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Military Language Institute's Teacher-to-Teacher Conference 2000 "Tools of the Trade" May 3-4, 2000 Al-Nahyan Base, Abu Dhabi (UAE)

Community Building Tools
for Online Language Learning

A presentation by Vance Stevens
Amideast Consultant and CALL Coordinator, Military Language Institute

Conference website: http://t2t2000.cjb.net
This presentation: http://www.netword.com/vance@t2t2000

The presenter aims to bring together three language-oriented teaching and learning communities in a demonstration of how synchronous communication tools freely available on the web can facilitate the formation of such communities, contribute to their cohesiveness, and further their educational goals. All three communities have been invited to attend at 13:00 GMT, Wednesday May 3, 2000, one physically, and two virtually.

The three communities are:

1. Those in attendance at the conference and physically present at the demonstration
2. The members of the presenter's online class, Writing for Webheads, http://www.netword.com/webheads
3. The members of a professional group formed by the presenter and his colleagues online: Teaching for Webheads, http://lightning.prohosting.com/~vstevens/tfw/index.html

The tools used in this convergence of communities are:

1. ICQ for finding each other online, http://www.mirabilis.com
2. The text chat site at: http://www.homestead.com/vstevens/ - This is a browser based chat site, easy to reach, and works fairly well for a broad base of user. It was created simply by starting a web page at http://www.homestead.com, using the web page builder there, and dragging the chat icon onto the page.
3. The voice chat site at: http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/hearme.htm - This page was created by visiting http://www.hearme.com and registering to receive the code by email. The code was pasted into a Notepad file, saved as html, and stored on the web. Anyone can use it by visiting the url using a PC and a 4.0 or better browser (on first visit, you install the plugin and grant the security clearances). You also need a sound card but if you don't have a mic you can interact in the text chat area
4. The Palace chat site - This is a chat client available from http://www.thepalace.com, and we visit a Virtual Schoolhouse made available by http://www.coterie.com. This has proven to be a highly suitable and enjoyable learning space for our online class members.

There is more information on these materials available from: http://www.homestead.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

For reports of future events of this nature: http://www.homestead.com/vstevens/files/efi/reports.htm

Writing and Teaching for Webheads will be bringing together the above three communities at the Current Trends in English Language Testing 2000 conference, Thursday May 11th 11:30 to 12:15 GMT (15:30 to 16:15 UAE) in the same venues as above, http://taesig.8m.com/ for the conference website and http://imtcsamba.hct.ac.ae/ctelt2000/ for the streaming video feed of keynote addresses.

This update: May 19, 2000 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0
Vance's email: vstevens@emirates.net.ae