On Saturday, January 12, at 1400 UTC, coordinators, moderators, and some participants in the 2019 round of Electronic Village Online sessions met online for their annual Kickoff event. The event was held in Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/417142783
Zoom produced a recording of the event, now available on YouTube
For the benefit of participants from Uzbekistan and other countries where YouTube is blocked, the recording was placed on Vimeo (courtesy of Nellie Deutsch) https://vimeo.com/311321378
During the event all moderators present spoke about their individual sessions. Here are the sessions on offer this year, followed by links to their descriptions:
Preparation for Best of EVO at the upcoming TESOL 2019 conference in Atlanta
Thursday, March 14 2019: 10:30-12:20 pm in Atlanta Friday, March 15, 2019: 1:45 – 3:00 pm in Atlanta
The event ended with an invitation to all moderators of 2019 EVO sessions to join us either face-to-face in Atlanta in March for the 2019 TESOL conference or from a distance at either of the two events shown in slide 21 of the presentation embedded above.
EVO moderators are welcome to present (in person or online) but anyone will be able to watch the presentation when it is streamed live from Atlanta.
If you wish to participate, request to join that document.
Session will be webcast live during the convention (closer to the date, visit http://callis2019.pbworks.com/. The link to the stream and instructions for uploading slideshows or other materials will be here.)
The webcast will also be recorded and made available on the CALL-IS website. (http://www.call-is.org).
Earlier events
Learning2gether was in haitus over the end-of-year break, as were many of the other events we follow. In November “we” (meaning Vance) were in Chile for the WorldCALL conference, and in December I tried to catch up with the #el30 MOOC that Stephen Downes had been running.
Fri Nov 16 – Vance Stevens presents ‘Gamifying Teacher Professional Development through Minecraft MOOC’ at WorldCALL 2018
Stephen Downes has been teaching a course on eLearning 3.0 since last October, find it at https://el30.mooc.ca/. I have been following the course obliquely up to now but it’s coincided with a long trip I had to make, traveling from Penang where my wife and I ended up in August, to Abu Dhabi in October to dispense with loose ends stemming from winding up our 20 years there, and then go to Doha to visit sons and grandchildren. From Doha, in November, we traveled on to Grand Rapids to visit Bobbi’s mom who was moved into assisted living there. In December we dropped down to Katy, Texas to deal with the house that Bobbi’s mom left. Meanwhile, for two weeks in November, I dropped down to Chile to put in an appearance at WorldCALL 2018, https://learning2gether.net/2018/11/16/vance-stevens-presents-gamifying-teacher-professional-development-through-minecraft-mooc-at-worldcall-2018/
I couldn’t find time to work on Stephen’s course during that time, apart from following its progress in a general sense. But the great thing about Stephen is that he is so open and transparent. He lives it; he models it. He is the epitome of sharing knowledge. He archives what he shares in a way that deliberately teaches it to others. So now that I’m back “home” in Malaysia, it’s not hard to pick up the breadcrumb trail to see where the course has got to before it ends with its final event on December 19.
Since Stephen has laid down a fine trail of breadcrumbs, the course is easy to follow asynchronously. Stephen’s course is shared under this Creative Commons License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. This stipulates that anyone can share these materials as long as we attribute their creator, and do so non commercially. The only caveats are that any alterations made must be noted, and also, the materials must be shared alike. All the foregoing are the case with postings in this blog.
Here are a few things I had figured out before I left for my trip in October.
This is worth looking at because in part 5 Stephen explains where you can find the video archive for the course: https://el30.mooc.ca/course_videos.htm. (I came on that before I discovered that this link is actually the Video link in the right hand sidebar)
There you can see that the course was announced in a post on October 10 and slated to start on October 15. The first reading posted for the course (and listening, the post includes videos) was on Why Data Culture Matters, an article (simplistically speaking) on the pros and cons of sharing data and results of its analysis.
Here Stephen declares this to be “‘Week 0’ and the topic is E-Learning 2 and 2.” He says the course will start officially on October 18. He says, “I hope to be prepared by then (but probably won’t be).” He adds that “I will be incorporating tasks into the course. Don’t worry about falling behind – I’m already behind in incorporating them.” However, he does say that he will be interviewing George Siemens shortly, gives the event page as https://el30.mooc.ca/event/79, and there, sure enough, we can find the video recording.
Stephen has made it pretty clear that he won’t mind if I share it here:
In that recording Stephen says that the course will begin NEXT day with the talk he’s giving on E-Learning 3.0 at the Online Learning Summit. He said in the newsletter that he would not be able to stream the event, that he’d post a recording afterwards, but he says while waiting for George that he will attempt to stream it anyway. All this is classic Stephen, rough edges surrounding a solid gold core.
In their video George Siemens notes that all the energy that accompanied the early days of MOOCs since their first one in 2008 on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge has been followed by 5 years of “wilderness” which is beginning to get interesting again with the recent interest in artificial intelligence, and its implications for human intelligence, and “what it’s left for humans to do.” This gets to the question of what IS uniquely human? George points out that humans have a “reset problem” whereas machines get better with more data and don’t tire. What about creativity? he wonders aloud, foreshadowing one of the topics in Stephen’s course-to-come. It may not be a domain unique to humans anymore. “Beingness” may be “our final domain of human control.” Stephen interjects that if we can learn something, probably a machine can too. But we have “purpose” and “goodness”. George agrees that humans are “being” entities, we are inherently learning entities; “we cannot unlearn.” Computers on the other hand can outlearn us.
These precepts are all elaborated on in brief annotations in the course outline, and more fully developed in the focus of each week, given in the sidebar at: https://el30.mooc.ca/course_outline.htm
So, back to the video, what should we be teaching in our universities when a student has such a disadvantage against machines? This segues into a conversation on connectivism and how much more relevant it has become given how the world has evolved today. Stephen sums it thusly: technology is helping us extend ourselves out into the world. George asks if we should move to a relational / random / exploratory kind of model in our educational systems. Stephen adds that the capacity to choose might be a key element in future learning, our focus of support. George concurs on the developmental aspects – we need a model of the intersection of AI and human intelligence; how they can work together to guide our educational institutions and return us to reflective, contemplative practices.
At this point in the video, George shifts the conversation focus onto Stephen’s projects. Stephen explains how the eLearning 3.0 course will focus his recent work on PLNs, connectivism, and blockchain. In the course he will be recasting old problems such as the problem of fake news, and how to reach a “knowable, trustworthy consensus” where the “bad actors don’t wreck the entire system”. He calls this “the joker problem” wherein “sometimes you just want to see the city burn”. He says that “to get from here to there, wherever there is, this problem has to be solved.” George talks animatedly on how recent events in Turkey, Koshoggi’s murder, were spun by the major players in such a way as to warp reasoned discourse. Two more topics of the upcoming course emerge: the issue isn’t just consensus, but also one of focus. Spinners throw out enough distraction to dispel (thus control) the narrative. That’s the joker effect. George articulates a quote whose source is not quite on the tip of his tongue: “Information abundance consumes attention.”
At the end of the hour, Stephen reveals that he forgot to check the chat. He apologizes but notes that one participant thinks that one strength of his courses are they are so messy. He warns his followers to get ready for more mess, to which George intones, “Making sense of the mess IS the learning, it’s not a distraction from the learning.” Indeed! And this slide wraps up what this all means for education:
Stephen streamed an introduction to his course, the mechanics of it, on Oct 11: https://youtu.be/hoR4VuJOa9g. He reiterates the concepts, how we got from eLearning 1 and 2 to eLearning 3 here https://el30.mooc.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?module=4. But he considers his official launch video to be this one from his Online eLearning Summit presentation Oct 18, e-Learning 3.0 and an outline of the core concepts. He archives this in an event called E-Learning 3.0 – The impact of the Next Wave of Emerging Learning Technologies, here: https://el30.mooc.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?event=77
So, as we can see, I’ve only just started finding out what the course is about. However I want to bring into this post, into one place, what I have been following as the course was in progress. I’m bringing these here from where I’ve been making notes in my Learning2gether wiki and in my last posting here at Learning2gether.net. I’m doing this because I want my notes all in one place, for my future reference, and for yours if you are learning about Stephen’s course through me.
In this tweet, I meant for the next 12 months, not just the rest of the calendar year 2018, which is almost over 🙂
Messy notes from this messy course, taken down as they appeared when Stephen’s newsletters hit my inbox, collated below seemingly at random …
Subscribe to the course feeds – using the feed reader of your choice (here’s a selection) use the course OPML file (here it is) to subscribe to the course feeds. To get a badge you’ll need to show you’ve done this, maybe by writing a blog post). Vance’s note: THIS is the feed you need to follow, https://el30.mooc.ca/course_newsletter.xml
Create a task – using a blog or some other sort of online application, create a task for participants in this course. You can do this any time through to the end of the course, so be sure to specify which course module it applies to (if you are not providing a feed to be harvested, you can email the url to me (I’ll be setting up a ‘task submission form’ soon)
from https://el30.mooc.ca/course_videos.htm Conversation with Ben Werdmuller Nov 08, 2018 video Now working with Unlock, Ben Werdmuller co-founded Elgg and Known, worked on Medium and Latakoo, and invested in innovative media startups to support a stronger democracy at Matter. We talked about blockchain, decentralized applications, indieweb, and how people can have their own online presence. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QM8mAX3cV0
This is a gentle introduction to graph theory. Graphs are data structires in which entities – called ‘nodes’ – are connected to other entitis via some sort of a link – called an ‘edge’. In graph theory there are no limits on what can be connected, nor how they can be connected. Defining graphs in specific ways, however, creates the structures that underlie most of the modern web.
Neural Networks are types of graphs. In the past I have stated that in order to be a network, a change of state in one entity in a graph must be capable of producing a change of state in another entity. Neural networks are therefore dynamic and interactive graphs. This resource describes a bunch of different neural networks. Different neural networks have different capabilities, and today are playing an increasingly important role in artificial intelligence.
The diagram in this resource descibes some different types of neural networks. Take a look at the specific tasks they perform – neural networks are good at things like classification and recgnition, as well as regression (that is, finding a trend or regulrity in data). I got this image from this page, which has more resourcs on neural networks.
Graphs are important types of data structures. Instead of thinking of things in rows and columns (the way we would in a spreadsheet or a database) we think of things as nodes and edges. This page has a very brief description of a graph data structure and then a long list of things that can be done with graphs – cycling, sortinfg, spanning, searching. This page is meant to explore, not to learn – follow the links, try running some of the code (click on the r’run in IDE button’).
You may have heard of GitHub – the open source software repository that was recently acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. GitHub is important because it allows authors to release related versions of their software, to incorporate and merge contributions from many authors, and to allow people to create their own version (or ‘fork’) any application. To do this, GitHub is structured as a Directed Acyclic Graph, creating a series of relationships among code libraries.
Today we’ll take a brief look at blockchain. Although presented as a type of currency, blockchain is in essence a graph technology. It creates a record of transactions by chaining them together such that you cannot change or revise one transaction without revising or changing all transactions. Because this is expensive and in some cases impossible, blockchain becomes a permanent record of transactions.
Topics in Distributed Ledger Technology
This is a presentation I gave twice this fall, summarizing some of the major themes in blockchain, describing how it works, surveying a number of applications, and discussing issues related to its use. https://www.downes.ca/presentation/495
This is a good crisp summary that doesn’t shy away from technical detail but steps through the major elements of blockchain technology with clarity and precision. The sections on blockchain components (section 3) and consensus models (section 4) are particularly strong. It even comes with a fun blockchain use case flowchart.
This podcast transcript provides a level-headed overview of blockchain technologies focusing especially on the trade-offs the use of blockchain entails (for example: less efficient databases in exchange for immutability). There’s also a nice table depicting the major use cases for blockchain. And there’s a nice look at the different motivations for employing blockchain.
This is a long (136 page PDF) and detailed report on blockchains in education. The authors work slowly and deliberately in their pursuit of accuracy and clarity, which results in a presentation that will be easily understood by most readers. There is a wealth of examples in the document describing use cases, scenarios and pilot projects, and companies involved in the space.
I found Week 3 (above) of special interest because of its exploration of the implications of blockchain for education.
Nov 14, 2018 Conversation with Maha Bali
Wed Nov 14 2018 21:00:00 GMT+0400 (Arabian Standard Time)
For week 4 of E-Learning 3.0, a conversation with Maha Bali, Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC), on topics related to identity.
Here is more from my notes in my Learning2gether wiki on the latter part of the course, an attempt to keep a catalog of the video presentations I was missing
Wed Nov 21 at 2100 UTC next event in e-Learning 3.0 – Connectivist learning by Stephen Downes
Week 5 of E-Learning 3.0 features Sukaina Walji, Online Education Project Manager, Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT), University of Cape Town (UCT).
From the archived video listing at https://el30.mooc.ca/course_videos.htm this turned out to be a Conversation with Sukaina Walji and Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams Nov 21, 2018 video
We look at the topics of open educational resources and open practices, consider some of the challenges around reuse of OERs, and discuss the potential of new resource networks (like the distributed web) to address those challenges. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sY6M58v3Pg
Wed Nov 28 at 2100 UTC next event in e-Learning 3.0 – Connectivist learning by Stephen Downes
Nov 28, 2018 Conversation with Viplav Baxi
Wed Nov 28 2018 21:00:00 GMT+0400 (Arabian Standard Time)
Viplav Baxi joins us for week 6 of E-Learning 3.0. He is currently Director – Product and Digital Transformation at Oxford University Press in New Delhi, India.
We’ll talk about resources, recognition and community.
From the video list at https://el30.mooc.ca/course_videos.htm Conversation with Viplav Baxi Nov 28, 2018 video Viplav Baxi joined us for week 6 of E-Learning 3.0. He is currently Director – Product and Digital Transformation at Oxford University Press in New Delhi, India. We talked about resources, the role of MOOCs in education today, his new ‘WhatIfEdu’ project, testing, badges and recognition, and community. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuSaeFStpwc
Mon Dec 5 at 2100 UTC next event in e-Learning 3.0 – Connectivist learning by Stephen Downes
Dec 05, 2018 video Week 7 of E-Learning 3.0 with Pete Forsyth, Editor in Chief of the Signpost, a community newspaper covering Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement., and serves on the Advisory Board of the GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium. We talk about how Wikipedia approaches questions like managing fake news, reaching consensus, and managing content. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Urc4EW9hiE
Wed Dec 12 at 2100 UTC next event in e-Learning 3.0 – Connectivist learning by Stephen Downes
Dec 12, 2018 Conversation with Amy Burvall (postponed to Dec 13)
After 25 years in K-12 education, Amy Burvall is currently consulting, creating, and curating in the fields of creativity, visual thinking, and digital literacies. She joins us in week 9 of E-Learning 3.0.
Be creative! Using the medium of your choice, create a representation of your experience of E-Learning 3.0. Then post your creation (or post a link to your creation) on your blog. Here’s a good example of the sort of thing you could create, by Kevin Hodgeson (who apparently also studied mind reading as he completed this Task before it was posted). If you need inspiration, visit the DS106 Assignment Bank and select one of the assignments, and then interpret it in the light of E-Learning 3.0.
Videos
The World Beyond the Word Dec 13, 2018 video Visit this page for both slides and video (the link shows a slide/video from a Seminar, Aug 19, 2012.). In order to manage the deluge of data produced by modern technology, a rapidly changing society, and challenging environmental and economic systems, we need to relearn what we understand as social and scientific literacy. The students of today and the innovators of tomorrow will speak languages we barely recognize today. What are the fundamentals of these new literacies, how do we learn them and teach them, and how do they redefine innovation in the future? In this talk I describe a future in which learning is a creative act and give an overview of the environments and technologies that will be needed to support this learning. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M060w0NLFas
I’ve covered the topic of creativity quite a bit over the years. This is a listing of the posts I’ve written referring to different resoruces on creativity. There’s a lot to pick and choose form.
The following pages represent a comprehensive summary of current research and theory on the sources of innovation and creativity, both in individuals and organizations. Based on the recurring concepts in the existing literature, the paper concludes with some recommendations for how education systems can best foster these attributes in students.
From her web page: “Amy Burvall (amyburvall.com) is a professional dot-connector who helps people think and live more creatively. A 25 year veteran educator, she now freelances as a consultant specializing in creativity and visual thinking.”
Be creative! Using the medium of your choice, create a representation of your experience of E-Learning 3.0. Then post your creation (or post a link to your creation) on your blog.
Here’s a good example of the sort of thing you could create, by Kevin Hodgeson (who apparently also studied mind reading as he completed this Task before it was posted).
If you need inspiration, visit the DS106 Assignment Bank and select one of the assignments, and then interpret it in the light of E-Learning 3.0.
I’m posting this on Dec 17-18 and plan to work more on it between now and Dec 19, the date of the last event of the course, Dec 18, 2018 Conversation with Silvia Baldiris and Jutta Treviranus. This talk Dec 19 for me, 1 am in the morning, which is the reason I’ve been missing all the live events since I’ve been back in Penang
Wed Dec 19 2018 01:00:00 GMT+0800 (Singapore Standard Time)
Here is its newsletter information, on Agency: https://el30.mooc.ca/archive/18/12_17_course_newsletter.htm
And the last episode was
Conversation with Silvia Baldiris and Jutta Treviranus
Videos
Conversation with Silvia Baldiris and Jutta Treviranus Dec 18, 2018 video For the last week of Learning 3.0 we had a conversation with Silvia Baldiri, who works with the Fundación Universitaria Tecnológico Comfenalco (Colombia) and Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (Spain), and Jutta Treviranus, Director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC) and professor at OCAD University in Toronto. We talked about inclusive design, agency and the Social Justice Repair Kit. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIFG8rpLdYA
Recognize, respect, and design for human uniqueness and variability.
Use inclusive, open & transparent processes, and co-design with people who have a diversity of perspectives, including people that can’t use or have difficulty using the current designs.
Realize that you are designing in a complex adaptive system.
The goal of the Social Justice Repair Kit project is to support youth at risk who have learning differences to re-engage in education through an inclusively designed social justice platform that integrates authentic project-based learning. For youth with identified and unidentified learning differences, the Kit will add inclusive design supports to remove barriers to participation.
These stories serve as a reference to other people who identify themselves in them and who discover in them similarities with their own life story, which in some cases may turn out to be unfavorable, however, in this discovery, possible methods of coping are identified that allow resolving or resignifying adverse situations optimistically.
“We find that when selecting a problem-solving team from a diverse population of intelligent agents, a team of randomly selected agents outperforms a team comprised of the best-performing agents.” See also Problem Solving by Heterogeneous Agents, by the same authors.
However, Stephen announces: One Final Live Conversation
Let’s wrap up the course with an online conversation anyone can join. When? I’ve set a default time but I’d rather set a time by consensus. This page is open for editing. Join in and help decide when to wrap up and celebrate the end of the course.
And with this post I (Vance) have placed all my notes in one place and have set out a possibility of follow up at this blog or at one of my others. Stay tuned …
Earlier events taking place between postings at this blog
Fri Nov 16 – Vance Stevens presents ‘Gamifying Teacher Professional Development through Minecraft MOOC’ at WorldCALL 2018
Mon Nov 19 1700 UTC – Factors Affecting Learner Collaboration in 3D Virtual Worlds
The EFLIS held its 3rd webinar for this year by Dr. Iryna Kozlova on Factors Affecting Learner Collaboration in 3D Virtual Worlds
Mon, Nov 19, 2018 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
If you are interested in learning about research in online language learning, particularly 3D Virtual Worlds, then this is a great opportunity for you and we hope to see you online!
Abstract:
Factors Affecting Learner Collaboration in 3D Virtual Worlds
Dr. Iryna Kozlova
University of Pennsylvania
Learners’ development of collaboration skills has important implications for their language learning (Donato, 2004), fluency development (Huensch & Tracy-Ventura, 2017), and the development of interactional skills (Johnson and Johnson, 2004). When working together towards achieving a common goal, learners use language to mutually construct new knowledge by sharing their own ideas and accepting contributions from other participants (Donato, 2004). 3D virtual worlds (VWs) can provide learners with the opportunities to collaborate through multiple communication channels, which may facilitate language development (Meskill, 2005). Drawing on the results of the study on learner collaboration in 3D VWs (Kozlova, forthcoming) when students used an audio channel to interact with their peers and a text-based channel to make notes on a collaboration board, this presentation discusses the factors affecting learner collaboration. These factors include (1) learners and instructors’ familiarity with 3D VWs, (2) learners’ familiarity with the format of the learning activity, (3) learners’ experience with the spontaneous use of the second language, and (4) instructors’ use of pedagogical techniques that facilitated collaboration. Although this presentation draws on the findings of the research in 3D VWs, implications of the findings to face-to-face classroom will also be discussed.
Presenter’s bio:
Iryna Kozlova, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the TESOL Program, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the use of second/foreign language spoken discourse in the classroom and in casual conversation, application of technology for second/foreign language teaching and learning, task-based learning, and teacher training. She has taught Applied Linguistics, ESL, and Russian in the United States and internationally.
Mon Nov 19 8 PM EST Data Informatics and Data Visualization in Second Life on VSTE Island
In Virginia students start in elementary school collecting, organizing, and interpreting data in math, science, and technology. The older the student gets the more sophisticated the expectations become in dealing with data. We imagine it’s the same with the students all over the globe.
Data Informatics examines and helps students make sense of data; reading, scanning for trends, and interpreting the data. Data Visualization is a way to take that data and make it easier to understand, more user friendly. Through data visualization we have techniques to make data easier to interpret. In 2D and 3D mediums we can show off data in expressive and meaningful ways. Bluebarker Lowtide (SL), Vasili Giannoutsos (RL) will show us examples of Data Informatics and Data Visualization and give us opportunities to build our own.
Whether you teach students to read and interpret data or you yourself are struggling for meaningful ways to share data you collect, there will be something for you in this session.
Meet us on VSTE Island in Second Life Monday, November 19, at 8 PM EST (5 PM SLT) to learn about Data Informatics and Data Visualization.
If you don’t have a Second Life account get one, it’s free. We recommend setting one up at the Rockcliffe University Consortium’s Gateway here: https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/ Download and install the software. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this link http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/61/104/22 and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, “Hey, I’m new!” We will take care of the rest.
Nov 20 Library 2.0 Webinar – Responding to an Active Shooter in the Library – A timely talk but not free
TOPIC: “Responding to an Active Shooter in the Library: Protecting Patrons and Staff From a Rare But Catastrophic Event.”
PRESENTED BY: Dr. Steve Albrecht, author, Library Security: Better Communications, Safer Facilities (ALA, 2015)
DATE & TIME: Tuesday, November 20th, 2018, 4:00 pm US-EST (1-hour presentation + 30 minutes with special guests). Click herefor time zone conversions. The recording of the Webinar will be available immediately following the live broadcast, and available to all who register.
COST: $99/person
A sign of the times, unfortunately
Thu 22 Nov – 24 Nov IATEFL web conference – Finding yourself as a teacher
This year’s web conference is entitled: ‘Finding yourself as a teacher’ and will focus on the needs and challenges of the beginner teacher. While remaining open to all language teaching professionals, the conference is focusing on the early career teacher area. Over three days it will provide different sessions on topics relevant to that area including a look at the different types of language teaching both contextually and thematically, CPD options and how best to make a career out of teaching.
Mon Dec 10 5 VSTE Virtual Environments PLN Meeting 8 PM Eastern Standard Time
When? December 10 5 SLT
Come to VSTE Island in Second Life! Bring something you learned at the last conference to attended to share with the rest of us.
Recent VSTE attendees will share how the sold out conference went!
I have a little app to share that I learned about in a Blues Bar in Second life! You never know where you might learn something cool if you are a lifelong learner!
See you at 5 SLT.
——————
If you don’t have a Second Life account get one, it’s free. We recommend setting one up at the Rockcliffe University Consortium’s Gateway here:https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/ Download and install the software. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this linkhttp://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/61/104/22 and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, “Hey, I’m new!” We will take care of the rest.
Tue Dec 11 1700 UTC TEIS Webinar Series: Critical Competencies for Online Teaching
Description: The Teacher Educator Interest Section (TEIS) webinar series ends the year with a discussion with Kiran Budhrani, an Instructional Designer on E-Learning from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The discussion will focus on timely research on online teachers and teaching. The explosive growth in online education at the higher education level, (1.6 million in 2002 to 6.7 million students in 2015), has resulted in the need for more faculty to teach online and has changed the role of the teachers and their teaching practices. The research undertaken by Budhrani and her team involves the perspectives of 8 award winning online instructors on:
the core and emerging roles of online instructors
the key competencies for successful online teaching
The webinar will be in a conversation format moderated by Faridah Pawan, the TEIS Chair Elect-Elect. The webinar is free to all TESOL International Members and everyone else interested in the topic. (See the attached poster for additional information)
On November 16, 2018, Vance Stevens presented ‘Gamifying Teacher Professional Development through Minecraft MOOC’ at WorldCALL 2018
Picture credit: Susan Mirandi
This was my proposal:
Abstract
EVO Minecraft MOOC is an ongoing community of practice of language teaching practitioners which invites newcomers to join in every January / February and then continues throughout the year with a dedicated group of teaching peers who have been interacting online in Minecraft for the past 4 years. This presentation explains how the group was formed, how it functions, and what we have learned about gamifying learning by experiencing it ourselves when playing the game Minecraft with one another. More importantly we reflect continually on how this informs our approach to teaching and learning. This presentation shares our insights and perspectives with our audience and invites them to join us online if they wish to learn more about what gamification feels like as a learning experience.
Summary
Electronic Village Online is an annual teacher training event run under the auspices of TESOL CALL-IS. EVO Minecraft MOOC is a 5-week session that has taken place in Minecraft, a wiki, and Google+ Community space each Jan / Feb since 2015. The presenter conceived the idea for EVO Minecraft MOOC as a way that he himself could develop expertise in the game and thereby use it with students. Other teachers were attracted to the concept, including some who had some experience in the game. Participants were attracted to the session for the same reasons — not that their learning paths had been prescribed for them in a neatly pre-set syllabus but that by entering the “game” or session, learning would happen for them in a way that participants would come to understand by experiencing the process that Ito et al (2010) characterize as “hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.”
We have found that Minecraft is capable of reversing the normal student teacher dichotomy whereby teachers traditionally are assumed to know more than their students. We have found through the experience of participants in our EVO session that that participants tend to take charge of their learning by guiding one another in the vagaries of the game.
This presentation explains what teachers (who are learning about the game through the experience of playing it as learners) are learning about designing worlds within the game context that will meet their curriculum objectives and create an engaging and enjoyable experience and task-based environment for learners. But above all, the paper explores how teachers can be made aware of the affordances of Minecraft by creating such spaces for one another and interacting in those spaces. It also serves as an example of how we teachers can use what we have learned through our experience with MOOCs to form communities of practice to reboot our own learning, using the community as curriculum (Cormier, 2008).
Here are the slides:
I converted this into a script for a 5 minute trailer entitled
Learn to engage your students in a gamified classroom through experiencing the participatory culture inherent in Minecraft by interacting with like-minded teaching peers in EVO Minecraft MOOC
Hi, my name is Vance Stevens. I’ve been teaching English to speakers of other languages for over 40 years. My methods have evolved over the years from the behaviorist and cognitive approaches prevalent when I started teaching, through more communicative approaches, teaching through communities of practice, through connectivism, and most recently through gamification.
Minecraft is a game that for the past decade has caught and sustained the attention of teachers wanting to introduce elements of gamification into their classrooms. However, there are two steep hurdles for teachers: (1) First is the complexity and depth of the game itself, and (2) secondly, understanding how students will interact and communicate with each other in Minecraft by engaging in self-directed critical and collaborative learning. I started EVO Minecraft MOOC to address and resolve both these problems.
EVO stands for Electronic Village Online. The actual Electronic Village is physical space that the CALL Interest Section in TESOL established as a fixture at annual TESOL conferences way back last century. In 2001 Electronic Village Online was established as a virtual event taking place each January and February ever since then. EVO consists of a baker’s dozen of sessions on topics proposed by language teachers who develop their proposals into training courses of interest to other teachers. Session moderators work from passion, no one is paid, no one pays, it’s free, and it happens every January-February. Find out more at http://evosessions.pbworks.com
EVO Minecraft MOOC is one of these sessions. We started it in 2015 and it has since become an ongoing community of practice of language teaching practitioners which invites newcomers to join in every January / February and then continues throughout the year with a dedicated group of teaching peers who have been interacting online in Minecraft for coming on 5 years now.
In November 2018 I’m presenting at WorldCALL 2018, in Concepción: Chile, about our work in EVO Minecraft MOOC. The presentation explains how the group was formed, how it functions, and what we have learned about gamifying learning by experiencing it ourselves when playing the game Minecraft with one another. More importantly we reflect continually on how this informs our approach to teaching and learning. This presentation shares our insights and perspectives with our audience and invites them to join us online if they wish to learn more about what gamification feels like as a learning experience.
As EVO Minecraft MOOC prepares to enter its 5th year engaging teachers hands-on with peers in the participatory culture their students will experience when playing the game of Minecraft, this presentation invites you to join us.
Writeup for the WorldCALL 2018 conference proceedings
Presenters have been invited to prepare a 1000 word article describing their presentations. What follows is a version that is almost twice that length, but contains about what I would like to say. I’ll have to cut my submission back substantially, but I am blogging the expanded version here:
1. Introduction
Minecraft is a game that for the past decade has caught and sustained the attention of teachers wanting to introduce elements of gamification into their classrooms (Dikkers, 2015). However, there are two steep hurdles for teachers: the complexity and depth of the game itself, and understanding how students will interact and communicate with each other in Minecraft by engaging in self-directed critical and collaborative learning (Kuhn & Stevens, 2017). EVO Minecraft MOOC was formed to resolve both these problems.
Electronic Village Online (EVO) is an annual professional development event established in 2001 under the auspices of TESOL CALL-IS and has taken place every January / February since then (Hanson-Smith & Bauer-Ramazani, 2004).EVO consists of a baker’s dozen of sessions on topics proposed each year by language teachers who develop their proposals into training courses of interest to other teachers. Moderators hope only to learn by teaching others, and participation is open to anyone free of charge.
EVO Minecraft MOOC is one of these sessions. Since it was started in 2015 it has become an ongoing community of practice (CoP) of language teaching practitioners which invites newcomers to join in every January / February and then uses its server for community development throughout each year. The community explores how teachers can be made aware of the affordances of Minecraft by creating virtual spaces for one another and interacting in those spaces. The core group of moderators have for the most part been returning year after year to sustain their practice of teaching languages and enhancing the professional development of peers through Minecraft. Participants who enjoy playing and learning with us often join the team.
This paper explains what teachers participating in EVO Minecraft MOOC are learning about the game through the experience of playing it as learners, and what they are learning about designing worlds within Minecraft that will meet their curriculum objectives and create an engaging and enjoyable experience and task-based environment for learners.
2. How Minecraft MOOC was formed and how it functions
The author has been teaching English to speakers of other languages for over 40 years. His methods have evolved over the years from the behaviorist and cognitive approaches prevalent when he started teaching (references), through more communicative approaches (references), teaching through communities of practice (references to Wenger, Lave), through connectivism (Downes, Siemens), and most recently through gamification (Gee, references).
The author became interested in Minecraft after hearing other teachers enthusiastically describe in podcasts how they were using the game with students ever since Minecraft was created by Mojang in 2009, but he was thwarted in finding a community of learners actively playing who would accept an adult in their midsts. Eventually he conceived the idea of forming EVO Minecraft MOOC as a way that he himself could develop expertise in the game and thereby use it with students.
The seed took root when the author collaborated at a distance with a Croatian colleague on an article in which she interviewed her 11-year old son on how he had become fluent in English by engaging with other European players in Minecraft, even starting his own YouTube channel (Smolčec, Smolčec, & Stevens, 2014). In conducting the literature search for that article the author discovered other teachers using Minecraft in language learning. When he proposed an EVO session on the topic, he invited Jeff Kuhn and David Dodgson to join the effort, and both accepted. Jeff Kuhn set up our first Minecraft server and other teachers were attracted to the concept, including some who already had considerable experience in the game and were able to help mentor the developing Minecraft literacy of others (Stevens, 2017).
Minecraft MOOC takes place primarily online in Minecraft. In order to attract new participants we renew our proposal each year to become an EVO session and invite people to join us at our Google+ Community (G+C), where we can interact asynchronously. In addition to a syllabus, we also have a wiki at http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/ where we can suggest a structure for the course.
Although we have always had a syllabus, participants are attracted to the session not because their learning paths have been prescribed for them but because by entering the game, learning happens for them in a way that participants come to understand by experiencing the process. Ito et al (2010) characterize the steps in the process gamers go through as “hanging out, messing around, and geeking out,” and this is what happens with people who join us without much knowledge of Minecraft apart from a vague interest in using it with their students. Those who persist eventually become remarkably creative and capable of guiding other teachers, and their students, into adapting the game to their diverse learning goals. Our session applies the community as curriculum model whereby the community negotiates the operative syllabus for the MOOC (Cormier, 2008).
3. Discussion
This section discusses what we have learned about gamifying learning by experiencing gamification ourselves when playing the game Minecraft online with one another. First of all we have penetrated the Minecraft community of learners by becoming learners in Minecraft ourselves, learning hands-on how gamification works and might apply to our own contexts. In so doing, we come to grips with the complexity and depth of the game, understanding through doing it ourselves how students will interact and communicate with each other in Minecraft (in our case using the text chat native to Minecraft as well as Discord, a 3rd-party VOIP app frequently used by gamers, to speak to one another while in-world). Through carrying out our own projects, such as discovering temples, both on land and underwater, and excavating them for their loot, we engage in self-directed, spontaneous learning.
Through experiencing the game ourselves, we see how Minecraft brings essential skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, and language and communication skills to bear on a range of concepts including, architecture, engineering, chemistry, mathematics, coding, history, and the list goes on and on.
This article has already cited one example of students using Minecraft to practice and improve learning a foreign language (Smolčec, Smolčec, & Stevens, 2014). That article cites many other instances, including the work of Jeff Kuhn who used Minecraft to generate ideas for ESL students writing about disaster management, and Dave Dodgson using Minecraft in Turkey in an EFL context (see also their more recent articles: Kuhn, 2015; and Dodgson, 2017).
We have found that Minecraft is capable of reversing the normal student-teacher dichotomy whereby teachers traditionally are assumed to know more than their students. We have found through the experience that participants tend to take charge of their learning by scaffolding one another in the vagaries of the game. We have also seen when, as often happens, teachers bring their children with them into the game, that these kids often become proficient more quickly than their parents, and mentor not only their parents but other adult players as well. Through this we see that a productive strategy of using Minecraft with younger students would be to set up a play space for them, encourage them to set their own goals within the curriculum, and empower them to become the experts, even to the extent of teaching the teacher how to use Minecraft to learn more about their curriculum.
More importantly we reflect continually on how what we learn through our experience collaborating with each other in-world informs our approach to teaching and learning. Our G+C has been an ideal space for sharing our screenshots and videos from in-world, and conversations around all our topics of interest ranging from helping noobies to showing each other our builds and projects. Lately we have discussed there how to replace our G+C when Google drops support for the platform in April, 2019. Meanwhile we are looking into alternatives such as Google Classroom and Moodle. We don’t intend to let what happens with G+C curtail our learning in the 2020 rendition of EVO Minecraft MOOC.
4. Conclusions
In our proposal and session materials, we invite other teachers to join us who consider themselves to be teachers with a gaming problem, gamers with a teaching problem, and teachers of gamers with a learning problem. By this we mean to address teachers who don’t already play games but would like to understand how gamification might work in their teaching contexts; teachers who already play games and would like to adapt what they know to teaching their students, and teachers who see that their students like games, and want to know how they might leverage this by fitting Minecraft into their curriculum. We consider it axiomatic that when asked by skeptics if Minecraft is in the curriculum, the reply is usually that the curriculum is somewhere in Minecraft already. We encourage our peers to join us so that together we can figure out how and where Minecraft can be utilized in anyone’s teaching curriculum.
By the time these proceedings are published, the Minecraft MOOC EVO session for 2019 will have completed its 5th year as a formal session engaging teachers hands-on in the participatory culture their students will experience when playing the game of Minecraft. However, we expect there will be an EVO Minecraft MOOC in 2020, in which case we invite any interested participants to join us. We can be easily found via EVO, http://evosessions.pbworks.com/ or in a Google search on EVO Minecraft MOOC.
Hanson-Smith, E. & Bauer-Ramazani, C. (2004). Professional Development: The Electronic Village Online of the TESOL CALL Interest Section .TESL-EJ 8, 2.(On the Internet) http://tesl-ej.org/ej30/int.html.
Smolčec, M., Smolčec, F. and Stevens, V. (2014). Using Minecraft for Learning English. TESL-EJ 18, 2. Available: pp. 1-15 in http://www.tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej70/int.pdf
“In his presentation, Gamifying teacher professional development through Minecraft MOOC, Vance Stevens explained that over the last 40 years he has taught English through behaviourist and cognitive approaches, then communicative approaches, followed by communities of practice, connectivism (aligned with the original idea of MOOCs as community-driven), and most recently gamification. He indicated that Minecraft has caught the attention of many educators over the last decade; it promotes critical thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, language and communication, and has been used for architecture, engineering, chemistry, mathematics and coding, in addition to language teaching. Gamification, he said, is about learning not in a top-down format, but by exploring in a bottom-up way. The challenges for teachers are: penetrating Minecraft communities of learners; the complexity and depth of the game; and understanding how students will interact and communicate with each other in Minecraft, and how they will engage in self-directed critical/collaborative learning. The EVO Minecraft MOOC started in 2015 to address and resolve these problems, and newcomers are welcomed every January/February.”
Here are some more photos taken by Susan Mirandi, during the presentation:
Heike Philp tracked presentations at this conference with a series of tweets
Mon Nov 6 0100 UTC Dakota Redstone at VSTE Minecraft Mondays
MINECRAFT MONDAY
Monday, November 5th, EST, we will meet at VSTE Place to work on a neighborhood which Dakotah_Redstone has already begun. Each person may try recreating their own home in the neighborhood. We will meet at 8 PM Eastern.
This week we will look at two resources our members have shared: music creation: within Minecraft using Note Blocks and red stone, and 101 Build Hacks. Both can help us furnish our homes!
You must have a computer Minecraft account from https://minecraft.net/en/ to join. There is a one time fee of $26.95. Download and install the software. Choose multiplayer and add a server: Name VSTE Place IP 69.175.17.26:25565 Our server is protected. If you want to be whitelisted to enter anytime you want to continue building this, or anything else, email Kim Harrison at K4sons@gmail.com or kvharris@vbschools.com from an educational email address with your real name and minecraft name.
We are currently using Minecraft version 1.12.2
Thu Nov 8 at 2000 UTC next event in e-Learning 3.0 – Connectivist learning by Stephen Downes
Fri Nov 9-10 Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference – The Future Present
The Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference: The Future Present took place on November 9-10, 2018 at the Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, California
Registration closed Sept 30, 2018 but there is supposed to be virtual participation possible (I don’t see how, and it might not be free, but stay tuned)
According to the organizers, “lightning talks are limited to 5 minutes and should include easy ways for attendees to learn more about the topic if interested. This may include your contact information, links to additional resources, or a copy of the presentation.” They go on to say, “live demos at a conference can be tricky, especially if they require a solid internet connection. You may wish to record videos as an alternative to streaming or live demos.” In the end they requested a video and were reluctant to deal with live presenters at a distance.
The didn’t limit the number of characters for the title of the talk, so I made it descriptive …
Learn to engage your students in a gamified classroom through experiencing the participatory culture inherent in Minecraft by interacting with like-minded teaching peers in EVO Minecraft MOOC
Minecraft is a game that for the past decade has caught and sustained the attention of teachers wanting to introduce elements of gamification into their classrooms. However, there are two steep hurdles for teachers: (1) the complexity and depth of the game itself, and (2) understanding how students will interact and communicate with each other in promoting their self-directed critical and collaborative learning. EVO Minecraft MOOC is preparing to enter its 5th year engaging teachers hands-on with peers in the participatory culture their students will experience when playing the game of Minecraft. This presentation explains how you can join us.
The recorded talk makes a handy trailer for a talk I’m scheduled to give at WorldCALL 2018 at 3pm on Friday, November 16 in Concepción, Chile. The talk is due to last only 30 minutes and I have just been informed that
I must bring a Microsoft PPT or PDF of my slides on a thumb drive to Concepción and submit it to technical staff there in person at least 3 hours prior to my talk,
The presentation will be loaded by technical staff onto the computer in the presentation room where I will be, and
No presenter(s) is(are) allowed to use their own device to give their presentation
This is a bit limiting. I’m surprised that at a WorldCALL conference there would not be some means of uploading these files online. Using thumb drives where so many presenters will be inserting them into the same computers is a bit promiscuous, though I presume they feel they have protected their environment. Also it means that all presentations, both those presented and those attended when the presenter is not presenting, will be subject to gradual death by PowerPoint. I like to liven PPT up with video, especially when my topic is Minecraft, and possibly even demo the game from the podium, maybe even with other participants joining me online. Also I prefer to put my slides at Google Docs and present from a tablet. I like to walk about and swipe the screen untethered from the podium and the mouse attached to the computer there, much easier to engage with an audience that way. So I’m disappointed that scope for creativity will be constrained for all concerned, but that’s their concepcion of WordCALL, and I’ll do my best to make my part as interesting as I can; the topic is one I’m passionate about 🙂
At any rate, here are the title, abstract, and summary of my talk coming up in Chile
Gamifying teacher professional development through Minecraft MOOC
Abstract
EVO Minecraft MOOC is an ongoing community of practice of language teaching practitioners which invites newcomers to join in every January / February and then continues throughout the year with a dedicated group of teaching peers who have been interacting online in Minecraft for the past 4 years. This presentation explains how the group was formed, how it functions, and what we have learned about gamifying learning by experiencing it ourselves when playing the game Minecraft with one another. More importantly we reflect continually on how this informs our approach to teaching and learning. This presentation shares our insights and perspectives with our audience and invites them to join us online if they wish to learn more about what gamification feels like as a learning experience.
Summary
Electronic Village Online is an annual teacher training event run under the auspices of TESOL CALL-IS. EVO Minecraft MOOC is a 5-week session that has taken place in Minecraft, a wiki, and Google+ Community space each Jan / Feb since 2015. The presenter conceived the idea for EVO Minecraft MOOC as a way that he himself could develop expertise in the game and thereby use it with students. Other teachers were attracted to the concept, including some who had some experience in the game. Participants were attracted to the session for the same reasons — not that their learning paths had been prescribed for them in a neatly pre-set syllabus but that by entering the “game” or session, learning would happen for them in a way that participants would come to understand by experiencing the process that Ito et al (2010) characterize as “hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.”
We have found that Minecraft is capable of reversing the normal student teacher dichotomy whereby teachers traditionally are assumed to know more than their students. We have found through the experience of participants in our EVO session that that participants tend to take charge of their learning by guiding one another in the vagaries of the game.
This presentation explains what teachers (who are learning about the game through the experience of playing it as learners) are learning about designing worlds within the game context that will meet their curriculum objectives and create an engaging and enjoyable experience and task-based environment for learners. But above all, the paper explores how teachers can be made aware of the affordances of Minecraft by creating such spaces for one another and interacting in those spaces. It also serves as an example of how we teachers can use what we have learned through our experience with MOOCs to form communities of practice to reboot our own learning, using the community as curriculum (Cormier, 2008).
Ergo …
It seems that if I said pretty much that, reworded more conversationally and with some elaboration, this would take about 5 minutes
Sandra Annette Rogers wrote me: I thought you might want to see the Educause Games & Learning community group meeting slides that included your lightning talk on slide 21-22. I heard there were about 30 participants.
Here are the slides introducing the event, and what my slides 21-22 looked like
Slide 22 embeds our video, so in theory it should be possible for attendees and others to enjoy our asynchronous presentation.
Earlier events
1300 start Sun Oct 7 thru Nov 4 – Teaching Online with Heike Philp – a paid iTDi course
The fall is a great time to work on professional development, and here is a great resource: a series of eight free webinars during the week of October 15-19.
The webinar topics include ideas for teaching grammar; developing academic listening skills; working with photos and images; using short stories; helpings students become self-directed learners; using popular songs; developing critical thinking skills; and 21st century teaching.
The presenters include TESOL professionals Sara Davila, Sybil Marcus, Joe McVeigh, Ken Beatty, Sandra Heyer, Sarah Lynn, Michael Rost, and Geneva Tesh.
These webinars are sponsored by Pearson as part of their 4th Annual ELT Webinar Series. They take place throughout the week at either 12:00pm or 2:00pm Eastern Daylight Time. Be sure to adjust for your own time zone. All of the webinars are free, but you must register separately for each one. All registered participants will receive a certificate of attendance.
Wed Oct 17 1900-2200 UTC – 3rd Library 2.018 mini-conference – Social Crisis Management
The third Library 2.018 mini-conference: “Social Crisis Management in a 21st Century World,” will be held online (and for free) on Wednesday, October 17th, from 12:00 – 3:00 pm US-Pacific Daylight Time (click for your own time zone). Register now to watch for free and/or to receive the event recordings.
This event is being organized in partnership with Patty Wong, Director of Library Services at Santa Monica Public Library.
Our human condition has changed dramatically and has implications for libraries of all types on a global scale. Food insecurity and hunger, housing policies and homelessness, violence, mental health service needs, social, economic, educational and racial equity, substance abuse and drug overdose – all of these and many more challenges impact the people who frequent our libraries – as customers, students, faculty, and staff. Operational decisions continue to be influenced by social concerns. Join us for a series of conversations on how libraries have developed, responded, and championed programs and services to address some of these social crises and learn about outcomes. What’s the new normal for libraries in this world of social and economic disparity? Has it altered or enhanced our core mission?
This is a free event, being held online. REGISTER HERE
to attend live and/or to receive the recording links afterward. Please also join the Library 2.0 network to be kept updated on this and future
Participants are encouraged to use #library2018 and #librarysocialcrisis on their social media posts leading up to and during the event.
SESSION LIST as of Oct 10:
Active Shooter Training – Mary Soucie, State Librarian
Bibliotecas acción social – Judith de Méndez, Librarian.
Broward County Library – Reach Out Reach Up Reintegration Program – Roslyn Dean, Community Engagement Manager, Broward County Library
“Conversescion”: not a mis-type, a different way to inclusion of asylum seekers – Matilde Fontanin
Educating Information Professionals to Manage Social Crises – Jen Jumba, M.L.I.S Adjunct Faculty at SJSU and Adult Services Librarian/Supervisor at Cuyahoga County Public Library
From Transactional to Transformational Responses and Roles: Current and Potential Library Responses to Social Crises – Paula Miller, Director, Baltimore County Public Library
It’s not (just) about transition: Librarians’ role in promoting trans affirming healthcare – Mary Catherine Lockmiller, MLIS, M.Eng., AHIP
Meeting some basic needs of SJSU students and San Jose citizens @ the MLK Jr. Library – Peggy Cabrera, Associate Librarian for Art & Art History, Environmental Studies, Humanities & Philosophy, San Jose State University
Opiate Users In Your Library: A Community Health Crisis – Dr. Steve Albrecht
Planning to React: Creativity, planning, and community coordination in response to crisis – Christian Zabriskie, Executive Director/Founder
Providing Support to Library Customers with Adverse Life Challenges – Alix Midgley, LCSW
The Role of Libraries in Addressing Homelessness and Poverty – Dr. Julie Ann Winkelstein
What role can public libraries play in the fight against HIV/AIDS? Lessons from Lubuto Library Partners in Lusaka, Zambia – Elizabeth Giles, Director of Library Services
Fri Oct 19 at the Online Facilitation Unconference – Vance Stevens connects with Hossein Vakili’s class of ELT teachers in Tehran
Ignore the prices, click on REGISTER, and scroll down to the bottom of the window till you see this:
This is an inclusive conference. If you haven’t registered by now you probably won’t at the suggested price structure. So the organizers encourage anyone to enter $1 as payment, try less if you wish, and join in the fun.
Here are the previous announcements with description of the event
Another Online Facilitation Unconference (our fifth). This year, the event will take place October 15–21, 2018.
Once again, we will be playing alongside International Facilitation Week, a week-long celebration of great facilitation and the skilled (and sometimes brave) people around the world that make it happen, organized by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF).
If you’re still interested in exploring what role technology can play in all this, OFU is the place to be. We’re super excited and hope you can join us. Stay tuned for more updates.
Greetings!
Your OFU18 team,
Lyda, Palash & Tim
PS: Please help spread the word. See our social media channels below or simply forward this email to your friends and colleagues. Thanks!
Another Year, Another Unconference!
This year’s Online Facilitation Unconference 2018 will be our fifth event since we first started 2013.
Each year, we continue to tweak the format. We will share more details with you over the next couple of weeks regarding this year’s program.
Claim Your Super Early Bird Discount!
We’re almost ready to roll out ticket sales (incl. sponsor options), probably sometime later this week.
If you’d like to get a little bit of a head start, you can secure your ticket for only $15 using our super early bird rate. This option has been extended to September 24, at noon Pacific Time.
But actually, at this conference there is an option to pay what you like
At an Unconference participants create the agenda.
Tue Oct 23 Curt Bonk in Teacher Educator Interest Section webinar
The Teacher Educator Interest Section (TEIS) webinar series resumes with a discussion with Curt Bonk on E-Learning. He has been consistently listed from 2012-2018, by Education Week as a top contributor to the public debate about online education. He will be sharing his thoughts in the TEIS webinar on the emergence of at least 30 different ways in which learning is changing-for instance, it is becoming increasingly collaborative, global, mobile, modifiable, open, online, blended, massive, visually based, hands-on, ubiquitous, instantaneous, and personal.
The webinar will be in a conversation format moderated by Faridah Pawan, the TEIS Chair Elect-Elect. The webinar is free to all TESOL International Members. (See attached brochure for additional information)
What is the State of E-learning? Reflections on 30 Ways Learning is Changing
Tue, Oct 23, 2018 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM Eastern Daylight (EDT)/Eastern Standard Time (EST)
This presentation explores the impact of the next wave of learning technologies emerging as a consequence of significant and substantial changes in the World Wide Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVnjet3cKfU
Oct 24, 2018 Conversation with Shelly Blake-Plock
Wed Oct 24 2018 20:00:00 GMT+0400 (Arabian Standard Time)
Week 1 of E-Learning 3.0 with Shelly Blake-Plock, Co-Founder, President and CEO – Yet Analytics.
Applications, Algorithms and Data: Open Educational Resources and the Next Generation of Virtual Learning Oct 29, 2018 video
Using examples such as virtual containers and actionable data books, I sketch the future for the next generation of OERs as a distributed and interactive network of applications, algorithms and data. My presentation starts at 1:18:00 in the video.
Quick (13 minutes) description of how to use the E-Learning 3.0 OPML feed (at https://el30.mooc.ca/course_feeds.xml ) to collect the list of feeds being shared by course participants and read all their new poss in your feed reader – I demonstrate how to import OPML for both Feedly and for gRSShopper.
Conversation With Tony Hirst, Open University Oct 31, 2018
We covered server virtualization with an in-depth look at using Docker to launch full web applications in just a few moments, and then looked at embedded programs in Jupyter notebooks, tying it all together with a discussion of how these might be used in the future.
For many years now, the leading way to isolate and organize applications and their dependencies has been to place each application in its own virtual machine. But virtual machines are bulky. Enter Docker containers. Containers make it possible to isolate applications into small, lightweight execution environments that share the operating system kernel.
Docker Hub is the world’s largest public repository of container images with an array of content sources including container community developers, open source projects and independent software vendors (ISV) building and distributing their code in containers.
Sun Oct 28 1400 UTC Djalal Tebib on Sundays with BELTA
I have joined and plan to blog some of my experiences with the iTDi course I have just started attending as a participant, Teaching Online with Heike Philp. This is a 4-week course to learn how to teach online, or if you are already experienced at that, to improve your technique. It’s not free, but it provides participants with multiple perspectives on how online courses might be constructed and delivered. It follows on the one I reviewed in my previous post, the 5-Day ESL Edtech Jumpstart Challenge with Jacqueline Vulcano https://learning2gether.net/2018/10/07/esl-edtech-jumpstart-challenge-with-jacqueline-vulcano-reviewed/
The live sessions take place 4 times on Sundays, at 1pm GMT and started on 7 October. I am not allowed to share iTDi proprietary links or materials here, but I can share my own postings, such as this video from Week 2 in the course.
Week 2 – Vance Stevens models and demonstrates teacher autonomy with ELT teachers in Tehran
This is raw video from Oct 19, 2018 when Vance Stevens accepted an invitation to speak to Hossein Vakili’s teacher training class at Raja Language Institute in Tehran about learner autonomy, which I suggests has to start out with teachers themselves becoming autonomous learners. This was done as Episode 394 in Learning2gether.net and also as a project for an iTDi class being given by Heike Philp on Teaching Online. It was also an opportunity for me to model and demonstrate my teaching philosophy to a group of engaged learners based on my experience practicing and reflecting on my teaching philosophy, and discuss my teaching philosophy in the context of teacher autonomy with teacher trainees in Tehran
This was not meant to be a top down presentation; it was meant to be a conversation. Hossein’s students were to read / review Vance’s materials and be prepared to ask questions in order to hold a conversation with the invited speaker (15 min). Online participants in the event will then be invited to speak to Hossein and his students about their view of online facilitation (15 min).
The presentation was in Zoom in Vance’s space at, https://zoom.us/j/5786977523. Anyone interested was welcome to attend and speak to Hossein and his students/teachers in Tehran, on October 19, 2018, 05:30 a.m. UTC.
Week 1 in the course
The assignment for week 1 was to pair yourself with someone else in the class and create a lesson to teach that person something of your choosing. I teamed with Hossein Vakili in Iran and decided for my project to teach how to introduce oneself in Arabic. I created a set of slides which would allow me to present students with visual prompts of what to say during a typical first meeting with an Arabic speaker. I provided a spoken model while delivering the lesson, and got students to repeat the utterances as I flipped through the slides showing them what they might say next.
The lesson was supposed to last for ten minutes, and at the end of that time, I was able to engage Hossein in a scripted conversation. When I repeated the lesson with two volunteers from the iTDi class on Sunday Oct 14, I was able to get them talking to me in a reasonable semblance of an introduction in Arabic ending in an invitation to have tea.
Here is what it looked like when I recorded it in Zoom with Hossein:
On completion of the course I received a certificate 🙂
International Facilitation Week and Online Facilitation Unconference
I have registered in the Online Facilitation Unconference again this year. It is the 5th year when this unconference has been facilitated in conjunction with IFA, and my second year to attend. Last year I posted a session on Sun, October 22, 2017 – Learning2gether with Hanaa Khamis – Voice Apps for Developing Speaking and Writing Activities – and the Online Facilitation Unconference
This segued nicely with the Week 2 assignment for the Teaching Online course. Here is the event description, as posted at Learning2gether.pbworks.com:
Hossein and Vance had connected via Heike Philp’s iTDi class the week before and as a result of that Hossein asked Vance to present at a web conference for his teachers and colleagues at Raja Language Institute in Tehran and speak to them about learner autonomy, which Vance suggests has to start out with teachers themselves becoming autonomous learners.
The presentation is based on a paper I wrote in 2007, now dated in details concerning software that was available back then, but still quite current in principle (same valid principles, different software).
Vance Stevens has worked in CALL for 40 years. He started Learning2gether in 2009, and has hosted almost 400 podcasts. He is on the editorial board of the CALL Journal and also serves on the executive board ofAPACALL. He has been editor of the On the Internet column for TESL-EJsince 2003. He has served as TESOL CALL-IS Electronic Village Online coordinator/moderator since 2003, where he started Webheads in Action in 2002 and more recently conceived, and currently co-moderates, EVO Minecraft MOOC, He archives his numerous publications and presentations at http://vancestevens.com/papers/.
OLLReN 2018 Annual Online Conference on Research into using Technology for Language Learning, organized by the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG, Laureate International Universities and Cambridge University Press, took place on Oct 4, 2018
Learning2gether has been on a long break while my wife and I have been focused on uprooting ourselves from the UAE, our country of residence for the past 21 years, and getting situated in a new country, Malaysia. Routine and workflow have been pretty much shattered, getting established in a new apartment and installing wifi, while awaiting a shipment to arrive with things we couldn’t pack into suitcases, just getting around shopping and exploring on public transport and Grab, have all been insanely time consuming.
Also we arrived on a Malaysia My Second Home visa which, when we applied for it, allowed visa holders to work part time in Malaysia, but by the time we got here that rule had been rescinded, so …
As someone who has been developing personal learning networks and training other teachers to reach each other online (through example) and (by extrapolation) their students, my thoughts for supplementing income have turned to one of the places my passion has been, and where I have been spending a lot of my spare time since the turn of the century, the online teaching environment.
It was this concatenation of recent events and the timing being right that caused me to respond to an invitation posted to the CALL-IS Community in MyTESOL on Sep 20, 2018. You’ll have to log into the website to see it, if you are a TESOL member, and then find it, but it looked like this:
I clicked on the link to see if it was free (it was) and got the following message
Followed by a graphic giving the tools to be used
Clicking on the button gets you a dialog box where you are asked your name and email and prompted to “Download Now”. When you provide the requested information it takes you to this page
And when you check your mail you find a link where you can actually “download now” and what you get when you do that is a larger version of poster shown in the graphic to the left of “Get the List” in the step previous to the last one.
So you didn’t really need to go through those last steps but now Jacqueline knows who is accessing her materials, nothing wrong with that (she asked and you gave :-), but she’s already told us the six tools to be covered in the course: G Suite, Symbaloo EDU, Remind, Seesaw, Quizlet, and USA Learns.
I was learning already. I was interested to see how Jacqueline does it. So far I’d learned that you could use a list that goes out to all TESOL members who subscribe to it to drive traffic to your site and find out who was driven there by offering them something they could download for free. Registration for the course was free as well, so I carried on.
The instructions said to look for an email from @edtech4adultesl.com. In the email, Jacqueline welcomed me to the course, briefly explained its rationale, laid out her plan for the 5 days of the course, and encouraged me to join the Facebook page and introduce myself there. Here’s what was in the email:
Welcome to the 5-Day ESL EdTech Jumpstart Challenge!
I’m so excited you are here! Using technology with adult ESL students who have limited digital literacy skills can be a daunting task, but it’s an essential piece of their education to pursue further education and become effective in today’s workforce.
Plus, the ability to use the internet and apps like Skype and Whatsapp gives our students access to staying in touch with family and friends in their home countries.
Simplification is KEY
My goal during this challenge is to simplify your classroom technology implementation process to help you overcome the overwhelm and avoid some of the hurdles that I have faced over my many years of using technology with my students.
Throughout this week-long challenge, I’ll show you how to organize your educational technology tools and websites, lay down some foundation to scaffold your students’ learning, and get students learning English on their devices.
Our agenda for the Week
Each weekday morning, you’ll receive an email from me with the day’s lesson and a few short activities.
Lesson 1 – G Suite & Technology Help Sheet
Lesson 2 – Symbaloo
Lesson 3 – Remind
Lesson 4 – School WiFi & Quizlet Activity
Lesson 5 – Student Google Accounts & Quizlet Class
The orange button takes us to a closed group, so no point in posting its URL (if you want it, follow the steps above :-). In all about 30 people had joined the group, including me.
You can see in the group’s postings that the group was formed on June 30 and then activated for the first iteration of the course Aug 24-28. On Sept 17 the group graphic was updated to give the current dates for the second iteration of the course.
All the materials for the first iteration are posted between the announcements of the two sessions and are repeated above the second Jumpstart announcement. Participant comments on the materials (the six tools mentioned above) appear below the graphic identifying each day’s posting, so you can see the participants’ questions from the two sessions and Jacqueline’s responses. Participants’ introductions appear under the “first post” (under the Welcome, introduce yourself graphic), so a complete record of the course milestones (not the content, see below) and its interactions are, as far as I can see, preserved here.
Over the five days I received a succession of emails from Jacqueline giving instructions for what to do on each day of the course:
The mails for day 1 and day 2 ended up in my spam folder so I was slow getting started until the third one arrived and I was able to retrieve them (another participant had noted that he was confused about “how this works” but it was quite straightforward if you were getting the emails).
The emails explained the tools in greater depth and provided links to videos to introduce them and to demonstrate the activities expected from each participant. The one for Day 2, Symbaloo, is representative of the rest, so I’m posting here selected images from that day’s email:
Of course, the links to the actual videos on YouTube are in the email which you receive when you register for Jacqueline’s course. They do not appear at the Facebook group, so to get them you must register and have them sent to you. The only thing that appears at Facebook is an icon such as the one you see above for each day of the course. Participants are asked to post their questions or comments each day below the matching icon on the Facebook page.
So to answer the above-mentioned participant’s question, this is how it works. You respond to an invitation to join the course wherever you happen to see it. You register your email with Jacqueline by requesting a free download, or by whatever way you approach the course (I’m not sure what the other ways are; I found it from a TESOL Community list). If you join the Facebook Group (or the course in some other way) then Jacqueline sends you emails giving you links to the content of the course (the videos). You watch the videos, carry out the tasks, and post on your comments on completion of those tasks at the Facebook group.
At the end of the week, Jacqueline congratulates everyone on their efforts in a generic post to the Facebook group:
As Jacqueline says in her first email, Simplification is Key!
And this is pretty simple – and I would say, for what it is, successful. Full disclosure: I did not view all the videos or complete any of the tasks – I am already familiar with most of these tools (I really should go back and review the ones I don’t know, like .. Remind?? … please remind me later :-).
I am writing this because I became intrigued about the way Jacqueline structured her course and presented it. It seems as if she is experimenting with deployment and modeling her experiments as a guideline for others to follow or elaborate on.
That was my takeaway, all worthwhile, and if you’ve been away from Learning2gether lately, as I have been, welcome back!
A lot has happened since I last posted here after the VRT and SLanguages conference in April (linked to below)
Earlier events
Apr 27-29 10th Virtual Round Table and 9th vLanguages-SLanguages Web Conference
Mon Apr 30 Global Education Fair opens for exploration and live chat
Our2018 Global Education Fair is next week, April 30 – May 4!Looking to take your school global? Working on a classroom global-connection project? Come learn about and connection with global organizations and projects in our free, virtual, online exhibit hall for teachers and school districts. Registration (free) is required.
The Global Education Fair (GlobalEdFair.org) is modeled after traditional vendor or college fairs, but takes place entirely online, allowing participants from all corners of the world to access information about the best global education resources and programs. We have over 45 organizations, groups, and projects signed up to exhibit!
The “exhibit hall” will be open for viewing the whole week starting Monday, April 30th, to learn about the work of leading global educators, companies and nonprofit organizations from their description and video previews. Live chat will then be available on Friday from 2:00 – 5:00 pm US Eastern Daylight Time (click for your own time zone)–you can click into live virtual session rooms to talk or ask questions of organization representatives to find out about their tools, services, projects, and programs related to globally connected teaching and learning. REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND(Free registration is required)
See you online!
Steve Hargadon & Lucy Gray
Global Ed Events Co-Chairs
Looking to take your school global? Working on a classroom global-connection project? Join us live on Friday, May 4th, for the Spring 2018 Global Education Fair, a free, virtual meet and greet for teachers and school districts to connect with global organizations and projects.
The Global Education Fair (GlobalEdFair.org) is modeled after traditional vendor or college fairs, but takes place entirely online, allowing participants from all corners of the world to access information about the best global education resources and programs.
The “exhibit hall” will be open for viewing the whole week starting Monday, April 30th, to learn about the work of leading global educators, companies and nonprofit organizations from their description and video previews. Live chat will then be available on Friday from 2:00 – 5:00 pm US Eastern Daylight Time (click for your own time zone)–you can click into live virtual session rooms to talk or ask questions of organization representatives to find out about their tools, services, projects, and programs related to globally connected teaching and learning.
Sat May 12 Michael Fricano II, Virtual Anywhere with AR & VR on Classroom 2.0
Saturday, May 12, 2018 “Virtual Anywhere with AR & VR”
We are so excited to have Michael Fricano II back on Classroom 2.0 LIVE as our special guest presenter this week! Michael has been doing amazing things with students and teachers to help them enhance learning with augmented reality, virtual reality and Google Expeditions and we can’t wait to have him share his passion and knowledge with all of us!Webinar Description:
Come explore and learn how Augmented and Virtual Reality has the power to transform learning in your classroom! Virtual Reality (VR) can transport your students all over the world, into outer space, and beyond their imagination! Augmented Reality (AR) bridges the real and digital world by letting students literally see and manipulate what they are learning in the palm of their hand. Take your students Virtual Anywhere!
Michael Fricano is a Technology Integration Specialist for the Education Innovation Lab and a Makerspace educator at ‘Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Previously, he was a 4th/5th grade teacher from 2007 to 2010 and a Technology Coordinator from 2010 to 2014. From 2009 to 2014 he helped transition a public elementary school in Hawaii to become a Google Apps for Education school, which included providing Google Apps training for teachers and students, and taking on the role of Google Apps Super Administrator. He is also the Director of Social Media & Community Engagement & Teacher Architect for The Janus Group. He became a Google for Education Certified Trainer in 2014 and has been providing professional development to public and private schools and at conferences for more than 7 years. He currently serves as the President for HSTE (Hawaii Society for Technology in Education – ISTE affiliate). Michael has a passion for education, technology, MakerEd, coding, AR/VR, reading, nature, video games, the internet, and TV.
Michael’s goal is to help provide educators and schools all over the world with the knowledge and skills to effectively integrate technology into their classrooms and to help their students become positive role models and contributors to the world (real & digital) around them.
Remember to follow us on Twitter: #liveclass20
On the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! site (http://live.classroom20.com you’ll find the recordings and Livebinder from our recent ““Global Collaboration through Online Experiences” session presented by Sara Malchow. Click on the Archives and Resources tab.
Mon May 14 Tilly Harrison Globinar – How Nearpod can scaffold language learners
Nearpod is a tool that allows you to create interactive content from your existing PowerPoint presentations streamed to learners’ tablets or smart phones. This webinar will give you the experience of being a student using Nearpod as well as seeing how a teacher creates material with this tool. With it you can:
– Keep your learners on track
– Find out how much they understand in real time
– Share good ideas from students to the rest of the class
– Add new activities ‘on the fly’
– Get a full report at the end of the class
– Set the same work as ‘homework’ to be done at the learner’s own pace
We will also discuss the pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of such a teacher-controlled app.
Thu May 24 1900 CET Zoe Gallou globinar on free audiovisual web tools for teaching
The last decades have brought a vast change in the way the students learn. The use of screens is so broadly expanding, that educators cannot disregard this fact. Furthermore, it is strongly supported by several researchers that the audiovisual web tools could help students to better understand the teaching materials and to improve their knowledge and creativity. They also have proven to be really useful for students with special learning needs.
During this webinar, several audiovisual free web tools will be presented, in order to help educators:
“Smartphones are not the answer!? The grand edtech buzzword bingo” provides an overview of edtech myths & misconceptions (especially mobile learning) presenting hands-on toolkits taken from “Mind the App 2.0” for smartphones aficionados but also edtech critics who would like to explore the full potentials of smartphones without the bling-bling tech fuss.
– Which trends are promising?
– Which innovations are digital voodoo?
– What should a language teacher know?
Presenter: Dr. Thomas Strasser
Professor of language methodology and technology-enhanced learning and teaching and head of the department of Continuing Professional Development and Educational Cooperation at the University of Teacher Education Vienna. Language teacher, teacher trainer, ELT author, international speaker. learning-reloaded.com | thomas.strasser@phwien.ac.at | @thomas_strasser
Host: Stephan Rinke
Deputy Director of VHS Essen www.edumorph.com | @edumorph
Wed May 30 1900 CEST – Globinar on How to engage students with video – Tools and tricks
E4.512-4578: How to engage students with video – Tools and tricks
30. 05. 2018 | 19:00h – 20:30h CEST
Russell Stannard / Host: Tilly Harrison
Access link: https://webconf.vc.dfn.de/toolsandtricks/
Thu May 31 Moodle MOOC ends, in progress since May 1
The next professional development event for past, current, and future teachers hosted by Nellie Deutsch is called Moodle MOOC 12 (MM12); see https://www.smore.com/u2057-moodle-mooc-12
MM12 will take place from May 1 – 31, 2018 on Moodle for Teachers and Moodle for Managers. The purpose of the MOOC is to connect educators for instruction and learning, reflective practice, social and collaborative learning, cultural exchange and peace, personal and professional development, community building, best practices and challenges involved in teaching with and without technology, student engagement with the content, peers, and the facilitator, and learning to teach online with Moodle course and learning management system.
In week 1, you will get acquainted with Moodle MOOC 12, the Moodle layout and pedagogy, the participants, and Screencast-o-matic and SlideSpeech video tutorial tools.
You will:
start teaming up to develop a collaborative course in the practice area in weeks 3 and 4.
learn to navigate a Moodle course, use the rich editor
understand Moodle as a platform designed for authentic learning and pedagogy of engagement.
use Screencast-o-matic or SlideSpeech to create video tutorials
Thu Jun 7 1200 PDT Library 2.018 presents Blockchain Applied: Impact on the Information Profession
We’re excited to announce our second Library 2.018 mini-conference: “Blockchain Applied: Impact on the Information Profession,” which will be held online (and for free) on Thursday, June 7th, from12:00 – 3:00 pm US-Pacific Daylight Time (click for your own time zone).This is a free event, being held online. This was the registration link
If you registered for the Library 2.018 “Blockchain” mini-conference then Included in the final email before the conference was the link to the conference schedule page, which page has the links to the session recordings. That page is still available, and only visible to those who registered for the event. It’s at http://www.library20.com/page/bc-schedule-and-links.
Each session was recorded in the full, Blackboard Collaborate format. Also available are .mp3 (audio) and .mp4 (video) versions. Members of the general public can access the recordings on Library 2.0 by going through the (free) signup process, http://www.library20.com/
This event was organized in partnership with Drs. Sue Alman and Sandra Hirsh from the San Jose State University School of Information as part of their IMLS-funded investigation of the potential uses of blockchain technology for the information professions.
Speakers include: Dan Blackaby, Todd A. Carpenter, Frank Cervone, Christina Cornejo,Miguel Figueroa, Patricia C. Franks, PhD, CA, CRM, IGP, Toby Greenwalt, Jason Griffey, M Ryan Hess, Amy Jiang, Stacey Johnson, Bohyun Kim, Heather A. McMorrow, Eric Meyer,Robert Norton, Tonia San Nicolas-Rocca, Ravi Singh, and Link Swanson.
Blockchain technology has the potential for libraries to accomplish much more than housing electronic credentials. The technology enables a broader impact within the community and around the globe. Some suggestions being explored for blockchain applications in libraries include building an enhanced metadata center, protecting Digital First Sale rights, supporting community-based collections, and facilitating partnerships across organizations. This mini-conference will provide participants with an overview of blockchain technology and information about current applications within the information professions. Join the discussion on ways that blockchain technology can be used in libraries. https://ischoolblogs.sjsu.edu/blockchains.
We invite all library professionals, employers, LIS students, and educators to participate in this event.
Participants are encouraged to use #library2018 and #libraryblockchain on their social media posts leading up to and during the event.
Mon June 25 Virtually attend Edmodo – A night at the Field Museum at ISTE Chicago
DESCRIPTION
Are you a tech leader at your school? Do you want to be more than “just tech support”? Join Edmodo and friends for A Night at The Field Museum with interactive learning and networking! Find out how to lead tech adoption at your school and get some PD hours while you’re at it. After the workshop concludes, relax with drinks and explore the museum!
If you’ll be in Chicago, join us live on Monday, June 25th! Can’t make it in person? You’ll be able to participate remotely in the workshop. Register now on Eventbright to stay in the loop.
Workshop Schedule (all times in Central Daylight Time):
5:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Keynote by Professor Stan Silverman
5:30 PM – 6:15 PM: Panel Discussion with Tech Coaches
6:15 PM – 7:30 PM: Workshop on Providing Feedback That Makes A Difference
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM: Refreshments and free access to The Field Museum’s Ancient Egypt exhibit
The purpose of the 7th annual 3-day online conference is for educators to engage in learning best practices and challenges involved in teaching and learning face-to-face and online (blended and fully online learning) using Moodle and other technologies. The theme of MMVC18 is teaching and learning with or without technology.
MMVC18 will take place on Moodle MOOT Integrating Technology. Enrol in MMVC18 to get access the content before and after the conference, get your badges, final certificate for reflecting and presenting.
Recordings will be available to those who enrol on the LMS Moodle platform.
This fourth-annual Global Collaboration event is a huge worldwide demonstration of the power of globally-connected learning. We encourage you to browse the event directory or the calendar and choose a compelling event to attend! Read directions and our website carefully to prepare. A current list of the events is at the bottom of this post, but use the links below because new events will be added and others may change).
Here are some important links for you to keep handy:
Here’s an update on Global Collaboration Week! We have over 1000 participants and 500 schools registered from 85 countries. 44 projects are being hosted this week, too, by global educators and organizations from around the world!
Take a look at the following links for GCW. Please save this information for future reference.
-Our main website is located at http://globalcollaborationweek.org
-Steve’s blog post about the event: http://bit.ly/GCWblogpost
-Events are listed here: http://bit.ly/2018GCWdirectory
-Best and most up to date method for viewing event details in YOUR timezone and directions for participation are located here: http://bit.ly/GCWjoin -Contact individual project/event hosts with specific questions.
-Please share this flyer with interested friends and colleagues: http://bit.ly/GCW2018flyer
-Follow us on Twitter at @GlobalEdCon for updates. Our event hashtag is #globaled18.
-Promotional badges for events hosts and participants are available here: http://bit.ly/2018GCWbadges
-If you need help, please chat with us here: http://bit.ly/GCW2018chat. We will respond as soon as we are able.
Thanks, and please let us know if you have any questions! Let’s go global!
Global Collaboration Week 2018 had over 1200 individuals and 585 schools and organizations from 90 countries registered.
47 projects were hosted this week, too, by global educators and organizations from around the world. We deeply appreciate the professional generosity of our event hosts. Their work has impacted thousands of students and teachers and together, we’ve helped raise awareness of the need to develop global competence in teachers and students.
Here are some next steps for continuing to collaborate globally:
Many projects did not require live participation and these asynchronous projects may still be going on if you and your students would like to join in http://bit.ly/GCWasynchronous.
We encourage you to contact all of our hosts if you would like additional information about their work: http://bit.ly/2018GCWdirectory
Follow us on Twitter at GlobalEdCon for updates and continue to use the hashtag is #globaled18 to share ideas and resources. Post any photos, videos, and blog posts about GCW on Twitter to share with the global ed community!
On March 15th, 2019, we will be co-hosting our fourth Global Leadership Summit with ASCD in Chicago at their Empower 19 conference. Registration for this event will be opening soon and make sure to reserve your space as this event sold out quickly last year!
Additional global education resources are available to those who are members of our main community (free): http://bit.ly/GECresources
If you represent a corporate or non-profit organization, please consider supporting our work so that most of our events can remain free for teachers. Contact Steve Hargadon at hargadon@gmail.com for a conversation on how we can partner.
Sun 23 Sept Edmodo Basics Webinar 1300 PDT
Want Edmodo Training?
Get a quick refresher in the Edmodo Basics Webinar, hosted by expert educators in our community. Who knows what you’ll discover with hands-on training from the comfort of your couch?
On Sunday Apr 29 some of the moderators and participants in EVO Minecraft MOOC took part in a Minecraft Symposium at the 10th Virtual Round Table hosted periodically by Heike Philp. The announced presenters were Vance Stevens, Mircea Patrascu, Dakotah Redstone, and Jane Chien, and we were joined in world by Mattie Tsai, Maha Abdelmoneim, Don Carroll, and Heike Philp herself, who streamed the proceedings for us through Adobe Connect and her YouTube channel
Program description:
Electronic Village Online (EVO) is an annual, free, series of 5-week sessions where teachers share with other teachers how they can improve their skills in a wide variety of aspects of their craft. EVO Minecraft MOOC has been a TESOL Electronic Village Online session since its inception in 2015. Having just completed its 4th consecutive year as a viable and expanding EVO community of practice, co-moderators and participants in EVOMC18 will conduct participants via Adobe Connect on a virtual tour in Minecraft to convey an impression of what this community looks and feels like when it assembles virtually in-world. At our presentation they can learn how Minecraft enables language learning, have their questions answered, or even join the community if they wish.
Where?
We will be warping and teleporting to various interesting sites on our Minecraft server. You can join us there if you are whitelisted
The following notice was posted on the social networks indicated below
Learning2gether episode 393 will begin at 1400 UTC on Sunday, Apr 29 as part of the Apr 27-29 10th Virtual Round Table and 9th vLanguages-SLanguages Web Conference. You can search for our presentation “Preparing Teachers to Engage Learners with EVO Minecraft MOOC” in the #vrtwebcon program here: http://www.virtual-round-table.com/page/program2018.
Our presentation is followed at 15:30 UTC by a Workshop on How to build in Minecraft. It’s free but places are limited, so you need to register at http://vrtwebcon2018.eventbrite.com. You need to have a Mojang login to participate hands-on at the mc.guinevereproject.eu server.
More about the Virtual Round Table/ vLanguage web conference on 27-29 April 2018
335 participants enjoyed three days of presentations, keynotes, workshops, addathons, hackathons and more.
All of the recordings have been published on the program and in form of individual session blogs here.
I am especially proud of the result of the Addathon where participants and presenters of the VRT collaboratively shared their know-how on tools. The Addathon lists approx. 100 tools for language learning including a short description on what it is, how to use it and perhaps some examples. This list is AWESOME!!!! to say the least and exceeded my expectations by a large margin. Many many thanks to all who shared their know-how, presenters as well as participants of the VRT.
We were delighted to hear
keynote by Thomas Strasser author of the book ‘Mind the App! Inspiring internet tools and activities to engage your students (Helbling)’
Visual Arts Circle, famous for their Image conference in Barcelona with Valéria Benevolo França, Kieran Donaghy, Magdalena Wasilewska, Magdalena Brzezinska and Rob Howard
GUINEVERE Symposium for those interested in creating games in a virtual environment with Dr. Michael Thomas, Dr. Letizia Cinganotto, Dr. Tuncer Can, Heike Philp and Carol Rainbow
Apr 27-29 10th Virtual Round Table and 9th vLanguages-SLanguages Web Conference
The 10th Virtual Round Table Web Conference took place on 27-29 of April 2018 together with the 9th vLanguages Annual Symposium in Second Life (formerly known as SLanguages).
The Virtual Round Table is a community event and focuses on language learning technologies. It is independent, a grass root event and free for all to attend. This unique web conference is supported by a great group of leaders in specialised fields who are willingly to donate their time as symposium coordinators or moderators.
This year, Virtual Round Table is joined by vLanguages on EduNation in Second Life and presents innovative examples, projects, or best practices on how to teach and learn a language in virtual worlds,
10th VRTWebCon CALL is now open for contributions on language learning with technology, which may include but is not limited to the following fields:
Digital literacy, online learning and web-based tools
Telecollaboration and multi-faceted interaction
VR, AI and other latest technology
Translation technologies and corpus
Open source, OER and other free resources
Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs)
Others
9th vLanguages CALL is open for contributions in the field of language teaching and learning in virtual environments such as
Social virtual worlds (Second Life, OpenSim)
Social VR worlds (High Fidelity, Sansar, Facebook Spaces, Altspace)
Come join three days of networking and great talks, workshops, addathons, hackathons, virtual worlds and more starting today, Friday 27 April at 11am GMT.
Program Overview Friday, 27 April 2018
10:30am GMT
WELCOME Heike Philp
11:00am GMT
KEYNOTE Thomas Strasser: Smartphones are not the answer?!
12:30pm GMT
WORKSHOP (1h) Maha Hassan: Online Assessment
1:30pm GMT
PRESENTATION E Robinson, W Simmerman, C Bell, G Ballif: When “Harry” Met Sally: Peer-to-Peer
2:30pm GMT
ADDATHON (1) Heike Philp
3:15pm GMT
PRESENTATIONLanguagenut
3:30pm GMT
ELTons Finalist Learn Match by Vision Education
4:30pm GMT
PRESENTATION Nick Koretsky:Teaching tenses with Grammar Organizer
Today we look forward to a full day of learning at the 10th Virtual Round Table WebCon/ 9th vLanguages Annual Symposium. Starting at 9am GMT we look forward to Joe Dale’s keynotes (9am) and his 1001 tips on how to create learning material with a few clicks.
Are you interested in virtual worlds, Minecraft and other virtual environments? Then do not miss the GUINEVERE Symposium (2pm) about games in virtual worlds and the vLanguages Symposium (10:30am) when Helena will introduce you to the games she developed and David talks about his successful English program in Second Life.
Equally exciting is the Sinespace Symposium (5:30pm), because this is a new virtual world which rocks.
Not really into 3D environments? Then perhaps Maria’s exciting presentation about how she uses Skype to connect to other educators around the globe and Kashif’s impressive case study. Did you know that 98% of Oman(ians) have a university degree? You will learn more about how Oman invests heavily in education.
And we will start our HACKATHON (10am) continue to work on the ADDATHON (12:30pm). Curious? So are we of how you develop this. Audience participation is required.
The full program and links to downloadable pdf and Google calendars
This was shortened, in the QR code he presented, to …
Here is a screen shot of one of the apps he was smashing
The program for Saturday, April 28
Saturday, 28 April 2018
9:00am GMT
KEYNOTE
Joe Dale: Easy subtitling and multimedia language learning with Apple’s Clips
Saturday, 28 April 2018
10am GMT
HACKATHON (1)
The future of language learning
11am GMT
Communication Break
Saturday, 28 April 2018
11:30am GMT
SYMPOSIUM
vLanguages
Saturday, 28 April 2018
12:30pm
ADDATHON (2)
Heike Philp
1:30pm GMT
Communication Break
Saturday, 28 April 2018
2:00pm GMT
SYMPOSIUM
GUINEVERE
3:30pm GMT
Communication Break
Saturday, 28 April 2018
4:00pm GMT
PRESENTATION
Maria Jose Giavedoni: Skype in the classroom
Saturday, 28 April 2018
4:30pm GMT
PRESENTATION
Kashif Ali / Sabiri: ICT Integration in Education
5pm
Communication Break
Saturday, 28 April 2018
5:30pm GMT
SYMPOSIUM
Sinespace
Day 3 of the 10th Virtual Round Table Web Conference/ 9th vLanguages Annual Symposium holds a few surprises for us in store. It is the last day of a VRTWebcon which has been more virtual than ever before.
We start today, Sunday 29 April at 12pm GMT/ 1pm UK time with Jean-Paul DuQuette who presents his dissertation about language learning in Second Life.
Then, at 2pm GMT/ 3pm UK time there will be a Minecraft Symposium by Vance Stevens, Jane Chien and Priscila Mateini on using Minecraft for Special Educational Needs students and children in school. This will be followed by a Minecraft workshop conducted by Carol Rainbow within the framework of EU funded GUINEVERE project.
The day will conclude at 5pm GMT with a repeat of the PCE (pre conference event) on Altered Reality by IATEFL LTSIG (LearningTechnologies Special Interest Group) and we look forward to Sarah Rogerson’s fabulous presentation and Raquel Ribero’s practical tips on how to use VR in class. Keep a cardboard at hand!
Me, myself and I, Heike Philp will also redo my presentation at the LTSIG on “Back to the Future: From virtual worlds to virtual reality”. Last but not least we welcome as a special guest Öznür and Ege, who demonstrate to us the VR game which won the Goethe Hackathon in Istanbul, a game the team of four developed in a matter of 3 days.
SUNDAY 28 APRIL 2018
12:00pm GMT
PRESENTATION
Jean-Paul DuQuette, Ed.D.: A Decade in Cypris Chat
Day 3 of the 10th Virtual Round Table Web Conference/ 9th vLanguages Annual Symposium holds a few surprises for us in store. It is the last day of a VRTWebcon which has been more virtual than ever before.
We start today, Sunday 29 April at 12pm GMT/ 1pm UK time with Jean-Paul DuQuette who presents his dissertation about language learning in Second Life.
Then, at 2pm GMT/ 3pm UK time there will be a Minecraft Symposium by Vance Stevens, Jane Chien (showing their work in EVO Minecraft MOOC) and Priscila Mateini (on using Minecraft for Special Educational Needs students and children in school). This will be followed by a Minecraft workshop conducted by Carol Rainbow within the framework of EU funded GUINEVERE project.
The day will conclude at 5pm GMT with a repeat of the PCE (pre conference event) on Altered Reality by IATEFL LTSIG (LearningTechnologies Special Interest Group) and we look forward to Sarah Rogerson’s fabulous presentation and Raquel Ribero’s practical tips on how to use VR in class. Keep a cardboard at hand!
Me, myself and I, Heike Philp will also redo my presentation at the LTSIG on “Back to the Future: From virtual worlds to virtual reality”. Last but not least we welcome as a special guest Öznür and Ege, who demonstrate to us the VR game which won the Goethe Hackathon in Istanbul, a game the team of four developed in a matter of 3 days.
SUNDAY 28 APRIL 2018
12:00pm GMT
PRESENTATION
Jean-Paul DuQuette, Ed.D.: A Decade in Cypris Chat
In this tweet, I meant for the next 12 months, not just the rest of the calendar year 2018, which is almost over 🙂
Picture credit: Susan Mirandi
