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(C)opyright 2004 Vance Stevens

Webheads Chat Logs from 2004

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Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 19:21:56 -0000
From: "Vance Stevens"
Subject: Happy New Year everyone

Hi all,

I'm reflecting on a remarkably productive past year with Webheads, one in which the community has shown itself to be truly organic, with many members taking numerous initiatives reflecting well on the group as a whole. We have also gained attention and respect this past year. Our work has been cited, mentioned, and featured in numerous professional circles and gatherings in 2003. I think we have a lot to be proud of, and I look forward to heightened collaboration in 2004.

The past six months have been especially challenging for me as I have met the demands of a forced career shift, but I think I've got my feet planted after my first semester in my new job and life should be easier when next semester I can concentrate on doing what is expected of me without having to spend so much time figuring out what that is. I'm hoping this can translate into a return to more time spent on Webheads. I certainly appreciate being a part of such a robust and competent community able to recover the ball and move it forward when team members are forced to devote attention elsewhere.

After mid January I will be in Cairo for a week giving a number of presentations. I haven't worked out yet exactly what those presentations will entail but I'm hoping to work in some online events involving Webheads, especially as we now have an expert there, Randa, who knows what we will need. I'll let you know of progress as people return to work after their Christmas holidays.

Happy New Year to all,

Vance

Saturday, January 3, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, January 4, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, January 10, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunda, January 11, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, January 17, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, January 18, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, January 24, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Electronic Village (EV) Online Sessions 2004 The CALL Interest Section of TESOL is proud to announce its fourth round of online sessions, including readings, discussions, chats, guest speakers, and task-based activities. If you can't come to the conference, now the conference can come to you! The EV Online 2004 sessions are held prior to the TESOL Convention and some in conjunction with Interest Section Academic Sessions or Strands. You do NOT have to be a member of TESOL, nor do you have to register for TESOL 2003, to take part in these FREE events. They run for six weeks, starting on January 26 and ending on March 5, 2004. Registration for the sessions will be accepted January 12-26, 2004. The following Online Sessions will be offered: * English for everybody; all gain, no loss? -- moderators: Professor Ulrich Bliesener, Jane Hoelker, Joyce Kling, Keiko Abé-Ford, Christine Coombe, Valerie S. Jakar - sponsor: EFL-Interest Section * Real English Online Video - moderators: Elizabeth Hanson-Smith, Michael Marzio - sponsor: CALL-Interest Section, Video Interest Section * TESOL Drama Presents: Let's Put on a Play - moderators: Nigel Caplan, Gary Carkin, Judy Trupin - sponsor: SPL-Interest Section/TESOL Drama * Becoming a Webhead - moderators: Dafne Gonzalez, Teresa Almeida d'Eça, Susanne Nyrop, Maria Jordano - sponsor: CALL-Interest Section * Creating interactive online language lessons with Macromedia Flash MX - moderator: Marmo Soemarmo - sponsor: CALL-Interest Section * Assessing and Teaching Oral Communication Skills - moderators: Rebecca Dauer, Christine Parkhurst - sponsor: SPL-Interest Section * A Basic Workshop for using the Internet in class - moderator: JoAnn Miller -- sponsor: CALL-Interest Section * Creating and using weblogs in ESL/EFL - moderators: Anne Davis, Sandy Peters, Aaron Campbell, Joe Luft - sponsor: CALL-Interest Section For complete session descriptions and registration information, please visit the web site http://www.geocities.com/tesol_evonline/ (best viewed in Internet Explorer).

The EVOnline session "Becoming a Webhead: A hands-on workshop on how to use Web communication tools for language teaching and learning" will be held from January 26 to March 6, 2004. It is intended for beginners, but the presenters would be very happy if those with online experience can help newcomers in the process of learning about web tools for language teaching and learning. There will be guest speakers for each of the six weeks in our session, and most of them will be Webheads. Vance (sic) will be the special guest of this event. Moderators are Dafne Gonzales, Maria Jordano, Susanne Nyrop, and Teresa Almeida d'Eca. It's free and part of the EVOnline 2004 event, for which Aiden Yeh has created a great page: http://www.geocities.com/tesol_evonline/

Sunday, January 25, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, January 31, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, February 1, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 17:42:39 -0000
From: Vance Stevens @emirates.net.ae
Subject: sorry forgot it was Sunday

Hi all,

I must be on holiday. I forgot it was Sunday yesterday. Didn't forget actually, just didn't notice it at all. It's not a day off in Egypt or anything out of the ordinary except it was a feast day, but otherwise nothing particular about it to distinguish it from any other day.

Next Sunday I'll be back home in Abu Dhabi and will be sure and join you and Dr. Bonk, or Curt as he prefers to be called.

Bobbi and I encountered a shark today, a white tip, in very clear and bracingly cold waters of the Gulf of Aqaba. Sharks are common here but you don't see them every day.

Vance

Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 18:16:03 -0000
From: Teresa Almeida d'Eca @mail.telepac.pt
Subject: Re: sorry forgot it was Sunday

Hi, Vance!

We had a lot of first timers from our BaW session and it was one of the greatest Webhead turnouts ever, I believe.

http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/baw/logs/1feb04.html

Enjoy what's left of your holiday!

Teresa

Saturday, February 7, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, February 8, 2004* we met Curtis Bonk in a two-hour conversation, nice event.

Saturday, February 14, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, February 15, 2004 - a nice chat in Tapped In with a bunch of Webheads checking out the Alado voice chat. Those who couldn't get there put up web cams and rolled their own in Yahoo Messenger voice conference. We got a lot of us to do web tours of the areas immediately around our web cams. I had just installed one at my office and gave Webheads a first-ever glimpse of the Petroleum Institute. Claire showed us Marc Siskin at the next pile of papers next to her desk. Juani showed us her garden and a quaint wood house in Chile. At some point her son came over and started hugging and kissing his mom. I snapped a pic and uploaded it to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/files/Chats/040215juani_marcelo.gif (you have to be a Webheads-in-Action member to access it with Yahoo ID and password).

Immediately following the regular noon Sunday GMT session Andy Pinchon held a demo at http://www.alado.net/webheads/ . He writes: "The archive from today is now up at www.alado.net/webheads Click on the link on the home page which takes you to the Agenda page where the link to the archive will be found at the top. Thanks for today to Sus, Teresa, Maria and Daf. Best regards Andrew Pincon Digital Workforce Education Society An Illinois SBDC Affiliate www.digibridge.org

Monday, February 16, 22:00 - 23:00 GMT, at Tapped In (ASO) - Barbara Dieu Talks about blogs in language learning and teaching http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/blog04/. Barbara has been teaching English to secondary school students at the Franco-Brazilian school in São Paulo for 20 years. Since 1997, she has become more and more involved in ICT(website:http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/index.html) and had her students participate and contribute to many international projects online. She coordinates the Foreign Language Department, belongs to the ICT committee and represents This is Our Time project for French and Portuguese speaking countries (http://www.timeproject.org). She is responsible for organizing the Time Classroom Twinning Activity for different schools around the world (http://community.eun.org/entry_community.cfm?area=257) and co-hosting the Euro Language Forum at Tapped In. She is among the finalists of the 2003 GSN Online Shared Learning Award. From the Becoming a Webhead events calendar at http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/chatsessions.html

Saturday, February 21, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, February 21, 16:00 - 17:00 GMT, at Webheads Virtual Office at Learning Times: http://www.learningtimes.org - Arnold Mühren Talks about the use of a/synchronous tools in online tutoring. Arnold Mühren has been a teacher of English in secondary and tertiary education, and an educationist involved in primary teacher training at Inholland University Alkmaar until recently. He coordinated the development of a ground-breaking two-year Post-Graduate Certificate of Education, the first of its kind in the Netherlands, and directed this teacher training programme for a number of years. He designed and developed an annual three-month Erasmus programme on the themes of inclusive education and reflective teaching for visiting students from across Europe, and tutored on it for five years. In the past few years he has been working freelance as an e-learning designer and adviser. In 2000 he was awarded a Masters in Open and Distance Education (OU UK), with a distinction for his second year course work concerning applications of information technology in online and distance learning. He has been participating in several online learning groups and communities over the past years (such as DEOS-L, elearningleaders, eModerators, Webheads-in-Action). Arnold is an online tutor for the University of London's Institute of Education on the Certificate of Online Education and Training. From the Becoming a Webhead events calendar at http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/chatsessions.html

Sunday, February 22, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Monday, Feb. 23, 20:00 - 21:00 GMT, at Tapped In http://www.tappedin.org - Michael Krauss talked about online materials design. Michael Krauss has been teaching ESL at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon for over 18 years. His special interests include CALL, content-based instruction, and teacher training to facilitate Internet use in the classroom. In 1998, Michael began teaching online with the U.S. Information Agency (now part of the State Department), and has developed an online course, "Integrating the Internet into the Classroom," which he teaches for the Graduate School of Education at Lewis & Clark. Michael is interested in conducting CALL training abroad and is planning a trip to Russia later this year for the State Department. Michael's materials for student projects and teacher training can be found on his home page at http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/ From the Becoming a Webhead events calendar at http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/chatsessions.html

Elderbob presented on Moodle on Tools day in Learning Times http://www.learningtimes.org, Feb 24 17:00 GMT

Wednesday, Feb. 25, 21:00- 22:00 GMT, at Tapped In http://www.tappedin.org - Isabel Perez talked about creating interactive exercises online. Isabel Perez is an English Teacher at IES Isaac Albeniz in Málaga. Fifteen years of experience in Secondary Education. Several articles, talks and courses on the topic of Internet and CALL. Webmaster of http://www.isabelperez.com / . Currently participating in two Projects related to teaching vocabulary in secondary and tertiary education. The ADELEX project http://www.ugr.es/~inped/ , (A course for assessing and developing lexical competence on the Internet, English Philology Department - Universidad de Granada) and the INTERLEX project (Vocabulary for students in secondary education) http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/averroes/interlex/index.htm Also working in her Ph. D. Thesis related to Webquests, reading and vocabulary learning. From the Becoming a Webhead events calendar at http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/chatsessions.html

MAKING IT WORK! COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOR YOUNG ADULTS WITH DISABILITIES Sponsored by the College Connection Project of the Advocacy & Empowerment for Minorities with Disabilities Program @ UIC City Colleges of Chicago & The Illinois Division of Rehabilitation Services Friday, February 27, 2004 West Side Technical Institute, 2800 South Western Ave. Advocacy & Empowerment for Minorities Program Forms may also be faxed to: Department of Disability and Human Development 312-413-1804 University of Illinois at Chicago Email to: nisrae1@uic.edu 1640 W. Roosevelt Road, M/C 626 Chicago, IL 60608 This Conference is FREE of Charge to all CCC Faculty and Staff CPD Units Available Special Webcast of the Afternoon Session by City Colleges of Chicago and Digital Workforce Education Society can be accessed from home or work PCs at this link: www.alado.net/login (that's 13:00 in Chicago)

the upcoming Feb 27 conference and workshop for Chicago's educators and administrators is intended to share resources so they can prepare the disabled and handicapped to be employable. This conference will be mostly for Chicago area higher education teachers and administrators and their disabled students who are learning about resources and best practices in training the disabled so they can get jobs. The location for the conference and workshops is very close to our MEDA Technology Training Center http://www.alado.net/meda/id4.html , only 4 blocks away, at Westside Technical Institute, one of our City Colleges of Chicago satellite campuses. We are located in the heart of Chicago's Mexican Community, called Pilsen and Little Village, where large numbers of residents are living and working in Chicago without legal documents. Westside Technical Institute has an enrollment of 3,200 college students, here's their website: http://daley.ccc.edu/wsti . 75% of the 3,200 students at Westside Tech have no legal status in America. The percent of homes in this area with computers is only 1 computer for each 25 homes, our national criteria for the "digital divide" for US families is normally those homes that are under the ratio of 1 home out of 4 without a computer, so clearly the Mexican Community in this area of Chicago is well below the national digital divide level. You can now understand why we have a Technology Center in Pilsen along with a free food bank and provide a lot of social services to the families living here. We have a partnership with Westside Tech and provide training so our students can proceed forward in their education at Westside Tech and begin to move out of poverty and hopelessness.

Now with that explained, I will tell you more details about next week's conference. You know some of what we do from all your virtual work with George, Elia, Ricardo and ourselves and our emails to you plus what we did together for Global Learn Day and Educacion tras Fronteras por Internet. We know your work, interest and commitment working with similar families and the disabled in Mexico and I thought there were only two people we needed to speak to our live and virtual audiences this coming Friday, George and you. I think it best for us to arrange a time to meet in our portal to discuss the details of the program but it will be very simple since we do not have a lot of time and all we need from you is a one slide online which we can put up on our webservers that explains the work you do or plan to do in Mexico. My colleague, Dr. Clarisse Croteau-Chonka and I have only 15 minutes to address the live audience and then accept questions from the live audience who may want to ask you and George some questions too as our virtual co-presenters. We will repeat this workshop two times on Friday so we have a chance to make our points to the live and virtual audiences twice and provide answers to their questions. We will be having some of our virtual colleagues from Tapped In and the Webhead group in the webcast portal from Portugal and Spain also since they are interested in accessible training. The entire two sessions will be recorded and archived for downloading on demand. I hope this clarifies next Friday's event, entitled "MAKING IT WORK".

Dafne attended and said: "it was really interesting and eye-opening. I think it was not recorded, at least the first hour. However there are some slides that you can check because I copied the urls. There were 20 or 21 slides, you only need to change the number at the end and you will be able to get the whole pres:"

• http://www.alado.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/adaslide3.jpg
• http://www.alado.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/adaslide4.jpg
• http://www.alado.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/adaslide6.jpg

And Andy Pinchon reports: "Yes, there will be an archive of the conference which you can access the middle of next week through this link: http://www.alado.net/webheads look for the link on left column toward the bottom. We had two webheads one from Spain, Dafne and one from Australia, Georgina attend as well as co presenters from Mexico and Michigan and over 150 educators and administrators in the audience.

Saturday, February 28, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, February 29, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 21:55:39 -0000
From: "Teresa Almeida d'Eca"
The REO (Real English Online) chat this afternoon at the Alado Webheads Room is now available at
http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/baw/logs/29feb04-alado-reo.htm
Only a few were present: Elizabeth Hanson-Smith (USA), Georgine Nou (Australia), Karen Garcia (USA), Michael Marzio (France), Michael Ivy (italy) and me, Teresa Almeida d'Eça (Portugal). We had a nice chat about Hot Potatoes, my 5th grade blog with the Polish-Portuguese email project including the use of voice mail, Michael Ivy's Metro Page, Elizabeth's Academic Writing YG and voice chat for students.

Monday, March 1, Noon (12:00) GMT, at Tapped In http://www.tappedin.org - Vance Stevens Explains what it means to be a member of Webheads and what binds its members together. Wia Coordinator. From 1997-2003, Vance Stevens was CALL (computer-assisted language learning) coordinator at the MLI in Abu Dhabi. An ESL teacher since 1975, he has implemented CALL since 1979. He has conducted research, produced numerous publications and CALL software, and was Director of ESL Software Design at a software publishing company in California. He has also served on the editorial boards of major professional journals, e.g. TESOL Quarterly and CALICO Journal, and is currently "On the Internet" editor of the TESL-EJ (Electric Online Journal). He is past chair and founding member of the CALL Interest Section in TESOL, current EVOnline Liaison to the Distance Education Sub-committee of TESOL's Professional Development Committee, and serves on the Executive Committee of APACALL (Asia-Pacific Association for CALL). Since 1996 he has developed online language learning environments resulting in two robust communities of practice based on the 'Webheads' concept of personalized web pages and weekly synchronous online events. From the Becoming a Webhead events calendar at http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/chatsessions.html

Saturday, March 6, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, March 7, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, March 13, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Sunday, March 14, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/new and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2

Saturday, March 20, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, March 21, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Last Saturday, March 6, we held Chicago's 2nd Mexican/Hispanic Education Summit at one of our City Colleges of Chicago satellite campuses, Westside Technical Institute where awards were given out to high school students that distinguished themselves with exceptionally high grades in Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Our Hispanic Technology Training Center, MEDA, awarded the students with the highest grades four new computers which will be given out to the students this Sunday, March 21 at 20:00 GMT. The students and their families will be guest at MEDA for a Mexican luncheon and we will have a live session in one of our webcast portals with students in Mexico, Niños de la Sierra, where the Mexican students will provide a presentation on Benito Juarez, Mexico's Abraham Lincoln, as part of the event celebration. March 21 is celebrated in Mexico as Benito Juarez's birthday. Dafne and Michael have graciously agreed to join us virtually and say a few words to the students, their families and some of our local community leaders and politicians who will be present. All Webheads interested in this multi cultural event are also invited. A link has been put up on the www.alado.net/webheads site that takes one to the information and some pictures from last Saturday's event and the login page for this Sunday's event. I've also placed a link on the webheads calendar page: http://my.calendars.net/webheads/ Hope some of you can make it to encourage these high school students to continue their pursuit of a college education and professional career. Unfortunately, Chicago's Hispanic youths have a very poor drop out rate with 50% dropping out of high school, so these four students are not the norm, but are to be encouraged. Best regards Andrew Pincon Digital Workforce Education Society An Illinois SBDC Affiliate www.digibridge.org

I just wanted to report back briefly from a most wonderful online session with the MEDA organization in Chicago, rewarding students who have graduated their computer class. The event was taking place in a Mexican restaurant, where students, their families, teachers and the project leaders from the community were together http://alado.tripod.com//meda/id5.html - voice was broadcast through Alado - and they were showing a webcam, too.

We also met two enthusiast Mexican teachers Gabriel and David who presented slides http://www.innovative-soft.com/dwes/Proyecto_files/frame.htm from their children /computer project http://www.cca.org.mx/dds/web/ventana/ninios.html and the Study center for Global learning at http://www.gcfaprendagratis.org/es/main/students.asp, they encouraged us to assist in their project, so we invited them to join Webheads in Action to meet with other teachers around the world. David & Gabriel - I'm also posting this message to you, so please have a first look at our global community and to a start, join this yahoogroup and introduce yourselves - we're very open and kind to newcomers :-) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/

Dafne, Michael C. and myself said a few words to the audience, Laine was there but had to leave early, and I think Bee was having problems with her sound? This was an amazing situation to be present, and I did learn a lot myself, too; the more I am exposed to the Spanish language, the more I feel I can understand.

As usual, Andy Pincon was managing the technical side of this event on site from the restaurant, his wife Debby joined from home, and their little daughter Gabriela said hello to us at the more informal part of the session - and asked Daddy when he will come home! This was a nice gesture from Andy to let us meet with his family, too, and that makes me feel even more connected :-)

yours, Sus

March 22nd, 2004 GMT 14:45 - 15:15 there is a Technology Day at Long Island University and faculty who have incorporated technology are asked to share what they have done/learned, etc. Laine Marshall plans to attempt a live link-up using web cam and audio, using tapped in and/or yahoo messenger. That is, meet at Tapped In http://www.tappedin.org and from there work out how to join the voice and web cam interaction on Yahoo Messenger. Would anyone be available during that half-hour for a short chat with me? I would want to do a dry run before that to be sure we have a plan. It would be terrific if I could actually set this up and show other faculty. I also plan to show them our yahoo group site, the portal, etc. to give them the idea of establishing an online learning community. Please respond if you are able and willing.

Laine,

Congratulations, by the way, for having a successful presentation. Now, you know have already experienced what most of us experience almost all the time, whether in conferences or in the classroom. Technical glitches are part of our techno-lives as webheads. We have to live with them, avoid them as possible, but the most important of all, is that we have to face them. That is why I believe in having a fall back strategy of some kind. So if what you intended to present does not work, there's always something that could be worked on to get yourself out of the quicksand.

In webheads, Laine, we also document what we do. This documentation allows us to look back at what we have done, and critically reflect on the event as a whole. For me, I always ask myself, what did I do wrong, what did I do right, and what can be done to improve my craft. I am speaking from my experience, Laine. This won't be your last presentation, I suppose, there'll be many more, and I hope that we'll still be around to join you and be part of your tech-savvy life ;-)

During your presentation, I had re-installed Total REcorder (see, my latop crashed two weeks ago) and tested it if it's still working. I didn't know whether TR works well with Alado, so I tried recording our session. Now, I'm wondering, could this be the reason why I lost voice? I really wanted to talk to Gobaad and answer her questions, but was caught up in fixing my voice control settings [sigh]. Anyways, I have bits of your voice conference, and your TI session, too. So, if you would like to have them for future references, just let me know and I'll email them to you. It would also be nice to publish them online for the sake of some peole who weren't able to attend [well, this is if you have time to do this, i know how busy you are].

Well, gotta go, class in a few minutes...

Tah-tah,

aiden

Laine's reply: Aiden and everyone, I started a reply post and was planning to post anyway - I just got home from a very long day since I had to teach class tonight too -- when my post became ridiculously long. I then recalled something called Laine's Blog, and realized that this was the perfect time to post in my blog! So, if you wish to read about my analysis, reactions, etc. to the demo today at Long Island University in which some of you were participants, I invite you to view my post there and to reply or respond, there, here or anywhere to what you see. Thank you to anyone who came to TappedIn and/or Alado at any time today to try and find that session. If you actually found it - congratulations! Here is the url for my blog: http://lainemarsh.blogspot.com/ Laine (I've asked Laine for permission to post her reflections from her blog here, before they disappear into her Blogger archives).

Saturday, March 27, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, March 28, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Tuesday, March 30, 2004 from 17:00-24:00 GMT or 9 am - 4 pm in Long Beach - With colleagues from Webheads I am presenting a PCI or 'pre-convention institute' on Enhancing Online Communities with Voice and Webcams.This is a major 6-hour event where I and five colleagues arrange for participants to experience hands-on use of chat (text only, and voice and web cam enhanced). Although we will be online and engaging with online interactants throughout the session, our first scheduled online event with on-site participants is at 18:00 GMT, at Tapped In, http://www.tappedin.org. At 19:30 GMT we plan to be experimenting with audio in http://www.alado.net/webheads and web cams with Yahoo Messenger. There will be casual online chatting with voice and web cams from then on, and at 22:00 GMT we intend to break into small groups with online participants in anyone's chat area of choice, by now including http://www.learningtimes.org/ or any other online tool mentioned at http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm. Any and all online participants are welcome to join us. Dafne Gonzales is organizing the online participants and has set up a sign-up page for this event here: http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/pci-invitation.html

Thursday, April 1, 2004 Internet Fair: 16:30 to 17:30 GMT, 8:30-9:30 am in Long Beach (see what time this is where you are) - The EV Online proposal titled "Professional Development through 2004 EV Online Sessions" has been accepted for TESOL's 2004 Internet Fair in Long Beach, California, organized by Suzan Moody, Randall Davis, and Malika Lyon. The fair takes place from 8:30-9:30 each morning of the convention (Wednesday-Saturday). I am involved in my role as one of the coordinators for the annual EVOnline events. That aspect of the program is being organized by Christine Bauer-Ramazani: http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/TESOL/2004/InternetFair/EV2004.htm. Webheads intend to be presenting live and online during the time indicated. The schedule of presentations is here: http://www.ilc.cuhk.edu.hk/english/tesol/2004/thurs.html

Friday, April 2, 22:00 to 23:00 GMT, 2:00 - 3:00 pm in Long Beach - (see what time this is where you are), in rooms 103 A-C of the Long Beach Convention Center. I have been invited to present in an Electronic Village Special Event, The Internet Classics Fair to be offered at the upcoming 2004 TESOL Convention in Long Beach, California. My presentation will connect conference participants with members of the Webheads community of practice who will join online from locations distant from the conference. As I have done at this conference the previous two years, I will set up a web cam and use this and voice chat software to enable the local and distant participants to communicate and interact with one another. According to the invitation: "This invitation is based on the high quality of the presentation you gave for either the 2002 or 2003 TESOL Internet Fair. This "invitation only" forum will feature the best presentations from the past few years of Internet Fair presentations. It is a means to bring back some of the best, thus providing access to those who may have missed these exceptional examples of Internet use for ESL/EFL instruction." Webheads intend to be presenting live and online during the time indicated.. http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bikowski/classic2004.htm

Saturday, April 3, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, April 4, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, April 10, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, April 11, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, April 17, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, April 18, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT - Thanks to all who participated in this chaotic testing session (but normal regular webheads intuitive chaos navigation weekly meeting - nothing unusual there). I was running around getting software working in labs and classrooms at the PI and it was only toward 2 p.m. GMT that we settled into a conversation in Learning Times. This seemed comfortable for all concerned and is the way we should start off on Thu. Andy is working to help me get Alado running from here but so far now success :-( Michael provided the clue that helped me crack the Webheads room at LT. I have just tested with Jean Michel and it seems we can use http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=273662 I will be a moderator there and can upload a slide presentation.

Karen's feedback: Reflection about last Sunday's hands-on run.

I learned a lot on last Sunday's hands on -run all over chasing Vance's session. Actually, I learned from everyone's patience and willingness to share their knowledge. Thank you, everyone. And since I've learned from Sus how we can all benefit from a report of the learning, here it goes:

I entered Tapped In (TI) which is the communication central site on Sundays. There we were lead to the action. Margaret was the self proclaimed usher who stayed there through it all. (Although I could see that others where there.... they were quiet.) I am convinced that a camera can give a sense of continuity on live activities... so I run looking for one. I dive into Yahoo Messenger (YM) with many difficulties since I don't know how to gather groups of people into a conference. (How can you invite people to join in viewing the camera without wasting energy.) I guess a list can be created in TI and sent to the YM camera site, who can then invite participants, or conversely, a list can be kept of which camera(s) is/are the one(s) used for the activity. From YM we started to run after others in Learning Times (LT) and Alado. We found that allowing for audio at YM would disallow audio in LT. (Although Venny and Sus where able to use audio in both applications.... ) Could someone figure out how they can have audio in both YM and LT at once and let me know? So in this scheme, we are to disallow audio in YM (use the camera only for continuity) and jump to LT where audio works for both PCs and Apples.

At LT we were treated to the wonders of adding pictures to the whiteboard. And like Daf (and Buth and Sus) explained you can use the LT menu to access files from your workstation. Elizabeth also gave some pointers about picture sizes and, with much pain I realized that my dial up was the slowest in capturing pictures from Spain, Denmark, Venezuela and I think even China. What a show and tell....., we where having so much fun! And we were exhausted..... (being 3+ hours later). The dilemma about having images available on live presentations also came up at the PCI when in Alado I realized that to have a camera image we would have had to load a webpage with it.... which I have seen done but have not found out how to do.

At that point we were wondering what other capacities moderators have in the use of Learning Times and Alado. And I think that we can further our learning by utilizing those sites at their maximum capacity. (if those that have moderator status would come forward and invite others to share in that standing.) How could those rooms in LT and Alado be used with moderator capacities?) Perhaps we can organize a little bit more and facilitate the "chaotic navigation" into its next evolution.

Best regards,

Karen Garcia

Thursday, April 22, 2004 - TESOL Arabia Abu Dhabi chapter event - See a copy of the flyer here. - There was a demonstration and workshop devoted entirely to Webheads: an interactive experience with a live remote audience. It was in theatre mode (in the Petroleum Institute auditorium where Michael Coghlan, Buthaina Alothman, and Vance Stevens did the Global Learn Day presentation on November 16, 2003). The time of the event was 10:00 to noon in Abu Dhabi, or 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. GMT, but Vance was online from appx. 5:00 a.m. GMT in these places:

• TappedIn: http://www.tappedin.org
• Yahoo Messenger for broadcast of web cams
• Learning Times for voice chat and prsentation: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=273662
  I will be a moderator there and can upload a slide presentation.

We followed this plan:

• At 5 a.m. GMT I show up at the PI and set up gear and find people online. We appoint managers of the different spaces (someone in Yahoo, someone in Tapped In, and someone to do crowd control in LT). We talk to each other. I train my web cam on the audience. As they come in they can hear our voices and you can see them if you are on Yahoo. I'll get your web cams up and running on the big screen. I think it would be good if those in the LT chat could write their names on the whiteboard and paste thumbnails of their photos and/or flags of their countries. Decorate the whiteboard. Make a country identity, which always impresses live participants almost as much as it does me. [Dafne had done this although she was not able to attend: http://www.geocities.com/dygonza/wia1/tn_daf-flags.jpg. Dafne was instead entertaining the daughter of Jean Michel Chaupart, who WAS attending this event. However, JM was in Columbia, and his daughter was in Spain, distracting Dafne from her dissertation work: http://www.geocities.com/dygonza/wia1/jacqueline.html]
• At 6 a.m. we begin the demo part. I'll say something about the tools we use along the lines of the presentation we gave in Egypt. At each slide maybe someone in the remote audience can do an explanation. I'll talk, I'll ask you to comment, we can discuss, and we'll try to draw audience members up to the podium.
• At 7 a.m. or earlier we take a short break and then the participants go to the labs where they'll be able to each take a computer and meet you in Tapped In. Those on hand can take breakout groups to offices. In each lab (two labs) we'll try to have a web cam running and we'll have voice up in one of our portals. We can see how it goes (whether to use Yahoo conference, LT, or Alado if we can get it working).

Participants expect to leave by 8 a.m. GMT (noon in Abu Dhabi) [In fact, they stayed almost to 1 p.m. in Abu Dhabi]

This should be a lot of fun. It's the first time anyone in the UAE has asked us to put on a live demonstration at an event at which we are the sole presenter. We are the show on this day and I'm confident we'll pull it off with characteristic aplomb.

Feedback

Bee's comments: http://beewebhead.blogspot.com and web page: http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/tesol.html

Vance's: The TESOL Arabia event went insanely well. I asked questions during the event like how many in the audience use Yahoo Messenger, and got only a sprinkling of responses. During the lab session afterwards, a lady all in black told me it was her first time to use the Internet ever, and there she was chatting away in Tapped In. One of the participants who spoke on Elluminate from our lab, the same one who asked how much expertise was required for this (where Michael gave an answer illuminating all the second nature micro-skills) has already added me to his Yahoo buddy list, and I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't have a supervisor of ESL named Majida and others in one of our chats on Sunday. The reception we rec'd was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. At one point the director of the Foundation Program at PI who was at our session went and got the head of the PI from his office where he was working on Thursday and brought him in to have a look at what was going on - chaos navigation being dealt with through trickery in cat herding! Webheads are an eye opener to the uninitiated.

I was thinking how a few years ago I used to think I was putting my professional integrity on the line each time I agreed to do a session in front of peers that depended on an online contingent appearing for it. One of the first things I noticed about our community, which I used to point out in my earliest presentations, was that people in the group, rather than acting anonymously, HONORED their commitments to meet at given times, and now that we are starting to meet one another in person, frequently in some cases, this comes as no suprise. We have come a long way from announcing the event and tossing the dice to hope that people appeared online to the ability for any of us to snap his or her fingers and get a respectable showing of able and willing participants at just about any online event we concoct.

So what looks to some like a circus performance is in fact, like a real circus, an accumulationship of relationships and skills that comes across in an auditorium with a big screen and a podium and an audience in comfortable chairs like a world-class event. At the moment, almost no one does it better than us, for free at least (John Hibbs and Global Learn Day comes to mind as a possible rival for that pole position, but we do it without any source of funds either).

So here's a pat on the back and a high five to all involved.

Looking forward to the next Webheads Circus act,

Vance

Here's a picture of Buth's web cam from April 24, 2004

Saturday, April 24, 2004 5.10 - 6.40 am GMT, Aiden Yeh is presenting at an International Conference on English Language Teaching Instruction and Assessment - Session Title: Webheads and CMC in Taiwanese EFL classrooms: Weaving it Together in Borderless Education. See http://www.my.calendars.net/webheads/d24/04/2004. She has asked a number of Webheads to put in cameo appearances. The website is in Chinese - http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~fllcccu/2004ch_conferences/2004ch_conferences.htm. Aiden't ppt for this event is here: http://dcyeh.com/ccu_424/ppt/index.files/frame.htm.

Saturday, April 24, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Dafne writes: Vance, Teresa, Arnold, Karen, and Joao (am I missing someone?) joined Doris yesterday at 18 GMT using Yahoo Messenger. This was Doris' first blended event (online-f2f) and she did a wonderful moderating job. She handled the f2f and online audiences like a veteran :-) All of us had the opportunity to share our experiences with Webheads, starting with our maximum guru (Vance, of course), and the audience was ready to ask questions. The session was conducted in a very relaxed atmosphere, and the end of the session was seasoned with music, yes! This is a web page I have created for Doris' event, if you have screenshots send them to me to add to it. http://www.geocities.com/bawebhead/doris-pres.html Doris started her online adventures in "Becoming a Webhead"

Sergei tuning in from Minsk

Sunday, April 25, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. On this day the possibilities included sunrise views over San Francisco from Elizabeth's web cam. Elizabeth always starts off with a dark cam which gets lighter on her face and surroundings as the day dawns. After a lively discussion, joined notably by Kim from Korea (a Writing for Webheads student) some of us (Buth, Dave Winet, Karen Garcia, and Elizabeth Hanson-Smith) ended up at Learning Times where Vance gave them all moderator priviledges in the Webheads room just to see what they'd come up with. One experiment was creation of breakout rooms (Dave's discovery) and figuring out how and who gets to move participants to them.

Monday, April 26, from 9:25-10:50 a.m. MST= PDT. That is 16:25-17:50 GMT. Chris Jones is organizing 4 volunteers to help her with an intermediate level ESL project for a conversation class: http://www.azwestern.edu/modern_lang/esl/cjones/interviews. She's planning to use Yahoo Messenger with voice chat. Her description: "Over the course of the semester, the students have done some interviews with live people. Most recently each one did a professional interview to find out about a job they were interested in. These interviews are modeled after those, so their questions relate to where you work, how much education you have, if you like your job, etc. I have 18 students, and I've divided them into 4 groups. Each group wrote up 20 questions starting with what's your name, where do you live, etc. I set up 4 Yahoo Messenger accounts for them to use and borrowed headsets since the computers in our lab do not have speakers. There are 4-5 students in each group, and each student will ask you 4 or 5 of the questions they wrote up. Then he'll hand the headset to the next person. If I get more than 4 Webheads willing to be interviewed, a second Webhead in the group could possibly carry on a text chat with the 3-4 students waiting for their turn with the headset. If there's enough time, the students could ask the 2nd person the same questions. ... Unfortunately, we won't have a webcam for you to see us. However, if you have one, I'm sure the students would like to see you. ... I told the students we would do this Monday or Wednesday, so some could do it Monday and some Wednesday if there aren't enough Webheads available on Monday."

Here's Sunday's day-to-go version of the plan (looks like a good model for others to follow):

Dear Agata, Buth, Tere, Daf, Sus, Elderbob, Arnold, Vance, Rita, Helaine, Christine, and Joao,

Since I now have 8 of you who can do these interviews tomorrow Monday, I’ve decided to do all the interviews then rather than Wednesday. Since Daf and Buth could only help out on Wednesday, let me say thanks. If some students are absent tomorrow, I may still be able to use you on Wednesday. However, don’t feel obligated to hold that time open. Both Tere and Vance were unsure if they could join us, so I won’t assign them to a specific group. If it works out for you to join a class discussion near the end, that would be nice.

Here’s a review of what we’ll be doing: This project is for a conversation class, so I’m planning to use Yahoo Messenger with voice chat. I have 18 students, and I’ve divided them into 4 groups. Each group wrote up 20 questions to ask one person. They start with what’s your name, where do you live, etc. They ask what job you have, what the responsibilities are, whether you like the job or not, how long you’ve worked there, what the qualifications for the job are, how much education you have, where you got your degree(s), if you’re still studying. Some ask what tourist places there are to visit in your state or country. Basically, the idea is for the students to find out about career possibilities.

I set up 4 Yahoo Messenger accounts for them to use and borrowed headsets since the computers in our classroom do not have speakers. There are 4-5 students in each group, and each student will ask you 4 or 5 of the questions they wrote up. Then he’ll hand the headset to the next person.

With 8 Webhead volunteers, I can put two of you in each group. The students can ask all the questions to one of you first. Meanwhile, the second Webhead can do text chat with the 3-4 students waiting for their turn to speak. When the students have done interviews f2f, they actually only take about 15 minutes. They do need time to write down your answers, so there will be a pause after you speak. They may also need help with spelling which you can supply either verbally or written. After they finish the 20 questions, they can either interview the 2nd Webhead or could continue with a more informal chat. Perhaps you could ask my students what they are studying, their plans for the future, or what they do or don’t like about living in Yuma, AZ .

When all 4 groups have finished interviewing one person, I may invite everyone to join one conference. (There are speakers on the instructor’s computer, so everyone could hear.) If you have questions, you can send me a YM message to edtec2002. I’m planning to project the instructor’s computer onto a screen, so I can see if you send me a message. I don’t think you can do two voice conferences simultaneously, so please do the voice conference with the students and send me text messages if you need to. If things go really wrong and nothing works, I’ll go to Tapped In to let you know.

We practiced with YM in class last Wednesday, and it was the first time most of the students had ever used chat. They are quite excited about these conversations. Unfortunately, we won’t have a webcam for you to see us. However, if you have one, please project it so the students can see you.

There was a lot of feedback on this session:

Meanwhile, Rick checked in Monday April 26 (times mentioned are in Argentina)

Thanks to everyone (Susanee, Arnold, Barbara, Daf, Vance and others!) who responded to my call for help and participation ... Today at 15:00-17:30 I will be working with teachers at ICANA. I should have a live connection for my computer. I would like to meet with any available Webheads during the last part of the workshop. Again, I can't be sure until I get there what my connection will allow me to do, with firewalls and all.

To quickly share a great hint from Vance: on Yahoo messenger go to preferences and connections and keep the settings on "no Proxies" even if you have configured proxies. I plan on giving this a try this afternoon.

In case any of you can attend, here is a quick wrapup of my sessions in Argentina next week (some workshops will need to be done without computers; I am unsure of where/when/if i can get connected). All times are in Argentina time.

Monday, Apr. 26

• 15:-00-17:30 Workshop: Online and blended tools and tasks for engagement Lecture: Activation, mutimedia, online tools: extending, adapting and blending for interaction
• 18:30-19:30 Lecture/presentation for ARTESOL members Activation, Multimedia, Online Tools: Extending, Adapting, & Blending for Interaction

Here's the rest of the tour ...

Parana on Wednesday April 28

• 10:00-12:00 Workshop: Activation.....
• 18:00-19:00 Public lecture; Escuela Normal de Parana, UNiversidad Autonoma de Entre Rios Integrating Web Resources into the Curriculum: Skill Developent through Interaction.

Thursday, apr. 29 in San Francisco 19:00-20:00 Public Lecture Integrating... at ISFICANA

On April 29 (at the 18th APPI Conference), between 10:15 and 11:15 (GMT +1) Teresa Almeida d'Eca gave a presentation on "Building Online Communities for Professional Development" to talk a little about how to go about this, based on her WiA and BaW experience, and the kind of work that can be done with students as a result. She used the Alado Webheads Room for Webcasting the presentation. She invited Aiden, Buth, Daf and Vance (in alphabetical order) to say a few words (max. 3-5 mins: need to be very focused) on how this type of professional development has changed our teaching styles.

Tentative Agenda

• Teresa: 15 mins (max)
• Others: 20 mins (max)
• Q&A: 20-25 mins

Possible topics:

• Aiden: a project/projects you've done with your students
• Buth: students' final projects Webcast for Webheads
• Daf: distance ed courses you've taught
• Vance: student projects at the Petroleum Institute - use of blogs is an example and would tie in with my previous pres. (day before) on blogs.

Andy set up the room for 20 participants, with a special login for Teresa's session. Teresa was joined in Portugal by Claire B. Siskin (back to Portugal after almost 40 years!) and Joao Fernandes, and perhaps Luisa and maybe also Fernanda.

Saturday, May 1, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, May 2, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; The chat tonight was particularly interesting. It was meant to be a repeat of our April 22, 2004 session for the benefit of Petroleum Institute colleagues who were otherwise occupied on that weekend day. It was requested by a colleague named Marc who told me to go ahead with it after organizing an audience. However none of the audience showed up except for Marc so it was just he and I and a couple dozen Webheads who stopped by to entertain themselves and each other, and in the process and incidentally Marc. Marc joined us in text chat at Tapped In and obsered us cranking up our web cams in Yahoo and stayed for the first couple of arrivals at Learning Times, but left just as it was starting to get good. In a session where Elder Bob explained quite a lot about the interface and even at one point summoned Jonathan W to provide more info, we learned (some things I didn't know) about how to share apps and desktops in LT. A particularly good trick involved reducing the LT tool to a corner of the screen and opening a browser in another, then sharing only that browser part of the desktop so that everyone else's whiteboard would show just the moderator's browser. We also learned how to grant or restrict that capability to others in the chat, how to wrest the mic from someone who might inadvertently leave his or hers on, and how to set up chats so that people would have to raise hands in order to request a turn to speak (granted at moderator control). We also managed to get quite a few from Tapped In into the LT chat, where they were suitably impessed. At one point someone in TI was watching Elizabeth's desktop in LT where my web cam was pictured and I waved and said that was me, did he see me? He did and was amazed. It was a great session and lasted almost 4 hours.

Friday, May 7, 2004, 15:00 Taiwan time or 7 AM GMT. - Aiden Yeh's Advanced listening and Speaking class, Group B, will have their final round of online discussion. The live chat is going to be at ALADO, webheads portal [http://www.alado.net/webheads] This session will last for an hour. This session will discuss families, in particular, what constitutes a family? Online guests are Dafne Gonzalez and Karen Garcia.

We will look at the traditional (husbands go to work, wives stay at home and take care of children) American family and will compare it with a typical Taiwanese family.

We will discuss about Gay or same-sex couples and their rights (if any) to form a family. Is it recognized by law and by the society? We will learn more from Webheads about this issue on an online discussion that will help gain a deeper understanding of how people and the world are changing. In retrospect, we will look at our own culture, the Taiwanese, and how it has changed over the years.

The url for our online session is at http://dcyeh.com/sy0304/2ndsem/groupb_projects/family/. There is a link at the bottom for our online forum, but here's a shortcut, just in case you're too lazy to scroll down the page ;-) http://dcyeh.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/

I would appreciate if you could join us this Friday for a live online chat or if you can't make it there, then the online forum is just good enough a place where you could post your comments or opinions regarding this subject.

Thanks.

Aiden

Saturday, May 8, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, May 9, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ - at this session a lot of the discussion was about the Mentoriing conference coming up, coordinating a Webheaads presence there. We have been given two full days, next Sat and Sunday. Andy Pinchon has graciously granted access to a recording of the Alado portion of the chat, where Happy Birthday was sung to BJ in many languages:: "Today's recorded Webheads archive is now available for downloading as a zipped file, a one hour session and 4.5 megs of download, at the www.alado.net/webheads webpage. The link to download the zipped files is on the left column between the Tapped In logo and the movie on the internet. Download the file to your hard drive, unzip the files and when you are online, click on only the html page which will automatically launch the Windows Media Recording."

Susanne Nyrop met with Donatella Persico and her teacher students in Tapped In after they did a tour with BJ. They plan to meet again this coming Wednesday 12 at 20 GMT in http://www.alado.net/webheads/ for a quick presentation of Webheads; they will be six persons and Susanne another one, and others are invited to the meeting. Donatella Persico is with the Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche - Consiglio Nazionale Ricerche, Genova - Italy. She requested a virtual tour of webheads for her students. There are 4 of them, only one is training to become an English teacher, the others will teach other subjects. She writes, "I have talked to them about the importance of communities of practice for teachers. Now I would like them to get a first hand experience with webheds and tapped in. I have also got in touch with BJ tocheck if she could guide them in a tour of tapped in too. I teach them an online course in educational technology within the local school of education."

City Colleges of Chicago will be hosting a five day conference on Tutoring and Mentoring Best Practices at our Richard Daley College Campus beginning May 14 thru May 18. http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/Leadership_Confe rence/e-conference%20agenda.htm and http://www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com/ and http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Conference/May2004/home.asp This annual conference on Tutoring and Mentoring is an ideal platform for Webheads to present their work virtually since Alado will be hosting three days of the conference dedicated solely to virtual presentations covering a number of disciplines. Andy Pinchon has reserved a time slot on Tuesday morning at 14:30 GMT for the live event at Daley College in the auditorium, at which Vance Stevens and Teresa Almeda d'Eca will present, and has also reserved open time throughout the weekend of Saturday May 15 and Sunday May 16 for additional time should anyone be interested in presenting their individual work for the virtual audience. Vance Stevens and Buthaina Al Othman are assisting with scheduling sessions on Saturday and Sunday May 15 and 16.

• Buthaina Alothman has made a web page for the event. Hers has more information on the presenters. Please refer to http://alothman-b.tripod.com/tutormentor_econf04_webheads.htm
• You can access the recorded e-conference presentations here: http://www.alado.net/econference
• Andy's photos from the on-site event are at http://www.alado.net/econference/id5.html

• Tuesday May 18 at 14:30 GMT, Vance Stevens and Teresa Almeda d'Eca will present online for the live event at Daley College in the auditorium
• B.J. Berquist is scheduled on May 17 at 16:30 GMT to present a presentation she has prepared for a forthcoming conference in New Jersey next month, so we get to preview it and finally see and hear some of her work.

B.J. is also arranging for Tapped In to have a continuing presence during the five day conference in the Hot Tub for anyone interested in the conference on Mac's or Apples and we will have full time staff during the day logged in at Tapped In, No. American Central Time Zone ( GMT -5). We usually have over 200 attendees from throughout No. America attend this annual conference and this year we have added the eConference section to the schedule. All Webheads and their invitees will be sent a password for access to the eConference at no charge, so you can ignore the information on the links above about fees since I've arranged to provide this free of charge to the Webhead and Tapped In community. A number of you have excellent material online now, like Vance's presentation for TESOL and Teresa's recent APPI Conference this week, so it should be easy to simply use that content for this audience. I am certain we will find more interest in Webheads and Tapped In during this conference since many in our audience are educators and retired persons who would like to know about Elder Bob's work for instance.

We can discuss this tomorrow during our regular session but for now you are aware of the opportunity to join us in the online conference section on either Saturday or Sunday, May 15-16 or on Tuesday morning at 14:30 GMT in front of our entire audience at Daley College. Also, on Monday May 17 at 16:30 GMT you should try to join us for B.J.'s presentation. The entire live and virtual program will be recorded and hosted on our servers and we are also cutting CDs of the proceedings from this conference for those in attendance to take with them upon leaving.

Best regards Andrew Pincon Digital Workforce Education Society An Illinois SBDC Affiliate www.digibridge.org

On Friday, May 21st, Dafne Gonzales is conducting a 4-hour session with teachers from the Universidad de Valencia. It is mainly about the use of Yahoo Groups and how to make the most of out of them. "I would also like to introduce Yahoo Messenger and this is where I would love to have your help. My idea is to have the participants talk to other teachers online and learn from them how they use Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger. This will be only half and hour, from 11 to 11:30 GMT. I am not sure yet if each they will be able to install YM in all the computers, but I hope that I will have it at least in mine." Here is the agenda of the session: http://www.geocities.com/dafne_gonzalez/cidu/agenda.html

Rif preparing for a next-day session with Vance, May 22, 2004

Saturday, May 22, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, May 23, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. This Sunday will feature the following event:

Sunday, May 23, 2004 at 12:15 GMT - An M.A. TEFL Conference entitled Developing Teacher Practices for Turkey is being held at Bilkent University. The audience and speakers will be alumni of the M.A. Bilkent program. reunion at Bilkent University MA TEFL program. The program URL is at http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~matefl/. This reunion will be celebrated with a conference, where William Grabe, Bill Snyder, Fredricka L. Stoller and Kimberly Trimble will be invited speakers. They are expecting approx. 150 EFL instructors all around Turkey. A joint proposal has been accepted: "Sustaining an online community: Webheads experience" an online presentation with Arif Altun (Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu Turkey) physically present at the Bilkent MA TEFL Reunion Conference (with Vance Stevens connecting online from The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE). The duration of sessions will be one hour, with the expectation that the actual workshop will last approximately 40 minutes, the remaining time being left for discussion and feedback." The online venue for the presentation will be http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=273662. Our abstract:

Language learning is an ongoing engagement, which requires learners to experience authentic use of language. Webheads, which is the name of an online community promoting just that, comprises a number of communities of practice of language students and teachers who meet regularly online to explore ways of using the latest free communications technologies that work over the Internet for language learning and teacher training (for more information see, http://www.webheads.info). Webheads use emerging and existing technologies both in their weekly synchronous meetings and in asynchronous messaging within the group. One part of the Webheads mission is to introduce teachers and students to CMC environments despite many of those involved being novice computer users.

This presentation will be a demonstration of the tools used to sustain such online communities of learners and teacher-collaborators. The on-site participants will have the chance to meet the initiator of this group, Vance Stevens, and interact with a remote audience of Webheads, who will tune in live and online for the occasion using the tools being demonstrated to allow us to hear their voices and view their web cams. The participants will also have the opportunity to discuss with the online guests the advantages and disadvantages of using these tools with students and other teachers. Consequently, the opportunities, limitations and strengths of joining an online community will be examined together with Turkish participants.

May 29th (Saturday), 2004 11am to noon GMT SenseiOnline presents 44th Benkyoukai (Study Forum) Richard Harrison "Online Communities for Teaching Japanese." Richard sensei's paper is at http://www.geocities.jp/rickoharrison/senseionline_paper.html. You can find a full CV at http://www.geocities.jp/rickoharrison/CV.html. Read the paper above and go to TAPPED IN http://www.tappedin.org. There, you will be able to discuss this topic with Richard sensei and others from around the world. TAPPED IN is open to everybody and the presentation will be done in English. Please go to http://www.sabotenweb.com/bookmarks/about/44thbenkyoukai.html for detailed Guest log in info. No sign up necessary. Please log in a few minutes early to get used to the environment or do practice before the actual session. The log of the event will be available in PDF format after several days after the event. Please visit: http://www.tappedin.org/transcripts/artshumanities/

Saturday, May 29, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, May 30, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, June 5, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, June 6, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm. Dafne had just passed her dissertation defense the previous Friday and she and Arnold, Teresa, and Maria had not communicated with the rest of us regarding the result. So by Sunday, a crowd had gathered in Tapped In to await the arrival of any messenger. Maria was spotted first online, back in Cordoba, and she said Daf was just getting back from the airport. The airport? Where had she gone. Que mysterioso!! She had just taken Tere there it turned out, for her return flight to Portugal. She was soon online and all were congratulating her and showering her with cyberhugs. The crowd moved to Learning Times where the whiteboard quickly became a congratulatory greeting card. Eventually webheads went on their separate ways except for Dave Winet who had an idea for application sharing at Learning Times. He had just purchased a logitech web cam with a software panel for controlling its up/down and sideways movements, and for zooming it. We made others in the chat moderators and each moderator took a turn controlling the application remotely. Meanwhile people were stopping by Tapped In asking what we were doing. We tried to keep them informed and invited them to participate. All in all a normal day of complexitasking.

June 7, 2004 - This morning Venny invited me to experiment with a video conferencing room Robin Good (Italy) has opened . It was very interesting and F.U.N. when other webheads joined us as well (Michael, Sus, Karen, Fernanda) and I encourage you to try it out. I have posted a comment and a print screen in my blog. http://beewebhead.blogspot.com Warm regards from Brazil, Bee Barbara Dieu http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/index.html

Saturday, June 12, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, June 13, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Tuesday, June 15, 23:00 GMT, the Ambassador of France will come to Bucaramanga, Colombia, and give Jean Michel Chaupart the French decoration "Palmes Académiques". Jean Michel wishes to invite Webheads to join in a virtual portion of that ceremony:

As you possibly know, the french government has recognized my 30 years work as a language teacher in Colombia with the highest academic french decoration : "les Palmes Académiques". Mr. Daniel Parfait, Ambassador of France in Colombia, will give me the decoration in a short ceremony at the Chamber of Commerce, at Bucaramanga where I live. I hope to broadcast the ceremony on Yahoo Messenger: one way voice, two ways text, but I will not be able to be under control of YM because protocol is very strict. Nevertheless I would like, during mi short speech(in spanish), to show the screen because in the conference room there will be representatives from the Government, universities, colleges, high schools, and also old students and colleagues who need to know that ICT can be useful for education. The ceremony will take place on June the 15th, between 18h-18h30 (local time) = 23h-23h30 GMT. Because of the hour, only webheads from Oceania, Eastern Asia, and the American continent can log in YM. For colleagues from central Asia, Middle East and Europe, I suggest them not to log in because it will be time to sleep and have very nice dreams, and as I cannot control YM and time is very short, it will be better to continue to sleep :) Best regards from south america --Jean Michel Chaupart

Saturday, June 19, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, June 20, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, June 26, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, June 27, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, July 3, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org - I was at a cybercafe in Guilin, China just before the appointed hour but the appointed hour was midnight in China, and I couldn't stay for the chat. Not sure what happened, but I saw BJB who told me that Maggi had said she might not be there to moderate as usual.

Sunday, July 4, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ - By this time I had traveled down to Yangsuo and I found a restaurant that was offering free Internet for patrons of the restaurant. All I had to do was keep my glass full, and enjoy the chatting, with over a dozen fine webheads in attendance

Saturday, July 10, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org - I'm not sure what happened at this one as I was with Yaodong, my online colleague in China, who I met in person for the first time on this day. I was taken out to dinner and then to a foot massage parlor. I was returned to my hotel around the right time for webheads but had no idea where to find a cybercafe in the pouring rain, if I'd wanted to stay up till one in the morning!

Sunday, July 11, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ - Yaodong put me on a bus to Zhongshan leaving an hour before this event, so I was on a sleeper bus. Yaodong and one of his students (Vivian) both promised they would check in to Tapped In and say hi for me, but Yaodong later told me he tried at noon GMT and an hour later and there was no one there? Are we all on summer holidays? I am, http://vancestevens.buzznet.com

Saturday, July 17, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, July 18, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Wed July 21st 14:50 GMT, participate in a workshop for first time CMC-using teachers, at Tapped In, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/becomingwebhead/files/CMC%20program.pdf

2:00 AM GMT Wednesday, July 21 is the time of the Webheads presentation at the 2004 TI Festival http://tappedin.org/tappedin/web/festival/. See the schedule athttp://ti2.sri.com/tappedin/do/CalendarAction?Month=6&Year=2004&state=displayExtCalendar. Dr. Elizabeth Hanson-Smith http://www.geocities.com/ehansonsmi is coordinating the Webheads presentation. The Webheads event is in The On Tap Cafe. To enter, type /join ElizabethH or /enter TapCafe Add the On Tap Cafe to your Favorite Places for a fast entry! Here is her proposal:

Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners

• Our portal Website: http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens//papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm
• An index of Webheads activities: http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/wia-index.htm
• Our group archive and e-list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/

Abstract: A community of practice forms when participants in an online community evolve a working relationship that leads them to focus spontaneously on shared tasks and problems. In such communities it is important that individual zones of proximal development be established and that conditions for scaffolding be enhanced through interpersonal relationships among the participants. What conditions are necessary to catalyzing an online community? What benefits accrue to its members, and what lessons can be applied to the common goal of its members: optimal facilitation of language learning? We invite you to explore these questions with members of our CoP, Webheads in Action.

Thursday, July 22, 14:00 GMT, or 10:00 a.m. in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Webheads have been invited to participate in the multimedia online event described at http://www.eflcenterworkshop.bravehost.com/. The sessions are part of a 20 hour course on CMC and Efl teaching. Computer- Mediated Communication: On line Tools Tutor: Msc. Doris de Martins. The sessions are held Monday through Friday, July 19 - 23, 2004 8:00 am - 11:40 am, local time, at the Universidad Dr. Rafael Belloso Chacín , Maracaibo, Venezuela. The abstract for the event sounds very much like Webheads: "Participants in this 20-hour course will experience hands-on use of CMC tools (on line communities and chat: text only, voice and webcam enhanced, web sites, and on line conference) in safe, educator-friendly online environments. This course will combine face-to-face training and on-line activities. Here participants will review basic on-line teaching and learning principles and will reflect on how to use them in their own classes. Participants will receive information on free software, explore techniques and resources for community-building, and learn the most appropriate uses of synchronous communication resources for language learning. " More at the website.

Saturday, July 24, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, July 25, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, July 31, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, August 1, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, August 7, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, August 8, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, August 14, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. I was able to participate from Prague. There were several people there from a CMC class at the University of Houston http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6320summer/onlineroadmap.htm .

Sunday, August 15, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. I was flying Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi right at this time on this day.

Tue, 17 Aug 2004, Mike Marzio wrote to Real_English_Online@yahoogroups.com: "Webhead Buth and I happen to be in NYC at the same time. I found out by reading the posts at our "sister group" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/. Buth teachers esl/efl at the University of Kuwait, and her daughter is working in the New York City. The important part is that the meeting and 3 hour lunch was great. Buth is so warm and smart, I was so happy we walked 50 blocks to find our meeting place. My wife Valerie and Buth hit it off well - really well - and spoke French together (my wife Valerie is French). Our conversations quickly drifted away from professional concerns and became just normal and general - Thank God for the internet and truly cool people like Buth. "

Buth's response

Hello friends,

Meeting Mike and Valerie face-to-face for the first time in the Big Apple, was indeed more than an amazing coincidence. Maybe some Webheads still remember that Mike, Valerie, and I were supposed to meet f-to-f last summer, in the south of France. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it then as I had a little accident on the next day following my arrival in Nice, France, that prevented me from a 3- hour drive journey that was planned earlier to meet Mike and Valerie in their home. I am so happy that we made it this time, and thanks to our evonline2002_webheads' list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/ , where Mike found out about me visiting with my daughter in NYC.

The good thing is that we managed to meet twice, in the City! The first time was last week, in Soho, downtown Manhattan, where we, as Mike has reported to you in a previous email, had a very good time, enjoyed some Italian food and chatted in English and French, :-); thanks to Valerie for encouraging me to practice my French. BTW, Valerie is such a wonderful company and I was so impressed to know that she is also a judge!

The second time was yesterday, Monday, Aug 23, when my daughter, Muthla, left work early to join us for dinner in Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Again, we had a great time, eating, chatting, and laughing together. It really felt like a family get together event. Those were great, unforgettable, happy moments that only occur in the lives of lucky people, I believe. Webheads indeed are lucky to have found each other; thanks Mike and Valerie for taking the time to meet me and my daughter in the city; and a big thank you for Vance Stevens, founder and coordinator of Webheads in Action, for making all this possible.

Please note that I am to complete and publish a page shortly to share with you some photos taken during the two events when Mike, Valerie, Muthla, and I met face-to-face in the Big Apple; so stay tuned.

Pics: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/wia_mikeandbuth_f2fny0804.htm

Saturday, August 21, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, August 22, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Renata Suzuki invited those interested in teaching (small) kids and the environment please come to TI for her first virtual presentation as a guest of Sue Roseman (an amazing fount of knowledge on teaching kids) to explore the songbook One Green Leaf together, midnight GMT on Aug 24th: K-3+ Resources - Ecology and Environment Event Type: After School Online Start Time: Aug 25, 2004, 9:00 AM Japan, Korea, Indonesia [GMT +09:00] Duration: 1 hour Leader: Susan Roseman (SusanR) and featuring special guest Renata Suzuki. The topic is ecology and the environment . Join us for 15 Great Resources starring http://www.onegreenleaf.net/ and learn how you can readily integrate this GREAT site into most areas of your curriculum. Practical ideas on how to use this site will be presented. Much of the material was hosted at Venny's Moodle: http://sun.ntjcpa.edu.tw/renata/

Elder Bob's reaction: "Kudos or "two poops" for Renata's masterful presentation last eve in TI. Not only was she very well prepared but her utilization of audio as part of her presentation is a great direction to take. The get together was well attended and host Susan Roseman saw to it that everyone was accommodated and that the group stayed on-task. There was a great discussion after the session and I think this is just one of what will be many, for Renata using this technique with blogging....Clap, Clap and take a bow Renata.... "

Wednesday Aug 25, 12:00 to 14:00 GMT (check your time at: http://tinyurl.com/4nspg), Barbara Dieu is giving an audio-conference/workshop in French on "Les blogues dans l' enseignment et l'apprentissage des langues" for the Cyberlangues conference Atelier in France on blogging http://cyberlangues.online.fr/2004/cyborls-b.dieu.html. The venue: http://alado.net/login . Bee's presentation, http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/blogues/blog00.htm, and report: "I think basically that everything went well, in spite of some minor interruptions and problems with pages in Orleans, which were soon corrected. The teachers and students on this side enjoyed it enormously and I hope this was the case for Orleans as well. The webheads once again proved true to their motto! A big public and special thanks goes to Jean Michel Chaupart for his invaluable help with the French language subtleties and rehearsals; Andy Pincon for the kindness and steady support at all hours; Vance Stevens, our distinguished speaker, for sharing his experience with blogs in purest French; Renata, Maria and Elizabeth for their attention and instructions to Cyberlangues participants at the side. I am so happy to be part of this gang :-) Merci encore une fois. Amitiés du Brésil". The audio recording from this presentation is available: The link to the recording in French (text, slides and audio) can be found at: http://cyber04.blogspot.com and on the Alado Webheads page. http://alado.net/webheads

My talk "in purest French":

Je voudrais expliquer d'abord qu'il y a deux aspects a ce que j'ai fait. Il y a premièrement la démarche personnelle d'avoir enregistré dans une sorte de journal en ligne ce que je faisais pendant que je voyageais en Chine (dans ce cas-ci). http://vancestevens.buzznet.com/. L'idée d'écrire des journaux de voyage n'est pas nouvelle. La différence est que, de nos jours, les voyageurs ont accès a l'Internet de presque n'importe quel endroit. Donc leurs journaux peuvent maintenant être en ligne. Certains voyageurs enregistrent leurs expériences par mél mais il est plus efficace de bloguer. Avec un blogue, vous enregistrez vos expériences en continu, toujours au même endroit en ligne, et vos amis n'ont besoin que d'une adresse URL qu'ils consulteront à leur gré. Le photoblogue est un bonus évident pour le voyageur car les photos qu'il prend avec son appareil-photo numérique peuvent être aussi ajoutées au blog, ce qui enrichi considérablement la communication entre l'auteur et le lecteur.

Le second aspect, que pour moi est le plus important, est l'approche pédagogique. Moi, j'ai longtemps défendu le constructivisme et l'idée que les étudiants doivent pratiquer la langue par des moyens communicatifs, et j'ai longtemps employé ces idées dans mes oeuvres pédagogique. Par exemple, j'ai quelquefois remarqué que des élèves ont pris des images de leur environnement proche pour les lier ensemble sur des pages Web qu'eux-mêmes ou leurs profs téléchargeaient en ligne. Je vous donnerai deux exemples. D'abord il y a les pages du projet Metro de Michael Ivy. Ses étudiants nous ont décrit Rome selon leur point de vue. Voila le URL : http://www.britishcouncil.it/students/rome/f_rome.htm. Comme exemple d'excursion par l'image, pour que mes élèves voient et décrivent leurs propres quartiers, j'ai monté ma propre page : http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/apt2corniche/balcony.htm. Voila, ici, quand on clique sur les images, on est conduit a un autre lieu où il y a un autre page semblable, etc. Mais il est un peu difficile de créer tel qu'un page dans HTML sans l'intervention du professeur.

Nous voyons donc que le photoblogue est un outil plus puissant que la page WEB traditionnelle car il permet aux élèves en très peu de temps poster ce qu'ils veulent dire immédiatement et l'illustrer avec ses propres images et avec une intervention minime du professeur. Et je vous laisse maintenant avec mon propre photoblogue: http://vancestevens.buzznet.com/user/?img=2&id=350795

Considérant que la création des pages Web peut être un outil puissant en autorisant l'étudiant pour communiquer des choses que l'étudiant lui-même trouve important et veut dire, il y ont de nombreux obstacles qui peut vraiment prevenir la réalization des photos en ligne quand on doit créer les pages Web qui les lieront et téléchargeant ceux à un serveur de Web quelque part. Un photoblog d'autre part est technologie facile à utiliser. L'interface à http://www.buzznet.com est accessible presque à n'importe qui avec un raccordement d'Internet, et elle est simple et intuitive pour employer. Ainsi à la différence d'une page Web, on s'attende à ce que créer un photoblog est quelque chose que la plupart des étudiants de langue pourraient apprendre pour faire dans une période de classe, ou même deviner pour eux-mêmes. Il ne faut qu'avoir des photos digitales et un raccordement d'Internet, et un désir communiquer. Il est, en d'autres termes, un bon exemple de la façon dont la technologie autorise des étudiants pour développer leurs capacités linguistiques par l'utilisation d'un outil qui leur permet de travailler plus efficacement par l'utilisation de cet outil que n'était possible dans le passé avant que des blogues de photo ont apparu

J'ai creé un autre blogue qui est le résultat d´une atelier que j'ai donnée récemment à Mahdia en Tunisie. Le sujet des ateliers était des cours privés en ligne, et j'ai montré aux participants (qui étaient lui-même enseigneurs) comment travailler avec des blogues. Mon but était de montrer aux professeurs comment utiliser les blogues pour mettre les élèves en contact, pour qu´ils se connaissent mieux afin de former une communauté d´apprentissage: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tunisia2004/mahdia.htm

Je voulais souligner la notion de communauté. Dans un environnement en ligne, les photos des participants sont particulièrement importantes Nos collègues expriment souvent leur satisfaction de voir des photos des membres de la communauté. Je pense que l´esprit d´une communauté se forme très vite et plus facilement avec des photos. Il y a beaucoup de listes basées sur texte où les communautés n´ont jamais démarré tandis que là où les photos existent, où la communauté se soude plus vite. Comme exemple de la utilization des images des participants, dans Moodle, un environnement en ligne, l'interaction par texte de chaque participant est accompagnée de sa photo en miniature. Les pages de la communauté des Webheads est un autre exemple. Voila: http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm.

Si vous cliquez sur une photo qui vous intéresse, vous trouverez une page avec plus d'informations sur chaque membre de la communauté. Souvent cette information est sous forme de blogue ou de page Web d'un membre. Ainsi, à l'aide de ce concept et de l'outil de photoblogue, j'ai commencé à créer quelque chose de semblable pour mes participants à Mahdia, en Tunisie. Buzznet nous permet de montrer 12 photos sur une page. Ainsi j'ai créé deux pages pour montrer les photos des deux douzaines de participants avec des liens à leurs blogs. Vous pouvez voir les résultats ici:

• http://mahdia2004.buzznet.com/
• http://mahdia2004wk1.buzznet.com/

Encore, si vous cliquez sur une photo, vous trouverez une page avec plus d'informations sur chaque participant. Si cette information est sous forme de blogue, c'est le participant qui le contrôle, sans besoins d'intervention du prof. Alors, il est encore plus efficace de bloguer que de travailler de la manière avant.

August 27, 2004, another message from Buth in the Big Apple

Thursday afternoon, Dave Winet and I met with our wonderful friends from LearningTimes, Jonathan Finkelstein and Hope Kandel over a lovely tea at a cafe in Manhattan. I took some pictures, of course, and would create a page to share with you another great, happy, unforgettable, moments we had with the people behind the Squirrels', :-) (To learn more about the Squirrels,please go: http://www.learningtimes.org/about.html) Jonathan is the founder and Executive Producer of LearningTimes and the President of the of the LearningTimes Network; and Hope is a member of the LearningTimes Editorial Board, and produces LearningTimes'library-focused programs and events. http://alothman-b.tripod.com/webheads_learningtimes.htm

This kind of event is another evidence on how online communities of practice can make our wolrd feel great. Again, it felt like one of those warm and happy family get together events. Thank you LearningTimes and Webheads' for making this possible!

Saturday, August 28, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, August 29, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/. Conversation tonight discussed audio files and conversion, creation of macro training movies via Camtasia, and so on.

Elluminate presentation on Thursday, September 2nd at 6.00 am GMT It will run till 7.30 am GMT. TOPIC: Online Learning Communities at Work DURATION: 90 minutes. Michael Coghlan: "I intend this to be a fairly informal presentation/workshop where I'll attempt to get the f2f and online audience discussing these questions with each other (f2f - f2f; online - online; f2f - online). It would be quite appropriate to drop in for any or all of this session. So if you showed up say in the second half hour I might just ask you to say a few words on the topic, and what you are doing personally, and have people ask you questions, and you could leave if you can't stay. So the structure of the session will be loose. Hopefully LearningTimes will agree to record and archive it for us. Is anyone game and able to join me at those times? The more the merrier for this occasion.. - Michael." http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=235631

And Michael's thoughts afterwards:

It was another interesting MVP (multiple venue presentation) session today! Firstly, many thanks to those who attended. I certainly enjoyed the session and the 15 or so people who were with me in Adelaide appreciated the enormity of what we are attempting - to unite face to face and virtual participants in the same learning event.

I'll be interested to hear the archive, but even without hearing it I can draw a lot from the experience. I intentionally wanted this session to be a more informal collaborative event rather than just a presentation, so I was happy that many in the virtual classroom were willing to speak. This of course, without a prior soundcheck, is risky. I really wanted to hear more from Vance for example, but the quality of his audio for us in the conference room was poor. And in these events it is often the case that the f2f audience have come knowing nothing, or come with a healthy dose of skepticism, and any poor quality audio just confirms their suspicions, so it's important that the audio works well.

It raises another issue too. I am conscious of wanting to 'look after' the f2f group more than the virtual group. The virtual participants have each other to talk to, and in a tool like Elluminate, can play with the whiteboard and emoticons, go browsing, or check their email. F2f participants just have me and the screen to look at. They don't have anything TO DO. That's why I tried to get them talking in groups today, at the same time as the virtual participants were put into break out rooms. This worked reasonably well for the f2f participants, but I am curious to know how the short breakout session was for virtual participants. And I had no idea that when people went into the breakout rooms that they could no longer see the slide with the questions!

To make the break out sessions work more smoothly, you really need other moderators to help you put people into groups, and later to herd people back into the main room. And I would make the allocated time in the breakout sessions very specific, and say for example that in 15 minutes everyone please return to the main room. Today I had to rudely barge into each room (except where Carole was a moderator) and quickly drag people back into the main room.

I think too that given the time it takes to weld the two groups together, it is better to limit the focus of MVP presentations. I was quite surprised at how few of the topics we got through - I'd planned to cover a lot more ground. I guess that's a consequence of allowing many people to speak. It's great to have many speak; it just means the focus or topic of the session needs to be narrower.

Because many of the virtual participants attended today in response to a somewhat personal invitation, I find it unsatisfactory that I can't acknowledge the presence of everyone. I know there were people present in Elluminate that I didn't greet, or communicate with at all. With the f2f group, even though I don't know them, you can make eye contact with everyone in the room so I feel I made better contact with the f2f group than the virtual group.

Still, today was about process and experimenting. The topic was "Online Learning Communities at Work." [and] it was a living example of a online community in practice -warts and all!

If you would like to hear the recording of last Thursday's session on Online Communities at Work you can find the archive at http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=522967

This is NOT a public LearningTimes resource. Due to the dodgy audio quality and the fact that the whiteboard and slides for the second half of the presentation were not recorded, I have decided it's not quite good enough for public consumption. So you will be able to view it at the above link but anyone who was not at the session will not be able to (unless they log in to LT as you).

Re the non-recording of the slides/whiteboard: Elluminate appears to have a glitch. If you pause the recording at any point (as I did when people went into the breakout rooms) it sometimes 'forgets' to resume recording the graphics. Audio and text messaging for the whole session are there.

Teresa:

I also enjoyed my time online this morning (for me!) and thought it was quite a dynamic event. Getting us together in small discussion groups was also an interesting idea - happens frequently in f2f sessions - and the fact that we lost sight of the topics gave us the chance to talk about anything we felt like. In my group, Jenny, Tony Redmond and I introduced ourselves and then talked generically about the type of work we do online. Jenny is in Tasmania and one of the things she does is give online computer training to students in rural communities. There is a f2f support, because they are absolute beginners, and she feels this is a must. The feedback is generally quite positive. I don't really remember what Tony said. Bad student, me!!! :-(

I agree with you about first timers and (bad) sound quality, but it is also positive and realistic when they see that not everything always run on wheels. That way they won't think it's their inexperience, or that it only happens to them, when they try to implement something and it doesn't work 100%. It's good that they get a lot of good stuff, but also a little of less good stuff. ;-)

Michael, I'm sure that if your session hadn't been as collaboratively informal as you planned it to be, you would have covered more ground. The approach you chose - I liked it! - gave you more flexibility and I'm sure your audience left with a lot of food for thought!

Many of us know from experience tha it's not easy to deal with so much going on online and f2f, so one of the elements/groups necessarily is less attended to. Quite natural! In this case your priority was definitely the f2f audience. And since most of us online knew each other quite well, and kept making those text comments we're so used to, we felt at home: Like fish in the water! :-)

Congrats! :-)

Saturday, September 4, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, September 5, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/: Sus wrote us afterward: "I just posted the roughly edited chatlog from today's long session in TI, in a folder called 2003-04 temporary folder for chatlogs. Vance used to put chatlogs online, I've done so from time to time, as well, but not lately. Elizabeth has also been doing this, and some others as well. Distributing tasks is one way to get things done. Today Candace says she will try to take over this task for a while. You're so welcome Candace! As you may have remarked, on every page that Vance has created for us Webheads, there is a reminder to let us know that particpation in Webheads sessions also mean that they might get opsted in the public online, to make sure we're not violating any privacy. Of course, it is always a good idea to cut out very intimate messages, and also leaving out email addresses. This is why chatlogs posted online should be edited, and this can be timetaking. Another thing is I found out we're reaching our limits for storage in the yahoogroups, so I deleted an old chatlog I had put up myself last winter, to get room for this one.

Let me share a good exemplary story about how Wendy wanted me to meet with another teacher colleague some weeks ago, so we opened a conference in YM, and as Doris logged in, she had an invitation, as well. Doris brought in one of her teacher colleagues from her recent workshop, also from Maracaiobo - and Paula was bubbling with enthusiam because she had already had experienced succes in using online components in her university classroom, just after having followed the one week's workshop with Doris and some other webheads. I can assure you this was a great motivation for everyone. After having spent some time with Wendy and her friends, reviewing their suggested blended learning EFL course design and showing how other webheads are using blogs, YM and homepages, I did learn another lesson about sacffolding novices, and for each episode like this one, I feel better prepared for teaching online one way or another. Wendy, I know you find good inspiration by following our mail conversation, looking at homepages and projects. Do not hesitate to ask for an opinion, some good advice, or just sharing your own learning whenever you feel like it. As you can see, Webheads are unfolding a broad fan of different opportunities to jump in and be present, either as presenters of just as supportive participants. And, I know for sure that for each of us that are active and openly contributing, there are many more that are just reading along and taking away what they can get. Which is fair enough. But the more we're together, the happier! For example, this Sunday I think all in all 20 or more people came in and joined us in our weekly Tapped In chat. This begin already at 12 noon GMT which is terribly early for you West coast people, but most Sundays people come and go for several hours; today I still saw some activity around 15 GMT when I closed my connection down. And a richness of planned projects were discussed. Hopefully the earlier tradition of sharing the chatlog will be taken up again: I could post it in our Files folder. You can locate it on the left side menu when you get to the homepage of evonline2002_webheads Yahoogroup. No more for now, the rest was said in a quick YM chat with you just now :-) yours, Sus"

Saturday, September 11, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, September 12, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

Wed, Sept 15th at GMT 5.30 am at the Australian Learning Communities Conference http://www.alcnconference.com.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=18414, no prizes for guessing what Michael Coghlan might be talking about at this session! Yes - Webheads! The topic is Staying connected: sustaining an online learning community. It is a 40 minute presentation and it would be great if as many Webheads as possible could be there. I will ask some to speak to the live audience. It will be using Elluminate at LT, and probably the main meeting room. Reactions after the event:

Dear Michael or The Voice, Congrats on a very interesting and lively presentation just now with several Webheads participating. You had a great choice of content and just the right mix of live participations from us and questions/comments from the audience. Absolutely great! I'll include it in the WiA Index as soon as you give us the URL. Hugs, Teresa

Thanks for this very positive feedback Teresa. And thanks to you, Bee, Chris, Arthur, Dave, Buth, and anyone else I've missed for being there. I'm looking forward to reading the text chat when I get home and check the archive. It's already up and available at http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=530396 - Michael.

From Mary Jane Danan in my Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments course: Vance, thanks for letting us know about the online session today. I had never heard of Learning Times either--I found it easy to join and use! I very much enjoyed the "live" conference experience. Also, it really gave a feel for the Webhead community exhuberance I have heard so much about especially from Teresa and Dafne, my instructors in a previous course.

Hi Michael, Wonderful presentation...already signalled in http://beewebhead.blogspot.com Warm regards from Brazil, Bee Barbara Dieu

Saturday, September 18, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Rita Zeinstejer writes: "Would anybody's students --post intermediate level, 17-18 years old-- be willing to have a chat on Yahoo, in September, on Saturday 18, at 16:00 GMT ? Mine are willing to talk about "Social gatherings in different countries: when, how, what for, people meet." We started talking about that in class, and they became aware of many significant differences, such as social gatherings at funerals here in Argentina, which might give food for thought and discussion... Obviously, I´m also interested in the final product, which I'll hopefully use for my Chat presentation in Spanish in October. Thanks to all in advance, cheers !! Rita "

Sunday, September 19, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Buthaina Al Othman posted this to the Webheads list: My last online class at EFI-Study.com has been postponed to this Thursday, when one student is going to present his short research paper. If you are free on Sep 23, at 18:00 - 19:30 GMT, please be our guest and feel free to ask or discuss any of the points included in the student's presentation. Of course, other interested Webheads are welcome, too. To find our EFI-vertual classroom, please go to: http://www.study.com/index And then, click on:

• 1b. HIGH-INTERMEDIATE and ADVANCED STUDENTS!:
• Click HERE to practice your English NOW!

Friday Sept 24th Voice Tools W/Shop for ESL/Literacy Teachers at the Conference on Community Languages and ESOL (New Zealand) http://www.clesol.org.nz/ . Title: Hearing Every Voice - with the aid of the Internet. Time: 1.00 - 4.30 am GMT. I envisage something like this: (all times GMT)

• 1.15 - 1.45 in Tapped In (would be nice to meet some Webheads there to text chat with)
• 1.45 - 2.05 Yahoo (only I will be in Yahoo but I'll try and encourage w/shop participants to talk to those online via external mic and speakers)
• 2.05 - 3.00 Wimba Voice Boards/Voice Email (if you feel like posting a message on the board at http://tinyurl.com/3ryun that would be much appreciated)
• 3.20 - 4.15 Alado (http://www.alado.net/webheads) and/or Elluminate We'll begin in Alado and may go on to Elluminate (http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=235631) if there is time and interest. It would be good to have some Webheads present to talk about how they've used voice tools with students.

The event was strongly attended by Webheads. Buthaina Alothman created a record of this event at http://alothman-b.tripod.com/wia_michaelc_wshop_09242004.htm

Chris Jones provided a play by play:

Michael Coglan's workshop yesterday was quite a success. I was amazed and impressed at how his onsite participants jumped right in and tried out several different Internet tools within about a 3-hour period. I think he had about 25 people there onsite. We started out in Tapped In, and it was quite amazing to see so many guests popping up one after the other. BJ explained a little about how TI works in between comments from the guests. These guests were not just boundary members, or lurkers! Finally, Michael sent them off to other rooms, so the conversation didn't scroll by so quickly.

Next we went to Yahoo Messenger, and several participants took the mike and came up to visit with those of us online. Unfortunately, YM closed up on me a couple times, probably because I had too many windows active on my 56K modem.

Next, the participants went on to use a Wimba voice board and possibly have a break, and we Webheads took our our breaks. I had recorded a welcome on the Wimba board earlier. Today when I went back to look at it, I had two replies to my greeting. However, there had been so much traffic on the voice board that it seemed most participants must have made several contributions--starting new threads and replying to various threads.

From there we went to Alado. Buth made a great impromptu explanation to many participants as some were in the room Michael sent us to and some were in the Webhead room with Michael. Daf and I contributed as well. Then on to Eluminate. Buth and Michael did a great job of showing everyone in Michael's office how to use Eluminate. We had all kinds of drawings and comments on the white board.

Previously, I've been online with presentations when it was hard to get anyone to speak into the microphone. Thus, I was quite impressed at how many participants spoke up and tried these different Internet tools.

Here is some more feedback on this session, from attendees:

• Michael, Thanks for an inspiring workshop on the friday of the CLESOL conference. I have met up with some other prospective netizens at work here who want to get our whole polytechnic on to E-learning. So to start with how do Igo about joining Webheads for a start ...
• “Engaging, great ideas”
• “I loved it! Michael is passionate about the subject and has inspired me to seek Webheadz!”
• “A very stylish and edgy presentation”
• “A most interesting session”
• “Extremely smooth presentation actually using what he was talking about – very risky but he made it look easy”
• “Good delivery method, subject knowledge and explanation of concept”
• “An eye opener into another world – the future? If so I’m glad I’ve been given a window in”
• “Really interesting material. It gave a glimpse of amazing possibilities for EAL teaching/learning”
• “Relevant, relaxed, clear”
• “New info and presentation – visual”
• “Mind boggling!”

Sat Sept 25th at GMT 5.00 am, Keynote by Michael Coghlan: Finding Your Voice on the Internet - changing the language, building community, and reducing diversity. Michael says, "Everyone is invited to attend but this will be more of me talking than anything else, though Vance and a colleague from Canada, Colleen Kawalilak, are helping me out with this but everyone is of course welcome to come and listen and talk in the text chat." In the Elluminate Meeting Room. Participants in my multiliteracies course were there. Graciela's comments: "I had a hard time with my dial-up connection while trying to attend the presentation. I was disconnected several times. I'm awfully sorry about that. I couldn't hear much of the presentation, but in spite of that, I liked the experience. I think this is an excellent tool and a great opportunity for teachers who, like myself, don't have easy access to face to face presentations. I'm glad I've tried it. I became a member of Learning Times since I intend to use it in the future for my professional growth."

International Online Conference on Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Research - September 25-26, 2004 The basic aim of this conference is to provide a venue for educators, established scholars and graduate students to present work on a wide variety of pedagogical, theoretical and empirical issues as related to the multi-disciplinary field of second and foreign language teaching and research. On these two days we will gather to share information and capitalize on each others' learnings, experiences and contributions. This conference will also give you an opportunity to make global connections with people in your field. The two days of sessions will be supplemented by keynote presentations delivered by distinguished professionals. For more information visit http://www.readingmatrix.com/onlineconference/index.html

Saturday, September 25, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, September 26, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, October 2, Andy Pinchon: reports: "As many of you may know, US Public Education at grades K-12 is going through a great change as a result of the economic downturn, the way public education is funded in the US and the impact of the new federal law, No Child Left Behind. This Saturday, October 2 from the hours of 9 am thru 3 pm, ( 14:00 thru 20:00 GMT ) we will be a part of one of the largest public education events we hold each year for Chicago students and parents of middle school age at the McCormick Center, the Annual Chicago Public High School Fair with over 50,000 students, parents, teachers and education administrators present. We will be doing hourly webcasts on virtual tutoring and mentoring over the Internet via a dial up connection with our partner organizations as part of Chicago’s solution to bridge the current education crisis effecting 383 of Chicago’s local public schools failing the No Child Left Behind education standards. This program is the first of three events we are holding and webcasting jointly with other partner organizations during the next two months. Our group of partners will be conducting a variety of virtual events over the Internet again in October and November. You are welcome to join in anytime during the hours listed above and see how the Internet is providing live one-on-one tutoring and mentoring to thousands of students in math, science and English. You can join in the webcast Saturday at the hours listed above by clicking on this link: http://www.alado.net/login Many of the hourly sessions will be recorded and archived if you can’t make and posted to the www.digibridge.org website next week. Hope to see some of you in this weekend’s session. (Unfortunately for some of you, Alado does not work with Macs - Vance)

Saturday, October 2, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, October 3, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Saturday, October 9, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT (9:00-10:00am PDT/12:00-1:00pm EDT) at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, October 10, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 5:00-7:00am PDT/8:00-10:00am EDT/12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Michael Coghlan did a short presentation Monday, October 11, 2004 at 01:30 GMT - 02.15 am GMT on Online Learning Communities. He invited any Webheads in the Americas or Asia who were online at that time to pop into his LearningTimes office at http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=235631 Daf and Vance were on hand to say a few words about online learning communities to a group of librarians.

" Winners of the 2004 Lola Awards were announced live online during "The Lolas" webcast on Tuesday, October 12th, from the Training Fall Conference & Expo in San Francisco, CA. The prestigious Lola Awards recognize outstanding achievement in the design, delivery and production of live online learning events across the globe. "

Jonathan F. was a great online presenter while Jennifer Hoffman and Jown Walber were on location and it was possible to hear the audience applaud and laugh. I had actually nominated amazing Thiagi for his excellent and fun interactive workshop sessions, (and I'm so happy because he was awarded with my motivation).

But because of time constraint, I missed this event and am so grateful that Buth pointed me to have a look late yesterday evening. Buth was present online and surprised to see the last of all the awarded nominees when one crazy Webhead was awarded in the Lolitas category Funniest Live Online learning Moment, (nominated by two anonymous persons), but best of all was an encouraging statement by John Walber who spoke about the Webheads as a very important group for LearningTimes - scroll forward to the last three minutes or so of this recorded session to hear his speak!

This message sent to the facilitator of a webinar with teleconference, explains the situation when a comic self portrait was taken: "Sometimes you do silly things in the privacy of your office, where nobody can see you. I was so eager to test my brilliant invention for an annoying problem: wanting to have my hands free for the keyboard AND listening to the [virtual classroom] session [by telephone]. I was completely unaware of the irritating scratch noise it must have generated to all other participants [on the phone]. And, it was only when someone asked if they could see me that I thought of taking a snapshot and sharing it with the other participants, and it was only then that I realized how idiotic I looked with my feminine scarf invention :-) By the way, it worked perfectly. No stress and no telephone-tired arm"

http://www.thelolas.com/snyrop.html

Sus

PS This reminded me of a similar situation when Dafne received a book price for her priceless self portrait http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/dafne.htm

Ps PS I laughed even more when Daf told me that in Caracas, Lolas is slang for tits :-)

Rita Zeinstejer's presentation on "Chat in Language Learning: Authentic Interaction in Real Time" (as translated from Spanish "El Chat en el aprendizaje de idiomas: interacción auténtica en tiempo real"), will be on October 15, at 5.30 pm GMT. The first hour or so will be devoted to the talk, slides, pix, etc, and she's planning to connect to YM at about 6.30 pm. for online interaction. Rita's description of the event:

I'd like to invite those who can make it to a presentation I'll give here for a Spanish speaking audience made up of language teachers --English, Italian, Portuguese, French-- willing (hopefully ;-)) to know how to use Chat for language learning. I have translated, amended and enlarged my "Vindicating Chat" as the organizers want to have a different, more cosmopolitan audience. I have been slotted for an hour and a half, during which I'm planning to connect to YM to allow Spanish speaking members of this fabulous community to address the audience for just a couple of minutes, if possible. The starting time for the presentation is 5.30 pm GMT, so I'll get connected about 6.30, once I have "rushed" through slides, chatlogs, screenshots and pix for only an hour...

Saturday, October 16, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time. http://tappedin.org/ti2web/calendar/ti2dec03.html#lang2 (this link was working March 21, 2004)

Sunday, October 17, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. The chat this Sunday will focus on Active Worlds with guests Bruce Neubauer and Bronwyn Stuckey facilitating. "Bron' has had experience with Active Worlds and is now working with Atlantis Quest http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/start/index.html. Bruce writes:

If we want to go to Active Worlds next Sunday morning, the URL is http://www.activeworlds.com/tour.asp# and the world at the top of the page (that looks like a Van Gogh painting) is "inhabited." I guess the point is that there may be educational situations in which a sense of geography contributes to the learning/teaching experience. What is missing, of course, is many-to-many audio.

I know most Webheads prefer free resources and for that reason may not be much interested in things like xBox. But the new xBox due out soon will have many-to-many audio plus virtual emvironments. The problem, of course, is that other than for military purposes the xBox games available are not suited for educational purposes, and Microsoft probably will not spend several million dollars on an educational project rather than a first-person shooter.

I am wondering if "Sims3" (when available) will allow humans (represented by avatars) to interact with one another and with avatars in the game from a first-person perspective. In any case, i think there is educational potential in these 3D environments.

Saturday, October 23, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, October 24, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. On this particular day we got webcams up for Vance, Claire, Rick, and Aiden. Sergei had been online earlier to give me the URL at Learning Times for the Elluminate chat room for the upcoming conference and so we were all there when Sergei arrived. By then we had made faces in our web cams and I had got a screen shot of Rick making a face above the notice in Yahoo IM to 'Report Abuse' and pasted that in the LT whiteboard. Someone had written there VANCE with an arrow pointing to the picture. I annotated that to NOT VANCE, to which the online interactant added NOTICE VANCE. So I scribbled in NOTICE VANCE's friend, and so on, as you will see when I put the screen shot here, another Webheads classic. Antonio from Writing for Webheads also joined us at LT but we were prevented somehow from hearing his voice.

At 10:15 am Chicago Central Standard Time, or 16:15 GMT, Thursday October 28 the City of Chicago and our Chicago Public Schools holds the 8th Annual Principal for A Day event http://www.pfad.cps.k12.il.us/ . This is an intitative of Mayor Daley encouraging the business and civic community in Chicago to provide public support for one of our 600 Chicago Public Schools. I have selected an elementary school with 1,200 students on Chicago's far southside, on the border of Gary, Indiana, Gallistel Language Academy, to be their School Principal for one day. We have adopted this school as part of the outreach program we have at Digital Workforce Education/Alado, City Colleges of Chicago and MEDA. This school is 93% Hispanic, 5% White and 2% African American. and below the poverty line. It is also one of the No Child Left Behind failing schools, one of 383 in Chicago. We will be in the Alado.net webcast portal at this link: http://www.alado.net/login/id14.html with some of our colleagues in Mexico who work with Mexico's disabled children and adults using assistive technology, the internet and this portal technology should any of our Webheads, especially those in Spanish speaking countries want to encourage a goup of 4th grade students and inspire them to continue with their education regardless of the difficulties they are experiencing. I hope some of you have a few minutes to say a few words to these 10 year old children. This class is bi lingual and we will have a webcamera on them so you can look at them if any of you can make it on a short notice and say a few words. We will be in the portal for about 40 minutes from the start of the class and it is totally unstructured and open for dialogue with the children. Thanks in advance. Andrew Pinçon Digital Workforce Education Society An Illinois Small Business Development Center Affiliate http://www.digibridge.org

Dafne Gonzales has been invited to present at the "Congreso Internacional "Soluciones CALL para el Aprendizaje de los Idiomas" http://www.eafit.edu.co/call2004/ in Medellín Colombia (Oct. 27-30). The plenary is about CoP's for teachers' professional development, and Webheads will be the case study. The plenary will be on Saturday 14:30 - 15:30 (GMT) and will have connection to Internet (but only for one hour). There will be 3 workshops on Friday and 2 on Saturday, in which Webheads are invited to participate. Each participant will have his/her own computer with Yahoo Messenger and Java installed. Different participants will come to each session and the idea is that they have a direct testimony about webheads from webheads. Thomas Robb and Susan Gaer will be there too.

At the workshops (timings below):

1. Meet with webheads at Yahoo Messenger (I will project the window on the screen)
2. Some webheads will go to Tapped In, and some others to Alado and participants will take turns going to the different venues. If time we can try Elluminate in LT.
3. If you have web pages or pics you would like to show, have them handy. I will try the connections as soon as I get there, I will keep you all posted.

Friday Workshops

• 18:30 - 20:00 (GMT) 1:30 - 3:00 (Colombia) 2:30 - 4:00 (Venezuela)
• 20:00 - 21:00 (GMT) 3:00 - 4: 00 (Colombia) 4: 00 - 5:00 (Venezuela)
• 21:30 -23:00 (GMT) 4:30 - 6:-00 (Colombia) 5:30 - 7:00 (Venezuela)

Saturday Workshops

• 18:30 - 19:30 (GMT) 1:30 - 2:30 (Colomb.) 2:30 - 3:30 (Vzla.)
• 19:30 - 20:30 (GMT) 2:30 - 3:30 (Colomb.) 3:30 - 4:30 (Vzla).

Friday, October 29, 2004 20:30 to 21:30 GMT, Vance Stevens presented at session 7 on Learning From Others - Learning in a Social Context; links to resources and the video are here: http://www.doris3meflcenter.bravehost.com/the_learning_classroomwelcome.htm and there is a template for my power point presentation at http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/theenglishworkshop under files. Schema for the session can be triggered at http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/learningclassroom/session_overviews/social_context_home7.html. Participants will meet starting at 20:00 GMT at http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=416360. Session organizer Doris Molero informs me, "There you'll find the recordings and there's also a website at the OpenSourcED server http://sun.ntjcpa.edu.tw/classroom/". Dafne Gonzales will be joining us from Cali, Colombia, where she will be giving workshops at a conference where she's been invited to give a plenary address: http://www.geocities.com/dafne_gonzalez/eafit/eafit-call.html

Saturday, October 30, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, October 31, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'. This will be the Annual Webheads HALLOWEEN event, so don't miss it.

The Belarusian Association of Teachers of English ( BelNATE) and Minsk State Linguistics University will be hosting the 6th International BelNATE-IATEFL Conference 'Teaching English as a World Language in the Information Age' on November 3 - 5, 2004 11:00 to 12:20 GMT and 12:30 to 14:10 on the two days. We expect approximately 250 EFL instructors and specialists from all over Belarus and abroad. The aim of the on-line workshop is to bring together EFL teachers and specialists in an online session to demonstrate a number of synch/asynch tools available on the web. This will take place at the PC Lab of Minsk State Linguistics University ( Building B, Room # 104 ) . Sergei Grid, organizer, writes: "I am going to book our PC Lab for two days: November 3 ( Wednesday ) and November 4 ( Thursday ). We may go like 40 min + 40 min or 1h 20 min depending on the format of your presentations. The PC Lab houses 16 computers plus a teacher's workstation . A data projector and a whiteboard will be available for the conference participants especially for those without PCs ( we'll try to accomodate at least 10 people ). A webcam will be available ( please, be ready to hook up your webcams too! ). So, we 'll have 20-25 people. 16 individuals will be on workstations. 2. The main audience will be academic/university teachers . It will be their first experience with on-line communication tools (creating blogs hands-on may take a lot of time ) Beginning from September, I am going to organize some online chats in TappedIn to practise.( check out http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/Teachers/onlinevents.htm)."
Speaker Proposal Form http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel//Teachers/conform.htm
BelNATE Conference http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/Teachers/conference04.htm
BelNATE Online Events Calendar http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/Teachers/onlinevents.htm
BelNATE Conference Blog http://bysergei.bravejournal.com/
BelNATE Conference Guestmap http://pub33.bravenet.com/guestmap/view.php?usernum=2813894146
BelNATE http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/Teachers/belnate.htm

Feedback on these sessions:
Here's the link to the BelNATE recordings: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=570543

• Susanne Nyrop's report from Wednesday: http://www.xanga.com/susnyrop
• Chat logs from Sergei
  • http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/chatlogblogs1a.htm
  • http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/chatlogblogs1.htm
  • http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/belnatechatlog.htm

Rick Rosenberg At the ABLA and BNC (NTC) conferences in Guatemala City. https://www.iga.edu/main.php?parent_id=0&id_area=89 and plans "to incorporate a short YM conference to illustrate WiA into three sessions I am doing here in Guatemala. It has to be short as I have a lot of material to cover for the administrators and teachers. I would like to know if any webheadies would be available to connect for a voice and video YM conference on the following days/times. It would be ideal if someone were able to connect with me in a conference *before* my session starts and leave the connection open (and multitask with other work or folks while they wait). I have a number of sound and video files as part of the presentation, so I won't have much time to tinker with connecting once the sessions start and can't interrupt whenever. Tomorrow (!) is my first session. It is a challenging group--70+ directors of binational centers from all over latin america. A challenge because many are at the point of making decisions on whether to invest or how to invest in technology (this is the kind of sesssion where it would be wonderful if the technology actually worked). My session is on Educational Technologies: New Trends. If you would like to stop in and say hello--10 or `15 minutes--

• I will start my session at 6:30pm UTC (12:30 noon time here in Guata) and run for about an hour. The ideal would be to connect with me about 6:15. I will leave my webcam on so you can see the audience. An idea number would be 2 or 3 as I have a very small screen to work with. Please set your image size to small. I intend on making the YM session towards the end of the talk.
• My session on Wednesday the 3rd will start at 9:45pm UTC/GMC (3:45pm Guata time). This session is on Activating classroom activities with online tools and multimedia. The audience will be anywhere from 30-70 teachers.
• The session on Thursday the 4th will also start at 9:45pm UTC/GMC (3:45pm Guata time). This session is on the use of online tools for teaching English (more of an overview session to introduce teachers to some principle resources). "

Saturday, November 6, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, November 7, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities inherent in 'go from there'.

NET*Working 2004 – Inclusion and Inspiration 8-19 November An online conference focused on using technology to deliver education and training more flexibly to boost business performance. http://flexiblelearning.net.au/nw2004/. Michael Coghlin is monitoring Elluminate for this one but it's a paid conference. If wishing to participate, contact Michael privately regarding prospects.

Saturday, November 13, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, November 14, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ . Vance tuned in from Mae Hong Son in far northwest Thailand for this one. Talk centered on preparations for the upcoming Tutor Mentor conference, with Andy Pinchon explaining his programs for disadvantaged kids.

November 15 and 16, 2004 bi annual Tutor Mentor Conference for the Fall in Chicago. This Fall's conference and eConference Overlay is especially important given the impact of the US Federal Education Act, No Child Left Behind, on so many US schools that are failing their state standards. While leaders of volunteer-based tutoring/ mentoring programs gather in Chicago for the 22nd Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference, at the District Offices of City Colleges of Chicago across the street from the Sears Tower, the eConference Overlay will be an opportunity for many other education leaders and supporters from around the world to network, share ideas and collaborate in capacity building.

eConference Format: On November 15 and 16 one workshop will be presented in the morning and a second in the afternoon using advanced video conferencing and web casting technology. Click this link to see examples of these types of workshops from the May 2004 Tutor Mentor eConference: http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/partner/cc/conference/May2004/agenda.htm

Topics: The goal of the conference is to build groups of understanding and action focused on the following key issues:

• a) convergence - tutoring, mentoring, education-to-careers, youth development, etc. mean different things to different people. Yet they are all part of the actions needed to help individual kids move from poverty to careers. Workshops under this theme are intended to draw people from different strands of service into collaborations that deliver multiple services from central sites in neighborhoods where such services are needed
• b) out of the box learning - while many efforts are aimed at improving what happens at schools during the school day, the conference focuses on increasing the variety of tutoring, mentoring and learning opportunities that are available in every poverty area and near every poorly performing school non-school hours, on weekends and in the summer. Workshops in this category demonstrate the many different types of learning and mentoring opportunities that are working in some parts of the world which could be working in many other places.
• c) eLearning and Collaboration - The T/MC believes that the Internet offers the only hope of gathering millions of people in on-going learning, networking and collaboration that is essential to make more and better tutoring/mentoring and learning opportunities available in all places where they are needed. Workshops in this category will demonstrate the many ways the Internet can be used to distribute knowledge, build collaboration, and help youth and leaders find resources to help them achieve any goal.
• d) Leadership Development - workshops in this topic area focus on developing leaders who use the Internet effectively to build and sustain effective, volunteer-based tutoring and mentoring-to-career programs. Workshops focus on building long-term leadership for tutor/mentor programs, as well as in business, university, philanthropy and media.
• e) Sustainability - this community is focused on generating new streams of revenue from public and private sector initiatives. The discussion focuses on the distribution of resources on a continuous and flexible basis to all places where kids need extra help. Workshops that share innovative sustainability strategies from one part of the country with other parts of the country are most welcome.

If you would like to present a workshop through the November eConference, within one or more of these topic areas, email Andrew Pincon at pincon@digibridge.org . For further information or to present a workshop in Chicago at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference, email Dan Bassill at tutormentor2@earthlink.net to discuss the topic and times that you are available to present. Best regards Andrew Pincon Digital Workforce Education Society An Illinois SBDC Affiliate www.digibridge.org

Feedback:

Barbara Dieu has created pages illustrating what her computer lab was like during the tutor mentor conference Andy Pinçon organized on the Alado platform.

• http://www.beewebhead.net/alado.html
• http://www.beewebhead.net/aladob.html
• http://www.beewebhead.net/sing.html
• http://www.beewebhead.net/comments.html
• The whole presentation can be heard and viewed at: http://www.beewebhead.net/sound/tmnov04-6beedieu.htm
• Bee's blog: http://beewebhead.blogspot.com/2004/11/22nd-tutor-mentor-conference.html

Possibly Nov 17, 2004, from Susanne Nyrop: "Our session will begin tomorrow around 10 am GMT and [those] who happen to be online are very welcome to join us. We're trying to use voice but not webcams. We have 12 participants, all are at a beginner level regarding usage of educational chat. Today we're at the end of day one in our workshop and participants are now getting their Yahoo membership ; that had had this as a pre-workshop task, but none of them really got into it. We might or might not get to learningtimes tomorrow; perhaps at this level it is better to stay in YM where Anne or I will start a conference. PS it is simply amazing to get to work in a live computer lab with Danish teachers, on location, not to mention how natural is feels to me being in the same room as Anne; we have been working together on this workshop and now, we're here together, supplying each other beautifully. I'm learning a lot, sa well as having great fun! "

Saturday, November 20, 2004 at 00:30:00 GMT Michael Coghlan's presentation is part of the Adult Learners Australia conference. http://www.ala.asn.au/#alaconf The session is basically about the Webheads, in the context of the conference theme of BRIDGING CULTURES. Michael's proposal: "The Webheads exploit Internet technology to forge links across time and distance to develop a truly cross-cultural community that is sustained by a rich dialogue of multiple perspectives. Rather than a point of division or difference, the cross-cultural nature of this community has been a uniting influence, and a key factor in its longevity." The plan:

• Michael's intro (5 minutes or so)
• Daf, Chris, and Elizabeth talk for 3 - 5 minutes on specific projects they've been working on relevant to the Bridging Cultures theme of the conference
• throw the session open for general discussion.

Saturday, November 20, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

I can't record all the feedback from this event here, but here are some selected remarks ...

I would like to thank you, on behalf of my twin Teresa as well, for your massive presence, support and encouraging words during and after the keynote speech on GLD8. There were a great number of very interesting presentations and interactions that followed in the next 24 hours and once again, John, congratulations on the endeavour. Warm regards from Brazil, Bee Barbara Dieu Lycée Pasteur, Sao Paulo, Brazil http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept

When a presentation stops me from multi-tasking I always think 'this is really good!" - Michael.

From Elder Bob:

In the third week of November, 2003, in the midst of a terrible time of turmoil in my life, I sat my final semester projects from school aside and put on a headset and tuned in to my first Global Learning Day. I wish now, that I could re-generate the awe and astonishment that I felt on that occasion. I don't really recall the sequence of events that led me there, but somehow, through listening to the presenters at GLD7, I found out about Learning Times, and in turn about Webheads. The idea that the world could be brought to my desk via the technology of the internet was still but a flicker in my mind. The GLD served as a catalyst to bring that flicker to full flame.

I looked back this morning to my email archives and found my first post to the Webhead's Yahoogroup on January 10, 2004. The short post declared my intention to sign up for the coming "Webhead-in-training" sessions. This morning, I find it really hard to believe that that was less than a year ago. What a wild and wonderful year it has been. I have been introduced to so many incredible souls around the globe that have become so dear to me. I have since become an active and somewhat vocal member of a group that would at first glance, seem to have little to offer me. I mean, I am not a teacher of foreign language or of English. In fact, I do not even give instruction in a regular institution. Yet, I keep finding myself feeling like a kindred soul to this rag-tag group of educational gypsies. They have taken me in like a lost cause and fed me a continuous drip of necessary high-tech development and in the end, I think I am maturing into a full fledge education crusader. I cannot find sufficient words to express my fondness for the Webheads crew, for the warmth and friendship and knowledge that have come my way from this merry band.

I have no way of looking back to that first GLD 7 and figuring out which Webheads were present. And my feeble mind, doesn't seem to want to recall which one of you first suggested that I 'check out' the Webhead training. But someone, tapped me on the shoulder at that conference and it started a chain of events that has made a profound difference in my life. So, to put on my headset again in November of 2004, to tune in to GLD 8 and to find that two of my cohorts/friends/role-models, Teresa Almeida D'Ecca and Barbara Dieu, are Keynote speakers, seems an appropriate marker for the coming year of my life.

As I sat there and listened to the wisdom of my elders (and I mean that 'elders' in a very positive way), my mind kept wandering to multitude of gifts these two have given us all. These folks are the crem de la crem of Webheads. They are standard bearers, and they did that yesterday in a majestic and Webhead sort of way. Anyone on this list should be extremely proud of these two shining examples for the way they represented the rest of us. I take my hat off to them.

And that's not all. I spent almost 20 hours on-line yesterday. I was completely physically and mentally exhausted when I finally took my headset off. I had heard almost the entire GLD 8. I don't think that I ever looked at the text chat in all those 20 hours, that there were not at least, some Webheads asking questions or tossing out comments to the presenters. We were so well represented. And why not? Why wouldn't there be a bunch of forward thinkers present at such a forward thinking conference? I did not take names, but I suspect that most of us were at that conference at one point or another. It was great to see all those familiar folks in such a place and see how interactive with their peers they were. It was "knock-me-down" awesome, when, at some point, Renata comes on singing a ditty accompanying herself on guitar. Then later, Vance asked me to IM him when Steven Downes came on to speak. When I yahooed him, he was on his way to bed, but he got up to listen because that is what we do. We all keep our ears to the ground, listening for the changes in technology and education. When the earth moves, we know about it.

For me, I am sure that GLD 8 will eventually be recalled as an earth moving experience. My mind is so cluttered with the memes placed there by this global conference, that I find it difficult to focus on the tasks at hand this morning. As I begin to sort out this clutter, I am sure they will lead me in new directions. Right now, community events and radio seem to be shouting out to me. But in a month, it maybe broad band and English teachers in China. I guess, I will have to let you know, a year from now, after the next GLD.

I am so proud of you all. But I am especially of Teresa and of Barbara. Ladies, you are the best that there is. You have set a standard for us all. In my heart, I know that we can live up to that standard and my fondest wish is to see us exceed it. Not in a competitive sort of way but in an evolutionary manner. Because of efforts like yours and so many others that I have not named, Webheads will continue to be a force to be reckoned with in global education. Thank you...Thank you...Thank you!!!

Webheads Rule!!!

Methods and open resources (online or otherwise) for the teaching of English as a second language: speakers were Karen Garcia and Renata Suzuki, a videoconference which took place on Nov. 23, 2004 from 01:30 to 03:00 UTC. Karen and Renata participated from Amherst, MA USA and Yokohama, Japan , respectively. http://opencourse.org/Collaboratories/occonversations/occonversations-wiki/TeachingEnglish through the Elluminate platform at Learning Times: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=416360 . Renata and Karen responded to an invitation from Robert Stephenson at opencourse.org to address concerns about the teaching of English using Technology with educators from the World Bank's Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Webhead friends as well as the Learning Times team were there as they attempted to bridge the technical challenges of audio patching and problem solving. Follow up will proceed at http://opencourse.org/Collaboratories/occonversations and at the speakers' blog currently addressing this experience http://blog.ntjcpa.edu.tw/moodlecollab/

Chris Jones has a class of 16 ESL adult college students of various ages who are learning about the Internet. All have set up Yahoo IDs, and have practiced a couple times in class using YM. Each student will be sitting at a computer with a headset. Chris wants to find up to 8 volunteers available to chat with them Tuesday, November 23, from 15:00 to 16:15 GMT. She says, "That's 8 a.m. for us in Arizona. Depending on how many Webheads are available, I'm planning to put 2-3 students with each Webhead. The students have made up a list of 10-15 questions to ask you, including such things as your name, where you are, what the weather's like, what time it is where you are, what you do for a living, why you like to/ are willing to talk to us on the Internet. It's mainly to get a conversation going, but they do need to write down the answers. When they finish their questions, you could ask them some of the same questions in return during whatever time we have left. Of course, they are excited to speak to someone outside our classroom! Let me know if you are available at that time, and I'll get back to you by the weekend with the Yahoo ID's of the students you'll be talking to. Some of you participated in a similar exercise with a class I had last spring. It worked out very well, so I'm looking forward to doing this again."

Afterwards: Dear Agata, Aiden, Arnold, Maria, Norbella, Rita, Vance, and Wendy, Thank you so much for participating with my students' chat this morning. The students were enthralled despite problems 2-3 had with the sound on their headsets. ... Several of you have sent me chat logs and screenshots, which I will share with the students next week. Again, thanks for bringing such big smiles to my students' faces! Chris Jones

Nov. 18, Nov. 23, and Thursday, Nov. 25 15:30 -17:30 GMT Dafne González is inviting Webheads to listen to her students English for Architecture, USB, ID3126 Final Oral Presentations on Building Evaluation http://80.60.224.77/dyg/id3126-04/content/final-pres.html

• Feedback from the Nov. 18 15:30 -17:30 GMT presentations: "It was a very interesting presentation, and your young folks were so obviously well prepared. I love this type of international collaboration and think that it is the most important thing that Webheads do. Sometimes I wonder if we really realize the long-term effect of the things we do now, and how those things will affect the students and instructors of the future that we come in contact with. The Webhead experience is becoming one of the most significant things I have done in my life. I welcome every opportunity to support them in whatever way I can, whenever there is an opportunity." Elder Bob Brannon

Saturday, November 27, 2004 at 14:00 GMT Webheads are all invited to participate in Session 12 : 'Motivation: The More the Merrier', a session of The Learning Classroom-A Blended Experience http://www.doris3meflcenter.bravehost.com/the_learning_classroomwelcome.htm

Saturday, November 27, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, November 28, 2004* Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm to fathom possibilities. John Hibbs's ideas for a Webheads Pinnacle Conference next Oct 9, 2005 were discussed and met surprising opposition from one member who did not like the radio angle, though the others present seemed to agree that all technologies had potential and were worth pursuing.

John's most recent thoughts on our Sunday noon segment, just days before the event:

• What I would do, quite frankly, is encourage you as strongly as I could to hold your own WEBHEADS conference - make it THE Pinnacle Conference for the English Language Training World. There are two things that I would ask if you decide to do this - and I will give you a dozen great reasons why you should - but the two things that I would ask is that you hold your conference on October 9, 2005 with three hours of it "braided and paraded" inside the Global Learn Day "spotlight". That's one thing I will ask. The second thing is that one way or another WE find at least one radio station which will carry that portion of YOUR WEBHEAD conference on a community radio station. There is no use being the finest orchestra in the world and not playing in front of audiences in the many, many thousands. What Franklin will do to support YOUR WEBHEAD conference would be to provide all the tools "we" use for outreach and funding and communications. (besides WEBHEADS Conference there will be other CONFERENCES of LONG TERM interest - one of which is "Tools and Technology" - you would "naturally" have access to the help the TOOLS Conference provider would be showing off. So, in Section Two, you can discuss the advantages and disadvantages of holding a WEBHEADS PINNACLE CONFERENCE - ten months from now with the aim -a nd a realistic one at that to be the finest conference in the whole of the English training world. I mean that.
• WEBHEADS CONFERENCE: Well, I guess I covered the reason *I* think having a Pinnacle Conference is worthwhile. I think it should be part of your outreach and fund raising strategy; I think those who devote themselves to it will find rewards of all sorts. I think if you hold it as CONVERSATION - NOT powerpoint, blwa, blaw, blaw - aimed at radio stations you have an excellent chance of getting the Voice of America, the BBC, Dutch Radio, Singapore Radio, Australia Radio and some of the English language AFrican stations to carry same. Now, what other conference can do that -with the kind of experts that you have? And why not do it "in partnership" with seven other conferences who are following the same path - in their passion area (literacy for children) (peace and justice through education) (science and the environment through distance education) (affordable connectivity to every home in the world)(radio, radio, radio) (grants, outreach and money raising) Is THAT enough to wet your tongue?

Doris Molero and Karen Garcia gave workshops offering a certificate by Annenberg/CPB in Maracaibo, Venezuela through December 04, having started September 17. She says, "There are going to be 13 sessions working with the contents and some other on line encounters. We are getting a certificate by Annenberg/CPB and another by our university here in Venezuela. We'll be getting together on fridays from 3:00 till 5:30. In Venezuela we're -4 GMT. We're planning to have one hour and a half working in groups discussing readings and working with a video, after than we'll have one hour on line disscussion with participants on line. We're going to work in groups and since some webheads are participating. I'm going to appoint a leader for each group. i'm counting on you to help lead the groups since you're the experts in on line teaching and learning. Buth, Sus, Renata and Karen are participating if there is someone else who would like to join us, you're welcome, just let me know. Karen has offered her learning times office to have our sessions. We'll be using YM, Tapped in and The English Workshop www.groups.yahoo.com/group/theenglishworkshop to post our messages and keep in touch. "

The learning Classroom: Theory into practice. A video course for teachers; 13 half-hour video programs, print guide, and Web site. Here you can have a look at the contents http://www.learner.org/resources/series172.html

This video-based course is an exploration of learning theory for the training of preservice teachers and the professional development of inservice teachers. Hosted by Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, the 13 half-hour programs illustrate a variety of learning theories with applications to classroom practice. A Web site and print guide supplement the videos, with background readings, questions for discussion, and ongoing assignments that bring theory into practice. We'll be discussing how to use all this theories into the EFL Classroom. You can join us and participate in our synchronous and asynchronous activities.

To join us in this experience:

*Registration: To register and participate in this course, you just have to contact me at doris3m@yahoo.com. If you want to help moderate this course, let me know. I need all the help possible. Registration deadline next Friday 10th.

*What We Need: 1. The video programs. We can get them through access to a broadband connection to the Internet. http://www.learner.org/resources/series172.html. You have to register to the site in order to have access to the videos.

2. The support materials for the course can be downloaded from the course site. http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/workshop_list.html

3. You'll need a yahoo e-mail address if you don't have one yet. Go to www.yahoo.com and get a free e-mail account. Also you'll need a Yahoo Messenger Id. Mine is doris3m.

4. Register to The English Workshop Teachers Community at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/theenglishworkshop where you'll create a folder with your name and upload all your work during the course to create a portfolio to be presented at the end of the course. After registering, please write a short introduction following the guidelines in the home page of the group.

5. Participants should join the Channel-Talk email lists for this course. There participants will share their observations, feedback and questions with other groups across the world. Sign up prior to the first session. The link to the registration page is http://www.learner.org/mailman/listinfo/channel-talklearning.

6. Register at www.learningtimes.com and go to Karen Garcia's learning Times office. http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes? go=416360 . Most of sessions will be held there. (might be http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=416360 without space after ?)

*Meeting schedule once a week. At the meeting, the group will spend half an hour discussing pre task readings, half an hour viewing the video program, and half an hour working with video exercises from the print guide. And one hour discussing on line with teachers around the world. Meetings will be held every Friday from 3:00 P.M through 5:30 P.M. Starting on September 17th, 2004. Extra sessions could be held on line. Participants from other countries have been invited to join on line discussions.

*Materials You can download everything you need from the course site. http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/learningclassroom/support_page s/index.html

* An Attendance Roster will be circulated during our sessions. Then, at the end of the workshop, the instructor will fill the online Attendance Roster. This information will allow Annenberg / CPB to generate Certificates of Participation for those working in groups. All certificates will be mailed to the facilitator for distribution. And URBE's ESL Center will provide a 34 hour approval certificate.

* Assignments will be complete both inside and outside class and will be announced after each session. Such assignments are as follow:

Weekly assignments:

. Read your assigned readings before each session so you're ready to participate actively in our classes.

. Start a journal where you'll write your reflections, questions, wondering and things to pursue. You can also include the reflections following the session reflection in your session guide. Post your entries at the course forum http://www.learner.org/mailman/listinfo/channel-talklearning or at the English Workshop Community www.groups.yahoo.com/group/theenglishworkshop . You should keep a copy of everything you do in your folder at the English Workshop community. Individual assignments:

. Showcase Portfolio. You should create a folder at the English Workshop Community under your name and keep your work produced at the sessions as well as transcript from your conversations on line. At the end you'll have to prepare a power point presentation to present your work an reflections to the group.

In group assignment:

. Select a scenario you want to explore at http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/learningclassroom/interactive.html and work with the activities indicated there.

* You can select to present your portfolio or explore a scenario and present your findings to the group as final evaluation.

Evaluate Annenberg / CPB. Group's feedback is essential to Annenberg / CPB's future workshops and courses. Participants fill out the Participant Evaluation form after the final session.

*Calendar

• Friday 17/09/04 1. How People Learn - Introduction to Learning Theory
• Friday 24/09/04 2. Learning As We Grow - Development and Learning
• Friday 01/10/04 3. Building on What We Know - Cognitive Processing
• Friday 08/10/04 4. Different Kinds of Smart - Multiple Intelligences
• Friday 15/10/04 5. Feelings Count - Emotions and Learning
• Friday 22/10/04 6. The Classroom Mosaic - Culture and Learning
• Friday 29/10/04 7. Learning From Others - Learning in a Social Context
• Friday 05/11/04 8. Watch It, Do It, Know It - Cognitive Apprenticeship
• Friday 12/11/04 9. Thinking About Thinking - Metacognition
• Friday 19/11/04 10. How We Organize Knowledge - The Structure of the Disciplines
• Friday 26/11/04 11. Lessons for Life - Learning and Transfer
• Saturday 27/11/04 12. Expectations for Success - Motivation and Learning
• Friday 03/12/04 13. Pulling It All Together - Creating Classrooms and Schools That Support Learning
• Saturday 04/12/

04 Final projects

F2F sessions will be taking place in Venezuela. We're -4 GMT

• Fridays 3:00 to 5:30 P.M
• Saturdays 8:00 10:30 A.M
• Virtual Office hours: 2:00 till 4:00 everyday

Friday (December 3) we heard from teachers in Venezuela (Amada Campbell, Arlines Rodriguez and Paula Perez) who will lead us through the topic: Lessons for Life - Learning and Transfer That session will take place as usual at 20:30 GMT. We would like to invite all who participated during the experience to also come back for a last session on Saturday (December 4) at 14 GMT. We will do a final review and discuss how we can incorporate this learning into our teaching in our classrooms. At that last session, Renata, Doris and Karen will lead a reflection and examination of the most helpful concepts presented in the program. Short of another virtual square dance, the last session promises to also be as memorable, so join us! You can review the concepts presented by looking at the slides generated for each session and discover a wonderful map which reminds us of our collaboration through out this experience: http://sun.ntjcpa.edu.tw/classroom/ See you at my Learning Time's office http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=416360

Saturday, December 4, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, December 5, 2004 Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

Saturday, December 11, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, December 12, 2004 Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

Saturday, December 18, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, December 19, 2004 Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

Saturday, December 25, 2004 Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru language learning is held each Saturday 16:00-17:00 GMT at http://www.tappedin.org or http://www.tappedin.org/new. Longtime Webheads facilitator Maggi Doty would particularly like to meet ESL students at this time.

Sunday, December 26, 2004 Webheads in Action/Writing for Webheads: World friendship thru lang. learning 12:00-14:00 GMT ; meet at http://www.tappedin.org/ and go from there. See http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

Our next online chat is always this coming Saturday at 16:00 GMT and Sunday, noon GMT (for about 2 hours on Sunday, 1 hour or so on Saturday). 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!

Copyright 2005 by Vance Stevens