On Sun Apr 24 #EVOMC16 held a SERVER PARTY and presented Minecraft and the gamification of teacher and student learning at the SLMOOC16 annual online conference.
Panelists Jeff Kuhn, Linda Gielen, Mircea Patrascu, Rose Bard, Robert Ogorek, Anna Jedryczko, and Vance Stevens will demonstrate through screenshare in Adobe Connect some of the work they have done on the EVO Minecraft server maintained by Aaron Schwartz at Ohio University. Panelists will also show how they use Minecraft for work with students in their own Minecraft virtual spaces.
All are welcome to join us in Adobe Connect for the server tour / party here:
Sign in with as a “guest”, enter your name and you’ll be able to see the Edmondo presentation.
Edmondo, the Italian educational Open Sim will be presented, highlighting the latest training experiences relating to English language and methodological courses carried out with Italian teachers and still ongoing.
On Sunday Apr 17 at 1400 UTC Mircea Patrascu, Rose Bard, and Vance Stevens gave a presentation as one of the IATEFL YLT SIG Bi-Monthly Webinars for 2015-2016, entitled Creating contexts in Minecraft for motivating and empowering young learners to take charge of their learning
This presentation is pitched at teachers of young students about how to put yourself in the mind and body or at least avatar of a young learner and get in the game of Minecraft and try and figure out what all the fuss is about through experience with other teaching peers occupying similar avatars.
Vance Stevens will begin by briefly introducing the EVO Minecraft MOOC Google+ Community https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/112993649763396826671. This is a community established as an EVO (Electronic Village Online) session. It was designed to attract participants knowledgeable in Minecraft who could help newcomers to Minecraft, a.k.a. noobies, to become functional in the game and better understand how they could use it in their educational settings.
Two of the strongest contributors to this community with respect to young learners have been Mircea Patrascu and Rose Bard. Each plans to spend 10 to 15 minutes showing us via screen share what they have built in Minecraft that can help young learners realize the potential of the environment for young learners when that learning is guided by practitioners skilled both in Minecraft and in working with learners. This combination of characteristics has become more and more common in educators as the affordances of Minecraft in empowering young learners becomes increasingly apparent and more widely known.
The video posted at https://youtu.be/YMvxWsOgSes (not hyperlinked here) is only 4 min. long and the sound cuts out at 2 min. exactly. Please use the link above
Complaints about a supposed decline in standards of English continue to be made, with increasing frequency, in the British press. Although these are nothing new – as the long history of use of would of for would have illustrates – they do draw attention to the way we seem to be going through a period of unusually rapid language change. This paper illustrates the main changes in pronunciation, orthography, grammar, and vocabulary, discusses the chief factors involved – social mobility, globalization, and the Internet – and compares the changes that have taken place in the past fifty years with those that are likely to take place in the next fifty.
David Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Bangor, and works from his home in Holyhead, North Wales, as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. He read English at University College London, specialized in English language studies, then joined academic life as a lecturer in linguistics, first at Bangor, then at Reading, where he became professor of linguistics. He received an OBE for services to the English language in 1995. Recent books include The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary (with Ben Crystal), Making a point: the pernickety story of English punctuation, The disappearing dictionary, and The gift of the gab: how eloquence works. His current research is chiefly in applied historical English phonology, with particular reference to Shakespearean original pronunciation. He is the patron of IATEFL.
Thu 14 Apr 0800 UTC Plenary by Silvana Richardson at IATEFL Birmingham
…and why we still need to talk about this in 2016. It is often claimed that much has changed in the eld of English Language Teaching since 1983, when Peter Medgyes rst described the struggle of ‘non-native’ teachers for visibility and due recognition. But has it? Away from academic circles, where the discourses that equated the ideal teacher with the ‘native speaker’ have been interrogated and critiqued, how has the situation really changed for the professional teacher of English whose rst or home language is a language other than English?
In this talk I will draw on research studies, anecdotal evidence and my own and my colleagues’ personal experiences to examine the state of equality and social justice in ELT with reference to the so-called ‘non- native speaker teacher’ thirty years on. I will look at how the logic of the market is used to justify current discriminatory recruitment practices that still perpetuate the view that a(n unquali ed) native speaker is preferable to a quali ed and professional ‘non-native teacher’.
I will reflect on the impact of the native-speaker bias and its dominance on developments in English Language teaching methodology, and how this dominance seems to have affected the emergence of context-appropriate pedagogies. Finally, I will address the ‘second best’ view of the ‘non-native teacher’ and its impact on their own construction of a legitimate professional identity and on their con dence in themselves as teachers, users and experts of an-other language.
Fri 15 Apr 0800 UTC Plenary by Diane Larsen-Freeman at IATEFL Birmingham
The justice and imperative of girls’ secondary school education – a model of action
Fifty years ago, around the time that IATEFL was founded, inquiries into the nature of additional language learning were begun. One of the earliest avenues of inquiry concerned the nature of the linguistic input that language learners were exposed to. Not only was the input thought to be the raw material that the learners had to work with, linguistic input was also thought to be a driving force in second language development. Researchers sought to demonstrate the effect of the input on what was called learners’ output. While this line of research been fruitful in contributing to our understanding of language learning, it has been encumbered by the use of its computer-related metaphors of input and output. Clearly, our students are not computers. We know that the way we talk in uences and re ects the way we think. One problem with ‘input’ is that it ascribes passivity to learners, robbing them of their agency. Another problem is that it suggests that there is a conduit between input and output. It overlooks the meaning-making nature of language use. A third problem is that the use of ‘input’ necessitates all sorts of terminological profusion, such as ‘intake’ and ‘uptake’. At this point, there is a need to move beyond input-output metaphors to embrace a new way of understanding, one informed by Complexity Theory with its ecological orientation – one of affordances. Affordances are two-way relationships between the learner and the environment. Affordances afford opportunities for action on the part of learners, provided that the affordances are perceived by learners. In this way, learners create their own affordances. Thus, affordances restore agency to learners. This also partially explains why learners’ developmental patterns are different. In this presentation, I will elaborate on affordances and discuss the implications of affordances for English language learning and teaching.
Sat 16 Apr 0800 UTC Plenary by Scott Thornbury at IATEFL Birmingham
In this talk I would like to use the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the IATEFL conference to review some of the major developments in the teaching of EFL since the mid-sixties and in particular the advent of the communicative approach, including the ideological context from which it emerged, its initial promise, its dispersion, its dilution, its normalization, and its discontents. I will interweave autobiographical detail throughout in order to illustrate some key landmarks in this narrative, while at the same time I will challenge the notion of progress and evolution, and suggest that the diversity of contexts, needs, and traditions that ELT currently embraces repudiates the notion of method, and challenges such established orthodoxies as cookie-cutter pre-service training, global textbooks, uniform examinations and even the notion of a standard English itself. I will argue that one way of making sense of all this diversity is to situate ELT within the wider orbit of education generally, which might mean re-con guring EFL/ELT/ESL/TESOL as simply LE: language education.
Sat 16 Apr 1215 UTC Closing Plenary by Jan Blake at IATEFL Birmingham
Man, woman, life, love: stories from Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond
Listen to Jan Blake tell tales of lovers, shape-shifters, the wise, and the foolish. She will transport you to faraway places, wrapping you in the rhythm of her words and trans xing you with the power of her stories, before bringing you safely home. These tales will bring a tear to your eye, a smile to your lips, and put a spring in your step.
50th Annual International IATEFL Conference and Exhibition
ICC, Birmingham, UK
13th-16th April 2016
Pre-Conference Events and Associates’ Day, 12th April 2016
Join us for IATEFL Online for live coverage of 2016 Birmingham IATEFL Conference
If you can’t attend the 2016 IATEFL Conference, follow the event online!
Birmingham Online coverage starts: 12th April, 2016
Go tohttp://www.digiworldz.com/and make a free account, create an avatar, download Firestorm or Singularity, choose DigiWorldz from the grid menu, and you’re in. Click on the World map icon at the bottom of your viewer, put “Escape” into the search bar on the World and then click “Find” and then “Teleport” and you’ll be there!
The webinar will preview instructions to useful skills for teachers, SLURLs to great places to find teaching-related freebies and useful toys, organizing tips for keeping class inventories, as well as introduce folks to the searching on the Marketplace for teaching related tools.
The workshop will include making display boards for links to helpful websites, or books, articles, making notecard givers for assignments, and setting up class/student subdirectories in your SL inventories.
On Sunday Apr 10 at the usual time of 1400 UTC Learning2gether met online with some of the people who made the CALL-IS webcasts happen this year at Baltimore:.Jack Watson, Jennifer Meyer, and Robert Wachman, and other CALL-IS webcasters to talk in depth about webcasting at TESOL 2016. Fittingly, we returned for this to the Webheads virtual office, http://webheads.learningtimesevents.org/
We chatted about what’s involved in webcasting from TESOL each year and where we might take it from here throughout the year, not just at TESOL conferences. And we talked about people’s experiences and suggestions for improvement on what we do.
We’ll talk about how the event went, problems that arose, and successes of course, and what we might do to improve it next year. We’ll find out about challenges faced by those who worked to make it happen, who put themselves in the position of having to kickstart the technology while organizing and uploading powerpoints from numerous presenters, all in the ten minutes between presentations, and what motivates them to put themselves in that position. And I’m sure we’ll find out how much they enjoyed it and why they might convince others to give us a hand next year.
In Jennifer’s case, where she used Bb Collaborate to webcast from a recent TNTESOL conference, we’ll talk to her about what brings her to webcasting, what motivates her to risk it despite the odds, and what her experiences were webcasting the recent TNTESOL conference, what she learned, advice for other webcasters.
We announced the event on our TESOL list and cordially invited other CALL-IS webcasters from the just finished TESOL Conference in Baltimore to join us as well.
Gaming for the Classroom: How to Use Them and What to Know About Them
This panel showcases how games have been used both in the classroom and as an approach for teacher’s professional development. We also explore what the future of games and learning holds and what teachers need to know about this new form of literacy. Panelists were
Elliott Casal, Ohio University, USA
Vance Stevens, Higher Colleges of Technology, CERT, KBZAC, UAE
Jeff Kuhn, Ohio University, USA
Rodrigo Carvalho, Georgia Tech Language Institute, USA
Apr 8 1300 UTC TESOL 50th anniversary event – Leadership panel – EV Retrospective
TESOL 50th Anniversary Special Event: Leadership Panel: History of the EV Retrospective: Over three decades of Professional Development in CALL. 9:30- 10:45am EDT
Nellie Deutsch and Vance Stevens will demonstrate the processes involved in connecting and allowing teachers from around the world to share their educational beliefs and expertise through webinars. The demonstration will focus on how the projects interconnect. The on-site participants will learn to engage in online conversations with teachers at a distance.
The QR code presented at the live event no longer works, so use the link below
Find our slides here, however note that the link has changed since the event
The Learning2gether Blackboard Collaborate room was used on April 6, 7, & 8 for CALL-IS events being webcast from the annual TESOL Convention in Baltimore. This room is available on a long-standing grant from LearningTimes, http://learningtimes.com, to Learning2gether as an instantiation of Webheads in Action, and LearningTimes have kindly agreed to support TESOL CALL-IS webcasts through donation of two additional rooms as well, to support the need to run two Collaborate rooms at the same time for EV fair classics, and at 20 min intervals on other occasions throughout the conference.
On Wed and Thu Apr 6 and 7, David Winet gave two talks as part of the 2016 TESOL Baltimore Classroom of the Future series of presentations, the topics of which can be subsumed under the catchy title of the first one,”VR and AR and Robots, Oh My! ”
The above video is from the Learning2gether Apr 7 David Winet presentation on robots in the classroom of the future from TESOL Baltimore in the Classroom of the Future pavilion in the Expo Hall, entitled:
Superblend: Using Robots for ESL Telepresence, or how to be in two places at one time
Dave Winet asked Vance Stevens to try and archive his talk at TESOL 2016. Ever pushing the edge of the envelope, Dave will attempt to get a robot to join his presentation (ironically bringing two entities into the same physical space at one time) whereas Vance will attempt to surmount bandwidth challenges to webcast the event via HoA. Join our fiasco or witness a seminal event, webcast from TESOL Baltimore. Anything can happen.
Summary: Robots permit ESL “telepresence,” being in two places at one time. Students can learn and interact with people, places and things in faraway places or nearby. Robots allow teachers to extend the learning realm for students, generating interest and excitement. An actual robot will be in attendance at the presentation!
Objective: To acquaint attendees with the idea of using robots, controlled through internet, to allow students to actually be in two places at once — the comfortable, safe classroom environment, and the exotic, exciting places a robot can visit. The attendees will see how this kind of McLuhanesque extension of ourselves leads to learning language and culture in a visceral, 100%-present kind of way. Attendees will be able to have a go at controlling the robots themselves, both inside the Convention Center and at great distances such as Paris, France, and will understand how students’ interest can be magnified by face-to-face contact with real people, places and things that matter to and intrigue them. Whether it’s by attending a regular university class, “visiting” Machu Picchu or Times Square in real time, or interviewing the man-on-the-street in Peoria, London or Mumbai, the use of robots will be seen to offer tremendous potential for learning language, understanding culture and participating in meaningful group experience with their classmates. I am requesting 45 minutes to explain to attendees how to: drive the robot, give participants a chance to try it for themselves, and use robots in different locales for different types of learning.
April 6, 2016 – VR and AR and Robots, Oh My! Recording:
The new 3-D virtual reality headsets are something like the 2-D virtual reality site Second Life but even more compelling and immersive for listening, speaking and reading at every level. Remote-control robots also offer tantalizing prospects for English teaching. Put together, they can create an effective enhanced-reality learning environment.
Abstract
Realistic 3-D “virtual world” environments using Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard and other headsets create an immersive environment for students to learn in a non-mediated, direct fashion not unlike the way children learn their own languages, but with the added educational benefit of “augmented reality” elements such as explanatory words superimposed on real-world settings and the ability to generate testing and competition within those environments, seamlessly connecting the real world, imaginary worlds and ESL tasks all in one. Personal robots, another emerging technology with educational potential, allow a learner or a whole class to experience “telepresence,” that is, the ability to be in two places at once, for example, in a classroom in Peoria and inside the Coliseum in Rome, able to move around in real time, communicate with real people in a faraway place, and, with the addition of “augmented reality” elements, to use those experiences for language acquisition. Pairing 3-D headsets with robots can take the immersive educational experience one step further by obviating the need for a smartphone or mouse for navigation and just allowing natural body movements like head-turning and walking to inform the learning experience. Participants will try out VR headsets during the presentation.
CALL-IS webcasts from TESOL in Baltimore
The Learning2gether Blackboard Collaborate room was used on April 6, 7, & 8 for CALL-IS events being webcast from the annual TESOL Convention in Baltimore. This room is available on a long-standing grant from LearningTimes, http://learningtimes.com, to Learning2gether as an instantiation of Webheads in Action, and LearningTimes have kindly agreed to support TESOL CALL-IS webcasts through donation of two additional rooms as well, to support the need to run two Collaborate rooms at the same time for EV fair classics, and at 20 min intervals on other occasions throughout the conference.
Fri Mar 25 1730 UTC EVO Minecraft MOOC server tour by Aaron Schwartz and Jeff Kuhn at OU CALL Conference
Aaron Schwartz invited the #EVOMC16 to a conference presentation where he and Jeff Kuhn will be discussing their EVO experiences and inviting folks to tour the EVO Server during the afternoon tech fair at the Ohio University CALL Conference
The presentation, titled “Minecraft for Professional Development and Networking,” will be an informal part of the fair, but we will have computers open demonstrating our G+ Community via our Adobe Connect meeting spac link:
If you are available, please join us on the server and/or in the adobe connect session so you can interact with other teachers and CALL professionals and demonstrate our community in action!
You can interact with other participants at our Google+ community Event here
The tech fair was scheduled for 1:30pm to 2:30pm EST…that’s 5:30-6:30pm UTC.
Sat Mar 26 More updates and feedback on Remind educational community engagement tools
If you participated in our Remind.com webinar last year you are probably already convinced about how valuable this tool is for strengthening home/school communication. There have been some great new updates to Jordan Pedraza and a panel of teachers and administrators return to share these updates. Joining her on the panel: Michael Buist, 5th Grade Teacher at Knox Gifted Academy in Chandler, AZ (@mrsjeff2u);; Joe Oliphant, Co-Principal and Former 2nd Grade Teacher, Propel Braddock Hills High School, Braddock Hills, PA (@Joe_Oliphant).
Remind helps school communities deepen relationships and engagement through instant and safe communication through text and mobile app messages. Better communication leads to stronger communities and improved outcomes. Teacher-parent engagement is critical to student success, and Remind helps connect these support networks with simple, accessible messaging. In this webinar, we’ll share how educators use light-touch communication to extend student learning, increase parent involvement, and strengthen relationships in their classrooms and schools.
Jordan Pedraza currently leads Community at Remind and has worked in the ed tech space for almost 10 years with experiences in higher education, k-12, policy research, and international settings. Before Remind, Jordan led Community with Google for Education and helped universities, k-12 schools, and ministries of education adopt various Google tools. Jordan is deeply passionate about helping communities explore and adopt technology for new learning models and creativity.
More information and session details are at http://live.classroom20.com. If you’re new to the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! show you might want to spend a few minutes viewing the screencast on the homepage to learn how we use Blackboard Collaborate, and navigate the site. Each show begins at 12pmEastern (GMT-5) and may be accessed in Blackboard Collaborate directly using the following Classroom 2.0 LIVE! link at http://tinyurl.com/cr20live. All webinars are closed captioned.
On the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! site (http://live.classroom20.com) you’ll find the recordings and Livebinder from our recent ”Global Google Mapping” session with Kathy Beck. Click on the Archives and Resources tab.
Classroom 2.0 LIVE Team:
Peggy George, Lorie Moffat, Tammy Moore, Paula Naugle, Steve Hargadon
Mar 31 Designers for Learning #OpenABE Service-MOOC Webcast
Please join our free Designers for Learning webcast tomorrow as part of ourinstructional design service-MOOC. We will be reviewing our progress as we reach the mid-point of the 12-week MOOC. Over 1,300 participants have enrolled in the free and open course that centers on the design and development of open educational resources (OER) for adult basic education (ABE). In this project-based MOOC, participants are networking and gaining instructional design experience while developing instructional materials that will be made available for free to adult educators and learners in the Adult Learning Zone group on OER Commons.
Read more about the webcast and Designers for Learning’s involvement in upcoming conferences where participants from our projects will be presenting:
Dr. John Baaki will host our conversation. In addition to a few of our course facilitators and subject matter experts, we have assembled a small panel of participants from this course who will share their perspectives as educators working with our target audience of adult learners, including Ruth Sugar, Patricia Hernandez, Alfons Prince, and Magxina Wageman. As in past webcasts, course participants are asked to please post your questions or comments before the webcast in our Ask a Subject Matter Expert forum, or live tweet questions and comments during the webcast using the #openabe hashtag on twitter.
Sat Apr 2 1700 UTC Classroom 2.0 – Dr Royce Kimmons on Copyright and Fair Use
We have had so many great presenters on Classroom 2.0 LIVE sharing the ways they use technology in their classrooms to support learning. In almost every webinar questions come up about issues related to copyright and fair use. We are excited to be able to get some background and answers to our questions in this week’s webinar with our special guest presenter: Dr. Royce Kimmons. We hope you will plan to join us for this valuable information!
Description:
“The Liberating New World of Open Educational Resources (OER): Copyright, Fair Use, and Open Licensing” Educational professionals typically either ignore copyright or are frightened by it, which either leads to gross misuse of copyrighted materials or failure to use these materials in meaningful ways. This presentation will help educators understand the basics of copyright, fair use, and open licensing and will provide a glimpse of the exciting new world of open educational resources (OER).(@roycekimmons)
Dr. Kimmons is currently an Assistant Professor for Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. He specializes in social networking, teacher education, technology integration, professional development, web applications and game development.
More information and session details are at http://live.classroom20.com. If you’re new to the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! show you might want to spend a few minutes viewing the screencast on the homepage to learn how we use Blackboard Collaborate, and navigate the site. Each show begins at 12pm Eastern (GMT-5) and may be accessed in Blackboard Collaborate directly using the following Classroom 2.0 LIVE! link at http://tinyurl.com/cr20live. All webinars are closed captioned.
On the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! site (http://live.classroom20.com) you’ll find the recordings and Livebinder from our recent ”Fostering Learning, Engagement and Community with Remind” session with Jordan Pedraza, Community at Remind, @JordanPedraza; Michael Buist, 5th Grade Teacher at Knox Gifted Academy in Chandler, AZ (@BuistBunch); Carla Jefferson, Instructional Technology Coordinator, Darlington, SC (@mrsjeff2u); Joe Oliphant, Co-Principal and Former 2nd Grade Teacher, Propel Braddock Hills High School, Braddock Hills, PA (@Joe_Oliphant). Click on the Archives and Resources tab.
Classroom 2.0 LIVE Team: Peggy George, Lorie Moffat, Tammy Moore, Paula Naugle, Steve Hargadon
Learning2gether 