TESOL EVO 2010

Happy New Year everyone!

Why not start 2010 with some professional development courtesy of TESOL's Electronic village Online?

The best place for educators to start, especially if they are new to teaching and learning languages with technology is the Becoming a Webhead (BaW2010) session. Run every year, this is the perfect introduction to the Webheads community of practice and it's specially suitable for those teachers who are interested in using technology but who are unsure of where to start.

After joining the BaW2010 Yahoo group, you'll be introduced to a dazzling array of possibilities and will be helped every step of the way by experienced and friendly mentors. By the end of the six week session, teachers will have a much better idea of how they can start to introduce technology into their classroom to enhance their lessons and will also be part of a supportive community of like-minded teachers they can draw on for inspiration and help.

For those of you with more experience, there are lots of other sessions to choose from:

• Adaptive Technology
• EVO Drama 2010
• Digital Materials Preparation Techniques
• Images4Education
• Internet4YoungLearners
• Multiliteracies for social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments
• EVO Video 2010
• Online Games for ESL/EFL
• Smart Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards
• Teaching Languages in a Virtual World
• Virtual Language Travel

Enrolment has now just opened for these six-week long hands-on virtual sessions and this year there is a wide variety you can choose to join,details of which are in the EVO Call for Participation

I'm excited about co-moderating the Teaching Languages in a Virtual World EVO session - essentially it's a repeat of the session we did last year, but so much has happened in the last year, and we're expecting the participants to have more experience, so the discussions should be very interesting. We're also hoping that more people will bring actual virtual world teaching experience to the mix. If you want to join in the fun, then sign up here: http://tlinvw.ning.com/

WiAOC 2007 Webcastathon

The Webheads in Action Online Convergence (WiAOC 2007) is now well underway, with so much activity going on it's impossible to keep up.

Fortunately, most of it, if not all, is being recorded, so we can go back and listen and watch to the presentations that we missed becuase we were too busy to attend them live, or because time zone factors made them impractical to attend.

Details of the presentations to come are here : http://schedule.wiaoc.org/

I really do encourage everyone to go along to some of them

I gave a presentation yesterday, with my British Council colleague Kyle Mawer. It was essentially a repeat of the presentation that we gave at APAC and IATEFL, on 'Computer Games & Language Learning: From Space Invaders to Second Life', although
we end up changing the format every time we do it: adding or removing slides, etc.

It's also been interesting to see how we have decided to change the pitch depending on the audience and how the experience has differed because of the participants and the venue.

Of course, yesterday was the first time we presented it online, and that in itself led to additional challenges and a totally different dynamic. One thing that was very different was not actually showing the games themselves, which we normally do when we've presented this f2f.

We also had some annoying hiccups to yesterday's presentation. Here's a copy of an email that I've just sent to the Webheads list that detils what happened:

Thanks to everyone who attended our presentation at Learning Times
yesterday.

We had a few problems with Elluminate, which I thought I'd share with
you all in case it helps others - it all went to show you that you can
prepare as much as you like, but you can never prepare for the unexpected!

- We used jpgs for our presentation, and when we'd uploaded the images
for the presentation, we found that if you use anything other than
Safari, they are huge. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to do
anything about this.

- We had 80 slides, and exceeded the Elluminate maximum. So, as we got
near the end of the uploaded slides, we had to delete some to make
space. You can delete slides by right-clicking over the slide (you'll
find the erase slide option if you are a moderator)

- We were able to view the slides fine when they were uploaded, but
just as we started, the screen section of Elluminate went blank for us
and we couldn't see any of the slides. Fortunately our audience could!

It did make it difficult speaking about the slides without being able
to see them, and I had to switch between my Powerpoint and the
Elluminate interface, which made things a little awkward.

- Kyle Mawer, my co-presenter's headphones stopped working just before
we were going to start (we were physically in the same space, so we
decided to share headphones). Then, just after Vance introduced us, my
(bluetooth) headphones cut out, so I had to scramble for another pair.

What a combination of gremlins! We were exhausted when it was finally
over, but it was a lot of fun.

Details of this presentation and the other WiAOC recordings are here: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=1563545

The direct link to the elluminate recording is here

You'll need to create an account (free) to access the Learning Times recording, but this is well worth it - the community has lots of very interesting resources, and you'll meet some great people there.

The Electronic Village Online 2007

Today is the official start of TESOL's Electronic Village Online (EVO2007) , which is an annual event of free workshops run by volunteers and open to educators from all over the globe. This is my third time as a session moderator - I keep coming back for more!



Proceedings kicked off grandly with a World Bridges webcast, which can be heard at http://webheadsinaction.org/



There are a total of active 13 sessions this year, in what promises to be a fun and lively 6 weeks (The sessions run until February 25th).



Personally, I'm involved in three of the sessions. The Digital Gaming & Language Learning one will be looking at all aspects of gaming and language learning, and includes an optional module focusing on Second Life, which promises to be very active, and we have started a wiki, where most of our collaborative efforts will end up. I'll be moderating this with Nicholas Noakes, who is based in Hong Kong, and Rita Zeinstejer, in Argentina.



I'm also co-moderating the Open Webpublishing EVO session, but not until week 4. Before then, Bee (Barbara Dieu) and Patricia Glogowski will be leading the way, concentrating on blogs, wikis and other non-audio Web 2.0 tools for teachers. The last half of the session will concentrate on podcasting, and I'll be co-moderating that with Nicholas Noakes and Scott Lockman.



Finally, I'm also going to be helping out with the Webcast Academy EVO, which will look at live, interactive webcasting. this is something I'm involved with at EFL Bridges, one of the World Bridges community sites. Jeff Lebow is at the helm of this session, with Vance Stevens, Lee Baber, and other Webcast Academy graduates and internees helping out. The Webheads in Action site will be one of the homes of this EVO, and there is also a Webcast Academy Yahoo Group too.

These are just a few of the sessions that are going on - EVO is always a great meeting of minds and full of people who are very giving and willing to learn from each other - make the most of the opportunity if you think you have time. I'm sure you won't regret it.