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Webheads in Action

Events leading up to and at the TESOL 2003 Convention March 25-29, 2003 Baltimore, Maryland, USA

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 Oct. 21 - Nov. 29, 2002 - Pretraining for EVOnline moderators Jan 20-March 7, 2003 - EVOnline workshop: Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners March 26, 2003 - Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice" at the TESOL 2003 Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice"
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
9:30 am to 11:15 am, (14:30-16:15 GMT)
Baltimore Convention Center Room 306
event number #4101 at the TESOL 2003 Convention, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

This event might be webcast. We are working on arranging a dialup connection. Stay tuned!

Presenters:

9:30 Vance Stevens Introducing WiA: who we are and how we came together, a little of the history of webheads, and how the group came to do an introspective study of itself as an example of a community of practice; brief overview of theoretical underpinnings of CoPs and their relationship to pedagogy and language instruction
9:45 Chris Jones What CoPs are, how they form, operate, etc.
10:00 Teresa Almeida d'Eça what we've been doing, the tools we've used (chat and email), and their role in, and contributions to, language learning
10:15 Buthaina Al Othman Introduction to how participation in a CoP informs and influences personal teaching
10:30 Arlyn Freed overview of technology explored by Webheads re: the database discussed during Wk. 5 chat, using still images of webhead pages created during the past year, plus excerpts from the compiled data
10:45 Aiden Yeh Aiden will share and showcase the projects for classes that were implemented in collaboration with the webheads (evonline webheads and efiwebheads), how she moved on to make better projects based on the lessons learnt from previous ones, and how the group also impacts her social life (e.g. f2f meeting with Rachel Chung, a efiwebheads member and our small students' meeting project in a pub!)
  Dafne Gonzalez Chavez unable to attend due to indefinite cutoff of stipend from home university in Venezuela, but if possible to make remote connection will talk about would talk about quality of e-learning
  Michael Coghlan unable to attend due to lack of funding for journey from Australia, but if possible to make remote connection will do a wrap up

A community of practice forms when participants in an online community evolve a working relationship that leads them to focus spontaneously on shared tasks and problems deriving from their participation in the original community. In such communities it is important that a zone of proximal development be established and that conditions for scaffolding be enhanced through developing interpersonal relationship of the participants. In the experience of members of such a community, how has this been achieved? What conditions are necessary to catalyze an online community into functioning beyond the scope of its initial mandate?

The panelists in this colloquium were recently teacher, teacher-trainer, and materials developer participants in an online computer-mediated communications course with a set syllabus and fixed duration. One of the outcomes of this course was emergence of a community of practice which continues to interact online although the course has long since ‘officially’ finished.

The panelists have already engaged in some degree of reflection on their participation in the community as a component of the fixed course. At this colloquium they will develop their positions in more formal papers and discuss with those present:

Participants in this colloquium will hear first-hand how participants in a community of practice have benefited from each other's participation in ways that have positively affected their teaching practices. Participants will come away with an understanding of how communities of practice can form and help practitioners to develop professionally in a zone of proximal development forged through interaction with peers online.

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 Oct. 21 - Nov. 29, 2002 - Pretraining for EVOnline moderators Jan 20-March 7, 2003 - EVOnline workshop: Reflection through experience and experiment with a communities of practice online March 25-29, 2003 - Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice" at the TESOL 2003 Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Electronic Village (EV) Online 2003 session, Monday, Jan. 20 - Friday, March 7, 2003

Weekly perspectives on this event: Overview | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7

Webheads in Action have proposed an EVOnline session entitled: Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners

Brief description of the content: A community of practice forms when participants in an online community evolve a working relationship that leads them to focus spontaneously on shared tasks and problems deriving from their participation in the original community. In such communities it is important that a zone of proximal development be established and that conditions for scaffolding be enhanced through developing interpersonal relationship of the participants. In the experience of members of such a community, how has this been achieved? What conditions are necessary to catalyze an online community into functioning beyond the scope of its initial mandate? What benefits accrue to the members of such a community. What lessons can be learned through participation in such a community that can be applied to common goal of its members: optimal facilitation of language learning? This session will invite participants to join such an ongoing community and reflect on its benefits through their own experience with the commun.

Target audience: Anyone interested in becoming a part of a community of practice for the purpose of sharing with and learning from other members of the community

Brief outline of the proposed activities during the 7-week period : The seven panelists in the TESOL/Baltimore colloquium, whose names appear below in red, will coordinate exploration of the following topics so as to prepare their presentations at the colloquium. .

"Week" Dates Facilitators   Topic
1 Mon Jan. 20 to
Sun Jan 26		 Vance Stevens

Welcome to the Webheads communities of practice

  • Who are the Webheads?
  • What have we done so far?
  • Let's get organized: how you can participate in this session

Dafne prepared a web page to sort out the different issues discussed in the first week: http://www.geocities.com/dygonza/wia1/wia-w1-intro.html
2 Mon Jan. 27 to
Sun Feb 2

Chris Jones

John Steele

Christine Bauer-Ramazani

  • What are communities of practice?
  • How do communities form online?
  • What conditions lead to emergence of communities of practice?
  • How do communities of practice operate?
3 Mon Feb 3 to
Sun Feb 9

Teresa Almeida d'Eça

Susanne Nyrop

Rita Zeinstejer

4 Mon Feb 10 to
Sun Feb 16

Vance Stevens

Arif Altun

Christopher Johnson

Susanne Nyrop

5 Mon Feb 17 to
Sun Feb 23

Aiden Yeh

Arlyn Freed

Dafne Gonzalez

Buthaina Al Othman

Rita Zeinstejer

6 Mon Feb 24 to
Sun March 2

Dafne Gonzalez

Arif Altun

7 Mon March 3 to
Fri March 7,

Michael Coghlan

All participants
  • What we've learned
  • Wrap-up and consolidation
  • In case you're not leaving us, where to from here?
etc. Sat March 8 to
end of time		    
  • None of us have figured out yet how to end this community of practice

The communication media expected to be used: discussion postings via email, chat, web site, links; with audio and video enhancements

Navigate this page
Hop to Top
 Oct. 21 - Nov. 29, 2002 - Pretraining for EVOnline moderators Jan 20-March 7, 2003 - EVOnline workshop: Reflection through experience and experiment with a communities of practice online March 25-29, 2003 - Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice" at the TESOL 2003 Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

TESOL EVOnline 2003: Pretraining for moderators, Monday, Oct. 21 - Friday, Nov. 29, 2002

I served on the team providing technical training for moderators during the 2003 EVOnline sessions, entailing providing pointers in running online courses based in YahooGroups as well as introduction and training in use of numerous synchronous online computer-mediated communications tools. Trainers are on "stand-by" during the actual online sessions (Monday, Jan. 20 - Friday, March 7, 2003) to answer questions and do some trouble-shooting for the session leaders they have been assigned to (probably 2 per trainer)


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Last updated: March 5, 2003 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0