IATEFL Harrogate Virtual Pre-Conference Event

[Heike Philp aka Gwen Gwasi]

Already for 6 weeks prior to the IATEFL conference which starts officially today, Thursday the 8th of April 2010, the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG 6-weeks online workshops hosted at IATEFL LT SIG NING site proved to be at hand to rival the success of the EVO Sessions of the CALL-IS at TESOL.

Yesterday's simulcast live from Harrogate was the highlight of this initiative by Gary Motteram and Graham Stanley. And a big bravo for organising a superb in-world/ offline event featuring Mark Pegrum, Scott Thornbury and Stephen Bax.

In case you missed it, here are the recodings in Second Life.

1) Mark Pegrum aka Kane Illios offered his presentation up front with a great recording found here. He also asked the participants to read the following well-researched document on "Modified, multiplied and (re-)mixed: Social media and digital liter..." and look at the following Slideshare presentation.

Pegrum Digital Literacies Iatefl Lt Sig Pce Harrogate April 2010

The input by Mark resulted in a discussion on the four questions he asked, which was done mainly in text chat:

1. What are the key literacies we and our students need in a digital world?
2. To what extent is it the responsibility of educators to teach these literacies?
3. Are there any literacies we should avoid teaching?
4. Where, when & how should we start teaching digital literacies?

The discussion in the in-world was one group and another two groups discussed the same questions at Harrogate. The summary of the discussions start at 0:14min of the recording and was presented in the in-world by Mark Pegrum aka Kane Illois himself.

The recording starts a bit in the middle of the discussion and I apologize for the late start. It is also shorter because during this first event, people were still a bit shy to talk by voice and I cut out the empty times since one can not read the text, hoping that s.o. else will have taken a copy of the text chat because I forgot. The other recordings are complete.

2) Scott Thornbury aka Olivetti Oh presented on attitudes towards technology, its shocking news and promising relationships and general responses by educators. He related an interesting illustration of the architect versus the builder approach, an 'online' or 'offline' working situation where as language teaching is often viewed to be an 'offline' profession in the minds of learners.

The questions he posed to the audience resulted in lively discussions...

1. Is the available software too tied to a particular theory of learning? Is there a theroy of learning underpinning current uses of technology?
2. Is the technology easy to use and readily available?
3. IS the training an issue? How can it be addressed?
4. Do we have 'user's reports' and is there a dialogue between users and designers?
5. Are there less costly alternatives?
6. Is technology showing results? and
7. What technologies today will be in the language labs of tomorrow?

The summary of the groups are presented by the group leaders in the recording from 1h 01min onwards. Group leader in the in-world was David Richardson of the University of Kalmar in Sweden aka Davric Rinkitink.

2) A presentation by Stephen Bax aka Normal Calamity (what a funny and perfectly appropriate SL name!) on "Technology in language teaching is a total waste of time and money... unless..." who talked about normalisation of technology.

It was a very funny presentation about 'normalised' technology of pens and glasses and 'yet to be normalised' technology of ipads and SecondLife comparing it to dating, falling in love, wedding and the result of a 'normalised' relationship in matrimony.

The presentation was followed by a small group discussions with questions asked were...

1. In the context that you know, what is preventing normalisation of a particular technology?
2. What in your view, is the best way of moving towards normalisation, in that context?
3. Which technologies for language learning are worth making an effort for?
4. In ten years time, which language learning will be normalised, which will be dead?

The summary of all of the groups starts at 1h 21min in the recording. In the in-world a fabulous summary was done by Helen Myer aka Karelia Kondor.

Overall it was a fantastic opportunity to meet in-world friends and a superbly handled simulcast from Harrogate, Gary Motteram and Graham Stanley.

[Helen Myers aka Karelia Kondor]

Thanks so much for putting this all together Gwen! It was a great learning experience for me about 'managing a discussion' ready for feedback... somehow quite a challenge without the usual visual cues you get in the physical world, yet possibly a reason for being even more 'focussed' on the actual content. So sorry that I missed all the cues telling me that I should start the feedback .. (the reason was that I was taking notes on a piece of paper, and had stopped looking at the chat .. I'd know another time). Also, had I known this was being recorded, I would have giggled less!!! A thoughly enjoyabe event .. thanks for including me!

[Heather Maria Baba]

Yes, Gwen, exactly. I decided to try SL when I got an announcement about a Museums and Virtual Worlds Conference last year, but it was quite a saga getting set up. Luckily Dennis was really supportive and Vance and another friend clued me in about the VPN, which I then bought. It's the same for Skype - I need to use a VPN at home, but strangely it sometimes seems to work at work. Yahoo Messenger stopped working awhile back, but today someone told me Google Talk works OK.

[Heike Philp aka Gwen Gwasi]

Thanks Heather for circulating this.

Out of curiosity, being behind a firewall, are you having challenges in joining Second Life or a NING discussion?
I am asking because I hear at times that voice over IP is restricted in the UAE.

Rgds Heike

[Heather Maria Baba]

Thanks for uploading this. I have circulated it on our TESOL Arabia ilearn discussion group to give my UAE colleagues an idea of what can be done in SL - unfortunately tho' we are behind a firewall here, so have to get creative to join in!

[Shaunw]

Cheers for this Heike, it was a great event both in Harrogate and second life. As I only had one ear on the SL discussions, it is great to be able to go back and catch it again.

[Heike Philp aka Gwen Gwasi]

You are welcome, Nergiz. It really was a great event.

[Nergiz Kern]

Thanks so much for these, Heike! I really wanted to attend this session because it is related to my current MA studies besides my interest in it but I was teaching at that time.