Learning2gether Episode 511

Navigation

Best of EVO March 26-27
— Minecraft MOOC at Best of EVO
— EVO Minecraft MOOC server tour
Facilitation – CALL-IS EV Tech Tips session
Sat 27 March Facilitated – Intercultural Competence 2021 and TECHNO CLIL 2021
Skip down to the Zoom Chat Logs
See our promotion and feedback for this event
Skip down to Earlier Events that happened since the previous Learning2gther post

Friday March 26

Best of EVO March 26-27

This was a big day for EVO Minecraft MOOC at the TESOL 2021 Virtual Conference. We presented a Best of EVO presentation at 10:30 a.m. EDT followed by a tour of the EVO Minecraft MOOC server at 11 a.m. We had planned the tour to begin with a discussion at first, so at 11 a.m. EDT we just carried on talking. But we were asked to stop there to make a correct break between our Best of EVO session and the server tour, which we had been expected to record in a new video.

The recording here, https://youtu.be/MnCUvIrt9oU compiles the EVO Minecraft MOOC best of EVO presentation and the server tour afterwards into one video separate from the CEFR session that preceded ours.

In the EVO Minecraft MOOC Best of EVO and Tour video there was a lively discussion of the benefits of using Minecraft with language learners. I made a transcript of the parts relevant to language learning from the closed captions and placed it online here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M5NrEH9_6O37o9BnOnUUbFL1jtcBYLoqRJxMvgD3RZQ/edit?usp=sharing,

The timestamps in that document are from this video. https://youtu.be/MnCUvIrt9oU, the compilation of the EVO Minecraft MOOC contributions to the following two events

Fri 26 March 1430 UTC Minecraft MOOC at Best of EVO March 26-27

I was involved in facilitating the Live/Synch session in which our Best of EVO event occurred. It was planned as a joint hour session on Fri 26 March 14:00 – 15:00 UTC (10:00-10:30 US EDT) shared between
CEFR VS Assessment: How can new revisions help? and EVO Minecraft MOOC 2021

Facilitators Christine / Vance

Here is the video for the combined session as recorded per the directions of CALL-IS, https://youtu.be/ZWpDpKaV8Tk

What is this?

According to https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html#evo here is how the event was listed on March 21 noon UTC

EVO Minecraft MOOC at the Best of EVO

This session was organized by Aaron Schwartz, Don Carroll, Jane Chien, Rose Bard, and Vance Stevens.

• Laura Briggs was not available to present but collected contributions for Best of EVO, as per
  https://www.screencast.com/t/ADALLSKGET

Google Slides

• Our slides were prepared mostly by Rose Bard, who was not able to be present at the event:
  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/160Fa_C1raxyVLKiWvyrODdL_twgRnOrwhxpyF9cnNsU/edit?usp=sharing

Fri 26 March 1500 UTC EVO Minecraft MOOC server tour

Immediately following our “official” Best of EVO Aaron Schwartz, Jane Chien, Vance Stevens, and Don Carroll conducted a virtual tour of the EVO Minecraft MOOC server. Marijana Smolčec was there as well and contributed significantly to the discussion.

We let everyone know they were welcome to come to Zoom and join the discussion as we screen share from Minecraft, and if you are whitelisted on our server you are welcome to join us there (but note that voice is via Zoom)

Bobbi Stevens and Dakotah Redstone joined us in Minecraft on the tour.

Here’s the official CALL-IS video of the event, https://youtu.be/AROQgp7Xzpw

but the full and contiguous Best of EVO Minecraft MOOC presentation followed by discussion and tour is embedded at the start of this post.

What is this?

According to https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html#evo

Updated information from March 23,10:00 UTC

What will happen?

The tour will continue via screen share in the same zoom room as was used for the Best of EVO EVOMC21 event which will have started at 10:30

For the Minecraft Tour at 11 am EDT

• Aaron will start the session (10 minutes)
• Jane Chien will next share her views on Minecraft and Vocabulary Learning (with one slide)
• Jane will ask Don questions (not in-game) about his views on the utility of Minecraft for ESL/EFL learning and the nature of in-game talk (10 minutes).
• After that, Vance will share his screen showing the server (in-game) and give our audience a world tour in Minecraft to explore tasks that engage language learners

 

Fri 26 March noon UTC Facilitation – CALL-IS EV Tech Tips session

From 08:00-09:00 am EDT
according to https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html#tf2 

Here is the video: https://youtu.be/GHOKZ3yPupA

—

Saturday March 27

Sat 27 March Facilitated – Intercultural Competence 2021 and TECHNO CLIL 2021

On Saturday, March 27, 3:00 – 4:00 am EDT (= 7:00 – 8:00 UTC) I helped facilitate
Intercultural Competence 2021 and TECHNO CLIL 2021

Facilitators Jane / Vance

The video is here: https://youtu.be/Orzgx74Jj94

 

Zoom Chat Logs

EVO Minecraft MOOC at Best of EVO

00:01:02 MushtakHusen: Hello from India!
00:01:36 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: Hello, Mushtak! I was just looking for the form you want.
00:01:49 MushtakHusen: Ok
00:02:04 MushtakHusen: You can get it after your session. Thank you.
00:40:15 Shereen Mahfouz: Thank you Mrs Maha for this beneficial session
00:50:25 Naglaa Salem: That was great!

The image is from http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/

00:51:25 Jane Chien: Thanks! I like our promotional video as well! 😀 https://youtu.be/JUF2-loSL0E
00:53:48 Naglaa Salem: Excellent use of the PBwiki!
01:00:33 Moderator, Vance Stevens: Thanks, I have a system for archiving old sessions so we never have to delete one
01:05:32 Moderator, Vance Stevens: Here is the link to our slides https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/160Fa_C1raxyVLKiWvyrODdL_twgRnOrwhxpyF9cnNsU/edit?usp=sharing
01:09:28 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: The pedagogical aspect is great, and that is what the goal is, right?
01:09:35 Moderator, Vance Stevens: Christine is reminding me that we want time for qustions
01:09:35 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: Or one of the goals?
01:16:06 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: And how does language enter into it here?
01:17:12 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: It is really project-based learning (PBL).
01:18:12 Walton Burns: Some teachers do role plays in-world as well. In fact, some players do role-playing pretending to be a settler from the 18th century or living in a medieval fantasy world.
01:18:43 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: Is there collaboration among the players–in English?
01:18:58 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: Negotiation of meaning?
01:20:13 Camyla Yamashiro: I play Minecraft and there is a lot of negotiation of meaning because other players are all over the word and English is the main language. It is an amazing game!
01:20:23 aaron schwartz: Yes… the game itself provides no instruction, so players have to interact to learn how to do anything
01:20:37 Jane Chien: Yes, there is a lot of chance to negotiate of meaning immersed in the Minecraft world.
01:21:18 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: Glad to hear it, Jane. (I knew but wanted to be sure to get this across in the session.)
01:22:08 Walton Burns: Absolutely! My son and I are starting to do big complex builds and we do all sorts of planning about resource collection, design, task assignment, etc…
01:22:16 Donald Carroll: I would consider the “in world” language learning opportunities to be “poor” as compared to the out-of-game MC resources, e.g. YouTube videos, wikis, forums, etc.
01:22:25 aaron schwartz: discord
01:23:29 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: We are already 7 minutes over time, but there is no session here after us.
01:24:09 Camyla Yamashiro: and now it has Twitch, where they can see live streams about it and participate in live interactions
01:24:10 Jane Chien: The next session is Minecraft for ELT
01:24:23 Jane Chien: With Aaron as the host for the session.
01:24:31 IELTS & More: Is Maha Hassan’s session after this one?
01:24:36 Jane Chien: But we’re having a great discussion.
01:24:49 Jane Chien: Maha finished her session already.
01:24:50 Christine Bauer-Ramazani: Maha Hasan presented first.
01:26:59 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Sorry, if I talked a lot
01:27:25 Jane Chien: Aaron is our host
01:28:24 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Shall we leave

EVO Minecraft MOOC Server tour

“The quality of the learning that takes place when we focus our attention only on the items to be learned is different from (and probably inferior to) the quality of learning that is incidental to something else that we are trying to do.” –
Earl Stevick 1982 Teaching and learning languages (pp. 131-2)

01:30:33 Moderator, Vance Stevens: you can stay we are gong to share minecraft
01:30:40 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Go, go guys! 🙂 #EVOMInecraft!
01:30:53 Donald Carroll: What will be used for audio in MC?
01:31:05 Moderator, Vance Stevens: Zoom, right where you are
01:31:11 Jane Chien: Welcome Aaron’s students!
01:31:42 Munavvara Xudoyberdiyeva: Thanks, glad to join in
01:31:51 Mokhlaroy: ☺️
01:32:58 Samsung: Thanks, glad to be here
01:35:37 Walton Burns: As a teacher, it seems like the map would be helpful to keep track of students though.
01:36:02 Moderator, Vance Stevens: http://mc.evomc.net:8123/

01:38:21 Jane Chien: https://padlet.com/aschwar/moegyvkptftcdvfr
01:38:35 Jane Chien: If you let me share screen
01:38:43 Jane Chien: I can show them padlet
01:44:16 aaron schwartz: “this thingy”
01:46:11 aaron schwartz: English as lingua franca for kids in different countries
01:46:33 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Definitely, it is for my sons and it has been for the past 10 years
01:47:03 Camyla Yamashiro: not only for kids, for sure… all my students are adults, and most of them are over 30 and use English to play games! it is an amazing tool!
01:49:04 aaron schwartz: I’d like to hear more about the books… Which Minecraft Books are really good?
01:50:40 Camyla Yamashiro: for me, I improved my English playing with native speakers using the voice chat..in a EFL context, that was my only opportunity to improve my speaking and vocabulary skills, mostly phrasal verbs and expressions
01:52:53 Oylola Ibrohimova: Great, I’m in favour of you. Game i the best way to upgrade vocabulary
01:53:17 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): I heat the sheep @Jane :))
01:53:18 Walton Burns: Books: I think the official Minecraft for Beginners by Mojang book is a great place to start. If I can plug my own Basic Minecraft for Kids books, I’m producing short and easy ebooks for basic builds that young kids can handle: https://www.alphabetpublishingbooks.com/minecraft I also love Megan Miller’s books. Really nice build ideas, some big and complex and some pretty easy.
01:53:28 Jane Chien: Great points, Camyla! Would you like to take the mic and share?
01:53:29 Samsung: Is there a book on Minecraft? I didn’t know that…
01:53:30 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Sorry, it’s Vances :))
01:53:39 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): There are many books on Minecraft
01:53:50 aaron schwartz: aren’t there some children’s fiction books set in minecraft?
01:54:05 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): I love the crafting and creative part of Minecraft.
01:55:08 Walton Burns: Diary of a Minecraft Zombie is a series of books written inside the Minecraft world that look cute. Never gotten my son into them so I don’t know if they’re any good.
01:56:14 aaron schwartz: intrinsic motivation
01:56:23 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Yes Aron
01:56:31 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): My sons have learned so many things from games
01:57:16 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Game within the game
01:58:04 aaron schwartz: and spider eyes 😛
01:58:07 Walton Burns: I prefer sending my son to books because some of the YouTube videos even the ones aimed at kids have some salty language, or lots of slang, or promote lots of stuff, or the kids talk at 100 miles a minute. I wouldn’t want my students exposed to that stuff either.
01:58:39 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Yes, so true Walton, my sons have picked up that bad language
01:59:09 aaron schwartz: have the students write a series of steps
02:00:21 aaron schwartz: reflective journal entries based on in-game experiences
02:01:35 Jane Chien: https://mattietsai.com/2020/02/23/minecraft/
02:02:02 Jane Chien: This is mattie’s blog and writing about Minecraft as an EFL learner.
02:02:13 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Awesome jane, will check it ouz
02:02:53 Walton Burns: Great blog! Nice simple writing task!
02:03:53 aaron schwartz: When Jeff Kuhn initially just tried to add Minecraft to his writing class, it failed — During his next opportunity, he changed the focus to do a unit on disaster preparedness (and the students read World War Z) — then they had to make anti-zombie plans and try and implement them in game — then reflect on their success in writing afterwards
02:04:36 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Great, I have just watched WWZ with my students and I love creative writing – it works great.
02:05:20 Camyla Yamashiro: I am using videogames to teach pronunciation
02:05:23 aaron schwartz: The book is more nonfiction than the film and lays out specific strategies they can try
02:06:32 Camyla Yamashiro: that is really true, I also type really fast because of games!
02:12:20 aaron schwartz: “tricked them to learn” — Nice Marijana
02:12:27 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): You get exposed :))to many different accents
02:12:31 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): :))
02:13:41 Camyla Yamashiro: that’s what I love the most! With the other medias, you mostly get exposed to American/British accent… but on the gaming environment, there people literally all over the world!
02:17:26 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): You really had fun this January and Feb, I am so busy and I couldn’t join as I wished, hope join soon
02:17:47 Walton Burns: Oh my gosh. I hadn’t realized that. I just thought phantoms randomly attacked sometimes and didn’t. It never occurred to me there was a rule!
02:18:13 Oylola Ibrohimova: thank you all for sharing
02:18:18 Munavvara Xudoyberdiyeva: Yes It was great to be informed about the minecraft
02:18:48 Jane Chien: Thank you for coming!!
02:18:55 Munavvara Xudoyberdiyeva: Thank you all sharing
02:19:20 Andrew Bowman: Good work, everyone. Great to see you all again.
02:19:33 Munavvara Xudoyberdiyeva: You are welcome!
02:19:37 Moderator, Vance Stevens: thanks great to see everyone
02:24:37 Oylola Ibrohimova: Hot conversation it was thanks

CALL-IS EV Tech Tips session

00:16:20 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Welcome everyone!
00:16:32 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Please feel free to ask questions of the presenters.
00:16:42 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Welcome everybody! 🙂 Where are you from?
00:17:30 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Kansas via Latvia!
00:18:23 Mr Khamis Atteyat-Allah Hegazy: Hello from Egypt
00:18:28 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Great!
00:18:42 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: I am from Trujillo, Peru 🙂
00:18:47 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Salam and hola!
00:23:32 Eric Grunwald: Students as Virtual Tour Guides: Link to documents and students presentations: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7dsf91jk6p14ec8/AABbrPutP_o_BytmlM-af5wQa?dl=0
00:24:13 Omar Moussa: greetings from Egypt
00:24:35 Omar Moussa: thank you Mr Khamis Attia for invitation
00:30:49 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Any questions?
00:31:26 Camyla Yamashiro: Hello! Baiba Sedriks, thank you for the presentation! I saw the video and I tried the website… how do we use the function that allow students to see presentations that are happening around the world? Or did I understand that function wrong?
00:32:31 DR.MD.ALAUDDIN: Nice Program
00:32:57 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: The Pecha Kucha website has thousands of videos your students could watch. I do not know if they are by country. I search by topic. Did you look at the official Pecha Kucha.org website?
00:33:21 Moderator Vance Stevens: If you want to ask a question about a specific presentation you watched, please put the speaker’s name here and we’ll let you speak it, or ask your question here
00:33:22 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Feel free to email me. bzsedriks@gmail.com
00:34:05 DR.MD.ALAUDDIN: dralauddin129@gmail.com
00:34:44 Larisa A Olesova: I have a question to Judith about padlet and specifically about peer feedback via comments. Thanks for a sharing great ideas on the use of padlet.
00:35:26 Muhammad Abdul Wahid: Welcome to all
00:35:38 Camyla Yamashiro: Sara Sedriks: I looked the website right before watching your wonderful presentation. I want to start to use this app instead of Google Slides or Pretzi. I will take a closer look and if I cannot find it I can post another question on the Flipgrid or send you an email! Thank you!
00:36:18 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: https://view.genial.ly/60498754f5458d0d987a5a8a/presentation-ovccalltesol
00:41:09 Shereen Mahfouz: Awesome first time to know about them.
00:41:40 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Thanksa lot 🙂
00:42:01 Moderator Vance Stevens: Does anyone else have a question directed at a specific presenter? if so we can take your question.
00:43:03 Camyla Yamashiro: Olenka: Hello! Thank you for your presentation! The Hogwards genially theme that you showed in your flipgrid… that was a template or your own creation?
00:43:54 Omar Moussa: thank you
00:44:11 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: This is not the free version, one colleague shared with me in Spanish and I changed it into English.
00:44:18 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Let me share with you the link
00:44:19 Eric Grunwald: Students as Virtual Tour Guides: Invaluable information, Judith, thank you.
00:44:39 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: https://view.genial.ly/603b123c0e04680d5d718c71/interactive-content-oleharrypotterescaperoom
00:45:14 Camyla Yamashiro: Olenka: Thank you very much! That is an amazing tool!
00:45:37 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Yes, try it! You will love it!
00:45:55 Presenter Judith Otterburn-Martinez: Here is a link to the padlet I presented: https://padlet.com/jotterbur/TESOL
00:46:11 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Thanks a lot Judith 🙂
00:47:19 Larisa A Olesova: Thanks Judith for the link
00:47:58 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: You can find me on the Social Media https://view.genial.ly/60182ad2e9f82d0d9de686c0/presentation-olevilla
00:48:12 Presenter: Oliver Rose: https://sites.google.com/view/lingolabsiteshelp/lingobingo-live
00:48:30 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Thanks a lot Oliver 🙂
00:48:44 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Arigatou Gozaimasu, Oliver!
00:49:46 Michelle W.: Thank you!
00:51:03 Camyla Yamashiro: Oliver Rose: thank you for your presentation! Does the bingo work as an app on the cellphone or does it open in the browser? Or both? thank you!
00:51:35 Presenter: Oliver Rose: Hi Camyla – works in both
00:51:57 Presenter: Oliver Rose: …in the browser on phone, tablet, PC
00:52:11 Camyla Yamashiro: thank you!
00:52:12 Larisa A Olesova: Oliver, how long can you keep LingoBingoLive? For example if I want to use for asynchronous mode and students come at different time and play. Is it possible?
00:52:50 Michelle W.: Is it available when having live sessions on Zoom? I mean playing the game.
00:53:41 Presenter: Oliver Rose: Larisa – it is really for synchronous, I’m not sure how it could work asynchronously (but you could try my other site LingoLab.co for asynchronous )
00:54:43 Presenter: Oliver Rose: michelle – yes, works well via zoom
00:55:10 Michelle W.: The students need to get an account, right?
00:55:45 Michelle W.: so I can play with the students via zoom?
00:56:02 Presenter: Oliver Rose: michelle – no , no account needed
00:56:50 Larisa A Olesova: Thanks Oliver
00:57:53 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: Socrative is wonderful for instant grading.
00:58:50 Michelle W.: thanks Oliver, I will try it.
00:59:48 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: That’s right, Baiba. Another app that I use is nearpod.
01:01:39 Larisa A Olesova: Thanks Rana
01:02:08 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: Thanks a lot, Rana 🙂
01:02:14 Camyla Yamashiro: Vance: the presenters already kindly answered me! thank you!
01:07:49 Presenter: Baiba Sedriks: 20 secs
01:08:39 Presenter Judith Otterburn-Martinez: jotterbur@atlantic.edu
01:08:55 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): hi all, LIVE from the kitceh again :)) Greetings from Croatia
01:08:58 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): kitchen*
01:09:18 Presenter: Oliver Rose: https://sites.google.com/view/lingolabsiteshelp/lingolab-online
01:09:21 Eric Grunwald: Students as Virtual Tour Guides: Speaking of 20/20: A public service announcement: I had my annual eye exam in December and things were mostly fine—no change—but then had to go back for my dilation in February, and it was found that my vision had deteriorated quite a bit. The doctor said she’s seeing this all over from staring at screens—certain muscles don’t relax, other’s atrophy—and it can become permanent. She recommended 20/20/20 or another app which reminds you every 20 minutes to look off into the distance for 20 seconds. It’s helped a lot.
01:09:26 Presenter: Olenka Villavicencio: https://view.genial.ly/60182ad2e9f82d0d9de686c0/presentation-olevilla
01:09:29 Presenter: Oliver Rose: oliverrose@kwansei.ac.jp

 

Promotion and Feedback

We organized ourselves around this info from CALL-IS:

• The CALL-IS Google sites home portal a tab to the SCHEDULE linked below and
  https://sites.google.com/view/electronicvillage2021/evo20
• The detailed Electronic Village schedule with links to Flipgrids and Zoom rooms
  https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html
• A simplified at-a-glance overview of the schedule for 3 days, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MuhzZb1YyboXASbqC0u_eGD5tQnuTFI6/view

In addition to the live sessions such as our Best of EVO sessions March 26-27
and those listed at https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html#evo

There are 6 asynchronous Best of EVO sessions scheduled uploaded to FlipGrid

• https://flipgrid.com/411ed30a

—————————-

For more details about the TESOL 2021 Virtual Online conference and for the associated CALL-IS Electronic Village virtual events please see the previous post at the bookmark here, labeled
Promotion of and preparation for the TESOL 2021 virtual events

 

Earlier Events

Minecraft, Virtual Worlds, and MWIS/CPPLN March 25 at the 2021 Virtual TESOL Conference

Minecraft, Virtual Worlds, and MWIS/CPPLN March 25 at the 2021 Virtual TESOL Conference

 

 

___________________________________________________________
This blog is written and maintained by Vance Stevens
You are free to share-alike and with attribution under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The date of this update is April1, 2021 03:00 UTC 

Learning2gether Episode 510

Navigation

Presentations on March 25
— Minecraft MOOC at CALL-IS Classics Fair
— Virtual Worlds for ELT
— Creating Materials in a Digital World
Facilitation – Immersive Storytelling in VW and Scientific Literacy and CLIL
Skip down to the Zoom Chat Logs
Promotion of and preparation for the TESOL 2021 virtual events
Skip down to Earlier Events that happened since the previous Learning2gther post

The TESOL 2021 International Convention & English Language Expo took place from Wednesday to Saturday, 24–27 March of that year. This blog post is about the involvement of Vance Stevens and Learning2gether at that event. All but one of the events in which I participated took place under the auspices of CALL-IS, the Computer Assisted Language Learning Interest Section in TESOL which I co-founded in 1985. The other event was an academic session accepted as a part of the main TESOL program.

In addition to presenting I also served as facilitator of several sessions through my active, though undesignated, and continued involvement in CALL-IS. I will include notes below of any session that I was involved in on the first day of normal sessions of the conference, Thursday, March 25.

 

Presentations on March 25

Thu 25 March noon UTC EVO Minecraft MOOC at CALL-IS Classics Fair

I was invited to present in the CALL-IS Classics tech fair on Thu March 25. Classics Fair topics are ‘invited’ re-runs or updates on topics that seemed to go well in the past. Presenters uploaded their asynchronously prepared 5-10 minute videos to Flipgrid, (and these were later uploaded from there to the CALL-IS YouTube channel.)  In addition, presenters could make themselves available to take synchronously asked questions at a live Q&A at either 8 am or 12 noon on March 25 in zoom.

My talk was called 
Preparing more teachers to engage learners with EVO Minecraft MOOC

Asynchronous version of my presentation

All asynchronous presentations in the TESOL 2021 Virtual Conference Tech Fairs Classics are here on Flipgrid: https://flipgrid.com/b510543a
Mine can be found here: https://flipgrid.com/374152e3

50 word summary

EVO Minecraft MOOC teachers continue interacting through their 7th year while engaging one another as well as young learners online in Minecraft, using Discord for live chat and (with Facebook) as a robust community portal. See how, as the community of practice grows & develops, so does knowledge within the community.

100 word abstract

EVO Minecraft MOOC continues to develop as a community of practice illustrating the benefits of meaningful play in learning through engagement in participatory cultures. Minecraft is a compelling & flexible environment for language learning, promoting engagement through gamified elements and through ample opportunity to exercise creativity & critical thinking. Participants include EVOMC21 moderators, teachers, & their children and students. Teachers learn from peers how to manipulate the environment and from learner participants Minecraft’s many affordances for facilitating language learning. New members in our community are welcome, and playing within a supportive community is key to learning how to use Minecraft effectively with students.

Rehearsal long version of my presentation

I actually prepared two versions of my presentation. One was a long rehearsal version, almost 20 min, https://youtu.be/SfusidwHFs0

This longer presentation was then cut down, using Camtasia, to 10 min for submission to Flipgrid.

The links at the end of the presentation point to

• The wiki I created for it here, http://evomc21classics.pbworks.com
• and to the slides used in the presentation itself (but details are in the wiki)
  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZFYNT4BdgTeSEFrNF2K2haN8SBsPphem/view?usp=sharing

I also created a working Google Doc to accompany my presentation. It contains some additional information but the wiki now has the most updated information –
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KOuVdpzm0M8JvPcnU9z0nPi-l-BqNTvhM2YrmN–lPg/edit?usp=sharing

Synchronous Q&A

I attended the Q&A session for the EV Classics Fair at 8 am EDT; there were two of them, the other at noon EDT (midnight my time). These sessions were listed on the CALL-IS Electronic Village schedule page here: https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html#tfc

Since many of the same people attended both renditions of event, the recordings are similar.

• The video of that entire Q&A session was put on the CALL-IS YouTube page here: https://youtu.be/yli6L6lefC0
• The video for the noon EDT page is here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FHx6T4IC2KU

The video of the one I attended is embedded here:

My segment where I am asked to explain briefly what I intended to convey in my 10 min video starts at 31:54 here: https://youtu.be/yli6L6lefC0?t=1914

I sliced that part (3 minutes) out of the longer video using Camtasia, created an mp4, and uploaded it to this wiki.

Thanks to Marijana Smolcec for posting this screenshot to Facebook, snapped during the 3 minutes I was speaking at the Classics Q & A session

 

 

Virtual Worlds for ELT panel

I also presented on a Virtual Worlds panel scheduled for 9-10 am EDT

Panelists were: Randall Sadler, Jeff Kuhn, Vance Stevens, Aaron Schwartz, & Laura Briggs; Jane Chien moderator

Here is the video, https://youtu.be/g3vWb7-BOJ8

Jeff starts talking about EVO MInecraft MOOC at 24:25 in this video and then “kicks it over” to me at 25:55
https://youtu.be/g3vWb7-BOJ8?t=1553 

Laura  was planning to demo her Mars Protocol MC on Windows 10 but had to drop out at the last minute.

The event is listed here https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html

This is the view as it appeared on March 23 10:00 UTC

The slides prepared jointly by the panelists are here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D1q19yeu9xRdgWbWthzcpABnXO1bWIxr/view?usp=sharing

Jane posted this on Facebook

Here are the panelists as they appeared during their presentation in Zoom

 

 

Thu 25 Mar 1700 UTC live Q and A session for MWIS/CPPLN Academic Session Creating Materials in a Digital World

Taken from the program book:
https://cms-tesol.ae-admin.com/docs/default-source/tesol-convention/tesol-2021-program-book_final.pdf

Abstract:

As the world becomes more dependent on technology, ELT professionals find ways to adapt. This presentation shows participants in all stages of their career paths various ways they can adapt, create, and develop materials for digital learning in a variety of contexts for language teaching and teacher training.

Panelists:

• Liz England, Ph. D. (moderator) – Introduction – 7 mins
• Justin Shewell, Ph. D. (moderator) – Gamification (ditto on name here)  – 17 mins
• Vance Stevens – Keeping Up and Upskilling (I made it up so change it, Vance, by all means!) – 18.5 mins
• Jessica Burchett, Ph. D. – Teacher education (ditto on name)  – 12 mins
• Michael Bowen – honorary organizer

Each of the panelists prepared in advance a video of his/her presentation. All presentations submitted in this way were uploaded in MP4 format (with accompanying handouts if any) to TESOL’s google drive.

The link above works but the files that were there have been removed or hidden. However, I created my own folder for the files created by our panelists and shared it publicly. The folder where I stored all the files associated with our presentation, ID 1926. is here
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1af1ZHH0Fji2JWCp5vKqN1kk_sCgppwQa

I compiled the videos those on our panel had uploaded there into one long presentation using Camtasia and uploaded the final video to the conference Google Drive location, where it was uploaded to the conference website, shown below. 

The final prerecorded video compilation was approximately 55 minutes.

Presenters were supposed to be available for text chat at the time our presentation was scheduled for release for consumption by conference attendees (to emulate our all having congregated in a brick and mortal location and speaking through Internet time and space to the assembled attendees). In theory, attendees would play our video for the very first time then. We panelists had agreed to be on the portal at the time scheduled for the live text chat Q&A session for the Academic Session ID 1926, entitled Creating Materials in a Digital World. 

This was the procedure.

• The presentation video compilator and accompanying handouts were made available to paid attendees on the TESOL virtual convention platform on Thursday, 25 March EXACTLY at 1:00 PM US eastern time. The videos would be posted here for only a limited duration.
• The text chat widget was opened at that time, for questions and comments which could be posted at any time while the four presentations were being played on demand by the attendees (not streamed).
• Liz England, Justin Shewell, and Vance Stevens had agreed to be available for a further 15-20 minutes during and beyond the length of the 55 minute video. to take questions in the text chat widget

It was a little confusing how this was going to work. On March 24, this is what I saw right after our presentation had been readied on the portal. 

When you click on the Sessions button, either in the main panel or in the sidebar as I’ve highlighted here, you can search on the presentation you are looking for. Ours looks like this:

When you click on Start Session, it looks like this. I made these screenshots before the appointed start time so I filled in the blank space with the two callouts shown below. At 1 pm EDT on March 25 the promised widgets duly appeared.

After the presentation I tried to copy the text from the text chat but copy functionality was disabled, so I was unable to retain a copy of what had happened during the time I spent there. No names appeared in the chat, only conference attendee registration numbers, which meant nothing to anyone else in the chat (so identity did not appear to be an issue). I identified myself several times in my chat posts as being Vance Stevens, one of the presenters.

When I arrived at the widget what was going on in the room was completely dark to me. I was only aware of others when they started asking questions, which they did pretty much from the start of the event, questions like, “Is this a live presentation?”  and “Where are the handouts?” Some of the attendees must have been playing the videos because eventually a few questions were asked about the videos themselves, which the attendees could not have seen in advance and would have to have been working through for the 55 minutes it took to play the whole thing. I had no idea how many were there, or when they came into the room, or when they left just as silently.

The chat had its interesting moments, albeit all ephemeral. Someone remarked that this was a poor model of teaching online. Indeed, in the Community of Inquiry Model [https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model/], the interface was almost completely lacking in Social presence “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities.” (Garrison, 2009)

Afterwards it felt anti-climactic. We had put a lot of work into our presentations, but were able to experience only the bare minimum of appreciation for the work, as would have been possible if we could have seen each other’s faces and expressions, even if not present in the same room together. When we used to use text-based chat clients at the turn of the century, we were able to form communities around them as our personalities emerged over time, but this experience was a throwback to that time without the feeling afterwards of having particularly existed in it, or of having any possibility of expanding our networks through the experience due to the extreme anonymity of the interface. Rather than coming away enriched, the feeling was one of anomie.

Panelists and their draft proposals

Justin Shewell:

I could give presentations on several different topics, either broad or more specific. I could talk about gamification in online courses, including the use of digital badges . I could also talk about principles for engaging content. I have included proposals for both here. Although Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are gaining in popularity, they generally have low completion rates (average completion rate is less than 10%). Several factors account for low completion rates, such as lack of student engagement with course material. The presenter co-designed a MOOC that utilizes innovative strategies to engage and motivate learners. These strategies include movement away from lecture ­style instruction toward the use of research­ based multimedia principles such as personalization and voice, the dual­ channel principle, signaling, interactivity, and online enjoyment. These strategies have contributed to the success of the MOOC (average completion rate is higher than 25%). Keeping students engaged in online learning is a constant struggle for teachers and course designers. In online settings, if a student becomes bored, they just turn off the video. Teachers can use several ideas borrowed from the world of game design to keep students motivated and engaged. These principles include leveling, the use of core tasks, and rewards.

Here is one of Justin’s slides from Justin’s presentation, where he had related Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to their parallel constructs in online learning:

Vance Stevens:

In my segment, I used myself as an example of how I have remained current by continually fostering communities of practice (CoPs). This is critical for maintaining cutting edge skills but especially important with regard to gamification, where materials developers need to understand how players network within participatory communities through their own experience in compatible CoPs where they can practice with one another to boost their skills. Teachers and materials developers need to form communities of practice in order to learn what they need to know about acquiring the necessary skills, and how to apply them with greatest effect to today’s learners. I will point to many instances where I and others have documented where this has been achieved and sustained in one CoP after another since the turn of the current century.

As I normally do, I prepared a set of interlinked multimedia to help participants prepare for and later review my presentation, and assigned them a mnemonic to each of two URL shorteners vance2021academic:

• You can read the in-depth prose backstory of this presentation here: http://tinyurl.com/vance2021academic
• You can find these slides with all hyperlinks live here: https://bit.ly/vance2021academic

Also, I prepared a  28 min. rehearsal version of my TESOL presentation and uploaded it to YouTube here: https://youtu.be/OYOfnxhcZ9Q.

In the YouTube version I elaborated a little more fully than in the presentation I pre-recorded for TESOL, which I had to cut back to 18.5 minutes, to be compiled with the others in the final 55 minute video.

Jessica Burchett:

I could present on online second language teacher education from a practical teacher educator (ideas, suggestions, examples, ways to get students to interact, strengths/weaknesses, helpful ideas).

Facilitation in Virtual Worlds

Thu 25 March 1000 UTC facilitation – Immersive Storytelling in Virtual Worlds and Scientific Literacy and CLIL

In addition I facilitated a pair of Best of EVO presentations scheduled to share an hour time slot Thu 25 March 6:00 – 7:00 AM US EDT (= 10:00 – 11:00 UTC) 6 pm in Asia

The presentations were Immersive Storytelling in Virtual Worlds and Scientific Literacy and CLIL

Facilitators Jane Chien and Vance Stevens (Jane also presented on the later topic, that of her EVO session)

VIdeo: https://youtu.be/Orzgx74Jj94

 

Other virtual worlds tours hosted by CALL-IS EV Tech fairs

OpenSim in ELT – Virtual World Demo – https://youtu.be/Hhz8vdXlrrQ
Thursday, March 25th, 10:00-11:00 AM
Heike Philp
This world tour in OpenSim will showcase how you might use OpenSim for English language learning and immersive storytelling.

 

 

Zoom Chat Logs

EV Classics Fair

00:01:14 Quratulain Hussain: Great
00:01:51 Quratulain Hussain: Tina this is wonderful.
00:01:55 Nergiz Kern: Great idea Tina!
00:02:02 Sergey Petrenko: Telegram @QuizBot
00:02:23 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): I got kicked out the room
00:03:00 Camyla Yamashiro: me too
00:03:05 Sandra Botero: that’s great Tina. I’m looking forward to checking that presentation. I think it’s very useful
00:03:30 Heather Casteel: Tina thank you for sharing – I’m really interested in learning more about those materials!
00:03:33 Tiina Matikainen: Thank you! I hope you will enjoy it and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.
00:03:41 Laura Ramm: Typically, we’re kicked out of Zoom because the Zoom client is not updated.
00:04:11 Camyla Yamashiro: the message said the host finished the meeting to start a new one
00:06:45 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): I will definitely check it out Amy!
00:07:06 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Have you ever used imerrsive reader as a part of Microsoft apps
00:07:59 Quratulain Hussain: I am interested to collaborate with people in teacher education.
00:08:21 Quratulain Hussain: My email is qahussain87@gmail.com
00:08:39 Randall: Here is my handout to my session.
00:08:42 Randall: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KMhAScm_oGC7vlH5tC28iAvxnujbbOWr/view?usp=sharing
00:08:57 Camyla Yamashiro: using PDFCreator instead Adobe might works
00:09:18 Amy C Cook: I have recommended the immersive reader to students–there are some cool features!
00:09:47 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Super, I love it as well and use it witinh OneNote esp. for my students with learning disabilities 🙂
00:09:59 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): busuu
00:10:15 Amy C Cook: Here’s info about the MS immersive reader: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/learning-tools
00:10:18 Christine Sabieh: great idea!
00:10:18 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Is it this one ? https://www.busuu.com/en/mobile
00:10:41 Nergiz Kern: Thanks Amy!
00:10:46 Heather Casteel: Thank you for the immersive reader link!!
00:11:24 Collin Blair: busuu
00:11:32 Amy C Cook: And here’s more info from MS about accessibility: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/make-your-word-documents-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities-d9bf3683-87ac-47ea-b91a-78dcacb3c66d?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us#PickTab=Windows
00:12:29 Sandra Botero: I hear you! I’m making breakfast for my family
00:12:43 Sandra Botero: Venezuelan cachapas
00:12:57 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Perfect!, Thank you
00:14:48 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): @amy thank you for sharing the link, I will definitely look into it. I will send you contact via TESOL website as soon as it become available again 🙂
00:15:28 Amy C Cook: Sure thing, Marijana! You can also reach me by email: amycook@bgsu.edu.
00:16:49 Nergiz Kern: Heather is GoReact like Flipgrid or is there a difference?
00:18:25 Heather Casteel: Hi Nergiz – it’s MUCH more interactive because it allows continual time-stamped responses. There are a few different types of assignments. This is a good into to the types: https://help.goreact.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002946031-Assignment-types
00:19:01 Heather Casteel: One big difference is that it’s all contained within GoReact though (you wouldn’t be able to publicly share what students have uploaded. It would be contained to just the class)
00:19:06 Nergiz Kern: Thanks a lot Heather!
00:19:40 Camyla Yamashiro: Heather: Is GoReact a free app?
00:20:17 Heather Casteel: That part I’m not sure about because ours is integrated to our LMS, so the university has a license. However, I do know that it exists as a stand-alone client, jut not sure if that stand-alone version is free
00:20:20 Laura Ramm: That’s fantastic, Manrique!
00:20:34 Camyla Yamashiro: okay, thank you! =D
00:20:41 Jota Manrique: thanks
00:20:55 Miguel Frontado: That’s cool Jota!!!
00:21:26 Miguel Frontado: Would you share the name of the app again?
00:21:34 Jota Manrique: Streamlabs
00:21:40 Nergiz Kern: Great!
00:22:06 Evelyn Izquierdo: Hello, Miguel!!!!! Cheers!!!
00:22:33 Evelyn Izquierdo: Love your topic!
00:22:59 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Super, VR is still something to explore for me :)) But, I would like to use it more in my class, I tried AR
00:23:39 Evelyn Izquierdo: Sounds fantastic!
00:24:10 Sandra Botero: Miguel, given the very low bandwidth in Venezuela, what’s been your experience with VR?
00:24:33 Nergiz Kern: How easy is it to access VR headsets for students in Venezuela?
00:27:15 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Van Gogh’s museum 360 https://360stories.com/amsterdam/story/van-gogh-museum
00:29:03 Miguel Frontado: That’s great Marijana!! Thanks for sharing. Students don’t need goggles for that
00:29:41 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Yes, I think EU sites have even more. I can’t share more as I am in the kitchen but this one is great I sue it in class when talk about musems and art
00:29:46 Christine Sabieh: Vance – link is not there
00:29:49 Tiina Matikainen: Sounds great, Vance, but we didn’t get a link from you.
00:30:00 Gena TTELT: https://www.ttelt.org/
00:30:06 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Great Vance! 🙂
00:31:51 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Nice work Gena!
00:32:12 Ella Dovhaniuk: Thank you for sharing the link!
00:32:18 Nergiz Kern: Thanks everyone! I have to leave now, but will join the next session on virtual reality.
00:32:48 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): LyricGaps 🙂
00:33:02 Michelle W.: kahoot
00:38:31 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): do we have twitter hashtag for these sessions?
00:39:10 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): lovely, Ella
00:39:51 Vance Stevens: Please use #TESOL_EV in your tweets, in addition to the #TESOL2021 convention hashtag
00:40:07 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): thanks Vance :))
00:41:29 Miguel Frontado: Sandra. We do not necessarily need a good bandwidth to work with VR technology. YouTube works just fine with 360 degree videos
00:42:10 Miguel Frontado: Apps for VR can be a bit heavy, however, they can be downloaded overnight
00:43:30 Miguel Frontado: Thanks for your comment Evelyn Izquierdo!!!
00:43:46 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Thank you all, great ideas! I will have lot to explore :))
00:44:11 Miguel Frontado: Thanks everybody

Virtual Worlds for ELT

00:04:52 Nergiz Kern: Hi everyone!
00:05:01 Gena TTELT: Hi
00:05:02 Vance Stevens: hiiiii
00:05:11 Nergiz Kern: Greetings from Turkey (3pm here).
00:05:38 Nergiz Kern: Hi Vance 🙂
00:06:32 Nergiz Kern: Agree, it took me a while to find my way here.
00:06:35 Randall: It would be impossible to moderate an open Zoom link.
00:07:50 Nergiz Kern: Oh, right, Randall is right about moderation.
00:07:53 Vance Stevens: This is where Nellie is storing videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoNGZMzLjocgAdyw-Nes0iA/videos
00:07:55 CALL-IS TESOL: https://us02web.zoom.us/postattendee?id=9
00:08:15 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Hello everybody! 🙂
00:09:17 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): That app sounds familiar. 🙂
00:09:26 Evelyn Izquierdo: Hi Tom!!!! Greetings from Caracas!!!
00:09:27 Sandra Botero: hello, I’m Sandra Botero from Venezuela. I’m looking forward to hearing about your presentations
00:09:36 Vance Stevens: Hi Maijana, and this is where the links to CALL-IS events can be found, https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html
00:09:47 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): Thank you Vance! 🙂
00:09:50 CALL-IS TESOL: Peereval.mobi
00:10:01 Christine Sabieh: welcome everyone
00:10:05 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): I couldn’t access the TESOL main site, is it down?
00:10:22 Evelyn Izquierdo: Vance!!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
00:10:26 Amy C Cook: Yes, I’ve heard others are also having trouble getting into the main convention site this morning.
00:10:49 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): https://peereval.mobi/
00:11:55 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): 🙂
00:13:09 Marijana Smolčec (Croatia): hi Tiina
00:14:15 Evelyn Izquierdo: (Hi, Marijana!) 🖖🏼😄

Immersive Storytelling in Virtual Worlds and Scientific Literacy and CLIL

00:03:53 Samuel M Adams: The next event in this room starts at 8:00 AM EDT, so no worries about going over time!
00:04:16 Jane Chien: Thanks Sam!!
00:09:35 Vance Stevens, Moderator: Open Sim yes, VR only at conferences
00:10:28 Jane Chien: Yes, I had a tour in open sim thanks to Heike! VR for gaming 🙂
00:10:41 Camyla Yamashiro: VR only for games for me too!
00:11:52 Jane Chien: Wonderful graphic novel!!!
00:19:04 Zeynab Moosavi: what was very amazing in this team, was their support and patience
00:32:44 Vance Stevens, Moderator: You did a really good job Zeinab, are you a teacher as well?
00:35:05 Heike Philp, Brüssel: do Taiwanese students or teachers watch American teacher’s lectures?
00:36:01 Heike Philp, Brüssel: that would be so great if teachers could observe other teachers’ sessions to learn globally
00:36:34 Heike Philp, Brüssel: brilliant
00:36:55 Darija Tomasic: I totally agree with you Heike 👍
00:42:24 Jane Chien: Yes, totally agree with you Heike! Great suggestion!!
00:43:48 Michelle W.: Very interesting
00:46:52 Helena Galani: Particularly inspiring
00:47:53 Vance Stevens, Moderator: Is the virtual worlds team ready to resume?
00:48:05 Jane Chien: bookcreater.com
00:49:21 Vance Stevens, Moderator: is it free?
00:51:14 Helena Galani: yes, it is free
00:52:25 Rose Bard: How great. Thanks for showing. I’m certainly going to integrate into my classes
00:53:47 Halima Kalanova: Hello to ALL from Uzbekistan! Heile the idea of importing is very timing!
00:53:50 Camyla Yamashiro: it is amazing, and it is so good that it is free!
00:54:20 Michelle W.: How wonderful
00:54:26 Jane Chien: So cute!!!
00:55:19 Helena Galani: This is the ‘Selfish Giant’s’ garden
00:58:52 Michelle W.: Agree, Heike
01:01:04 Merve Kıymaz: Thank you so much!
01:03:45 1 Valentina Holubeva, Minsk: Sorry, I have just joined. Is it the end or soemthing else will follow?
01:04:00 Heike Philp, Brüssel: another session follows at the top of the hour
01:04:05 Heike Philp, Brüssel: TEFL for young learner
01:04:09 Helena Galani: I have lost your sound and screen sharing
01:04:28 1 Valentina Holubeva, Minsk: Thanks!
01:06:18 Helena Galani: relogging
01:06:37 Jane Chien: Thank you all everyone for joining Best of EVO!
01:06:39 1 Valentina Holubeva, Minsk: Thanks a lot for exlaining.
01:07:26 Camyla Yamashiro: thank you
01:07:32 Farag, Islam Medhat Abdelaziz: Thank you
01:07:33 Jenny Chen: bye-bye!!
01:07:36 Amany: Thank you
01:07:40 Jenny Chen: thank you!!

 

The 2021 Virtual TESOL Conference – Promotion and Preparation

Wed-Sat 24–27 March 2021 – TESOL 2021 International Convention & English Language Expo

Bring your passion and excitement for the field of English language teaching (ELT) to the TESOL 2021 International Convention & English Language Expo, 24–27 March 2021! At the largest ELT event, presented virtually in 2021, you’ll leave empowered after attending an array of sessions, engaging keynote presentations, exhibits, and networking opportunities. Connect and learn with thousands of English language professionals from all over the world.

Learn more on the Convention website.

Schedule overview: https://www.tesol.org/convention-2021/schedule

The TESOL convention is entirely online this year

• Most of the sessions are pre-recorded, but for events accepted in the regular TESOL program, the option for a session with live text Q & A allows for 15-20 additional minutes of interaction between presenters and attendees at a given time slot.
• There is a “view on demand” alternative, which does not require any attendance from presenters (nor a time slot).

TESOL asks presenters to be present to answer questions for additional 15-20 minutes after the length of the pre-recorded presentation. For example, if the session is scheduled to be available at 2 pm and it is 60 minutes long, presenters should stay and answer questions at least from 3:00 until 3:15 pm.  Presenters can arrive earlier and/or stay longer if they choose to.

CALL-IS events overview

Here is the CALL-IS portal, https://sites.google.com/view/electronicvillage2021/home
and its shortened link – http://tinyurl.com/electronicvillage2021

• The ‘Schedule’ tag at the portal links to presentations featured in the virtual Electronic Village as part of TESOL International 2021 Online Convention, https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html

What can you do here?

• EV Tech Fairs – short, practical on-demand videos grouped according to four themes: Making Your LMS Work for You, Tools and Activities for Synchronous Virtual Instruction, Tools and Activities for Asynchronous Virtual Instruction, and Tech Fair Classics. These presentations are hosted on Flipgrid; there are options to meet live with the presenters, too!
• Best of the Electronic Village Online 2021 – celebrate the outstanding work and lessons learned during the 2021 EVO sessions through live and recorded events. This is the 20th Anniversary of the free Electronic Village Online ELT professional development sessions!
• Virtual Worlds for ELT: Live world tours and expert panel – how might you use platforms like Minecraft and OpenSim for language learning?
• Please use #TESOL_EV in your tweets, in addition to the #TESOL2021 convention hashtag!
• There will be live Tweet-ups with new discussion prompts posted at 8am EDT each day, please hop in and model how to use Twitter for professional development for the convention attendees. Participate using #EV21chat 
• Participate in our daily asynchronous Jamboard and Poll Everywhere events; again, attendees will benefit from your modeling
• View and comment on asynchronous Tech Fairs, Classics, and Best of EVO presentations via FlipGrid.

Nellie’s Smore on Best of EVO, https://www.smore.com/5p3zm

Most CALL-IS events will be 10 min pre-recorded and uploaded to Flipgrid, but some will be live in Zoom

These are in turn being relayed to this YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoNGZMzLjocgAdyw-Nes0iA

For CALL-IS events the live Q&A events will be in Zoom room arranged through CALL-IS 

Flipgrid links

Coordinators and moderators of EVO sessions have been asked to submit introductions to Flipgrid in the following spaces

• Coordinators are asked to record short (2-3-minute) testimonials https://flipgrid.com/bfb0ef28
  As of March 8, recordings submitted are Martha Ramirez, Chris Jones, Nina LIakos, Nellie Deutsch, and Natasa Bozic Grojic, Vance Stevens
• Moderators moderators are aske to record short (2-10 minute) testimonials https://flipgrid.com/75f54086 
  As of March 8, recordings from EVOMC21 moderators are Vance Stevens and Marijana Smolče

The two Flipgrid recordings I submitted to introduce my involvement in EVO are here:

• Coordinator – https://flipgrid.com/cdb2ae47
• Moderator of EVO Minecraft MOOC-  https://flipgrid.com/s/xiKy-AhN-vgj5Sjo

To see all the Flipgrid videos submitted to all of the CALL-IS EV fairs, see Marta Halaczkiewicz’s Flipgrid channel here,
https://flipgrid.com/halaczkiewicz6867
At the top of the page, upper left, click on “view 6 topics” to find a treasure trove of short tips and tricks and etc. presentations

Some of these may be moved up to the  CALL-IS YouTube channel here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLszpYG4zIPvNLxbZ-eTMzNp61qSVUQElu

 

Zoom links

Zoom links will be updated on the EV site on March 25.

• Access if visa the url with the embedded passcode.
• On social media from the CALL-IS accounts, everyone will be directed to the EV site rather than promoting individual Zoom links to sessions.

TESOL 2021 – Electronic Village Zoom rooms were posted at https://call-is.org/ev/2021/schedule.html

Planning for CALL-IS events was conducted on this spreadsheet

The tabs at the bottom allow for different views:

1. EVO21 sessions listed alphabetically,
2. EVO21 sessions LIVE/by day/date,
3. EVO21 by time slot, and
4. EVO21 pre-recorded/asynchronous sessions.

 

Earlier Events

Sun Feb 14 – The End of EVO Minecraft MOOC and Electronic Village Online wrap-up for 2021

https://learning2gether.net/2021/02/14/the-end-of-evo-minecraft-mooc-and-electronic-village-online-wrap-up-for-2021/#TheEnd

Sun 14 Feb 1400 UTC EVO 2021 annual wrap up Zoom meeting

https://learning2gether.net/2021/02/14/the-end-of-evo-minecraft-mooc-and-electronic-village-online-wrap-up-for-2021/#EVOwrapup

Thu-Sat 18-20 Feb from 0600 UTC – 1st International Conference on Emotional Intelligence, Happiness, and Wellbeing in Higher Education

The 1st International Conference on Emotional Intelligence, Happiness, and Wellbeing in Higher Education will be held Feb 18-20, 2021.

Conference Chairs:

• Lana Hiasat
• Christine Coombe
• Faouzi Bouslama

Presentations

Designing Localized Bilingual Surveys for Emotional Intelligence
Christine Coombe, Faouzi Bouslama & Lana Hiasat, Dubai Men’s College, Higher Colleges of

Getting Through Challenging Times – It’s On Us
Liz England, Consultant TESOL and ESL, Principal, Liz England and Associates, LLC

Foundations for Success: Developing Student’s Emotional Intelligence through Interactive Games, Simulations, and Behavioral Assessments
Dennis A. Trinkle, Director, Center for Information and Communication Sciences, Ball State University

The conference poster, schedule, and list of plenary speakers can be found in a Google Drive folder here
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oJv7uDFJVCjiRC8OzDV5LA8hEPw1tz9e

Fri-Sun 19-21 Feb Connecting Online Conference CO21

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jQYLqqXAjYe5waRSMIs1ohQCtRiMeNeQ042-MiY8GU4/edit

Sat 20 Feb 1400 UTC – CALL-IS hosts Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson on The OER Movement for Social Justice and English Language Teaching

CALL-IS free webinar with Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson on the topic of “The OER Movement for Social Justice and English Language Teaching.” This webinar will be moderated by Chadia Mansour and Mary Allegra.

Date: Saturday, February 20, 2021
Time: 9:00 a.m. EST / 2:00 p.m. GMT

Ebba Ossiannilsson, Sweden, Professor, Dr. Consultant, Expert, Influencer and Quality Assessor in the field of open, flexible, online, and distance learning, is an advocate and promotes and improve open and online learning in the context of SDG4, and Futures of education. She is on the Board both for ICDE and EDEN. She works as an international quality assessor for EADTU and ICDE. Ossiannilsson chairs the ICDE OER Advocacy Committee, since three years ago (2017) and she is appointed as Chair for another mandate period 2021-2024. She has even several other missions for ICDE, as ICDE Quality Network, and she was research director for the Global Overview of Quality Models Study 2014/15, and on Blended Learning 2017. Ossiannilsson received the title EDEN Fellow 2014, the EDEN Council of Fellows 2018, the Open Education Europa Fellow 2015, and ICDE Ambassador for the global advocacy of OER 2017. Ossiannilsson has nearly 20 years of experience in her field. Ossiannilsson works in addition with the European Commission and ITCILO. She is a member of the Ed Board for several scientific journals and regularly invited as a keynote speaker at conferences. Her publications comprise over 200+ At the national level she is Vice President in the Swedish Association for Distance Education (SADE) and National Organization for e- Competence (REK).

Recording of The OER Movement for Social Justice and English Language Teaching

Sat 20 & 27 Feb & 6, 13, 20 & 27 Mar 0900-1100 EDT – VSTE Second Life Saturdays – repeats each Saturday

About this intitiative, https://vste.org/upcoming-events-virtual-environments-pln/

Jaz and Thunder are at VSTE Space in Second Life every Saturday morning from 5 am to 7 am Pacific time.

Feel free to come learn more about the VSTE VE PLN there. Follow VSTE on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VSTEVEPLN/

Below are directions for joining the VSTE VE PLN in Second Life and Minecraft

Basic directions to join VSTE Spaces

If you don’t have a Second Life account get one, it’s free. We recommend setting one up at the Rockcliffe University Consortium’s Gateway here: https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/

1. Download and install the software.
2. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this link http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Soulgiver/155/144/58
3. and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, “Hey, I’m new!” We will take care of the rest.

Wed Feb 24 0100 TESOL ICIS – Short “lightning” talks from doctoral candidates about their current research

#TESOL International’s Intercultural Communication Interest Section (ICIS) invites you to listen to a series of short “lightning” talks from doctoral candidates about their current research. More details on presentation topics to follow.

Topic: ICIS Lightning Talks

Time: Feb 24, 2021 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Zoom Meeting

Sun 28 Feb 1000 ET Christine Combe – Recharging your professional battery

Sun 28 Feb 6am EST Teacher Caravan 2021 – Teaching to Innovate and Inspire

The International English Language Teachers Association is inviting ALL Educators AROUND THE WORLD for the first-ever TEACHER CARAVAN 2021 “TEACHING TO INNOVATE AND INSPIRE”. Bringing together fourteen Distinguished Speakers from fourteen different countries!

Live on the International English Teachers Association Facebook page
Click the link to register: forms.gle/LRMGvX9uazCGXHy6A

FOR the EVENT DETAILS CLICK THE LINK of the Teacher Caravan 2021 Site: sites.google.com/view/teachercaravan

Tue 02 March 0100 UTC Minecraft Mondays egg hunt on the VSTE Minecraft server

VSTE will be meeting in Minecraft on Monday 8 pm Eastern time,  which is 1 am UTC (GMT) Tuesday

Come for an EGG HUNT !Jaz and K4sons have hidden 24 shulker boxes full of treasures in a beautiful flower forest in survival. You will WANT these treasures if you ever play on our server. Come hunt and see what goodies you can find.

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.

1. Download and install the software.
2. Make sure you have installed and are running version 1.16.5
3. Choose multiplayer and add a server: Name VSTE Place IP: minecraft.vste.org:11002.
4. 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.

VSTE uses its Discord server for voice communication while playing Minecraft

Discord is a voice and screen sharing application that will run on your computer or mobile device.

1. Download and install it for free.
2. Create an account. Many of us use the same name for our Discord account as our Minecraft account to keep things simple.
3. Our channel is https://discord.gg/cp9tsWz

It helps us to be able to play Minecraft in one screen and listen via Discord with earbuds or headphones.

Wed 3 March 1400 UTC Susan Hillyard free on-line workshop commemorating Sir Ken Robinson

This is a practical, experiential on-line workshop for anybody who wants to explore their inner life and sense of creativity to find their ELEMENT and so change their life. You will meet people from around the world who also want to change everything and re-imagine education.

Join us in Zoom to have lots of creative fun and leave with high energy to change the world for the better.

This will be a part of the Fringe Festival <– here

Sat 6 Mar 0900 EST – TESOL CALL-IS Free webinar on How to Use Wikieducator and Create OER with Dr. Nellie Deutsch

TESOL CALL-IS cordially invites you to attend the FREE webinar
“How to Use Wikieducator and Create OER” with Dr. Nellie Deutsch.

Dr. Nellie Deutsch (Ed.D) is a Canadian education technology relationship-based mentor to educators worldwide. Nellie has been teaching English in middle school, high school, and at the college level for 40 years and integrating technology into face-to-face programs since 1992. She organizes free annual online events such as Moodle & Virtual World MOOCs, online conferences (Connecting Online and Moodle MOOTs) on Moodle for Teachers site. She is an EVO coordinator and moderator. She practices team-based peer learning, supporting learner autonomy & integrating technologies such as Moodle, Jitsi, Congrea, Google Meet, MS Teams, ZOOM, Screencast-o-matic, Kahoot, Padlet, Quizlet, and google drive to engage and empower learners.

Sat 06 Mar Kariman Mohsen discussed Promoting the Effectiveness of Education by Implementing Change

Announced on myTESOL Lounge:

Kariman Mohsen who will discuss Promoting the Effectiveness of Education by Implementing Change.
Saturday March 06, 2021, 7 AM ET, 2 PM Cairo time. No pre-registration required.

The-Sat 18-20 March VWBPE 2021 Reconnaissance

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference: * Reconnaissance * March 18-20, 2021

Call for Proposals is now closed, but to get an idea of what to expect, https://www.vwbpe.org/cfp2021

Accepted Immersive Experience submissions will be scheduled in the 2 weeks before and after the conference dates.

Mon 22 Mar 1600 UTC Ohio U. Patton College panel on Global Issues on Immigration

Check out the flier below for a professional development opportunity hosted by Ohio University’s Patton College of Education. This is open to all.  If you can’t attend live, a recording will be available on YouTube after the event.

 

 

___________________________________________________________
This blog is written and maintained by Vance Stevens
You are free to share-alike and with attribution under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The date of this update is March 31, 2021 10:00 UTC