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Webheads Chat Logs from 2002

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January 6, 2002 - wfw020106.htm - The chat log starts in Vance's office where Susanne went to play with Muscat, the cat who lives there. She saw the cat was hungry and tried to feed it. When Arthur appeared, Vance tried to help him with voice chat, but it turned out Vance was having trouble connecting on the voice chat server. Meanwhile Shun and Rachael were getting organized for their Tuesday class where they would bring their students in Japan and Taiwan together at Tapped In, and we visited Shun in his ESL Cafe. Fortunately Michael had managed to organize voice chat and prevent disappointment. Along with Webheads voice chatters like Yaodong, the voice chat attracted Liw, who joined Webheads as a new student..

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

January 8, 2002 - Webheads supported Shunichiro Ito in finding synchronous chat partners for his class of Japanese junior college girls. The plan was to meet with Rachael's cadets at the Chinese Military Academy in Taiwan. Rachael appeared belatedly, but her lads were experiencing connection problems. Lessons were learned for the repeat session scheduled the following Tuesday. Shun's transcripts are here: http://www.geocities.com/ito_shun/TappedIn/TI_chat.htm.

January 13, 2002 - wfw020113.htm - I arrived at Tapped In just as BJB was showing photos to find we had a new participant, Rita. Shun arrived to discuss with Rachael his meeting of his students with her class the coming Tuesday (Rachael did not appear in Tapped In on Sunday, but she did manage to get her students into the chat sessions with Shun's classes next Tuesday). Ali joined us out of curiosity, having been invited from the TESOL Electronic Village Online sessions <http://personalweb.smcvt.edu/gsl520/TESOL/ev_online02_TESOLblast.htm>. Arthur had been away cooking chicken, but came on to greet Ali in dulcet Arabic. We discussed the session Arthur was giving at one of the EVOnline sessions, and Rita decided to join in (later, she enrolled in the Webheads session, http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm)*. Michael had emailed that his workshop on Jan 19 was cancelled and joined us shortly after. Ying Lan dropped in with the good news that she was about to make the move to New York January 25! David was dreaming of bagels most of the time and singing occasionally. We found out that both he and Michael like Jimmy Buffet.
* If you can't reach Geocities, you can find out about the Webheads session at TESOL EVOnline here: http://lightning.prohosting.com/~vstevens/papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm

Meanwhile, on Yahoo, Yaodong was trying to reach me from China. But somehow an event received thru my LAN hookup crashed my Yahoo, and when I tried to go onto Yahoo from my dialup, I couldn't get voice. Dan and Michael were chatting happily, so I ended up trying a reboot, and then installing a new version of Yahoo onto my laptop. Eventually this worked, and I got in a chat with Dan and Nancy in Michigan, and we were joined by Mingqiu (text chat only) and Ismail, another visitor from the TESOL EVOnline sessions. The new version of Yahoo, which I had avoided because it doesn't allow cut and paste from the chat window, somehow did not save the contents of one of my chats in its save-as feature, and so the text chat accompanying the voice session was lost.

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, Dan in Wisconsin, Yaodong in Liuzhou PRC, DavidW in New Jersey today, MdA in Hyderabad, Shun in Japan, Rita in Argentina, Ali in Morocco, Nancy in Michigan, Mingqiu in Nanning, Ismail in Cairo, and Liw in Sweden.

January 15, 2002 - wfw020115.htm - Webheads supported Shunichiro Ito in connecting his class of Japanese junior college girls with Rachael's cadets at the Chinese Military Academy in Taiwan, successfully this time. The topic for the discussion was 'What we do on weekends'. Shun's transcripts are here: http://www.geocities.com/ito_shun/TappedIn/TI_chat.htm.

Saturday, January 19, 2002 - Webheads again supported Shunichiro Ito in finding synchronous chat partners for his class of Japanese junior college girls. Besides Rachel and her students, Vance, Yaodong, James Simpson, and Susanne Nyrop all participated.

January 20, 2002 - wfw020120.htm - My own experience with today's chaos navigation was complicated by having lost my connection three times during the evening - each time, neither of my browsers could recover Tapped In and each time, I had to restart my computer. Plus, Yahoo voice chat was not working properly - two of us were able to talk to one another, but the third person in a group voice chat could neither hear not speak to the others.

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, Dan in Wisconsin, DavidW on the eastern seaboard, MdA in Hyderabad, Shun in Japan, Rita in Argentina, Dafne in Spain, Azzam in Canada, Gary in Illinois, Lev in Israel, Marina in Italy, Mingqiu in China, and KeniK in Hubei Province

January 27, 2002 - wfw020127.htm - Webheads gathered at Tapped In as usual but as the others talked, Vance and Gary broke out to iVisit where, eventually, in true Webheads spirit, many of the others joined us. CHAT LOG ARCHIVING STILL IN PROGRESS

February 3, 2002 - wfw020203.htm - Webheads in Action gathered at Tapped In today eager to tackle three previously announced agenda items: (1) making notes in Tapped In, (2) creating personal icons to represent us in the Who's Here frame, and (3) learning more about pets. We didn't get to the last item, but the first two were enthusiastically treated by the small groups who followed first BJB for a lesson on notes and then Keiko and Vance for getting faces to turn up in the frame. The latter exercise proved to be a smashing success, but it might not have gone so well had Vance not met Chris Fry earlier at Tapped In and rehearsed the steps that Chris took to get his icon to appear. With Chris, Vance refined the technique and was able to apply it to the satisfaction of those who joined us later at the regular time. These logs also include transcripts from a follow up session between Susanne and Rita.

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: Chris in Barcelona, Randa in Egypt, DavidW on the eastern seaboard, BJB in Pennsylvania, Libby, Christine in France, Shun in Japan, Ali in Morocco, Arthur in Ireland, Dan in Wisconsin, Lena from Russia, Dafne in Spain, Gary in Illinois, Selina, Teresa in Portugal, Nelba, Azzam in Canada, Keiko in New Mexico, Roslyn in Tasmania, Nige from UK, Susanne from Denmark,Yaodong from Liuzhou PRC, and Rita in Argentina finding Susanne for an after-class tutorial

February 10, 2002 - wfw020210.htm - I thought we had a great session this evening. For many of the participants I think it was perhaps a first encounter with voice chat or at least with video projection. It was certainly a chance to get to know each other better, and to gain a greater appreciation for the skills and talents we each bring into this seminar.

The first hour or more was spent at Tapped In making the most of that environment to roll play a samba school http://home19.inet.tele.dk/susnyrop/sambaschool.html. The preparation the participants put into the event enhanced the experience for us all. The prize for preparation I think must be handed to the creators of the Samba School website, and throughout the chat, we enjoyed projections of urls bringing us the flavor, and even the music, of carnival from various countries. There are many who come to these events feeling I think that the technology may be over their heads, but they usually find that it's not only doable but fun. And they also find that those who are just one step ahead are happy to pause and lend a hand to pull the next one up.

At the end of the evening, while I was wrapping up on the two computers in my office, I was forced to leave the Tapped In chat, but was very pleased to find when I went to shut down that computer that someone had projected this url: http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheadswebcamsessionphotos-10feb02.htm. What a nice tribute! Thanks everyone who participated.

February 17, 2002 - wfw020217.htm -

February 24, 2002 - wfw020224.htm -

March 3, 2002 - wfw020303.htm - Ying Lan and Felix both appear as in old times; Vance helps Webheads in Action with Wimba setup.

Thursday, March 7, 2002 - We met at Tapped In for a session with Sylvia Currie of Global Educator's Network

Friday, March 8, 2002 - We met again at Tapped In where Vance was moderator of a session on cultural aspects of CMC scheduled as one of the Human_CALL TESOL EVOnline sessions.

March 10, 2002 - wfw020310.htm - Lots of web cam play in this one; pics still need to be put on web page.

Wedesday, March 13, 2002 - We met at Tapped In for Michael's session on emoderation

March 17, 2002 - wfw020317.htm -

Monday, March 18, 2002 - The 'Collaborated Online Event' with Ismail Fayed and EgypTESOL

March 24, 2002 - wfw020324.htm - In Vance's absence, Dafne showed her Fallas web ouevre

Friday, March 29, 2002 - not sure where I was. Logs say I was at TESOL Arabia

Saturday, March 30, 2002 - We all met online for Vance's live presentation at the CALICO Conference in Davis, California

March 31, 2002 - wfw020331.htm -

Saturday April 6, 2002 Sue and Vance web broadcast from Houston

April 7, 2002 - wfw020407.htm -

April 12, 2002 - Not sure of the dates exactly, but Webheads were having fun as usual at two Internet Classics Fairs at the TESOL Conference. Teresa eventually produced a great page recording the event: http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/sessions/12apr02-tesol.htm. Vance's pics are here: http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/webheadsinaction/ (TESOLpix/2002_Salt_Lake_City)

April 14, 2002 - wfw020414.htm - no logs posted yet; I was in Salt Lake City in the morning, chatting with the group from my hotel room. I flew to New York where I was picked up at the airport by Tapped In discussion group leader David Weksler and driven to Ying Lan's place in Queens. To see my record of that visit, click here <-- Vance

No web pages yet: April 21, April 28, May 5, May 12, May 19

June 23, 2002 - wfw020623.htm - Webheads were busy today, with the following people all in Tapped In: BJB in Pennsylvania | Vance in Abu Dhabi | James | Claire in Pennsylvania | David Weksler | Dafne in Spain | Venny in Taiwan | Nicia in Brazil | Aiden in Taiwan | Christopher in Germany | Teresa in Portugal | Susanne in Denmark | Keiko in New Mexico | Michael in Australia | Ying Lan in New York | Felix in Brazil | Nancy. In addition, Yaodong in China was in Netmeeting, showing his students in China around with Vance's assistance, which was also why Vance was often distracted from the Tapped In chat. To demonstrate the file transfer features, he sent us a picture, and you can also see a picture here of Keiko and Vance in an iVisit chat which Keiko started.

Vance has had to suspend chat logging due to workload with Webheads in Action, but Teresa has been logging video sessions from February 10 onwards here: http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheadswebcamsessions.htm. Vance will try to record chats through March 25 here. So come back in April and see.

July 21, 2002 - wfw020721.htm - Topics included: Edward Lear and his whimsical recipes and limericks; Teresa's book Netaprendizagem; recent resurgence of student Webheads group; how to create web pages with relative as opposed to absolute links and things to watch out for when uploading to a server; what we've learned (individually) from the Webheads projects. Present were BJB in Pennsylvania | Aiden in Taiwan | Teresa in Portugal | Dafne in Spain | Vance in Abu Dhabi | Susanne from Denmark | FaiW in Hong Kong | Maggi in Germany | Christopher in Germany | Michael in Australia | Colin from the USA | Venny in Taiwan

August 4, 11, and 18, 2002 Vance was on Holiday in India (Ladakh and Rajastan)

Wednesday, August 21-22, 2002, Webheads participated in Net Working 2002, http://flexiblelearning.net.au/nw2002/, an online conference held 19-30 August, 2002. Webheads were a part of Michael Coghlan's session, Cross Cultural Communication 0nline - perspectives from around the globe - presented by the Webheads Community, http://users.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/ccc/pres.htm. Logs have been placed at

This was a part of the e-Merging e-Learning Conference at Higher Colleges of Technology Men's College, Abu Dhabi, UAE, http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/admcinternet/eeconference/ee2002/Program.asp . The presentation was entitled: A visit with Webheads online community of practice for language learners and teachers, scheduled at noon GMT, Sunday September 8, 2002. Abstract: Writing for Webheads is an ongoing 'experiment in world friendship through online language learning' whose participants have been meeting weekly online for almost 4 years now. During that time, Webheads have experimented with numerous synchronous and web-based multimedia communications formats, and presented at several live and online conference venues. More recently, the community has formally expanded to embrace language teaching professionals in a community of practice called Webheads in Action. These communities come together online every Sunday for a regular session held at about the time of this demonstration. Therefore we have an opportunity at this session to convene members of the community online to demonstrate 'live' our use of free and easily accessible text, video, and voice enhanced synchronous communications technologies, while showing conference delegates around the Webheads community. See Teresa's view at http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/sessions/8sep02-aiden.htm (Aiden's 'The look!')

Sunday, September 15, 2002 - wfw020915.htm

Wednesday, September 17, 2002- wfw020917.htm - Teresa has created a page on Michael's 'Using Voice Online' session at: http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/sessions/17sep02-mc.htm )

Sunday, September 22, 2002 - wfw020922.htm - From Susanne, 26 Sep 2002: Your communication Skills class were very lively, and I was not really aware that their topic was "national customs", although most of our our conversation was oscillating between the Chinese Moon Festival and the love for pet cats and dogs :-)

Next time they wll do even better, as their natural anxiety will be diminish The first time IS not very easy, neither for the newbie nor for the facilitator, moderator or helpdesk, or just fellow participant, whichever role you may decide for the more experienced user, patiently willing to share some previously understood practice tipsYour class met us last Sunday and, as you mention, it was obvious that some of them seemed to be quite happy with the fast chat format and participated with some natural fluency, while others felt more confused. One good advice is to let them login with their true names instead of taking a new role play identity, as they may easier recognize each other and feel among peers!

I did not make a count of heads, but they were many! That is one reason why we try to encourage new Tapped In participants to explore some day on their own, or with a few mates only. Several times a week, Tapped In helpdesk volunteers offer scheduled Tours and tips session. BJ and Keiko are very regular on this newbie support format, and I also try to help now and then whenever it may fit into my European calendar. I suppose that I will be at home and join you this upcoming Sunday - looking forward to meet your students again.

Sunday, September 29, 2002 - wfw020929.htm

Aiden Yeh plans to bring her Taiwanese ESL students in her Communications Skills Class to Tapped In for the second week in a row. The topic assigned is about National Customs, and the students will interview members of the Webheads Community about their respective national customs and holidays. The information they will be gathering will be shared and discussed in the classroom. Those who will be online will get extra marks for their efforts and perhaps, a possible exemption from Midterms or Finals. Those interested in participating, /join aideny in her office at TI.

Regarding last week "I received mixed reactions about last Sunday's chat. Some felt that the flow of communciation was too fast, while others managed to chat and had no problems navigating TI. I explained to my students that this class is not technically a CALL class but Communications skills and what better way to learn these skills but by practising what they've learned. Those who are willing to extend their learning environment and overcome obstacles are the people whom you will be meeting this Sunday. "

Susanne's impression - "Today I met Fiona and Cynthia in a Yahoo chat; they expressed a fear that they had been rude, or not polite enough in Tapped In. That is absoluteny not my impression. On the contrary: It is an amazing experience to meet your students. I feel they have a natural curiosity making their einterview a good experience last Sunday; I apolofize that I was distracted from our session after about more than one hour because I met with Keiko in messenger. But BJ was also active, and Vance had joined the class, too. It was fun because we also had another new Tapped In member, Nancy from somewhere in the US, she was a language teacher, doing a study class and participating as an assignment."

Sunday, October 6, 2002 - wfw021006.htm - Aiden Yeh plans to bring her Taiwanese ESL students in her Communications Skills Class to Tapped In for the third week in a row. "Some of my students will be in TappedIn this Sunday, October 06, to talk to the webheads about traveling and the best place to visit (e.g. Sus, what would be the best tourist spot in Denmark? What's there to see? What's so special about it?). Perhaps, they could think of more questions. This will be the third in a row for them to be in TI. Vance's online presentation is on the 13th, that's next Sunday. I will ask my students to rest on this day and continue with our online activities the week after that. Thanks for those who were there in TI last Sunday, there's still another one to go. I hope you won't give up on my students." - of course not, our pleasure - Vance

Sunday, October 13, 2002 - wfw021013.htm - Webheads made a presentation during regular class time as a part of Global Learn Day 6. The presentation was made at http://www.alado.net/chicago. Unfortunately the presentation occurred an hour or two before it had been antiicipated.

Sunday, October 20, 2002 - wfw021020.htm - Following the success of GLD6, Andrew Pincon offered Webheads the use of http://www.alado.net/chicago as a Webheads playground. Webheads played accordingly, speaking easily in the voice chat room while viewing each other's webcams in Yahoo and carrying on conversations with Aiden's students in Tapped In. You can see screen shots off the fun here.

Sunday, October 27, 2002 - wfw021027.htm

Sunday, November 3, 2002 - wfw021103.htm - The annual Webhead Hallowebhead party was held on this day. A special web page was prepared for the occasion. Webheads dressed in costume on their web cams. It was a little spooky.

Sunday, November 10, 2002 - wfw021110.htm - Sus's reactions: Last Sundays' session in Tapped In was a very entertaining example of the casual and informal way we are working and playing together. At least three new participants joined us, Cindy who is a Tapped In helpdesk trainee from somewhere in USA, Anh from Vietnam who claims to be a good singer, and in particular Yos, the doctor (MD) from the Philipines who has started and followed up on several thought provoking discussion toipcs lately in our English for Webheads mail list. I remember how Yos has told us some time ago, that he can only read mail from his home town, with a slow modem connection, and that he had to travel for five or six hours to get to a place with an internet cafe to use the WWW to read webpages - join us in Tapped In. And now he came to meet us. Respect!

I do wonder how this chaotic experience was for the new people with such a confusing and active session, with people running in all directions, from Yahoo to iVisit and reporting back to the Tapped In party class, asking for advice on how to get here or there? Probably a mixed feeling of amusement and surprised confusion. like most of us have experienced at our first sessions, until the unstructured chat communication mode became a habit. In case you had expected a classroom-alike learning situation, you have indeed beein involved in a challenging experiment

Sunday, November 17, 2002 - wfw021117.htm

Sunday, November 24, 2002 - wfw021124.htm - Webheads experimented with iVisit today ...

Wednesday, November 27, 2002 - Michael handled the event quite fabulously. It was however, a bit frantic on my end. My internet connection was rather unstable and I was repeatedly catapulted out of the conference room. Asking for an invitation to get back into the conference once or twice is fairly acceptable but having to be invited back in for more than 10 times is utterly insane. My students were brave enough to carry on the discussion and they were pretty much focused on the topic. It would have been a very successful conference if not for the technological foul ups. I was desperately chaos navigating (maneuvering is more like it) and in the most ironic sense, technology became our biggest hurdle and conspicuously became the "end" rather than the "means to an end". I am really hoping that we could use another chat venue that allows voice (and video?). Wouldn't it be really superb to just concentrate on the topic and go smoothly with the flow of discussions without having to worry about being knocked off? I can't wait for the new TI version. Inspite of all this, my students and I were able to salvage transcripts but I'm afraid they're all we've got. I wasn't able to take a snap shot of Michael's webcam (btw, Michael was sporting this new look, hair neatly pressed and combed, suave to the max!). I will be setting up a webpage for post-teacher-student conference and will include Michael's and my own comments about this online activity. http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/michaelc.html; what's this, more? http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/michaelc/index.htm

Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 21:44:47 +0100 From: s.nyrop@get2net.dk

Aiden and myself kept being cut off from the conference, and had to login again and again. It was a frustration for me that I was only able to read three or four of the students' questions, and I had no idea why my own messages were sent in double or more. Same happened the day after when Daf had invited for an important evaluation meeting with her colleagues plus us two observers. I am still wondering why yahoo is doing this tricky bug? I can read from the log how I was invited multiple times at the same time, and seemed to appear as a dragon with many heads.

I admire your patient students, Aiden, they kept asking all their brilliant questions. (I tried to mend the damage by sending a longer message about my own life experiences on language learning and communication. I also uploaded a picture taken from my screen showing my webcam insterted in your class' homepage portraits. Both to the conversation class yahoo group).

This kind of technologogical obstacles did serve as stressing challenge to a conversation class, as well to our meeting agenda.

By a very careful reading of the chaotic chatlog, however, the multilogical action does make some sense.

Sunday, December 1, 2002 - wfw021201.htm - Christopher and Vance jam on a number of songs. Webheads react. Web cam screen shots record the event.

Saturday, December 7, 2002 - wfw021207.htm

Participants: Chris Jones in Arizona, Susanne from Denmark, Teresa from Portugal, Nigel from UK, and Maggi in Germay

Sunday, December 8, 2002 - wfw021208.htm

Saturday, December 14, 2002 - wfw021214.htm - Vance flew to Cairo to meet Ismail Fayad and do a join presentation with him at the EgypTesol conference. There are lots of great links here recording many webheads impressions of the event.

Ismail's video clips (you must be an evonline2002_webheads member with a Yahoo ID to access these videos:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/files/Presentations/EgypTesol%202002/Demo_Video_Clips/

Sunday, December 15, 2002 - wfw021215.htm - Vance was still in Cairo but managed to drop in for the usual Sunday event

Saturday, December 21, 2002, Vance was back in Abu Dhabi and checked in to see if anyone was online. I didn't see anyone at 16:30 GMT. Sunday, December 22, 2002 - wfw021222.htm - let's see what happens

Our most recent logged chat is the one above ^

Our next online chat is always this coming Sunday, noon GMT (for about 2 hours). What time is that where you are? Check: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/full.html What will happen when we meet? Who knows? (Just about anything!) But click here to get an idea. Meet us at Tapped In, http://www.tappedin.org

You are welcome to join us at any of the locations given at the top of this page!

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