I was first alerted to this event when Philip Shigeo Brown posted this reminder on Facebook just the day before:
International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi) MonthlyRoundup (FB LIVE) with Philip Shigeo Brown & Steven Herder: Fri Nov 29, 1200-1300 GMT: https://www.facebook.com/iTDi.Pro/
The graphic was interesting 🙂 so I decided to drop in. I had intended only to see how this event worked. I hadn’t had enough notice to make it a Learning2gether episode in its own right, and I didn’t know I would be called on to participate. When I arrived, Steve was explaining how he had prevailed on the powers-that-be at the most recent 2019 JALT conference to stream their most recent plenaries and put the recordings on open access:
At first I was only listening to Phil and Steve on my PC talking in Zoom while broadcasting that through Facebook, so I got the event up on my iPad and took it into the kitchen to do the dishes. But when I heard them talking about my interview with them the previous week, I dried my hands and made a screen shot. You see? I was starting to get engaged.
And then when Steve invited anyone listening in Facebook to come into the Zoom room and join the conversation, Andy Boon and I obliged, joined later by Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto.
Steven called our attention to Gianfranco Conti’s website Error Correction: The Language Gym, https://gianfrancoconti.com/category/error-correction/. Dr. Conti is a prolific author who asks, “is the time and effort [spent] marking justified?” Dr. Conti draws on “thirty years of error-correction research, my personal experience as a learner of 14 languages and teacher of five and, more importantly, neuroscience and common sense [to] suggest alternative remedial approaches to MFL learner errors which are as or even more effective than the trending methodologies.” https://gianfrancoconti.com/2017/02/04/why-marking-your-students-books-should-be-the-least-of-your-priorities/
Vance contributed a technique for using voice to encourage revision from student writing begun on paper. The technique has the students share a Google Doc with him but start their writing on paper in class. The teacher collects the papers and then reads them correctly into Google Docs using speech-to-text. The teacher makes printouts of what the students wrote expressed in correct language and writes on these printouts suggestions for revision and improvement of the papers. The paper printouts are returned to the students along with their original papers, and the students continue writing in Google Docs, for as many revisions as possible, now focused on whatever errors occur or re-occur. Vance has presented this technique on numerous occasions, and the link shared in the chat is one which also has links to a writeup about the technique, as well as to its slide presentation https://learning2gether.net/2019/08/04/learning2gether-with-vance-stevens-at-mmvc19-supporting-student-writing-with-the-help-of-voice-to-text/
Vance also contributed the link to a screencast he recorded while in his office giving feedback to a student elsewhere on campus on the student’s writing, using Google Docs. The video illustrates the effectiveness of the technique: https://youtu.be/bH1p86lXD40
Vance argued that papers covered with red ink were useful only if there was some evidence of follow-up by the student; for example, if errors detected on one round of correction were tracked into the next round to see if they recurred, and if they did, that they be addressed at another remedial level. Here, Steven referred me to the work of Dana Ferris, which Vance Googled to turn up her book, Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing, a “principled approach to the theory and practice of error treatment that can guide pedagogical decision-making.” https://books.google.com.my/books/about/Treatment_of_Error_in_Second_Language_St.html?id=SxFaAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y
On Thursday. November 21, Steve Herder and Philip Shigeo Brown talked to Vance Stevens about iTDi and the challenge of commercial viability vs social community needs
Vance Stevens, founder of Learning2gether, talked with iTDi Director and Cofounder, Steven Herder, together with TESOL Certificate Course Director, Philip Shigeo Brown about iTDi, how it came about: when it began to be planned in 2010, then launched in 2012, and why, what it does, where it’s going, and how it serves the field of language learning.
In particular, how does iTDi balance the needs of the #iTDiCommunity with the need to remain commercially viable? In the context of that challenge, what kind of teacher development opportunities are offered and should be offered in the future?
Learning2gether promotes efforts that share knowledge in a free and open manner (share-alike in creative commons terms). As founder and coordinator of L2g, Vance is both interested in and impressed by the aspects of iTDi that do that. Whereas L2g does not promote commercial interests, I have no qualms whatsoever about spotlighting the altruistic work of for-profit entities that help to spread knowledge in our wider communities.
I gather from talking with Steven and Phil in the past that they seem to embrace that mindset while at the same time they and others at iTDi are seeking a fair return on the parts of their work where their professionalism shows devotion of time, expertise, and investment.
Achieving a return on investment is only right and fair, but I’d like to discuss how iTDi straddles the challenge of providing a service to the field while at the same time being compensated for it, and recruiting others to their team in return for their just compensation as well. In discussing these issues, I hope to find out more about how iTDi manages these challenges, and of course where they see it going. – Vance
These questions were alluded to during the conversation
Regarding this balance of service to the community vis a vis iTDi’s right to support itself and its investors (of time, money,expertise) I believe these questions were touched on in the discussion.
The iTDi website says that attendees are welcome to attend the Teachers Room sessions for a particular amount of time.before they are expected to subscribe. For this reason, I don’t announce them on L2g. When I have been there it seems you have welcomed participants. How does that work in practice?
We talked about JALT and IATEFL streaming sessions, in other words providing free content while making money elsewhere on the paid event (presumably). Does iTDi have a parallel model?
What can people do or participate in for free as community members vs what they must pay for, given of course that the paid areas would be ones where they could gain certification perhaps? Do you know W3 Schools? All their materials are free (choose from dozens of programming languages and help yourself) but if you want to be certified, you pay for that. (In the conversation, we found that iTDi had experimented with something similar).
What does iTDI do to develop their community. What benefits are there to community participation? How would users increase those benefits by upgading to paid services?
I presume you are teachers like me with a passion for sharing and contributing to the field, but are hoping to monetize the process to some extent for yourselves and others for reasons similar to why people don’t write books for free? What makes this tick?
All of these issues were touched on in the recorded materials. Have a listen!
On Wednesday, November 20, 2019, Hanaa Khamis and Vance Stevens presented online in Blackboard Collaborate at the annual Global Education Conference, (GEC). The title of the session was
Highlighting the participatory culture of continuous professional development through self-sustaining professional learning networks
Hanaa Khamis, NileTESOL PD Committee Chair and Learning Technologies Special Interest Group (LTSIG) Co-coordinator The American University in Cairo/School of Continuing Education (SCE/AUC)
Vance Stevens, coordinator of EVO (Electronic Village Online) and founder/coordinator of Learning2gether.net; Twitter (@name): @vances
Short Session Description:
This session aims at highlighting the benefits of experiencing participatory cultures in continuous professional development (CPD) among ELT practitioners by raising their awareness of the potentials inherent in working through personal learning networks (PLNs).
Target Audience: ELT educators, program leaders, teacher trainers
In this session, the presenters will share their experiences in creating several communities of practice which have crossed paths online and face to face. These communities have aimed to spread the culture of continuous professional development (CPD) among novice and more experienced ELT practitioners locally and globally.
ELT practitioners can miss out on CPD for all sorts of reasons. One assumption is why does one need training when one has received recognized certification in teaching? Another is, with all the burdens of teaching, why overload oneself with extra hours of needless CPD? A third is that it is such a luxury to consider training with the low pay teachers get. A fourth is how can one connect with those who provide free training opportunities?
The presenters have identified these and other issues that prevent ELT practitioners from benefiting from numerous training opportunities of which they are oftentimes not aware. As part of their passion, the presenters spend time and make relentless efforts to reach out and help practitioners join networks of various shapes and forms.
Professional development in TESOL is not a one-time event in the career of ELT practitioners. As much as we ask our learners to be lifelong learners, the least we can do is be role models. CPD is a culture of its own requiring dedicated and passionate teachers. It is a reciprocal process of give-and-take; one time you are a participant, another time a trainer, and the cycle goes on.
Participants in this session will recognize the fundamentals of maintaining a CPD participatory culture. They will identify various ways to collaborate and create within the framework of personal learning networks (PLNs). Finally, they will suggest CPD principles appropriate for their contexts.
Other Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
Vance Stevens lives in Penang, Malaysia. He has produced (up to now) 429 episodes since 2010 of Learning2gether.net. His over 150 publications, many available at http://vancestevens.com/papers/, deal with students using computers to learn languages and teachers learning to teach using technology by engaging in communities of practice and in participatory cultures. His accomplishments earned him the 2019 CALL Research Conference Lifetime Achievement Award.
Hanaa Khamis is an instructional technologist at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She is also an English language instructor and teacher trainer in the School of Continuing Education at AUC. Her research interests include cross-cultural communication, communities of practice, instructional technology, network-based language teaching, language acquisition, and pragmatics.
Vance joined the Main Room. ( 3:34 PM ) –
Sue tasteach56 – 3:35 PM – hi Vance you are in very early
I have no microphone but can answer in chat area
do you need help setting up?
– Hanaa Khamis joined the Main Room. ( 4:15 PM ) –
Sue tasteach56 – 4:16 PM – you are now a moderator Hanaa
Hanaa Khamis – 4:16 PM Hi Sue, Hi Vance
Sue tasteach56 – 4:20 PM – your sound is very low Hanaa
– giuseppe.fortunati joined the Main Room. ( 4:22 PM ) –
– giuseppe.fortunati left the Main Room. ( 4:22 PM ) –
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 4:31 PM – sorry my connection went down and have had to reload everything again
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 4:38 PM – I still can’t hear Hanaa
Hanaa, above where vance’s picture is click on the microphone with the setting gear
Vance Stevens – 4:42 PM – https://www.screencast.com/t/fK3btCjRwRN
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 4:43 PM – Hanaa, have you done the audio wizard here yet
Tools> Audio> Audio setup wizard, that should improve your audio
If Hanaa can normally chat on her computer then she probably only needs to do the AUdio Wizard
Hanaa can you try talking now?
4:51 PM
– Hanaa Khamis #2 left the Main Room. ( 4:53 PM ) –
– Hanaa Khamis #2 joined the Main Room. ( 4:53 PM ) –
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 4:54 PM – it is up to you
most people finish by quaRTER TO
I am in Australia
– Rachel joined the Main Room. ( 4:57 PM ) –
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 4:57 PM – hello Hanaa that sounds better
yes you are both talking well
Vance Stevens – 4:58 PM – I hear yu, can you hear me?
Hanaa Khamis #2 – 4:58 PM – Yes, can u hear me?
4:58 PM – Vance Stevens – yes
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 4:58 PM – better to have just one microphone on at a time
so when it is your turn to talk open the mic
Vance Stevens
– Jake joined the Main Room. ( 5:00 PM ) –
– Hanaa Khamis joined the Main Room. ( 5:00 PM ) –
Jake – 5:01 PM – From the UAE
Hanaa Khamis – 5:01 PM – Hi Jake, Hi Rachel
Rachel – 5:01 PM – I’m from Wellington, NZ
Jake – 5:02 PM – Not sure how this works
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 5:02 PM – everyone now has microphone permissions
Hanaa Khamis – 5:02 PM – Slide 2, WHere r u in the world?
20 Nov – Learning2gether – 429 episode – Thx to our partners – Have fun w navigation, Egypt
Rachel – 5:04 PM – Dont have whiteboard permission, I’m in Wellington, NZ
Jake – 5:04 PM – How do I attach the star to the map?
Rachel – 5:05 PM – I’m off the map lol
Vance Stevens – 5:05 PM – what planet?
Rachel – 5:05 PM – Only 1/3 of NZ was showing lol – yay its on that one
Vance Stevens – 5:06 PM – Here’s the link to our presentation, with working hyperlinks https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10mgAbhM6ZCq2TdE0x8r9J3n3vOnNwK-uICv_Ir_F8Wk/edit?usp=sharing
Hanaa Khamis – 5:06 PM – Can u poste session link to yr colleagues? https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/dropin.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=GEC19Part73
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 5:07 PM – Hanaa, people will be able to listen to the session again from the archives if they can’t attend today (the answer is yes)
Rachel – 5:10 PM – yes that’s a great summary pic
Hanaa Khamis – 5:13 PM – http://niletesol.org/ – NileTESOL
NileTESOL on Facebook – NileTESOL LTSIG on Facebook
– Stephanie Graham joined the Main Room. ( 5:16 PM ) –
– Amanullah Saand joined the Main Room. ( 5:18 PM ) –
Amanullah Saand – 5:18 PM – Hello from Sindh province of Pakistan 🇵🇰
Hanaa Khamis – 5:20 PM – Hello dear Aman
Hanaa Khamis – 5:21 PM – Connectivism, Downes, Siemens, MOOcs – see Stevens, V. (2013). What’s with the MOOCs? TESL-EJ 16, 4, 1-14: http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej64/int.pdf. Also available: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume16/ej64/ej64int/ WiA 2009 online Convergence, http://wiaoc09.pbworks.com/ – Encyclopedia – WiA entry – see
Stevens, V. (2018). Webheads. In Liontas, J. (Ed.). The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Wiley-Blackwell. 5824 pages. Available: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/archive/9781118784235eelt0458webheads.pdf Webheads Started in 1998http://webheads.info
Stephanie Graham – 5:28 PM – Hello from Massachusetts, USA
Rachel – 5:28 PM – Geez Stephanie you’re up late/early!
Stephanie Graham – 5:28 PM – haha- truly
Vance Stevens – 5:29 PM – 4:30 in MA
Rachel – 5:29 PM – I was in NH 2002 and used to ring home at 10pm and was 2pm the next day in NZ, now it’s 10pm NZ so must be about 4am depending on daylight savings
yikes
Vance Stevens – 5:31 PM – http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/w/page/10972799/FrontPage, The multiliteracies course
Stephanie Graham – 5:33 PM – Daylight savings always throws me off a bit. I’ll be in NZ in January, so I guess my internal clock is already in limbo. I hear you
Hanaa Khamis – 5:34 PM – hi, u go ahead
Stephanie Graham – 5:35 PM – Getting everyone on the same page is a challenge
Hanaa Khamis – 5:35 PM – I’m breaking up – I’m back – Go ahead Vance – polls
– Amanullah Saand #2 left the Main Room. ( 5:36 PM ) –
Hanaa Khamis – 5:37 PM – U go Vance – May be
Jake – 5:37 PM – Challenges: Calibre of staff; school’s professional directions v personal directions; time and access to quality CPD material, Not too mention technical barriers; being time poor…
Hanaa Khamis
5:40 PM – Yes, Yahoogroups z gone – Google+ too
Vance Stevens – 5:43 PM – https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10mgAbhM6ZCq2TdE0x8r9J3n3vOnNwK-uICv_Ir_F8Wk/edit?usp=sharing
– Abeer Raafat joined the Main Room. ( 5:43 PM ) –
– Samah 1 joined the Main Room. ( 5:46 PM ) –
Hanaa Khamis – 5:47 PM – sure – Yes
Samah 1 – 5:47 PM – Hi everyone – We hear u Dr.
Vance Stevens – 5:49 PM – here is the link to our session in pb works http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#WedNov200900UTCHanaaKhamisandVanceStevensatGECnbspParticipatorycultureofCPDthroughselfsustainingPLNs
Rachel – 5:50 PM – I love FB, I used to not use for professional just twitter but now use both
Vance Stevens – 5:50 PM – hanaa does a lot of live events in FB and posts the videos
– Hadeer Fikry 3 joined the Main Room. ( 5:51 PM ) –
Vance Stevens – 5:52 PM – abeer has a hand up
Hanaa Khamis – 5:53 PM – Abeer can u use mic or text chat – better text chat
– Jake left the Main Room. ( 5:55 PM ) –
Hanaa Khamis – 5:55 PM – can u hear me? chk polls
5:56 PM – n check how much competent in CPD as a teacher?
Vance Stevens – 5:56 PM – https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10mgAbhM6ZCq2TdE0x8r9J3n3vOnNwK-uICv_Ir_F8Wk/edit?usp=sharing
Stephanie Graham – 5:59 PM – Thank you both
Vance Stevens – 5:59 PM – thank you, sue are we under time constraints here?
– Stephanie Graham left the Main Room. ( 5:59 PM ) –
Hadeer Fikry 3 – 5:59 PM – Appreciated
Sue tasteach56 #2 – 6:00 PM – you need to finish now as hour is over
thank you both very much for presenting and also the participants for taking part
Hanaa Khamis – 6:00 PM – Thx all, plz type yr email bf leaving room to receive a badge for attending
– Rachel left the Main Room. ( 6:01 PM ) –
Abeer Raafat – 6:01 PM – Thank you very much bye
Hadeer Fikry 3 – 6:01 PM – supplies email address as requested
Abeer Raafat – 6:02 PM – It is very beneficial indeed
Hanaa Khamis – 6:02 PM – Thx Sue
This was all part of the GEC 2019 online conference
Mon Nov 18- Wed Nov 20 – The 9th Annual GEC Global Education Conference
The Global Education Conference Network’s ninth annual world-wide collaboration on globally-connected education will take place around the clock starting Monday, November 18th, and continuing through Wednesday, November 20th.
This conference is a collaborative, inclusive, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. Our activities are designed to significantly increase opportunities for connecting classrooms while supporting cultural awareness and recognition of diversity and educational access for all. For more information about the GEC and to access educational resources, click here to visit our online community.
The GEC features thought leaders from the world of education and beyond, is completely free to attend, and all events take place online in webinar format. We invite you to join the 27,500 GEC community members (from 170+ countries) and actively participate in dozens of sessions focused on international education topics.
This event is FREE to attend, but does require that you REGISTER!
Please register HERE
When you register, you receive this email, which lays out the above information in a more loquacious way:
Thank you for registering for the 2019 Global Education Conference, this Monday – Wednesday, November 18 – 20. This should be a great conference! We have 10 keynotes and over 130 regular sessions.
ATTENDING:
To attend the conference live please go to the conference schedule page link below, choose your specific time zone, then expand the calendar events to see the links to join each session (sessions links will only appear starting Monday).
If you have friends or colleagues that wish to attend, this is a free event and we encourage you to share our information widely. However, please send them to the conference registration page (http://www.globaleducationconference.org) rather than giving them the above link directly as it will allow us to track participation.
The keynote sessions are in the Zoom platform, and there will be a link in the schedule for the Zoom room. When you click it, you should be prompted for any individual computer/browser/mobile setup at the time. An alternate link will also be there for YouTube streaming if Zoom doesn’t work.
The regular conference sessions are being held in Blackboard Collaborate and can be accessed from any personal computer and most mobile devices. If you have not used Blackboard Collaborate before, you may be prompted to download the Collaborate “launcher” in order to enter the virtual room. The download time on this can vary, so try entering the following empty session room between now and the conference in order to go through this process: https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?password=D.4509CB0F221719A2897A1F1CF3494C&sid=2008350. Once you enter the test session room, then your computer is configured and you’re prepared for the event. If you do have any trouble, please review “First time user with Blackboard Collaborate Web
We are using Blackboard Collaborate’s “classic” version, which is the only tool we know that combines stability with low-bandwidth accessibility and has the organizational tools for a worldwide conference of this size. Thanks for understanding that it may be a little more complicated than you are used to when you attend your first session. After that, it will work automatically.
Please follow us (@GlobalEdCon) and use #globaled19 on any social media posts leading up to and during the event. And do encourage others to register in order to attend!
The CEFR [Common European Framework of Reference for Languages] takes an innovative stance to seeing learners as language users and social agents and thus seeing language as a vehicle for communication rather than as a subject of study. How can new CEFR revisions help teachers develop Pluriculturalism in their classes?
The methodological message of CEFR is that language learning should be directed towards enabling learners to act in real life situations expressing themselves and accomplishing takes of different natures.” Thus appeared the great emphasis and importance the new CEFR revisions gave to Plurilingualism and Pluriculturalism to develop active global citizens. How can teachers promote that and what is the relation between that and Mediation?
Maha will talk about the new CEFR revisions and how they can benefit teachers to help their students promote better understanding of other cultures whether abroad or even among their classes. I will especially refer to the descriptors used to help guide teachers along the way and how to assess the development of their students in that concern. Not only that, but to help them “develop their awareness and competence in that area.
What? Teaching in low-resource settings : Challenges, Opportunities, Activities
In the last few years, we keep discussing technology as an integral part of our teaching / learning routine. What if, for any reason, we cannot use fancy Interactive whiteboards or our classrooms are bare of WiFi connections? What if our learners have no devices to bring in class? What is the alternative to technology and how can teachers survive in the EFL classroom without top-heavy technology? Join 10 speakers in short 10 minute presentations and get endless inspiration!
When? 17:30 to 20:00 appears to be time in Greece, so this must be 15:30 to 18:00 UTC
Where? The announcement doesn’t say. Perhaps you have to indicate that you are going in FB. I’ll do that and see if it works.
On Wednesday, November 13, 2019, Heike Philp hosted a simulcast from Firenze on educational applications of virtual worlds, and invited me to come on in the Q and A period and talk for 5 min about #evomc20 EVO Minecraft MOOC. My brief appearance followed more comprehensive presentations by Heike herself talking about her #GUINEVERE project,Nick Zwart-Knottnerus of 3DLES on his work in OpenSim, Tuncer Can talking about his app Gistory, and James York presenting on the affordances of Minecraft for language teaching.
GUINEVERE (2017-2019) is a two-year project investigating the potential of digital game-based learning in 3D immersive environments focusing on foreign language learning (2017-2019).As part of the project, language teachers were introduced to the art of designing and processes involved in creating digital games within various VWs including Second Life, OpenSim, and Minecraft.
The project is nearing completion and all of the partner are present in Florence for the final project meeting and look forward to sharing the outcomes. They proudly present the project results in a 2h web conference on Wednesday, 13 Nov 2019 from 11am to – 1pm Italian time.
Heike Philp from let’s talk online will introduce the goal of GUINEVERE and the final results.
11:15am
Project partner Tuncer Can of the Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa will talk about the theoretical framework of Game Design/Gistory App Design Process (soon available from PlayStore and Appstore under the name ‘Gistory’)
11:30am
Project partner IUL and Heike Philp talk about the Teacher Training Course development and the impressive 3D games developed by teachers.
12:00pm
Nick Zwart-Knottnerus of 3DLES presents his work in OpenSim
Q&A with online participants – Vance Stevens has been invited to speak for 5 min about EVO and EVO Minecraft MOOC
Presenters
Guest speaker James York: How to teach languages in Minecraft: What are the affordances of Minecraft for language teaching?
Minecraft offers three different game modes (survival, creative, and adventure) which each have different use cases. In this talk, I provide a list of teaching tips and ideas that have worked for me in my own teaching context with a focus on productive language skills. The talk addresses the affordances of Minecraft for language learning and how teachers can adopt a task-based language teaching approach in this environment.
James is a lecturer at Tokyo Denki University where he conducts research on the pedagogical application of games for language learning. His current main focus is a curriculum development project using tabletop games as the centrepiece of a task-based language teaching and multiliteracies approach to second language acquisition. James is co-editor of Ludic Language Pedagogy, an open access, open peer-reviewed journal exploring games and play, language and literacies, and teaching. James’s previous projects include the development and management of an online Japanese learning community which utilized Minecraft as the domain for interactive, experiential learning activities.
Dr Tuncer Can completed his MA at Istanbul University in 2004 on “Constructivism and Training of Pre-service Foreign Language Teachers”. In 2005, he was granted a Fulbright Scholarship and he spent two terms at Syracuse University, NY, USA, where he taught Turkish via videoconferencing for one year. In 2008, he took part in a project at Istanbul University in the Faculty of Education, English Language Teaching Department, on the implementation of MOODLE in the training of pre-service foreign language teachers; a project was funded by Istanbul University Scientific Research Center. He completed his PhD at Istanbul University in 2011 on “Using Foreign Language Learning Strategies in the Context of Lifelong Learning and Plurilingualism”. Dr. Can also has taken part in three EU Projects. (1) CAMELOT, (2) INTEGRATION OF YOUNG REFUGEES Using mobile devices leading to better language acquisition and relevant career / YouRNI, and (3) TABLIO on the use of tablets for classroom differentiation and inclusion/ TABLIO.
Nick Zwart-Knottnerus is CEO of 3DLES, a Dutch company that offers project management on educational project in virtual worlds. Nick has studied theology and IT in Amsterdam, was an IT teacher for years and built the EU prize-winning virtual language villages Chatterdale and Parolay. He worked for the University of Alcala de Henares in Spain doing research on the use of OpenSimulator for language education. He works for the City University in London as a technical researcher for the aphasia project called EVA Park. 3DLES was partner in several EU projects like TILA, TeCoLa and now the GUINEVERE project.
Heike Philp is CEO of let’s talk online sprl is an edtech and immersive learning integration specialist. Philp co-initiated four European funded projects on teaching and learning a language in real-time at a distance: LANCELOT (LANguage learning with CErtified Live Online Teachers), AVALON (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline) and CAMELOT (CreAting Machinima Empowers Live Online language Teaching and learning) and GUINEVERE (Games Used IN Engaging Virtual Environments for Realtime language Education). Philp founded and organizes several web conferences, Virtual Round Table (language learning technologies) DaFWEBKON (teachers of German), SLanguages Annual Symposium. She co-owns EduNation islands in Second Life.
Screenshots and text chat logs
05:56 PM Me (Vance): Heike is muted (she then requests a sound check)
06:01 PM alansimpson: Fine sounds good.
06:01 PM Me: fine (Heike then requests introductions in text from the audience)
06:09 PM Me: I’m a coordinator of EVO Electronic Village Online and moderator EVO Minecraft MOOC which starts its 6th session in Jan-Feb
06:09 PM Tuncer CAN: Hi Vance
06:09 PM alansimpson: Yes, I joined as a student on the pilot study. I teach at a uni in Japan, have an interest in ESP applications online.
06:09 PM Lucia Bartolotti: Nice to see you, Vance. I took part in the Guinevere project
06:09 PM Me: Hi Tuncer
06:10 PM Tuncer CAN: Hi ALL
06:14 PM Lucia Bartolotti: Hi Heike 🙂 I will leave you in 15 minutes as I have a lesson shortly. I have no microphone, sorry, I am at school
06:51 PM Heike Philp: hi James, great to see you
06:51 PM James York: Thanks for inviting!
06:58 PM Rumeysa Yücel: thank you tuncer cam but how can we find this app, cause when I searched ,I couldn’t find it
06:58 PM James York: Thanks Heike
From Tuncer CAN: 07:00 PM
Hi Sare
it will be on the market veri son, when the project is over
From Rumeysa Yücel: 07:00 PM
Okey hocam thank you,btw Im Rumeysa:)
07:01 PM Tuncer CAN: rümeysa 🙂
07:05 PM Me: hmmm – I would like to join the next one (in response to learning that participants in one of Heike’s projects overwhelming gravitated to Second Life; only one to Minecraft)
07:06 PM James York: All good 🙂
07:09 PM Me: what is the link you are showing (when you get a moment) http://learn.guinevereproject.eu
07:17 PM James York: ?? – Well remembered!
07:20 PM Vance Stevens: 6th one (I hold up 6 fingers in video, indicating that we are about to enjoy our 6th EVO Minecraft MOOC session coming up next January-February)
07:21 PM alansimpson: Great, fine. (must be in response to a sound check)
07:24 PM Me: I know the feeling – Minecraft is easy … Zoom? (James is having trouble navigating in Zoom; he seems to get around fine in Minecraft 🙂 07:27 PM Heike Philp: fine
07:44 PM James York: Slides from me http://bit.ly/34YkGyq
07:50 PM Heike Philp: Any questions from the audience about GUINEVERE and for James or for Vance?
07:50 PM James York: http://minecraftmooc.org/
07:51 PM Heike Philp: James was faster than me
07:51 PM James York: hehe – Keen to join actually! Ty ty vance
07:51 PM Heike Philp: James do you have a link to your TED session?
07:53 PM James York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gokaQuqIAwM
Is Jeff Kuhn still involved? In the MOOC (If he ever was?)
07:53 PM Heike Philp: he was
07:54 PM James York: gotcha
Thanks for the information!
I have read your paper
Christine Coombe TESOL Webinar Nov 8 on participation in professional organizations
The announcement was sent out on TESOL lists Nov 7 and this event was over by the time I opened the mail, but for the record:
Sun 10 Nov 1400 UTC EVO Moderator Professional Development Week 4 Live Event
The coordinating team and the members of the EVO (http://evosessions.pbworks.com) Moderator Professional Development Week 4 invited EVO coordinators and moderators to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Learning2gether invited others who felt they would have something to contribute.
Topic: Week 4: Getting ready to go live
Time: Nov 10, 2019 at 2 PM UTC and 09:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Below find a video embed of this session starting at 25 min 35 seconds, which is where Nellie asked for moderators to come on and discuss the online spaces they had chosen for their sessions. First up was Graham Stanley, who spoke about how his Escape the Room session is organized, and he invited Vance Stevens to join him in the discussion, https://youtu.be/0W–5Kuk2mA?t=1535
EVO coordinators today hosted their third meeting of the EVO Moderators Professional Development month but this one was different from the previous ones. This week’s event was hosted by Vance Stevens and Jane Chien and was a discussion of free online spaces appropriate to facilitation of EVO sessions and the pros and cons of offering badges and certificates.
Week 3 in EVO Moderator PD is about Developing the Content
The week begins with a live online kickoff event on Sunday Nov 3 at 13:00 UTC
The meeting today will be conversational. Please come prepared to ask questions
and share your expertise with one another.
By the end of this week, we hope you will have
made substantial progress on your syllabus
revised your original proposal in the EVO Proposals wiki to transform it into a ready-for-the-public-eye session page which will be tranferred to the public Call for Participation wiki.
begun to add content to your online space(s).
learned about Certificates of Participation and digital badges options for your session(s)
posted your questions and comments in the appropriate threads.
You can only open that link if you are registered in the Schoology course, but he following suggestions for spaces appropriate to EVO were made in that discussion
Some platform or LMS where students can view the content, conduct discussions, ask questions, share content and connect with each other; e.g.
Canvas Instructure
Moodle
Google Classroom
Edmodo
Schoology
Nellie suggests that Groups.io, Facebook groups, What’s APP, Linkedin groups, Twitter, Google Groups, and Slack can all work as LMSs
Blogs and wikis for hosting and discussing content; e.g.
Additional tutorial and digital storytelling tools; e.g.
Padlet, VoiceThread, YouTube Video tutorials, Presentations on Slideshare
Screen capture tools; e.g. Jing, Screencast-o-matic
If you are still searching for platforms you like, try exploring some of the tools listed on former Coordinator Carla Arena’s Pinterest Board.
Week 3 asks moderators what other online space/Learning Management System will you use for your session’s content and interactive hub(s)? Can you explain to others how to use and navigate your space(s)?
Rather than work from a slide deck, Jane and Vance instead screen-shared from Schoology, and set all participant mics to open to encourage discussion. This posed no problem during the event, as all participants voluntarily muted themselves until they wished to speak. We expected that this format would create an opportunity for participants to discuss what they had learned about potential community spaces, and whether or not to promise badges or certificates in their EVO sessions.
Because the event would be of benefit to the Learning2gether community, Vance hosted it in the guise of Learning2gether episode 427.
However it was not announced in advance as such since the event was intended for EVO 2020 coordinators and session moderators.
Vance extended the invitation to others who would have something to contribute; e.g. previous moderators and participants of EVO sessions.
As coordinators are modeling best principles and practices of online discussions in our weekly events, as we know them from our experience, this was intended to suggest that moderators might want to branch out beyond just their session participants and include members of wider networks, if that seems appropriate to their purposes. That is after all the theory underpinning the first cMOOCs; see Stevens, V. (2013). What’s with the MOOCs? TESL-EJ, Volume 16, Number 4, pp. 1-14: http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej64/int.pdf. Also available at: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume16/ej64/ej64int/.
The event took place in Nellie Deutsch’s Zoom room. Vance took these screen shots during the event, when
Sorry I didn’t get a screen shot of Judy aboard here ship! Maybe someone else did 🙂
Zoom text chat transcript logs
Marijana Smolcec : hi all! I have turned off my camera, as I am still in the process of making lunch, so will join shortly :)) hi :)) Naglaa Salem : Good morning everyone! Rosmery : Good morning. Am I late? Gamze : Hello everyone Rosmery : Hi Gamze Gamze : Hi Rosmery! McCoy Family : Wow! That’s very lovely clock sound. Rosmery : Thanks McCoy Family : Welcome Rosmery! Welcome Gamze! Welcome N Salem! live video on Youtube from Zoom! Cool! AyatAlTawel : Hi everyone 🙂 Marijana Smolcec : My first time, or maybe second in zoom, need to explore this tool more 🙂 Rosmery : Hello from Bolivia AyatAlTawel : Joining audio only today Marijana Smolcec : hi vance :)) Marijana in Croatia :)) McCoy Family : Hello AyatAITawel. Welcome! AyatAlTawel : Hi from Egypt Marijana Smolcec : ahaha, itz’s abput Minecraft! :)) Hi Ayat 🙂 barely, mostly cooking, but will come in soon Rosmery : Hi Ayat and Marijana Naglaa Salem : Naglaa from Toronto Marijana Smolcec : Hi Rosmery, so great to see you here :)) We are interested in Schoology Gamze : Gamze from Turkey Jane Chien : Hi everyone! 🙂 Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : hi From Bogota!!! Harshita K : Hello from India 🙂 Judy Wong – usually NY /Barcelona : Can’t talk travelling to my boat
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : HI Judy Mike Kenteris : Hi Carolina! Hi everyone! Judy Wong – usually NY /Barcelona : Hi Everyone!! ���� Rosmery : Good morning Jane, Carolina, Judy Harshita, Mike Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : hey Rosmery!
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : We are all mods including the members of the coordinating team for EVO20. I moderate TEFL2YL EVO20, M4TEVO20, and Tools for Student Collaboration : Schoology has its “bugs” : Schoology has its paid version which is interesting. McCoy Family : yes to all questions Gamze : I believe Edmodo is similar to Schoology in nature. McCoy Family : Yes, I zoomed into Edmodo briefly.
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Edmodo has less “bugs” than Schoology. Marijana Smolcec : I like Moodle, missing Google+Community, but Edmodo, I mainly used with students, all in all I need to explore Cshoology
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : I also listen3d to the Edmodo conference. Marijana Smolcec : Schoology*
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Marijana, you would love https://groups.io Marijana Smolcec : I didn’t have time for EdmodoCon, it was early for us in CRO, all in all, it’s a good social network site : I love WAKELet Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : edmodo is vey clean! Marijana Smolcec : It’s awesome :)) : http://www.wakelet.com Jane Chien : Thanks! Marijana Smolcec : it’s not Microsoft : but they have many MS tools that are able to be integrated with wakelt
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Yes, it is very clean, Carolina. We tried to use Edmodo for our PD a few years ago. Maybe, we can try again, next year. Marijana Smolcec : such as Youtube, Immersive Reader and FlipGrid Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : that’s a good idea, Nellie!!!
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : https://groups.io also has a wiki. AyatAlTawel : yeah, we’ve been exploring it for some time. It’s a bookmarking collaboration tool : Edmodo is always there and never fails to be a reliable and safe tool Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : i’ve been meaning to explore wakelet… Mike Kenteris : Wakelet Marijana Smolcec : Yes Ayat, true, but it can be used as a website for resources, right?
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : I use Jing and Snagit. Mike Kenteris : Here’s a wakelet about my hometown I use with my Mystery Skype sessions: https://wakelet.com/wake/7e408b62-7ccc-44da-bdea-5496110ac4f8 Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : wow Mike!! we have to talk about mystery skype! Rosmery : I use Screen-cast-o-matic Marijana Smolcec : My wakelet https://wakelet.com/@msmolcec
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : You can learn a lot when you use a learning environment. Just don’t get frustrated if things aren’t perfect. Marijana Smolcec : I don’t have many public posts, but mostly private, but am thinking of using some public collections for my students : @Rosemery, yes, me too, it’s easy : thx Mike for sharing your wakelet, will follow you : I agree with Nellie Rosmery : We need to explore, make mistakes, and learn…. Marijana Smolcec : the tools that work for you use them those that don’t lose them 🙂 Harshita K : Agreed…that’s the most practical and authentic advise @Dr.Nellie
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Don’t let the fact that technology is not perfect get you down. : Yes, very true, Marijana. : Perfection is not key. Things do go wrong. The process of learning is. Marijana Smolcec : as we lways say “sharing is caring”
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : So true, Mike. Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : true Mike!!!
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Our attitude as mods is very important. Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : we all love to share Marijana Smolcec : True, Jane, EVO is like family 🙂 Harshita K : Am sure that’s interesting to learn, getting introduced to the platform- minecraft. Nice @Vance Marijana Smolcec : I started playing games because of my sons, but I am still trying to be better at Minecraft 🙂
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : EVO is about teachers’ generosity to share their expertise with other eachers worldwide . Marijana Smolcec : Caroline, can you write the name of the tool in chat_ Jane Chien : Anvil? Naglaa Salem : Usually how many participants sign up for a session? Marijana Smolcec : It could be from 50 to 300 it depends 🙂 : But, I know for our ICT4ELT, we have from 100-150 more or less : IN Minecraft EVO, I think Vance knows more Naglaa Salem : Thank you, Caroline! Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : @Marijana The tool is ANVILL Marijana Smolcec : Thank youCarolina, Mike has already send the link to me : :)) : @Vance is EVO himself :)) Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : 🙂
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : I’m available to help any mod before, during, and after EVO20 sessions. Marijana Smolcec : @nellie, you mean helping on Moodle Rosmery : Thanks Mike Kenteris : 🙂
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : I mean any help on any platform Marijana Smolcec : You have to give credit, Copyrights : I agree with Nellie Harshita K : Depends on the CreativeCommons involved.
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : What platform will you be using for your live online meetings? : I also teach young learners. : We use Education Suite. : Google Education Suite : I used Google Classroom in the past with my young learners, too. : This year I got the school a Moodle site. Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : Yes, Google classroom is very complete! it would suffice Rosmery : Creating a Gmail account is the first task I give my students. They do not use it as much as we do. Marijana Smolcec : I need to go, but I do know Microsoft teams : I use it with my students : it’s free for us in CRO, in Office365 : will join Schology and will add more info there, about Teams : Talk more later guys, hugs and have a nice Sunday : bye Mike Kenteris : 🙂 McCoy Family : Here is a comparison chat; I’ll find the Microsoft: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-for-Education/Teams-Vs-Moodle-Vs-Google-Classroom/m-p/215942 Jane Chien : Bye, Marijana! McCoy Family : Here is the Microsoft Teams descriptions: Rosmery : I find that the live sessions are useful McCoy Family : https://teams.microsoft.com/download Naglaa Salem : Live sessions can be helpful for my session (when I get over my camera shyness) : Practice will do it I guess 🙂 McCoy Family : I think that the live video is awesome. When I first started, I had no clue what to do. As I listened, I decided that I’d try to talk and share. Harshita K : I also feel live sessions are useful. If the participants are unable to attend they do watch the recordings.
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : What platform do you plan to use for your live meetings? Meriyem : Escape the classroom – Zoom Naglaa Salem : I’ve signed up for Zoom, but not sure about the recording bit Harshita K : Zoom Rosmery : Live sessions give us learners the opportunity of meeting moderators and experts, and ask questions Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : Yes Rosmery. Somehow live sessions make it all real! Rosmery : That’s what I meant! McCoy Family : Yes, I’ve reduced my FB presence for those reasons. Judy Wong -NYC, USA : I’m back! Vance Stevens : wbJ Jane Chien : Hi Aaron! 🙂 : WB, Judy! 🙂 Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : I have to step out, I’m sorry! Vance Stevens : bye carolina Carolina Rodriguez Buitrago : bye Vance! : and all! Jane Chien : bye Caroline! 🙂 Judy Wong -NYC, USA : The perils and challenges of being truly mobile! Hahaha! : On a boal in Barcelona : oat : boat Vance Stevens : hey aaron! McCoy Family : Even closed captions for the video. : yes Naglaa Salem : Would love to help with Arabic! 🙂 Rosmery : It is a problem here McCoy Family : The teachers need to be at least a B2 teacher. : a B2 level of English Naglaa Salem : May be translation can help with dealing with technological tools : *issues Harshita K : Thank you Dr Nellie, Vance, Jane and everyone for a helpful session. Have to leave. Rosmery : EFL environments Vance Stevens : thank you Harshita Gamze : Thank you for the session. Have to leave for now. Happy Sunday! Rosmery : Just translate instructions not content McCoy Family : Yes, is everyone finding sources for their badges? Naglaa Salem : Is it ok to do without the badges? : All this is new to me : I don’t know how to have these ready for participants
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : badges are motivating like gamification Jane Chien : Yes, I think it’s okay to do without badges. McCoy Family : That’s great. : agreed : vance Naglaa Salem : Is there like a progress bar on Moodle? I can’t remember Jane Chien : Love Badges from Nellie’s moodle session! Mike Kenteris : @Salem yes there is Rosmery : I like badges, too. They are great to show off in social media! LOL Naglaa Salem : Yes! I loved those as well Rosmery : LOL McCoy Family : yes they are.
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Credly : I also use Credly and Canva for badges and certificates. : Badgr is the new Mozilla Open badges Vance Stevens : badgr, I like it
Dr. Nellie Deutsch : Yes, Vance, Badgr took over for Mozilla.
Joe’s post says: “beginning on Monday, October 21 and continuing through the rest of the week, you can join in a series of free professional development webinars, sponsored by Pearson. The webinars are free, but you do need to register in advance. Here’s the link to register.
Times are listed as Eastern Daylight (New York) times, so convert as needed for your own time zone. After you click on the link that takes you to the main sign-up page, you do need to register individually for each session. I have simplified and abbreviated the titles of the sessions below for speed of reading. See the link for the exact titles and a description.”
Learning2gether value added: Click on the time links to see when this webinar is in your time zone
Tue Oct 22 1800 UTC – Susan Mirandi hosts Mirjam Hauck on Virtual_exchange for digital literacy skills development
A #webinar on #virtual_exchange for (critical) #digital_literacy_skills development by Dr. Mirjam Hauck (#EUROCALL President) hosted by Dr. S. Susan Marandi October 22, 2019, 18 GMT
This one is also hard to register for and is likely not free. When I created an account I got this screen.
I don’t speak Farsi, and I don’t click on buttons that are in any way suspicious
but I think that was a screen to verify my address, since when I tried to log in I was blocked
It looks like this is where we were heading at any rate, to a payment page
Meanwhile I received an email with a link that let me verify my address, so I successfully logged in and clicked on the online payment form and this took me again to the screen in Farsi that I posted above.
So as much as I admire the work of these two remarkable ladies, I stopped my efforts at that point.
The webinar is being held at 2 am for me here in Malaysia, but I was hoping that by registering, I might be notified of a recording. If others are interested. I would certainly recommend the webinar to anyone able to register and willing to pay.
And finally, having registered for the event, I was notified in email that
the webinar materials (video, audio, and PowerPoint files) are now available on my profile page. To access my profile, I only need to log in to my account on ELTacademia.com.
They also said: “You can be updated for our next events by visiting the website or joining our Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/eltacademia/.”
In retrospect: It PAYS to REGISTER for ONLINE EVENTS even if you won’t be able to attend at the time of the event itself.
Thu Oct 24 2130 in Brasilia – BrazTESOL webinar with Claire Venables
Fri Oct 25 1400 UTC – Sun Oct 27 2200 UTC IATEFL YLTSIG Web Conference
The IATEFL Young Learners and Teenagers Special Interest Group (YLTSIG) hosted a free three-day online event later in October.
Opening up the ‘YL’ umbrella: age-appropriate pedagogies featuredseveral talks by renowned experts in the field of young learners and teenagers. Find out more here,
The Young Learners and Teenagers Special Interest Group (YLTSIG) 2019 Web Conference took place over three days, 25, 26 and 27 October 2019. Sessions took place from 14.00 – 22.00 GMT each day.
Wed Oct 30 – The 3rd free Library 2.019 mini-conference on Emerging Technology
The third Library 2.019 mini-conference: “Emerging Technology,” will be held online (and for free) on Wednesday, October 30th, from 12:00 – 3:00 pm US-Pacific Daylight Time (click for your own time zone).
Tomorrow’s technologies are shaping our world today, revolutionizing the way we live and learn. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Drones, Personalization, the Quantified Self. Libraries can and should be the epicenter of exploring, building and promoting these emerging techs, assuring the better futures and opportunities they offer are accessible to everyone. Learn what libraries are doing right now with these cutting-edge technologies, what they’re planning next and how you can implement these ideas in your own organization.
This is a free event, being held live online and also recorded. REGISTER HERE or the conference registration page https://www.library20.com/emergingtech
to attend live and/or to receive the recording links afterward.
Please also join this Library 2.0 network to be kept updated on this and future events.
Participants are encouraged to use #library2019 and #libraryemergingtech on their social media posts leading up to and during the event.
To attend the conference live please go to the conference schedule page link below, choose your specific time zone, then expand the calendar events to see the links to join each session (sessions and links will only appear a day or two before the event). http://www.library20.com/page/sessions-and-schedule
This event happens entirely between 3 am and 6 am in Malaysia, home of Learning2gether
KEYNOTE PANEL:
Christina Mune
Associate Dean of Innovation and Resource Management, University Library at San Jose State University @bibliopathicChristina Mune is the Associate Dean of Innovation and Resources Management at San Jose State University’s King Library. Her passion is supporting discovery, creativity and digital scholarship by designing technology-enabled spaces and services in libraries. She is currently working on her upcoming book Libraries Supporting Online Learning: Digital Literacy, Open Access and Local Connectivity from ABC-CLIO. Her research interests include online instructional design, discovery and digital literacy. https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinamune/
Jim Hahn
Associate Professor, Orientation Services & Environments Librarian @phobiaofthisJim Hahn is an Associate Professor in the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois. His research into technology-enhanced learning has led to many software development projects within library settings and provides unique insights into new student’s expectations and needs and helps inform the work that he does as the Orientation Services and Environments Librarian for undergraduate students at the University of Illinois. He founded and manages the Minrva project (https://minrvaproject.org) and currently serves as project PI for a research & development grant funded through the University of Illinois Campus Research Board, entitled, “Information and Environment: Integration of an IoT-powered recommender system within the FOLIO open source platform,” the aims of which are to incorporate Internet of Things functionality into a FOLIO wayfinder application (https://github.com/minrva/ui-wayfinder) and make the resulting software available in the open source. www.library.illinois.edu
Ida Joiner
Librarian at the Universal Academy, TX @ida_joinerIda Arlene Joiner is the Senior Librarian at the Universal Academy in Texas. She is the author of the book Emerging Library Technologies: It’s Not Just for Geeks (Elsevier, 2018). Her forthcoming book on Drones in Libraries will be available in July 2020 (Elsevier). Ida has published numerous articles on emerging technologies. She is an international and national presenter on emerging technologies. Ida is a member of MIT’s Technology Review Global Panel. She discussed Are Drones Coming to Your Library on the Drone Radio Show. Ida is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Texas Wesleyan University’s Curriculum and Instruction program. She is a member of LITA’s Information Technology and Libraries board where she peer reviews articles for their peer reviewed open source journal. Ida peer reviews technology-related book proposals for Elsevier. She formerly co-chaired the Publications Committee for ALA’s International Relations Roundtable (IRRT). Ida holds her MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA degree in Business Management from Chatham University. Her research focuses on emerging technologies such as drones, robotics, driverless vehicles, artificial intelligence, augmented/virtual reality, and their use in libraries and education. In her role as a project management consultant, Ida saved PNC Bank, PPG, Tucker Arensberg, Las Colinas Cancer, and Texas Breast Care thousands of dollars in technical and training costs. https://www.linkedin.com/in/idajoiner/
Bohyun Kim is the Chief Technology Officer and an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island Libraries. She is the author of two books, Understanding Gamification and Library Mobile Experience: Practices and User Expectations and the founding editor of ACRL TechConnect Blog. She is the Past-President of the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) and serves on the advisory boards and committees of the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, San Jose State University School of Information, and Library Pipeline. She holds a MA in philosophy from Harvard University and a MSLIS from Simmons College.
This is a free event, thanks to our founding conference sponsor: School of Information at San José State University.
ATTENDING: To attend the conference live please go to the conference schedule page link below, choose your specific time zone, then expand the calendar events to see the links to join each session (sessions and links will only appear a day or two before the event). NOTE: the links to the actual virtual session rooms will not be available until the day of the conference.
The sessions are also listed below in US-PDT (GMT-8), but you will have to do your own time zone conversions if you use them.
If you have friends or colleagues that wish to attend, this is a free event and we encourage you to share our information widely. However, please send them to the conference regis tration page (https://www.library20.com/emergingtech) rather than giving them the above link directly as it will allow us to track participation.
WEBINAR PLATFORM: The keynote sessions are in the Zoom platform, and you should be prompted for any individual computer/browser/mobile setup at the time. The concurrent (non-keynote) conference sessions are being held in Blackboard Collaborate, and can be accessed live from any personal computer and most mobile devices. If you have not used Blackboard Collaborate before, you may be prompted to download the Collaborate “launcher” in order to enter the virtual room. The download time on this can vary, so try entering the following empty session room b etween now and the conference in order to go through this process: https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?password=D.4509CB0F221719A2897A1F1CF3494C&sid=2008350. Once you enter the test session room, then you’re computer is configured and you’re prepared for the event. If you do have any trouble, please review “First time user with Blackboard Collaborate Web Conferencing” at https://blackboard.secure.force.com/apex/publickbarticleview?id=kA770000000CbIW.
RECORDINGS: The event recordings will appear shortly afterward on Library 2.0 and we will also email you a direct link to a special recordings page to let you know when the recordings have been posted. You need to be registered (free) and logged into the Library 2.0 network to view them.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Please use #library2019 and/or #libraryemergingtech on any social media posts leading up to and during the event. And do encourage others to register in order to attend!
That page also mentions a webinar conducted by Dr. Steve Albrecht on October 17 entitled “Interacting with the homeless” (in general, but also directed at Library staff, who “should be mindful of their safety and security when dealing with certain parts of this population.” The webinar costs $95 to attend or to have access to the recording, which is unfortunate, but that’s how it is.
However, the email promotion of this webinar is free for anyone to read and gives an eye-opening list of resources associated with the situation of homeless people and their recourse to use of libraries as a space where they can find shelter and food for thought. Have a look at the following if you are concerned with public safety and the decay of social infrastructure in your own environment.
Movie, panel focuses on homelessness and libraries https://www.nelsonstar.com/community/movie-panel-focuses-on-homelessness-and-libraries/
On a bitterly cold night a large group of homeless men decide they’re not going to leave the public library at closing time. It hasn’t happened — but it could.That scenario is the subject of The Public, a new film written by and starring Emelio Estevez. (27 Sep 2019)
Libraries Have Become De Facto Homeless Shelters: Emilio Estevez on His New Movie, “The Public” https://www.motherjones.com/media/2019/04/emilio-estevez-public-movie-libraries-homelessness/
The filmmaker discusses the timely drama and ethical battle lines drawn at libraries nationwide during a special screening and panel with Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery. (10 April 2019)
Janesville library considers staffing social worker to help homeless https://wkow.com/news/2019/09/10/janesville-library-considers-staffing-social-worker-to-help-homeless/
Libraries continue to be a place of refuge for those seeking shelter and protection for a wide variety of things ranging from mental health issues to homelessness. In recent years, staffing social workers to help those in need has become a new effort embraced widely by library system across the country. (10 Sep 2019)
Edendale Branch Public Library marks one-year anniversary of providing services for homeless community https://abc7.com/community-events/edendale-branch-public-library-marks-one-year-of-services-for-homeless-community/5556782/
The Edendale Branch Public Library in Echo Park celebrated their one-year anniversary of ‘The Source’. “The Source essentially is a one-stop-shop of services for folks that are experiencing homelessness or low income in the community,” said Librarian Angi Brzycki. (23 Sep 2019)
As tech changes homelessness, libraries roll with the punches https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/31/as-tech-changes-homelessness-libraries-roll-with-the-punches/
The warmth and quiet of the library have ever been a draw for those suffering from homelessness, but the past decade has piled more responsibilities on the shoulders of these institutions. The digital resources they provide are more important than ever for the homeless, but libraries have warily embraced their new role. (31 July 2019)
Disorder in the Stacks: Homeless services put an increasing burden on the New York Public Library https://www.city-journal.org/homelessness-ny-public-libraries
Every morning before 10 AM, when “SIBL” opens, a small crowd of men gathers outside the door, many carrying their personal items in plastic bags and wearing dirty and mismatched clothes. (Spring 2019)
Sat Nov 2 1230 UTC – EdmodoCon free online web conference
EdmodoCon is a global professional development conference that you can attend from the convenience of your laptop or mobile device. Educators from around the world share inspiring stories and practical strategies from the best in the education community.
EdmodoCon was streamed live through Zoom Webinars starting Saturday, November 2, 2019 at 08:30 AM EDT (US and Canada)
It appears to be a flipped conference in so far as preview postings are appearing for some of the presenters. You can see the postings at the link above. For example, Sean Robinson, Empowering Students Through Connections-Based Learning
What if we were to base teaching and learning on human connection? Projects, passions, competencies, and questions can still play a role. But relationships could be at the forefront of our minds. We could pursue learning partners that would help lead our students to acquire the needed skills, knowledge and understanding. Could we adopt a teaching approach that makes connection a priority?
When you register, you get an email that says
Thank you for registering for “EdmodoCon 2019”.
Use the links below (unique to you, not to be shared) to watch EdmodoCon live on Saturday, November 2 with educators all around the world. Follow our official EdmodoCon community page to get updates and resources, learn more about our speakers, and join the conversation with fellow teachers: https://new.edmodo.com/pages/edmodocon. See you there!
AFTER the event, Edmodo bots detected that I had been in the room so they sent me an email which included this:
Oh wow! A certificate! I clicked on the link and downloaded the PDF, and here it is:
If you right click on the image and download it to your computer, you can have a certificate too, for vicariously attending by reading this far in my blog post. Yaaaay !!
When? Tue Oct 15 at noon UTC at one of the regular events that take place 4 times a month in the Teachers’ Room
Steven Herder sent me a few questions in advance
During the interview Steven started with the first question and the interview proceeded organically from there. However, I did get through most of the narrative of my teaching journey.
How did you get where you are today?
In a nutshell, I graduated from the University of Houston with a BS in Biology in 1971, which was a long time ago. I got a job working as a purchaser in a company that made seismic sensors. I used that job to accumulate enough money for me to quit it and travel for two years, hitchhiking mostly through Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I returned to Houston with a desire to do something that would enable me to travel more, so I walked into a branch of English Language Services at my alma mater U of H and convinced the director there to hire me to teach ESL, part time. He must have been desperate for staff because he asked me to start the next day. I turned up and was told, there’s your class. I said, huh? what am I supposed to do? Someone told the class to chill for an hour while someone else answered my questions (I always tell people I got a quick 1-hour course in all-you-need-to-know about teaching ESL), and that’s how I started my teaching journey.
In March of 1976 I went to New York to the TESOL Conference there. Having only a bachelor’s degree in biology I was not that much in demand, as MA’s were preferred. But someone else over there was desperate for staff, and UPM in Dhahran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, made me an offer. I was in KSA for the next 5 years. By the time I left to get my MA/ESL at another U of H, this one in Hawaii, I had been put in charge of the Language Center’s first ever computer-assisted language instruction development effort
(see Stevens, V. (1981). What’s an ESL teacher doing with a computer? TEAM. Dhahran, KSA: University of Petroleum and Minerals, pp. 3-11. Available: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nIEE3Wj-wl-3yObPjMgK4KaDVf5bN9-ZQPyqlkPoeIE/edit?usp=sharing)
At U of Hawaii I did my thesis on CAI in ESL (CAI, computer-assisted instruction, was what we used to call it). There was a TESOL Conference in Honolulu while I was there where a small coterie of CAI enthusiasts was forming, and I was invited to join them in Toronto the following year for a symposium on computers in language learning. This group set in motion an effort to form a CALL Interest Section in TESOL (by now it was computer-assisted learning, to put the emphasis where it belonged). A chair was easily selected but one by one all nominees for an associate chair position declined the nomination. Finally my name came up along with one other candidate, and I was elected. The chair dropped out later in the year for personal reasons and I was left to shepherd the group’s petition to become an interest section in TESOL. When the application succeeded I became the first chair of the CALL-IS in TESOL.
When I graduated with my MA/ESL from UHM (University of Hawaii at Manoa) I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii to implement a program designed to address the academic needs of ESL students there. I got the school to buy some computers but they didn’t budget for software so I learned enough BASIC programming to be able to adapt public domain software to our purposes (see Stevens, Vance. 1985. You’d be surprised at how much public domain software you can adapt to ESL and language learning. TESL Reporter 18, 1:8-15.
Available: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/archive/1985TESLReporter.pdf.)
By now I had accumulated some publications on top of my MA (which you can read in as a set of 15 publications in under the year 1983, here, http://vancestevens.com/papers/index.html#publications). I was attending TESOL conferences where I met potential employers, and through these efforts I got a job as an instructional developer and lecturer of EFL at the under-construction SQU, Sultan Qaboos University, in Muscat Oman.
I was there for ten years and when I left it was to move to California to work as Director of ESL Software Design for an upstart start-up company there. The year was 1995 and I had by then been teaching for 20 years, but working at a software company, for the first time in my new career, I had no students. and I missed teaching. But a teacher at Berkeley named David Winet was organizing students and teachers around a website at study.com and I became an online teacher of courses conducted by email on writing and grammar. One of my students created a web page for the course and it wasn’t long before I had learned HTML and was making my own web pages.
I stayed at the software company long enough to work on the speech recognition aspects of an interactive adventure game our team was developing for the ESL market called Traci Talk (Traci Talk was reviewed in Harashima, H. (1999). Software review of Tracy Talk, the Mystery. Computer Assisted Language Learning 12 (3), 271–274; available http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1076/call.12.3.271.5708), but the company did not pay regularly, and a friend soon recruited me as a consultant and then CALL Coordinator for a Military Language Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Part of my work was to ensure the fit of our technical specification in support of the academic side, and when the military installed a LAN in our facility I was able to hang out online and pursue my volunteer work with study.com in a connected environment. To make a long story short, this led to my online classes for language learners morphing, albeit at a much greater distance, into Writing for Webheads (WfW) at a website that I created and that remains online here: http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/webheads.htm
Meanwhile I continued going to TESOL conferences and remained closely connected to CALL-IS, and when the interest section started its Electronic Village Online (EVO) program in 2001 (http://evosessions.pbworks.com), I was asked to do an EVO online workshop lasting 6 weeks on how I had developed and sustained the WfW community. For that purpose, in 2002 I created the Webheads in Action (WiA) community of educator-practitioners, whose website also remains online at http://vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/webheads_evo.htm.
This community remains viable to this day, and a few years ago I was asked to create an entry in the TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching under the topic of Webheads, which had been included as one of the topics in the encyclopedia. It took a few years for the article to be published as:
Stevens, V. (2018). Webheads. In Liontas, J. (Ed.). The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Wiley-Blackwell. 5824 pages. Available: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/archive/9781118784235eelt0458webheads.pdf
From this point in my career, how I was earning my living in my paid jobs became less important to me in the long run than my work in my online communities. The two were inextricably related though. My work in connecting teachers online kept me at the peak of that aspect of my profession and helped me bring CMC (computer-mediated communication) and other connectivity tools to bear on my face-to-face work life. I became known for my expertise in technology in the places I worked and this helped me keep at the top of my game and continue to get real teaching jobs. In other words, my after-hours online activities were helping me get salaried jobs in brick-and-mortar institutions and thrive in them, while in my spare time, I was able to sustain an alternative existence with an equally viable online web presence.
There are some quaint anecdotes from these early days that might amuse the colleagues I worked with at the MLI and Petroleum Institute at the time. These were the days where at home we worked on dialup connections, whereas at my workplaces I had access to always-on LAN connectivity. I was also provided with top quality desktop computers at work, and in both places I was able to bring in my laptops and connect those to the network as well. At the MLI we had to be at work at dawn, but everyone left in the afternoon and the workplace was deserted. Except for me. I liked to stay and have my two computers working in tandem over the unlimited bandwidth. It was so unusual for employees to stay behind at the workplace that it came down to me via our director that the military officers there suspected me of conducting some “business” after hours. The notion of working away happily for free online once everyone else had gone home was not on anyone’s radar.
I had the same habit at Petroleum Institute where I went to work teaching computing to aspiring engineering students after leaving MLI. In this more normal academic environment, people came in the morning to meet their classes and left at the end of the day after their classes were over. Again, when people left and the office became quiet my own work would segue into my online activities, which I could conduct from the comfort of my office, top notch office furniture and desk arrangement, fast Internet, two computers going at once. I would often be there after dark, and I was possibly the only one of my colleagues to know that the lights were timed to go off at 8 pm throughout the building. By that I mean, all the lights went off, hallway lights, lights in my office, they all cut out at 8 pm, leaving me bathed in the glow of my computer screens. I couldn’t override this, the light switches no longer worked, and I couldn’t work this way. I touch-type but I couldn’t see the keyboards, so I would have to leave my office and walk into the hallways to trigger the motion sensors that would turn the lights back on long enough for me to shut down my computers and exit the building.
My wife Bobbi has always been tolerant of my odd work habits, even my frequent 9 pm returns home from work. My workplaces have been less tolerant, placing higher value on being in place and at a desk at 8 a.m. each morning, not taking into consideration such strange preferences for getting real work done in an environment which in the evenings afforded almost no distractions.
Meanwhile back in my all-hours online world, in 2005 the WiA community mounted its first of three Webheads in Action Online Convergences (WiAOC). These were significant efforts to put on entirely free, crowd-sourced, 3-day (72 hours running) online conferences with hundreds of registered participants who came together online using the CMC tools we had been exploring in WiA. We ran these conferences three times, in 2005, 2007, and 2009 (they were too intensive to do annually). We’ve preserved what records we have of these events here, http://vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/wiaoc_index.htm.
These WiAOC’s occurred at a time when people had already started experimenting with online conferences, but up to 2005, these all required a credit card; almost none were done for free (one exception, John Hibbs’s annual Global Learn Day events, http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GLD/overview.html). The first significant effort at free online conferences for educators was the K-12 online conference which started in 2006 (https://k12onlineconference.org/). The first WiAOC in 2005 predated George Siemens’s first free Online Connectivism Conference in 2007, https://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=38808, and was three years ahead of the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course (CCK08) at https://sites.google.com/site/themoocguide/3-cck08—the-distributed-course which is widely acknowledged to be the first connectivist MOOC, the term connectivism having been coined in 2004 by George Siemens, https://www.academia.edu/2857071/Connectivism, and the term MOOC having been coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier (and Brian Alexander), who was helping George and Stephen Downes put on the CCK08 course, including how they were going to deal with 2,200 participants, about 2000 of whom had registered unexpectedly. I’ve written about this era in Stevens, V. (2013). What’s with the MOOCs? TESL-EJ, Volume 16, Number 4, pp. 1-14: http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej64/int.pdf.
Having dealt now with “how you got there” this brings us to my current position. After doing my last WiAOC in 2009, I realized that 3-day marathon conferences were too taxing and I hit on the idea of breaking this down into a weekly webinar/podcast series which I started in 2009 but began to do regularly in 2010. All the almost 430 podcasts produced between 2010 and up through today (currently updating this in Nov. 2019) are indexed here: http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/34456755/archiveindex.
Meanwhile, back in my everyday routine life, I ended my teaching career in July, 2018, having been farmed out of my last job in the UAE. I moved to Malaysia and got an apartment in Penang and now I call myself Founder and Coordinator of Learning2gether.net.
It doesn’t pay well, nothing at all actually. In fact I have to support it with an Internet line, computer equipment, and hosting services for its various aspects, including the WordPress site that hosts https://learning2gether.net. I am prevented from working for local currency in Malaysia, but I am beginning to be offered opportunities to speak at conferences and go on English Language Specialist assignments for the US State Dept.
The four teachers who have influenced me most in my career path after my formal education, when I really began to learn on my own, have been Jeff Lebow, Dave Cormier, George Siemens, and Stephen Downes.
Jeff Lebow developed the Worldbridges network, at http://worldbridges.net/. At about the time of the first MOOCs one of his most active channels was http://edtechtalk.com/. Another of his projects was http://webcastacademy.net/, which derived from his conviction that by teaching others the art of webcasting, or more specifically having others teach themselves, he would relieve himself of trying to hold together a band of cats and channel their energy into productive outcomes (which I often express as “a teacher should never work harder than his/her students”). As editor of the On the Internet section of TESL-EJ, I helped Jeff publish an article there about what he was doing at a time when I was working most closely with him, Lebow, Jeff. (2006). Worldbridges: The Potential of Live, Interactive Webcasting. TESL-EJ 10, 1. http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej37/int.html
As one of Jeff’s Webcast Academy participants (students is not quite the right word) I learned how to do webcasting as opposed to being taught. Jeff helped me to come to grips with Hangouts on Air and get them streaming over YouTube. YouTube eventually made this easier through tweaks to its own software, but whenever Google changes the playing field, it forces us to provide our own streaming tools and figure out how to use them. Thanks to Jeff’s modeling, I was able to work out how to get OBS (Open Broadcasting Software) working, and I also compiled a manual of sorts to help others come to grips with this versatile but complex tool, https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12KL1390JLzBsopdsMLMi6ZHNC23CEzT2biNp0mCOV3M/edit?usp=sharing
Dave Cormier was Jeff’s partner in http://edtechtalk.com/. Dave has interesting theories on teaching and how learners need to share with one another in order to learn in a connected manner. This is too complicated to explain in the time I have available right now, but before he started breeding kids and got focused on that, Dave’s last MOOC was on Rhizomatic Learning, a topic on which he publishes, some pieces of which I have preserved on this Learning2gether wiki page, here: http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#Rhizo15and16APracticalViewMOOCbyDaveCormier
This has guided my own teaching as with EVO MInecraft MOOC, which we will be doing for the 6th year this January. The ‘syllabus’ for our course is laid out here, http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/ and is also reachable through minecraftmooc.org.
But the syllabus is only what we produce to get ourselves accepted as an EVO session so we can run a MOOC for another year. If you read that out loud it sounds like run amok, which is in fact what I meant, because a MOOC by its very nature is community driven. In other words, once the MOOC begins, the syllabus is neither here nor there. We do what the community of participants most active at the time wants to do. Once we get going and have assembled our cohort for the current instantiation of EVO Minecraft MOOC, we don’t worry about the syllabus unless the participants ask about it. We keep it in mind, and the participants might try to orient on it to some degree, especially at the outset of a session while they are getting their bearings, but it is there as scaffolding not as dogma.
According to Dave there are five stages of coming to terms with MOOCs. He delineates them in this video as being orient, declare, network, cluster, and focus: https://youtu.be/r8avYQ5ZqM0
Our syllabus at http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/ is distributed over five weeks, each addressed at one of Cormier’s five stages of achieving success in MOOCs, e.g. one week each for orientation, declaration, networking, clustering, and finally focusing on what has been achieved and more importantly, where we go from here.
After the initial stages of orienting on a MOOC and figuring out and then expressing why they are there, the participants network and cluster around their own goals and projects. The syllabus brings them together and starts them on their learning journey in the MOOC, but that journey departs from the journeys of others and leads like-minded people to collaborate in clusters into developing their own learning outcomes, which is the focus part.
This was George Siemens’ idea when he conceived of connectivism. He has said he was reacting to the fact of the matter where in his classes he would have no idea why individuals in a lecture hall were there. Each must have a reason, but as the sage on the stage he could not possibly cobble one shoe to fit all those feet. Connectivism makes it possible for learners to utilize their networks to get from them what they need to know at any given time. The pipe is more important than the content of the pipes; if the pipes are working the content they lead to becomes available, as he famously wrote in his seminal work (2004) on Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age, which you can download from https://www.academia.edu/2857071/Connectivism.
Siemens and Stephen Downes have explored the nature of knowledge; e.g. Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens (2006). George’s work tends to disappear from it’s original locations and then arise phoenix-like from the space dust of the Internet. I found at least two sources for this book as of Oct 8, 2019
I have always liked Stephen Downes’s Where’s Waldo analogy of what knowledge is. You can stare for some time at a picture where Waldo is concealed and not be able to see him. But once you see him, then you “know” where he is, and then you understand the corollary to what knowledge is, which is that it’s something you cannot “not know” as Downes puts it, or that you cannot ‘unknow’. In other words, once you KNOW where Waldo is, you cannot again NOT know, and you will always find him quickly in that same picture. Congratulations, you have acquired yet another tidbit of knowledge.
Siemens’s book offers a connectivist perspective on what it means to “know” and the book is about knowledge in this day and age. Siemens and Downes suggest that any one node in the network is as knowledgeable as the most knowledgeable node in the network. Thus “knowing” is largely a byproduct of being able to connect in this day and age, and this is what teachers need to grasp, and what they need to teach their students.
You can get Stephen’s free ebook on Connectivism and Connected Knowledge here: Downes, S. (2012). Connectivism and Connective Knowledge: Essays on meaning and learning networks. Stephen’s Web: My eBooks. Available, http://www.downes.ca/files/books/Connective_Knowledge-19May2012.pdf
Berrybush Books got its name from a distinction made by the husband-wife researchers Scallon and Scallon in the early 80’s and which I included in my MA thesis (which you can read at the link provided earlier in this post). The distinction was an early one to describe access to information as through a conduit or by berry bush. A conduit is where information comes to you through a series of data points, so you get one item of information and then the next one. Computers made possible access to information as if it were berries on a bush. You pick the berries that appeal to you. Information systems are designed to improve access to any desired berry. I became associated with this distinction early in my career only through having read about it and then having talked about it enough in my writing and at conferences to where people thought it came from me. But that is just another anecdote.
Steven asked me to encapsulate these beliefs during our conversation so I repeated the mantra I have often used, based on the work of Stephen Downes in conjunction with David Warlick, whose blog posts and recorded presentations have been another significant influence on my beliefs.
I related how Stephen Downes appeared at our WiAOC in 2007 and gave a talk on Personal Learning the Web 2.0 Way, which Jeff Lebow still hosts at the Drupal site he set up to harvest recordings of our WiAOC conferences (but then his site was hacked, we suspect, by minions of a certain state actor because Jeff was hosting materials there relating to his prior work and interest in Tibet, and we lost all our WiAOC recordings and much else that was there preceding the hack): http://www.webheadsinaction.org/wiaoc2007/StephenDownes
And there you can find Stephen’s slide 22, which looks like this:
Stephen has often repeated this neat and comprehensive characterization of the two things that teachers do and the two things that learners do. I have added value to it by incorporating Warlick’s definition of teachers being master learners, from his post here:
Warlick, D. (2010, October 8). Are they students or are they learners? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://2cents.onlearning.us/?p=2762
So I often point out that teachers, in their true role as master learners, in fact incorporate all four roles that Downes so succinctly shared with us in 2007; i.e. they must constantly percolate all the four actions, modeling, demonstrating, practicing, and reflecting, in an ongoing iterative process of learning and re-learning through teaching.
Another of my beliefs is that learning itself must be percolated. I have on occasion found myself at odds with teaching colleagues who have objected to my putting our common coursebooks online for students to freely access, in berry bush mode; because some teachers want to be the conduit, and feel that if students see the material before they appear in class to “teach” it, this will detract from the impact of their presentation. By the same token, some of my peers might object to my presenting on one class something that they were planning to present in their. This may be warranted if teaching is seen as performing, and why would students want to see one person perform the same ‘song’ as it were when they had just heard that ‘song’ from another teacher. But my view holds that learning a song IS a matter of hearing it over and over again. Not only the song itself but what it means, its underlying poetry, allusions, etc.
we can see that the first slide in this slide deck informs the audience to whom it was delivered that
“THIS IS A FLIPPED PRESENTATION ● You can read my presentation in full text here: https://tinyurl.com/icctar2019vance ● You can download my slides at any time here: https://tinyurl.com/vance2019icctar If you visit my slides you will find a link to the full text. If you visit the full text you will find a link to the slides.”
In the interview, and on the recording, I touched on the following points
My teaching approach has TWO KEY ASPECTS
I noted two aspects of my approach to teaching: the healthy role of chaos in teaching and learning, and the need to model, demonstrate, practice, and reflect on flipped learning.
The FIRST KEY ASPECT is to model and practice flipped learning
I recently proposed to give a plenary on Flipped Learning (the proposal has since been accepted for ThaiTESOL 2020; here I was writing about how I was conceptualizing it).
As can be seen from the example above, the plenary would be conceived as follows:
The plenary as I would envisage it would itself be flipped. I’ve done this with many of my presentations lately. When I’m about to give a plenary, or any kind of solo presentation, I usually start by writing out what I want to say. From that I produce a slide presentation. Doing that feeds back into the prose version as I work to tighten up the structure until I have a cohesive prose document and a slide presentation, both of which I can share online.
Any presenter practices what s/he does before delivery from a podium, and I might do this by offering an online https://learning2gether.net event in Zoom which would make a recording of my presentation before I actually give it (or I might just practice it in my office and make a Zoom recording there; the live audience being beside the point for this purpose). In any event, all of this, the links to the prose writeup, the slides, and to YouTube version of the rehearsal goes up online before I give the presentation live, and I announce it with its links on my social media.
Normally my audiences are not so connected as to be following my social media, so when I appear before them, I tell them at the beginning of the presentation that everything I plan to say is already written out and recorded, and online, and I invite them to follow my slide show on their own devices as I present on the day, and they can see that in the slides there are links to the prose document prepared in advance and also to the video recording of my rehearsal.
To get them started on the slides, I usually make a TinyURL of the link to the slide show. A TinyURL is a mnemonic link which I generate from visiting http://tinyurl.com. Every TinyURL begins with that URL and is followed, after a slash/, by anything the creator of the TinyURL specifies. In my presentations I usually include the name of the conference, its,year, and my own name. The year is always in the middle but I transpose the conference acronym and my name for the TinyURL link to the slides and to the prose document. It doesn’t matter which way conference goers remember it because the two documents, slides and prose, link to one another.
For example at a recent plenary in Melaka in Malaysia I created these two TinyURLs, the first to the slides and the second to the prose document, so either link would get you to the slides:
I paused my presentation at the first slide to allow the delegates to get the presentation up on their personal devices, so they could follow the links as I mentioned them.
One nice thing here is that, if the presentation departs from script or runs out of time I can always tell the audience there is a backup elaborating on those last two slides. And of course I never have to tell an audience they can email me if they want a copy of my slides, nor do they need to take pictures of my slides during the presentation. If I’m presenting in a small room I might include a QR code on the first slide for the convenience of people who do like to photograph slides as speakers progress them.
And as the final part of the flip, there is an archive, which I can add to by fleshing out links or elaborating on tangents that came up during the presentation. I always make a blog post with the video recording or at least an audio (sometimes I attempt to make one during the presentation), Often because this started with a prose document I’ve now developed cohesively, there might eventually be a publication, which also becomes a part of the archive as I update it after the event that prompted the presentation.
So this is my technique and I was thinking that the plenary could itself be on the tools of podcasting and webcasting and how you can not only connect with peers, but you can put your students in touch with experts or with their peers in other countries, and not only that but you don’t have to go online while using these tools, you can use them to make recordings of yourself giving lectures, include screen shares, graphics, animations, web tours etc in the presentation and put that online as the first part of the flip, which you tell students to review before you meet them in class (and to do that you need to have a space where you can put things online where they can go to find what you want them to see and do before class, and this is where DIYLMS tools come in – Blackboard would work as well, but not everyone has Bb, and not everyone who has it likes it! but anyone with an internet connection can cobble together an effective DIYLMS. You can find out more about this through the links at http://diylms.pbworks.com/.
Anyway, to continue, the middle part of the flip is where you meet the students in class and ideally you set those who come prepared on to the next task. Others can use the time to view your materials and do the work they were supposed to have done prior to the class. Others might have questions, so you use class time to do what students need on a JIT (just-in-time) basis and not preach to a choir, a third of whom might be sleeping, and another third who are not quite keeping up with the nuances. And the last part of the flip is where students go off and use your archive of the event to figure out what they missed, or if they missed the whole class, to catch up. And in my plenary I would be modeling all this, well not exactly the middle part, but at least the first and 3rd stages.
This was the extent of what we discussed in the iTDi interview. The quote comes from Howard Reingold’s interview of George Siemens somewhere in this video
Read the Zoom text chat for this event
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : http://www.melta.org.my/
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Sounds like Vance caught travel bug 😉
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Minecraft
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : HI Hanaa Khamis. Welcome to The Teachers’ Room 🙂
Hanaa Khamis : Hi Phil
Hanaa Khamis : Wonderful to catch u jst in time
MikeのiPad : Other countries Language teaching markets seem so much more dynamic than Japan.
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : MUVE = Multi-User Virtual Environment
Hanaa Khamis : Hi Vance
Hanaa Khamis : Always wonderful to work w u
Hanaa Khamis : Learning experience watching u in a tion
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Great to collaborate 🙂
Hanaa Khamis : *action
20:22:26 Barb : When I first got online (thanks to Webheads) I remember other newbies like me would ‘discover’ something amazing about learning and teaching online…and it would turn out that Vance had written about the same thing years earlier lol. Ahead of his time.
Barb : And really gracious about us discovering stuff that was old news for him 🙂
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Here’s the Learning2Gether:
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#Nextupcomingevents
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : EVO = Electronic Village Online
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/10708567/FrontPage
Barb : http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/10708567/FrontPage
Barb : beat me 🙂
Barb : That’s the first online course I took! Becoming a Webhead
Barb : 2009 🙂
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : World Bridges: http://worldbridges.net/
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Learning2gether is also on Facebook for anyone interested: https://www.facebook.com/groups/learning2gether/
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Webheads in Action: https://www.facebook.com/groups/webheadsinaction/
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : MOOCs = massive open online courses
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Connectivist MOOCs
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Stephen Downes – Connectivism, MOOCs and Innovation: https://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?presentation=388
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Missions for EVO MC: http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/103905181/FrontPage
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : *Authentic interaction
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Chaos involve disorientation and perhaps different learners’ ambiguity tolerance is a key factor in determining whether they like the approach you mentioned
Hanaa Khamis : I did some work on concordancing in 2000
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Tom Cobb – Compleat Lexical Tutor: https://www.lextutor.ca/
Barb : So cool to have a chance to hear Vance talking about himself! Usually he’s encouraging others to be in the spotlight 🙂
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Welcome to The Teachers’ Room, Iman Elbahay
Barb : It’s hard. Things are changing, but teachers still expect to get things for free online
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Welcome to The Teachers’ Room, Jane Chien
Barb : Different mission and goals, I suspect
Jane Chien : Thanks 🙂 Hi from Taipei!
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : #JALT2019 Plenary Sessions will be live streamed! See https://jalt.org/conference/jalt2019/livestream for complete details.
Two sessions on Saturday, November 2nd, and two sessions on Sunday, November 3rd:
David Barker
Sponsored by englishbooks.jp
Plenary Session: Exploring Teacher Efficacy in Japan
Saturday, Nov 2, 09:45- 10:45 JST
Donna M. Brinton
Sponsored by Soka University and JALT
Plenary Session: Learner Agency, Then and Now
Saturday, Nov 2, 14:00- 15:00 JST
Oussouby Sacko
Sponsored by JALT
Plenary Session: Diverse Leaders in Japanese Education
Sunday, Nov 3, 10:30-11:30 JST
Mari Nakamura
Sponsored by JALT Junior
Plenary Session: Collaboration Across Borders Is “Nothing?”
Sunday, Nov 3, 14:10- 3:10 JST
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : We’ll share the recording next Tue via our iTDi Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/iTDi.Pro/
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : And this will be up on Learning2Together courtesy of Vance 🙂
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : *Learning2gether
Jane Chien : Thanks for the info! This is great!
iman elbahay : Great
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Please note, everyone, that you can save this chat by clicking on the 3-dot menu in the top-write of the textbook here
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Hi Rhett!
Rhett Burton : I give a month at a time.
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Welcome to The Teachers’ Room, SS 🙂
Rhett Burton : YouTube rocks
Vance Stevens : thank you, haven’t been following the chat that much but appreciate your all being here
Hanaa Khamis : I’m interested in d leadership seminar
MikeのiPad : Awesome talk.
Rhett Burton : I try to be a leader of 1(me).
Hanaa Khamis : Can we plan a mini-workshop on d?
Jane Chien to Vance Stevens(Privately) : Came in late but enjoyed last part of discussion! Thanks!
Jane Chien : Came in late but enjoyed last part of discussion! Thanks!
MikeのiPad : Do you have a favorite face to face conference.
Vance Stevens to Jane Chien(Privately) : thanks Mike, any questions fire away
MikeのiPad : ?
Hanaa Khamis : I prefer IATEFL
iman elbahay : It would be a great idea if we could have such conferences in the evening. I am actually in the kitchen and can’t enjoy the talk while I am interested 😁
Hanaa Khamis : Thailand was also interesting
Hanaa Khamis : France TESOL n TESOL Greece
Rhett Burton : korea
MikeのiPad : Thank you
Hanaa Khamis : Eman n I: Egypt
Hanaa Khamis : I’d rather not
Hanaa Khamis : Multi lingual
Rhett Burton : they are very strategic
Rhett Burton : teachers are good for double checking their work.
Hanaa Khamis : I assume their experience is more immersive
Hanaa Khamis : They sort of pick up language
Hanaa Khamis : Rather than learn it
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : https://www.ted.com/talks/lydia_machova_the_secrets_of_learning_a_new_language/transcript?language=en
Hanaa Khamis : I believe they must be young before puberty when they have had exposure to languages
Hanaa Khamis : Wts yr take on homeschooling?
Rhett Burton : I saw Andrew Cohen. he talked about his process for learning.
Hanaa Khamis : I’m prepping for a debate in two days
Hanaa Khamis : We should abolish schools n universities n study from home
Hanaa Khamis : painfully a d word
Hanaa Khamis : That’s it
Hanaa Khamis : I’m taking this segment
Hanaa Khamis : to share w my Ss
Hanaa Khamis : Do u mind
Hanaa Khamis : statement s in debates need to be strong
Hanaa Khamis : Thx all
MikeのiPad : Thank you!
iman elbahay : Thx 👍
Hanaa Khamis : wish I could join JALT one day
Phil Brown (iTDi TESOL) : Indeed!
Vance Stevens : http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/
Other postings organizing and responding to this event
Join us in The Teachers’ Room for an interview with the illustrious lifelong teacher/learner, Vance Stevens, hosted by Steven Herder Herder: https://lnkd.in/eE8P9y2
Vance started teaching #ESL #EFL #ESOL in 1976, and has over 40 years experience in #CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning). As Founder and Coordinator of #Learning2gether, he is forever sharing and supporting fellow #ELT professionals. He has recognised expertise in #edtech, #leadership in #online #CommunitiesOfPractice, teacher training, and instructional technology; plus extensive publications and presentations both online and as an invited speaker at international conferences.
Oct 8-12 – the 2019 annual Online Facilitation Unconference
From an email received at 9 am in Malaysia Oct 28:
This year’s Online Facilitation Unconference (OFU) kicked off at midnight last night.
We have 125+ people registered from 30+ countries from around the globe.
Our first two welcome sessions took place earlier today. Session planning has gotten under way, and most unconference sessions are expected to take place Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week.
New this year, we’re offering a “trainer track” of four pre-scheduled sessions with virtual facilitation trainers.
We also have a brand new online venue where you’ll be able to meet your fellow participants, brainstorm session topics, and schedule sessions.
It’s not too late to join! Use discount code “oldschool” (exclusive to this very special Yahoo! list of early adopters and innovators in this space) for a special discount, (and through the wonders of copy/paste, now extended to followers of Learning2gether)
Last but not least, OFU is a not-for-profit endeavor. We have low/no income options available. Around 15% of our registrants have already taken advantage of this opportunity, and we encourage everyone who might need it to do the same. Anyone interested in the exciting world of facilitating in the virtual – we really want to have them attend and contribute their experience and insights!
Oct 8 Braz-TESOL webinar
This information arrived in my email unfortunately after the event.
The registration asked if I was a Braz-TESOL member but the checkout cost was RS 0.00
But, for the record …
Wed Oct 9 1400 ET – EnglishUSA Associates free webinar on Assessment Providers & Services Part 2
The following was posted on myTESOL Lounge on Sept 17, 2019. If you can access that list you can find the thread here:
ESL Assessment Providers (Part 2)
Description:
This is the second of two complimentary webinars on assessment. Expecting further information to be posted before the event
The 6 Principles for Paraeducators webinar will take place on October 9th from 10:30 am – noon eastern time. The webinar will discuss professional development for this important group of educators who work closely with our English learners and will expand on the 6Ps Paraeducators Quick Guide that TESOL published last March.
This event carries a $50 charge for non-TESOL members
The event was recorded
If you registered for TESOL Virtual Seminar, the recording titled “The 6 Principles® for Paraeducators” is available here. Their email sent to registered participants says you have to log in to get it (but try and see 🙂
The second event, which I was more personally involved in and had set up to be L2g episode 425, occurred on Monday, Oct 7, 2019 at 8 pm in Maine. This was the October rendition of VSTE Minecraft Mondays. The time of the event in Maine is always midnight Tuesday in Europe and in countries to the east, so for much of the world this event took place on Tue Oct 8 midnight UTC.
The event on this day was scheduled on the East Coast Miners’ server. Because that server is populated by students, I was asked not to stream the event, though I’ll try to stream a Minecraft Monday event one of these days, if participants will permit that.
Here is how today’s event was announced:
MINECRAFT MONDAY!
October 7th 8 PM Eastern (World time -5)
Creative builds by kids at spawn, Halloween 2019, and in the ECM City
Dark’s mysterious waterlogged journal page recovery program
Nazi Concentration Camp recreation for school credit
The East Coast Miners server is locked to a whitelist but was opened for an hour Monday night, so that VSTE and Learning2gether, and EVO Minecraft MOOC miners could attend as well.
From there they pasted in rather nicely into the space here on this post. Then to further decorate this post I brought additional pictures in from my .Minecraft screenshot folder, and interleaved those with the large pics to enhance the presentation of what follows.
Our spawn point for the day was set underwater in the Coral Garden. Since we were in creative mode we had no issues wandering around in water to look around, and we hit the space bar to surface and begin today’s East Coast Miners magical mystery tour
Here’s what it looked like up on dry land
We followed the crowd over to nearby EMCCity
By now Cats_4_change had joined us. Cats was a student who had executed a faithful replica of a German WWII concentration camp. To create the build she had to research the topic and view photos taken of inmates and the conditions they lived in. One difference was that her camp was patrolled by giant spiders.
From the concentration camp we flew over to an area where pixel art had been created by kids. The teachers involved explained how the kids had made their creations collaboratively without any arguments over creative issues; they just worked spontaneously, had fun, and left an interesting build for us to tour.
Our next stop was a house where ancient scrolls were stored in chests. The kids had to retrieve the pieces of the scrolls and mount them on the walls and then re-order them and orient them so that their messages emerged. The pieces stored in separate chests were all parts of a larger story. Cats_4_change showed us how quickly she was able to work with the puzzle pieces, and it was also apparent how focused she was on the task.
Reconstructing and deciphering ancient texts
What does it say?
Someone had constructed a giant roller coaster ride on the premises. The ride took several minutes and went in and out of underground tunnels. To start the ride we were given minecarts and then we just had to move forward and let the redstone take over to propel us through the course. At one point the track ran out and dropped us into a deep hole, where the cart came out upright on track at the bottom of the hole, and the ride continued.
This was fun
By far the most interesting presentation on this day was the build created, if I recall correctly, by The18thDoctor. Being a space case, he spaced on the time as well and came to the event just as we were all leaving, thinking that 9 pm, where he was, was the start time. I was ready to leave as well so I switched off my Discord mic but listened in as he explained the set of rockets he had constructed there.
His attention to detail was phenomenal. That detail was not only to the outer surfaces, which were to scale, but to the interiors too. Someone helped me enter ‘spectator’ mode, a game mode setting in creative mode in Minecraft, that allows the player to pass through textures as if they were, well, pixels on a computer screen. In this mode you can just beeline through objects and come out the other side.
The student explained the rockets he had constructed and how they had evolved over time, from the earliest NASA rockets to some of the later models. One of the rockets on display was the Redstone, which is described on p.7 of this document, https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/153410main_Rockets_History.pdf. I remember the student saying that the Redstone was a one-stage rocket that was not able to put objects in orbit, and I recall from my childhood when in 1961 Alan Shepherd became the first American in space, having been shot in the air on a trajectory that brought him back to earth to an ocean splashdown after a 15 min. ride.
I asked if the student had done this as a class project. The answer was no, he had just done it as an obsession. It’s these obsessions, empowered by tools as creative as Minecraft, that enable students to follow their passions down paths of true learning that mark the difference between following a curriculum and just getting through school vs. finding one’s own learning pathway that leads to achieving brilliance while there.
While we were in the area, Dak had a special request. He wanted someone to take his picture standing next to his namesake.
I had never realized before that the Redstone rocket was named after an essential element in Minecraft
Time for the requisite selfie: Gang’s all here
In case we don’t see you till November, Happy Halloween
I was told in Discord that I was welcome to use the pictures that K4sons and Mainecakes had posted there. They copy / paste so easily from there to here … tempted … oh, go on! why not?
K4sons
Mainecakes
Basic directions to join VSTE Place, VSTE’s Minecraft world
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. You will need to be whitelisted to enter. Email Kim Harrison at K4sons@gmail.com from an educational email address with your real name and Minecraft account name.
Discord
Discord is a voice and screen sharing application that will run on your computer or mobile device. Download and install it for free. Create an account. Many of us use the same name for our Discord account as our Minecraft account to keep things simple. Our channel is https://discord.gg/nDX4mZv . It helps us to be able to play Minecraft in one screen and listen via Discord with earbuds or headphones.
Sat Oct 5 from 0900 to 2045 UTC – IATEFL World Teachers’ Day Web Conference
Where we find this information, copy/pasted from the website. It’s pretty succinct.
Join us for the World Teachers’ Day ELT Web Conference
Join IATEFL and British Council on Saturday October 5 to celebrate World Teachers’ Day with a one-day web conference, featuring 16 separate sessions on a wide range of themes and issues, including inclusive education and materials development, life skills, learning technologies, classroom tips and advice and many more.
Plenary talks
Practical workshops
Discussion forums on key topics
Q&A sessions with plenary speakers
Starting at 10.00 am UK time and running through until the evening, the web conference will provide useful and practical advice that you can apply to your own context, whether you are a teacher or a teacher educator. Attendance of the web conference is free and open to all. Sessions will also be recorded and made available after the event.
I missed most of it but I attended the following events
10.00 – 11.00
Plenary 1 – Seminar Room 1
Antonia Clare – Taking Flight from the Intermediate Plateau
Many learners encounter problems when moving from Intermediate (B1) to Upper Intermediate (B2). They struggle to perceive their language progress and often feel frustrated. This webinar looks at why this happens and offers strategies to help your learners take off from the Intermediate plateau.
This was an interesting presentation with many practical ideas. Several interesting web sites were introduced. Two that captured my attention were
Answer garden, where on this page https://answergarden.ch/about-AnswerGarden/ you can read this succinct description: “AnswerGarden is for anyone interested in using an easy and powerful way to get brief feedback from a group. AnswerGarden is used by teachers to establish the knowledge level of a class on a certain topic. It is used at conferences and workshops to break the ice with the audience in a fun and interactive fashion. AnswerGarden is used by creative teams for digital brainstorming sessions. People who maintain websites and blogs use it to poll their visitors in a brief and to-the-point matter.” You can see screen shots on that page.
Chunky dictation was an interesting idea. You read sentences to your students but where there is a blank you insert a sound (the bell perhaps). The students have to write down the word that is missing. But then the follow up is, when the students have written down the words, then get them to recall the sentences.
Florence Muluh – Challenges to teacher professional development in low resource contexts
This talk aims to explore some of the challenges that teachers in low resource contexts face regarding professional development. This concern has emerged from my interaction with teachers of varying levels of experience within the framework of my local teachers association and a survey I carried out in 2016 which revealed that in service training, skills up grading, and acquisition of new knowledge wasn’t on the agenda of most respondents. This is the fate of most teachers in low resource contexts who are often limited in their attempts to achieve this goal. Underlying factors to be discussed are demotivating working conditions, systematic challenges and poorly designed professional development programmes, limited teacher autonomy, among others. These often lead to frustration and burnout, leaving teachers with no zeal to improve on their performance. However, this situation could be improved through a number of policy and practical changes.
13.15 – 14.15
Plenary 2 – Seminar Room 1
Konstantina Ntomprou – Life Skills: Lessons taught; lessons learnt 21st Century Skills, Life Skills, Soft Skills are all popular concepts, but how far are we from fully implementing them in our teaching? Are these enough to equip learners for success in their future endeavours? We will explore how concepts like motivation, positive thinking, stress management and personal values fit in a language learning environment. I will be sharing my experience from delivering a series of skills workshops to young graduates and entrepreneurs for the British Council in Athens. We will discuss how ideas can be adapted for various contexts, for teachers and learners.
Here is the program for the day copied out for convenience
(to me, so I can fix this event chronologically with others taking place at around the same time)
Programme Overview with time frames linked to YOUR time when each event occurs
A 10:00 am start in UK is 9 am UTC and 17:00 in Malaysia. Again for convenience I’m linking each of the times given to the worldclock for that time. So you can explore the topics in the table above and if you find one you like, you can click on its time in the leftmost column and see when that event happens where you are.
Need to paste a link into a mobile device? Copy this one for Room 1
Certain panels and keynotes from the Connected Learning Summit being held onsite in Irvine, California are being livestreamed. And indeed, a follow up email links to a blog post where there are
Picture posted on Facebook by Christel Schneider, used here with permission
cc 4.0 by-sa 