 3 at a time during the time of the event. The interesting thing from the point of view of these students is that the three groups each ended up getting completely different experiences.

Tutors online today: Vance in Abu Dhabi and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: Yaodong from Liuzhou, PRC, and Rif from Bolu, Turkey

December 16, 2001 - wfw011216.htm - Vance was away in Oman today, and there was no evidence left of any chaos navigation. The only record left was a recording in Tapped In which Vance has posted below. It seems that the main topic of discussion was color and its connotations in different cultures, though the weather was a secondary topic. Susanne was cooking in the kitchen. Ying Lan was still waiting for her visa to the USA. James was about to leave for Spain and Wales. Maggi was feeling better after a bout with back problems. Perhaps someone who was there would like to add a commentary?

Tutors online today: John in Pennsylvania, Maggi in Germany, Ying Lan in Taiwan, and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: BJB in Pennsylvania, Arthur in Ireland, Susanne in Denmark, Dan in Wisconsin, David in New Jersey, James in Reading UK, and visitors to Tapped In Venny from Taiwan, and drop-in guests Karin and Elizabeth

December 23, 2001 - wfw011223.htm - Today's chat was cozily crowded with numerous Webheads gathered round the yule log the day before Christmas eve. With many newcomers having joined us as well, the chat illustrated perfectly Vance's characterization of emoderation having much in common with herding cats. Some attempt was made to 'stay on topic' when BJB and Vance tried to negotiate getting the classes of DanielKa and Shunichiro hooked up with Webheads in the middle of Maggi and Felix's discussion on international commerce and SAP financial software. Ying Lan told us of her visa problems and the death from cancer of a close friend with two kids. Susanne was concerned about how to protect oneself from scam emails Vance told stories of a recent trip to formerly remote mountain villages in Oman that now have roads, and of an evening spent with Portuguese girls on a remote island off the coast of Brazil. Felix joined us and got us trying to work out when carnival is. We were thinking to form a virtual samba school when DavidW arrived, sending everyone over to virtual ballroom dancing. Yaodong came on with his Webcam and he and Vance had a voice and webcam conversation on Yahoo. John missed the class because he was on his way home to Puerto Rico for the holidays. Michael's holidays were so relaxing he simply forgot what day it was.

Tutors online today: Vance in the UAE, Maggi in Germany, and Ying Lan in Taiwan; John in Pennsylvania and Michael in Australia sent their excuses
Friends and students present: BJB in Pennsylvania, Arthur in Ireland, Susanne in Denmark, Dan in Wisconsin, Sue in Japan, Joanna in Malaysia, Felix in Brazil, Yaodong in Liuzhou, PRC, DavidW, MdA in Hyderabad, Daniel and Richard from Uganda, Shunichiro in Japan, and Robert and George

December 30, 2001 - wfw011230.htm - Webheads gathered in Tapped In and started talking about each other and about the weather. All the snow about got them reaching for their virtual hot toddies. Talk soon turned seasonal, to fireworks and what we're doing New Years. Ying Lan started telling us about a barbeque she had where she built an igloo of clay and cooked sweet potatoes inside. This made her flatulent, and she had to release gas in an important meeting. This got us on the topic of farting, and Vance told a fart story that Michael read out loud on Yahoo voice chat and everyone seemed to appreciate. Integral to Vance's story was cassava, or tapioca, which BJB seemed to know something about, as she sent around urls relating to cassava poisoning and cassava-related diseases.

Tutors online today: Vance in the UAE, Maggi in Germany, Ying Lan in Taiwan; John in Pennsylvania and Michael in Australia
Friends and students present: BJB in Pennsylvania, Arthur in Ireland, Susanne in Denmark, Dan in Wisconsin, Yaodong in Liuzhou, PRC, DavidW somewhere in the eastern seaboard, MdA in Hyderabad, Kemal who dropped in, and Bridget, spotted online

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Last updated: April 21, 2002 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0