Community Members

a.w-z@...pl In YGroups roster early 2005
http://www.englishquizzes.prv.pl
To write your comments /opinions please send me an e-mail or visit my weblog http://www.agatas.blogspot.com/

bwjdieu@...br In YGroups roster early 2005

http://beewebhead.net (timeout Jan 16, 2007; will try later)
Bee's intenational collaboration online page
http://www.members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/projects/files/collaboration.html
exercises and suggestions for students and teachers at: http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/students.html
http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/teachers.html
and http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/epals.html

After the e-booklet for BaW workshop http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/blog04 and opening my own blog on blogging and learning online http://beewebhead.blogspot.com , an article on Blogs in Language Learning will be appearing in the Practice Portal of Essential Teacher fall edition, thanks to Mercedes Rosseti's and Kathy Weed's invaluable help.

Bee's 2005 project with Rudolf Ammann (Webhead) and Aaron Campbell: http://www.dekita.org

There is an interview with this beewebhead on the BC Brazil ELT "In the spotlight" sectionn. http://www.britishcouncil.org.br/elt/novidades.asp?meses=09&index=0

Barbara Dieu teaches English at the Lycee Pasteur, a Franco-Brazilian school in Sao Paulo, Brazil and is also responsible for the Time Classroom Twinning activity in Time project. "I teach high school students and have introduced some online activities in class, which may count as some blended instruction. Some have used blogs: http://beeonline.blogspot.com Others have participated in a webquest: http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/foodquest (see some students' postings at: http://www.ardecol.ac-grenoble.fr/viva/resto3.nsf/$DefaultView while others are participating in international projects like WKTO (also with university students) http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/wkto/ where I set a class and tutor teachers and classes from other countries in: http://wkto.free.fr/as/wktoEJ19.htm or LIP E-journal http://ejournal.eduprojects.net/ipmtools21/"

What Bee thinks of Webheads: G.R.O.U.P (Gregarious, Reliable, Open, Undaunted Practitioners) involved in INTUITIVE CHAOS NAVIGATION and F.U.N (Frivolous Unanticipated Nonsense)

chris.schneider@..com In YGroups roster early March 2005
I'm based in Hamburg, Germany and work in Kiel, the very north of Germany not far from Denmark. If you want to know more about me, you can check my website www.e-learning-international.com
(Christel is "getting started with a blended English course where I am supposed to run the eLearning part."). If anyone is interested in my first keebook you'll find it under www.e-learning-international.com under news. On this website you can also find an 'abacus demo' showing the platform I have been working on for several years.

I have been training trainers for a couple of years now. In the adult education sector, where I work, there seems to be an overload of trained trainers, but not enough learners interested in learning online. Some people in companies complain that they work at computers all day and don't want to spend their spare time learning at computers. This is what most of them say BEFORE actually taking part in an online course. As soon as they have started, we can easily win them and make them realise how communicative and interesting online learning can be and with the right blend, that it can really be challenging and most effective. However, you are addressing costs. This seems to me like one of the biggest problems and difficult to solve. The teachers we train feel that they are better qualified than ordinary teachers and want more money for running an online course than they'd get for a face-to- face course. Online learning in my view becomes a more individualised learning with more intensive tuition, which requires more tutor time. When you then add the costs for hosting a platform, books CD-ROMS and what have you, online learning can become quite costly. I don't know what your experience is in this respect. Of course there are free resources on the net like Yahoo messenger, Nicenet and others, but I don't think you can use them when you have to charge for the course.

Presently I am running an English course for 16 young woman who are trained to return to their jobs after a break ( bringing up the children etc.) Among other things - like word and excell etc. they have to learn 6-8 hours English every week. The course started in November and finishes in May. Some of the students will finish the course with the Cambridge BEC Preliminary examination and others with the European English Language Certificate. The material I'm using is some online course material (digital publishing) which comes in a package for all different levels and I picked A2 and B1 (Common European Framework). In addition to that there are face-to-face sessions every second week. We are also using an ordinary course book - which is used in the face-to-face sessions, which are run by a different tutor (I'm living 800 km away from where the students are based). This is not ideal, but OK. I am using the Course Book for inspiration, transferring some activities into collaborative tasks. (Three or 4 each week). I have devided the group into 3 small groups of 5 and 6. This is to prevent people from information overload. The participants have also got a room where they can ALL communicate.

In addition to the asynchronous sessions we are planning to integrate some synchronous sessions. The institution is working with 'Centra'. I have worked with this system before and am quite familiar with it. I think it doesn't differ much from Elluminate?

One of the most important things I have found as an onliner over the past 8 years is that it is essential to be in the position of a learner as often as you can. This way I've learned a lot about NOT to do things:-)

• Portal: http://www.elderbob.com
• http://www.elderbobonthetrail.blogspot.com This is the On The Trail blog. Essentially, it was only going to be there for about 2 months but I still have stuff to post...so I don't know where it goes from here.
• http://elderboblog.typepad.com/elderboblog/ Elderboblog was my first Typepad account. I still like the look of this one a lot...and need to keep up more on it...as you can see the trail ride blog, shut everything else down. I am so disorganized. I will be adding more to this in the near future. You will find my first audio efforts here. (timeout Jan 16, 2007; will try later)
• http://www.elderbob.com/university/ (not found Jan 16, 2007; will try later) -This is the oldest attempt, and the most in need of an update. It is also my first Movable Type. I have the new Movable Type program, but I am waiting till the end of this semester to install it on my server. My service provider installed this one, and I wanted to have the experience of installing this one on my own. Eventually this one will connect with the Moodle (which I will also soon be updating to the latest model) and will be my main adult training site. I am working on using the On the Trail blog as a model to add to my first attempt at Recreational Learning for Adults or Vacation Education. I am hoping to use the blog and moodle as the electronic elements of a real tour from South Texas (Del Rio) to Kansas (Dodge City) up the old Western Trail. I am writing the text now...both users guide and teachers guide for my Instructional Design class and as soon as that comes together, I will start looking at lodging, transportation, meals etc. The whole thing will be similar to RoadScholars and Elderhostel but a little longer and a little pricier...but I hope it will also have a more challenging offering.
• http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=424005