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Enhancing Online Communities with Voice and Webcams

Week 1

A TESOL Online Academy session October 27 to November 23, 2003 Workshop Leader: Vance Stevens, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: http://www.tesol.org/edprg/olw/academies.html#w3 Our YahooGroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/enhanced_online

Portal: Meet the participants | See where we are in relation to one another's time zones | Session overview | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Scheduled meetings |

Week 1 Oct 23-29, 2003: organizational

1. Read one of my favorite articles on rational for using collaborative educational learning tools with students and primarily (in my view) with teachers (who are of course students of their profession). http://www.publicationshare.com/docs/Bon02.pdf
2. Browse through the Webheads in Action site to see what we've done already with an existing community of practice, especially the syllabus, which serves to overview some of the things we'll be doing in our course: http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/papers/evonline2002/syllabus.htm
3. Send me an introduction and a pic so that I can make a portal site for this group. The pic can be a photo of you, or if you prefer, an image (or avatar) that we can use to represent you. I avoid putting my email address on web pages these days, but you can probably figure this out: vstevens at emirates.net.ae
4. Create a BLOG account at http://www.blogger.com. Instructions are here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/blogger_tutorial.htm
5. You'll also need a Yahoo ID from http://www.yahoo.com. This will enable you to log on to YahooGroups at http://www.yahoogroups.com. Can you do that?
6. And finally, join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/enhanced_online. You can visit the link and click on Join, or you can send email from the address you wish to register to: enhanced_online-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. After you have joined the group you can send messages to all members to enhanced_online@yahoogroups.com

I started a BlackBoard site at http://www.uwec.edu/wbls/tesol.htm and each students received an email explaining how to log on. However, I was only notified of my instructor enrollment at our Blackboard site 2 weeks before this course began. I had been curious about how I might use Blackboard to develop a course but came to the conclusion that on short notice I could better develop this one free-form using these pages, and that Blackboard might be a good medium for presenting an already developed course, so perhaps next time ...

Report on Week 1

It took a while to find all the community members and pull them together. However by the end of the week all had checked in with photos and the information given on this page. Most members started blogs and, following instructions, reported their blogs at the Blackboard site. The blogs had initial postings but were otherwise undeveloped. Meanwhile, I had set up the YahooGroups site and I started archiving materials there. All members had joined or were on the way to joining; however by the end of the week there had been no postings except from the instructor.

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Last updated: November 23, 2003, 2003 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0

(C)opyright 2003 Vance Stevens