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Papers and Presentations by Vance Stevens

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Here, giving a presentation at the TESOL Conference in Long Beach, April 3, 2004.

My "Web 2.0 Workshop for Sudan" in Khartoum hosted by the British Council there has not as of yet been rescheduled. In preparation I am developing materials off-line for transfer to a wiki later: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/sudan2007/web20workshop.htm; or http://tinyurl.com/2fku9q. Hala Fawzi had set up a YahooGroup for the event: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SudaELTech/. If the event is confirmed I will set up some spaces such as NetVibes for this, as well as a Voicethread for pictures.

Upcoming presentations

This fall I will again be involved with EVO, Electronic Village Online. I have been a coordinator since 2003, the year after the seminal Webheads in Action session in 2002. A timeline will appear here; meanwhile Dafne Gonzalez has provided these links from past sessions most relevant to the upcoming one:

next - At some point August 6-9, 2008 I will be presenting at the WorldCALL congress in Fukuoka, Japan, a 45 min. talk on Engaging collaborative writing through social networking

Past presentations:

Presentations: 2008 - Navigate to other areas of this page

On May 29 I was invited to participate in an Elluminate session as a panel guest for 75 Superintendents from around Western NY who were discussin Current Internet Issues for Schools http://21stcenturylearning.wikispaces.com/Current+Internet+Issues%2C+Obstacles+and+Challenges+for+schools-+Panel+Discussion
I had been asked to help "set the stage for this discussion and brainstorm challenges and obstacles to using the Web and Web 2.0 tools (the Internet) for teaching and learning" as one of a panel of "key leaders from around the globe." This session lasted for 50 minutes and ws part of an all day workshop. URLs:


May 10, I joined David Winet and Dafne Gonzalez in Second Life in Christopher Hill's live presentation at a conference put on by the Linguistics Department at Ohio University. He introduced Second Life and talked about how SL can be / is being used in teaching. http://esl.osu.edu/staff/hill/resources/secondlife.html

The presentation was in the form of a panel discussion. He asked in-world panelists to give perspectives on what works well and what challenges are faced there. Chris Hill planned "to spend the first 20-30 minutes introducing SL to the audience in RL on a large projection screen, lecture-style. I'm going to show a couple of YouTube videos and then have the audience watch me navigate my avatar through SL, including the SL version of the OhioU campus, which is hosting the conference . After they're up to speed, I'll meet you at the OhioStateU island, TELRport. Some SLURLs are locked down, so use this one: http://slurl.com/secondlife/TELRport/89/211/24 This is the main entrance area of the island. We'll use SL voice chat for you to communicate with my avatar, which the RL audience will also watch on the big projection screen. You'll each have about 15 minutes, so introduce yourself and what you've done in SL. Dafne has a PowerPoint presentation http://dafnegonzalez.pbwiki.com/SL-COULD08; Dave is thinking of including a tour of interesting sites. A variety of perspectives is great. Vance will be basing his presentation on http://sl2ndchance.pbwiki.com/

May 7, 2008 at 17:00 GMT Barbara Dieu and I participated in a CPsquare Field Trip to Webheads. Bee and I set up a wiki for it here: http://beevance.wikispaces.com/cp2. There are numerous other links posted to Webheads in Action list. I was hoping to get a recording but this has not yet materialized.

April 23, 2008, I participated in an interview with Carla Arena which she shared with her class resulting in some marvelous repercussions; e.g. http://explorations.bloxi.jp/a/vance-stevens-talks-about-abu-dhabi/. I blogged the event here: http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2008/04/carla-arena-interviews-advanceducation.html. There is also a Voicethread, link in my gmail.

I participated in an EarthDay presentation April 22 in the vicinity of http://enviroscims.wikispaces.com/Earth%20Day and I need to find the recording link on EdTech.com

The Writingmatrix team were invited to give an online presentation April 20, 2008, at http://www.instantpresenter.com/lancelotschool5. This presentation was meant to explain aggregation, tagging, and RSS with respect to filtering content online and describes how these were applied in a worldwide collaboration project involving student bloggers tagging their posts writingmatrix and then using Technorati and Del.icio.us to identify each other's posts and explore mutual interests through social bookmarking. This session was billed as a discussion with the coordinator of the project, as well as with any other Writingmatrix project participants who might join us. It then developed that the session might include other EVO session moderators apart from Writingmatrix so was asked to keep our part down to ten minutes. The announcement is here: http://www.lancelotschool.com/Terminkalender/details/EVO-Sessions-2008---The-Writing-Matrix-or-How-bloggers-connect-their-brain-neurons or http://tinyurl.com/3myv8v and a recording of some kind might materialize.

I repeated my Exeter presentation at an event April 12, 2008, 11:15 to noon in Abu Dhabi, or 7:15 to 8:00 a.m. GMT at the Abu Dhabi Men's College in Abu Dhabi. I started with a short report from the LA SIG Preconference Event in Exeter (IATEFL) which I attended briefly, I then did the larger presentation on The Multiliterate Autonomous Learner: Teacher attitudes and the inculcation of strategies for lifelong learning, "with focus in particular on the influence of teacher attitudes towards technology as it might impact autonomy in the newer generations of learners."

On April 7, 2008 I was invited to present at the Learner Autonomy SIG Pre-conference event here: http://learnerautonomy.org/exeter2008.html, scheduled as part of the 42nd Annual IATEFL Conference in Exeter http://www.iatefl.org/content/conferences/2008/index.php. 7th-11th April 2008. My presentation was requested as a part of the "Autonomy and the language classroom: opening a can of worms!" project, http://learnerautonomy.org/wormsindex.html. I am indicated as being 'keeper' of the Technology worm here: http://learnerautonomy.org/wormsmay2007.html.


Graham Stanley, Dafne Gonzalez, Ronaldo Lima, Jonathan Finklestein, Teresa Almeida d'Eca, Carla Arena, Rita Zeinstejer, Aiden Yeh, et moi vraiment after dinner in New York City

On April 4, 2008, joint proposal, number 119652, titled, "CALL and SLA: Research, Applications, and Beyond " has been accepted for the TESOL 2008 convention program. I have been asked to "be prepared to present your session on 4/4/2008 from 9:30 AM to 10:15 AM and in Gibson Suite in the Hilton." This is part of a panel discussion and it could conceivably be done online as well. Abstract: 'Technology and Second Language Acquisition evoke consternation, innovation, and excitement. From any perspective, technology has had an impact on SLA. This session investigates current research on SLA, how research translates into best practices in CALL, land how future trends in SLA and emerging technologies may effect classroom applications.' I have been asked to address Emerging Technologies. The session is listed on p.7 here: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/docs/convention08/AdvancedProgram.pdf. My slides have been posted to http://tinyurl.com/5tjtdy .

At this conference I also did a stand-in presentation of a workshop on Second Life for two presenters who had their workshop accepted in the EVO but did not turn up in NYC. In pulling this off I also engaged Christopher Hill and Graham Stanley to assist me live in New York, with Gavin Dudeney graciously meeting us at Edunation. We had about 30 participants and doubled them two to a computer. After explaining SL minimally, we got them to create avatars and befriend Dudeney Ge, who teleported them to his location, and got them morphing and off and running, flying, etc.

At the TESOL Arabia 2008 Conference to be held at Dubai Men's College, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on March 13-15, 2008 I present on: Writingmatrix: Engaging collaborative writing through social networking - Abstract: This presentation explains aggregation, tagging, and RSS with respect to filtering content online and describes how these were applied in a worldwide collaboration project involving student bloggers tagging their posts writingmatrix and then using Technorati and Del.icio.us to identify each other's posts and explore mutual interests through social bookmarking.

250 word summary: Multiliteracy is increasingly recognized as being critical for student development, and requires changing attitudes AND practices. Content management through aggregation and understanding tags and RSS is key to collaboration and filtering and regulating the flux of information resources online. This presentation explains these concepts in terms accessible to educators and then describes how the concepts were applied in a worldwide collaboration project involving bloggers in two countries in South America and one in Balkan Europe, who utilized tagging and social networking tools to enable their students to locate each other's blogs and then interact with individuals whom participants identified as being of similar age and interests. To achieve this, students were encouraged to blog their interests and concerns, then tag posts with an identifier unique to the project. Technorati was used to ferret out the posts of participants in other countries. RSS feeds are generated not only by blogging individuals but by Technorati searches, and all these can be subscribed to in aggregators such as Bloglines or Google Reader. Many participants became motivated to form writing partnerships spontaneously or in projects set by teachers collaborating in the project, and engagement in the project occurred simply through tagging posts; no other coordination required. A final aspect of the project was to have students explore areas of mutual interest through tagging each other's posts in Del.icio.us, and then discern who else was reading and tagging their own posts. Positive outcomes are expressed in the voices of the instructors and students in the project.

February 13, 2008, from noon to 13:15 UTC (GMT), have been invited to present online at the 4th Inter-college Conference on Technology and Multiculturalism being organized by Elaine Hoter at Talpiot College of Education, to take place in Intwise (exact URL to be announced). Title: RSS, Tagging, and Collaboration Online

Abstract: Mutual understanding, key to harmony between peoples of different cultures, is often facilitated through the leveling impact of Internet connectivity. The widest area network, the Internet, is in aggregate peer to peer, with millions of nodes which tend toward commonality in outlook and agreement on content, Wikipedia being perhaps the classic example. Interactants often initiate encounters with some degree of anonymity and are generally met with openness by other interactants. Although there can be a downside to this (predation, spam) many aspects of the Internet, subsumed under terms such as connectionism and Web 2.0, lend themselves to effective peer-to-peer learning environments with reduced affective filters. In this presentation we can look at some of these environments and see how certain characteristics of connectivity on the Internet serve to diminish cultural barriers.

RSS and tagging are key to p2p collaboration over the Internet. Tags allow people to organize the information available through their distributed networks in ways that are meaningful to them, and social networking enables nodes in these networks to interact with each other according to how these tags and other folksonomic data overlap. When productive tags are identified, then RSS is used to monitor where web artifacts using those tags are accumulating, or being aggregated. This presentation will explore some of the ways that tagging can be used productively by people wishing to locate one another in order to discover more about each other's cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The WritingMatrix project will be used as an example of how basing interaction on tagging has enabled students in various parts of the world to interact with one another in the ways suggested here. Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/rss-tagging-collaboration-online-264077/ or http://tinyurl.com/2bwfuy

On February 3, 2008 I was interviewed by Anne Fox for her Absolutely Intercultural podcast, http://www.absolutely-intercultural.com/?p=76. The audio is available here: http://www.absolutely-intercultural.com/podcast/absolutely_intercultural_show_050.mp3, and Anne blogged about the event here: http://eduspaces.net/annef/weblog/267747.html

January 14 - February 24, 2008 - I am participating in the 2008 TESOL Electronic Village Online (EVO) http://evo08sessionscfp.pbwiki.com/ Blogging for Educators. My 'extension' activity entitled "Exploring Tagging with Vance Stevens" http://blogging4educators.pbwiki.com/Week3 is set for Week 3, January 28-Feb 3, 2008. Material for it will be drawn from this working paper: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dr22kn2_24dpqdgg. URLs associated with B4E:

As EVO Coordination Team member, I was again involved in the organization of training of moderators for the 2008 EVO (Electronic Village Online) sessions for 5 weeks in Oct-Nov and leading up to Jan-Mar 2008 EVO sessions themselves. My responsibility was supposed to be in helping to coordinate management of the EVO Moodle: http://evo.tesol.org/moodle/ however there were no requests for use of this facility. The EVO call for proposals is here: http://dafnegonzalez.com/evo08/Cfproposals.htm and for those who responded and were accepted, the EVO moderator training wiki and syllabus is at http://evo-training .pbwiki.com/. I mentored two sessions:

080122 - Tuesday, January 22, noon UTC (GMT) - I was invited to be a guest speaker for the EVO 2008 session, Getting the Most Out of Web 2.0 for ESP, on the advantages of using tags and technorati for a community of bloggers in the ESL/EFL/ESP classroom. http://evo08esp.pbwiki.com/Week%202. The session was recorded: https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2008-01-22.0130.M.7AE801FFB697DA460D4BF25AA8C21B.vcr

- January 16-19 I was a presenter in the TCC TALO Connections unConference, or Future of Learning in a Networked World 2: http://flnw.wikispaces.com/flnw2_tcc which connects TALO with FLNW2 participants on the ground in Thailand and online throughout the world between the 16th and 28th January 2008. I plan to be present in Bangkok and Jan 16-19. There is a blog associated with this event here: http://learningnetworkedworld.blogspot.com/. Some of the events will be webcast, recorded, and/or podcast, with URLs here:

Presentations: 2007 - Navigate to other areas of this page

Sunday December 23, 2007 - 16:00 GMT I was an invited guest on the Worldbridge Network Solstice 2007 Webcastathon, http://www.webcastacademy.net/solstice2007. I blogged the event here: http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2007/12/ustream-i-stream-we-all-stream-for.html and ...

I was an invited guest on a Webcast hosted by Paul Allison, with Susan Ettenheim and Lee Baber, on Wed Dec 5, broadcast over the Worldbridges Network http://www.edtechtalk.com at 9 p.m. EST or 2 a.m. GMT Thu Dec 6. Paul maintains the blog http://www.teachersteachingteachers.org/ as an archive of the weekly show. His edit of our interview is here: http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=145. I put the original recording at my podcast site: http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com/entry/2007-12-11T19_13_45-08_00

November 23- November 25, 2007, I hosted a Knowplace event on Google Notebook, running under this byline: - "Google Notebook Location: http://knowplace.ca Google Notebook is a free service offered by Google that provides a simple way to save and organize clips of information when conducting research online. Join the webhead cat-herder, Vance Stevens as he provides his own description of the many uses of Google Notebook. You don't want to miss this one. Facilitator: Vance Stevens" - The actual course location was http://knowplace.ca/moodle/course/view.php?id=213. After the course was officially shut down at Knowplace it was archived here: http://213.42.148.233/course/view.php?id=180

071103 - I was invited to be a Featured Speaker at GloCALL 2007, Globalization and Localization in CALL, at Hanoi University, November 2-4, 2007, http://www.glocall.org/. I gave two talks, listed in the program at http://glocall.org/program/printprog.php:





Note: When visiting the Google Docs listed at right, look for the link that allows you to view the materials without logging in, if you don't wish to sign in at Google.
  • Saturday, November 3, 2007 - 16:45-17:20 (session 81) New Age CALL: Syndication, aggregation, and mashup of content on the Web - Becoming Multiliterate requires changing attitudes AND practices in education. Content management through aggregation and understanding of tags and RSS is key to collaboration and control of information resources online. This presentation will explain these concepts in terms accessible to educators and then describe how the concepts were applied in a worldwide collaboration project involving bloggers in two countries in South America and one in Balkan Europe, who utilized tagging and social networking tools to enable students to locate each other's blogs and then interact with selected individuals thus identified as being of similar age and interests. To achieve this, students are encouraged to blog their interests and concerns, then tag relevant posts with an identifier unique to the project. Technorati is then used to identify the posts of participants in other countries. RSS feeds are generated not only by blogging individuals but by Technorati searches, and any of these can be subscribed to in Bloglines. The intent is for students to be motivated to form writing partnerships spontaneously or in projects set by teachers collaborating in the project. A final aspect of the project is to have students explore areas of mutual interest through tagging some of their and each other's posts in Del.icio.us, then discern who else is reading and tagging their posts. Slide show: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddkc6v4f_40cvxvjm
  • Sunday, November 4, 2007 - 16:00-16:35 (session 113) Petroleum Institute Starting from Scratch with Computer Assisted Language Learning - In the developing world it is not uncommon for an institute to introduce computers into the language learning environment for the first time, with restricted or no Internet access. This paper will touch on some of the benefits that can reasonably be expected and some obstacles and problems that might be encountered and how to address them. Among the obstacles are finding appropriate software on tight education budgets and training of staff unfamiliar with how computers are best used in an educational environment. Regarding software, we examine where the computers at the institute will be used offline, what software can be obtained for free, and what a school might consider purchasing. We will overview how the computers might be networked, the concept of software licensed for the network, and what firewalls and other protection must be in place when the network is opened to the Internet. Finally we will touch on the extensive resources that would be available once students are working from computers with Internet access. Two aspects of staff training are considered. One regards anxieties staff will likely have when expected to function in an environment where they might be less competent than certain of their students. The second regards awareness of appropriate use of CALL both off and online. While time will be insufficient to cover these topics in detail, this paper seeks to heighten awareness of the scope and nature of adjustments required, and point participants to resources available in dealing with these issues. - draft slide show: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddkc6v4f_45f2ntmj

071020 13:00 PM GMT Saturday, October 20 was the time of our "fireside chat", on the K-12 Online Conference Live Events (Fireside chats schedule: http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=128) October 15-19 and October 22-26, 2007 - The Writingmatrix group Vance Stevens, Nelba Quintana, Doris Molero, Saša Sirk, and Rita Zeinstejer answered this CfP http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=83 and were accepted to present “Motivating Student Writers by Fostering Collaboration through Tagging and Aggregating” at the K-12 Online Conference “Playing with Boundaries,” (presenters listed here: http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=100). I also hosted an hour of the 24-hour conference wrapup, "When Night Falls" http://k12onlineconference.org/docs/k12online2007schedule.html.

Abstract: "The presenters play with boundaries through the simple expedient of having student bloggers in different countries tag their blog posts with the unique tag term writingmatrix. Searching on that tag in Technorati, the student bloggers in four locations in three different countries have managed to locate one another's posts, leave comments for one another, and have subsequently interacted in other ways as well. The presenters explain how they started the project and how it has branched into other online and even face to face activities involving the students in the participant countries. The presentation is made not only through the voices of the presenters, but with the students themselves lending their voices through their blogs and videos." Presentations at this conference are all asynchronous except for the live chat events. The presentation itself can be found at these web artifacts:

Wesley Fryer left this comment at our conference presentation node http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=162: "Wow, what a GREAT presentation on so many levels. This was the best example of a “blended” presentation I’ve ever seen," and he followed up with a podcast at http://wesleypd.blogspot.com/2007/10/pd-reflection-on-motivating-student.html. Along the lines of our presentation, more content related to the conference can be aggregated at http://www.technorati.com/posts/tag/k12online07.

September 10-October 7, 2007 - I facilitated the 4th rendition of my annual Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments course as part of TESOL's Principles and Practices of Online Teaching Certificate Program, described on the TESOL website at: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=5&DID=488. The course itself is described here:

070928 - I participated on Friday September 28, at 9 pm GMT in Rita Zeinstejer's presentation on "Emerging Technologies for EFL Teachers and Students: the Web 2.0 and its possibilities" http://ritaz.pbwiki.com/CollaborativeTechnologies using Learning Times Elluminate http://tinyurl.com/y3eh - Rita's presentation to teachers in Argentina intended to encourage us to "say something about your own experiences using any social software with your students--blogs, wikis, Google maps, Flicker...--, live for the audience for about 5 minutes ... My idea is showing a VERY simple ppt and providing precise concepts and examples not to overwhelm the web-phobics, but to give them a view of how life for educators has definitely changed as from the advent of Web 2.0, which I'm also going to define very briefly and in a simplified way. Your live presence would be GREATLY appreciated, since that is definitely the best way to produce a consciousness-raising impact on our teachers" My slide presentation was here: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/vance-stevens-28-sept-2007/.

070905 I was invited to present online at the EuroCALL conference on 8 September from 11:15-12;00 in Coleraine, Northern Ireland (10:15-11:00-- GMT) as a featured online presenter in the Virtual Strand which includes streamed presentations from the conference, and conference blog and chat space, in addition to a limited number of invited, interactive, online presentations lasting approximately 40 minutes My paper entitled Mastering competencies for collaboration and aggregation in distributed learning networks can be accessed as indicated below. Registered delegates are expected to read the text in advance, so that during the presentation itself, I will join delegates in a chat room on a Blobber-enabled web-page for discussion and questions.

Here is the abstract:

This talk begins by discussing terms in the title, especially 'aggregation' and 'distributed learning networks'. Regarding the latter, Downes and Siemens are strong proponents of the notion that functionality of networks is of prime importance to the knowledge embedded there, and therefore accessing this knowledge is key being able to utilize and develop the knowledge within the network. We look briefly at Web 2.0 and some impacts on education, and especially at how knowledge is organized there in folksonomies as opposed to taxonomies, and finally at heuristics aimed at aggregating this knowledge. We then apply these concepts to techniques specific to second language learning.

My colleagues and I have implemented interesting experiments in applying aggregation techniques in the teaching of writing, and its counterpart reading. These colleagues are not my institutional ones, but those in my distributed (online) communities of practice, who comprise a significant part of my distributed learning network. These colleagues and I conceived the Writingmatrix project, which became our means of learning how to aggregate content (what the students were writing) via tags (a prime element in folksonomies).

The remainder of the talk explains how students posting in blogs throughout the world used the tag 'writingmatrix' to make their postings visible to others in the project, and how similar techniques can be used to promote collaboration among students around the world and motivate them to read each other's postings, comment, formulate responses, and form partnerships conducive to learning outcomes. It is stressed that understanding the concepts is key to making the paradigm shift leading to opening minds to the transformational potentials inherent in connectivity facilitating interchange across the Web 2.0. Such notions impact reading, writing, and thinking, in CALL contexts worldwide, and enable applying these concepts to one's own language learning projects.

070831 - - Through a recommendation on Jay Cross' Internetime Ning, I was invited to speak in the second 20 min talk in a session taking place from 9:00 a.m. to 10:45 (so, about 9:30 Egypt time) on 31 August, in session 3 of the "New Learning for Sustainability in the Arab Region" meeting 30 August - 1 September 2007 at the Alexandria Library, in Alexandria, Egypt. The event is subtitled "Motivating Change: New Learning in Formal Education for Sustainable Development", and the conference seeks regionally-based experts working in informal learning, web 2.0, active bloggers, etc. (The organizers' blog is here: http://www.welearnsomething.com). My presentation is written out here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/2007alexandria/web20arabia.htm; TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/398bnw

070901 -I had originally been offered an opportunity to mount a poster session at the parallel New Marketplace at New Learning for Sustainability exhibition (with wireless, available). My idea was to use the wireless to demonstrate some of the tools we use in Webheads and Worldbridges Webcast Academy. This resulted in my eventually being offered an additional slot for a workshop on Saturday Sept 1, 9 a.m to 11:30 a.m. in Egypt (06:00 to 08:30 GMT) on:

F.U.N. Fare - UnWorkshop on Computer Mediated Communications Tools for Distributed Social Learning Networks:

The two convergent communities of practice Webheads in Action and Worldbridges are constantly exploring new computer-mediated communications (CMC) tools for percolating knowledge through their overlapping distributed learning networks, many of which take on many properties of social networking. Members of those communities will be invited to join us online, and the (un)workshop will take place informally, without fixed agenda, in response to the direction suggested by the online participants and those present in Alexandria. Among the spaces we can explore (more to be added as they occur to me) are:

070811 I was invited to teach a short course on writing on the Internet 11th-13th July during the XXVI Summer Courses of the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian, Spain. The course is entitled "Learning to write in a global and plurilingual world" and my part is to give 3 talks (60' exposition + 15' debate) on Internet (Electronic writing, On-line learning to write, Electronic approach to language learning -focus on writing). There is more information about the university and these courses here: http://www.sc.ehu.es/cursosverano. In order to have something to talk about I instigated a writing project here: http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com/. I created a Moodle component here: http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=46 and a course portal here: http://www.vancestevens.com/writing.htm. I also wrote out the text of each lecture, uploaded the slides, and left recordings of the lectures themselves as follows:

  1. Lecture 1: Multiliteracies and the changing landscape of communication in a world without arbiters of what gets published
    Internet, electronic genre and writing. Several analogical literacy practices have migrated to Internet. Now we write emails, wikis, blogs, chats or webs. We read on a screen and write with the keyboard and mouse. How has Internet changed literacy practices? Which are the most relevant electronic genres in L2 learning, why, and how can we use them?
  2. Lecture 2: Web 2.0 and Social Networking: What you need to know about these concepts to get your students colloborating online, using tags, rss, and aggregation
    L2 learning with an electronic approach. More and more L2 courses incorporate Internet and on line learning activities as part of the syllabus and teaching materials. How does this change our teaching practice? Which are the good teaching practices in an on line course and in a blended-learning course? What free and collaborative online tools exist to help us do it better? (On line learning platforms such as Moodle have become very popular in some secondary and university centres in Spain -but we cannot assume that all the students in the course will be aware of that fact…).
  3. Lecture 3: Putting the forces in motion: Applying technology to foster writing through motivating online environments
    Resources and ideas for learning to write on line. Language technologies and engineering offer us powerful resources to help us write and teach writing, such as multi-user virtual environments, pen pals and class collaboration projects, blogging, wikis, Google docs and mapping tools. These greater-picture enhancements can make use of lower-level spelling software, readability analysis systems, automatic assisted translation, terminology data base, plurilingual textual corpora, etc. We also have software that register our writing process, huge on line writing labs, with lots of materials, outlines and information. How we can use these resources in the classroom and in on line courses? What implications do these resources have in the learning of writing?

070518 The Webheads in Action Online Convergence was held May 18-20, 2007. http://wiaoc.org, with archived presentation details at http://schedule.wiaoc.org and http://www.webheadsinaction.org/wiaoc2007; recordings linked from http://streamarchives.net/. I planned and coordinated the conference, and participated in two presentations:

070421 I was invited to present a workshop (2 hours) at the TTTT (TESOL Arabia Abu Dhabi chapter Tactile Tasks and Technical Tips 5) at the Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi on April 21, 2007 http://ilearn.20m.com/news/newevents.htm on Writing in a flat world: better blogging through social networking. It was presented in conjunction with the writing course I am giving in Spain this summer http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=46, for which I started a project with a number of teachers worldwide -http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com, among them Rita Zeinstejer, who assisted from Argentina via Elluminate, and the recording is here: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/play.jnlp?psid=2007-04-21.0050.M.7AE801FFB697DA460D4BF25AA8C21B.vcr. I posted the slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/writing-in-a-flat-world-bettervblogging-through-social-networking/

The workshop covered:

  • How to start a blog
  • How to post to a blog
  • How to edit a post
  • How to TAG a post, and why you should do this
  • How to open a http://www.bloglines.com account, and why you should do this
  • What RSS is, and why it's important
  • How to subscribe to RSS feeds generated by other bloggers
  • How to organize and follow each other's updated blog postings
  • How to open a http://del.icio.us account, and why it's important
  • How to get the del.icio.us browser button and tag sites you visit
  • How to see who's tagged YOUR pages and find other tags they are interested in
  • How to aggregate content using the tags you've placed in your posts

070414 I was invited by Ankara University Development Foundation Schools, to be a Plenary Speaker at the annual ELT Conference held at the ATAUM Conference Hall, in Ankara, Turkey on April 14, 2007. The theme of this conference is "CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) – Technology CALLs You". The title of my talk is "What is CALL? It's YOU!" (derived roughly from my blog posting from Sunday, April 1, 2007 What is CALL: Computer Assisted Language and Literacy as well as from Webheads chat logs from October 29-Nov 3, 2001). We webcast using Elluminate courtesy of Learning Times, http://tinyurl.com/y3eh starting with Dr. Senem Yildiz's presentation at 07:10 GMT. URL's used in the presentation are given in playnotes: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/ankara2007/whatiscall.htm and http://tinyurl.com/yvx6yd. The slides for my presentation are here: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/what-is-call-its-you-vance-stevens-ankara2007/

URLs provided by the organizers:

I was invited to participate in the1 hour - 45 min. Colloquium entitled: "CALL IS Electronic Village Online Communities" held on March 21, 2007 at the international TESOL Convention in Seattle, Washington State Conv Center/Room304 Hall C 8:30am ~ 10:15am PST http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/seccss.asp?CID=1244&DID=6071. The event was Skypecast and the recording is posted at http://www.webheadsinaction.org/node/154. On-site and distance presenters created a wiki for it here: http://colloquium07.wikispaces.com with biodata here: http://colloquium07.wikispaces.com/presenters. I created my presentation on the wiki here: http://colloquium07.wikispaces.com/Vance+Stevens, and have placed a slide show version here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/2007seattleEVO/00.htm

I gave my talk on the potential for education of the MUVE Second Life at the METSMaC conference in Abu Dhabi, http://metsmac.org March 18, 2007 in an oral presentation entitled "Second life and online collaboration through peer to peer distributed learning networks" March 18. The draft of the paper I submitted for the proceedings can be viewed here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/metsmac/metsmac_secondlife.htm, and the published version is here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/metsmac/Stevens-METSMaC-2007.pdf. An annotated rendition of the slides presented at this talk appears here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/arabia2007/00.htm

I presented at the TESOL Arabia 2007 Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates http://tesolarabia.org/conference/ on March 17, 2007. My talk was entitled "Second Life and collaboration in distributed learning networks". As my 'handout' I gave out the link to my Studies in Second Life. An annotated rendition of the slides presented at this talk appears here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/arabia2007/00.htm

January 21, 2007 - I was invited to give a short talk on the topic of "Benefits of using computers and technology in teaching: Focus on language teaching" by a company called Senaco, who asked me to speak at a meeting of its sales and technical staff in Abu Dhabi. I put the text from the PowerPoint slides up at my blog: http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/, and I recorded the talk and placed it at my pod-blog: http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com/.

January 15-February 25, 2007 I am co-moderating the EVO rendition of the Webcast Academy Class of 2.1 http://webcastacademy.net/EVO2007 . The EVO sessions homepage is here: http://evo07sessions.pbwiki.com/. The Webcast Academy syllabus and other information are here: http://evo07sessions.pbwiki.com/webcast-academy. I am tracking my work in this endeavor at my page Tackling the Webcast Academy <-- here.

Presentations: 2006 - Navigate to other areas of this page

As EVO Coordination Team member, I was involved as usual in the organization and training of moderators for the 2007 EVO (Electronic Village Online) sessions taking place prior and leading up to Jan-Mar 2007 http://dafnegonzalez.com/evo-07/Cfproposals.htm. My evolving responsibility is helping to coordinate management of the EVO Moodle: http://evo.tesol.org/moodle/. The planning wiki was at http://evo-07- coord.pbwiki. com/ and the EVO moderator training wiki and syllabus was at http://evo-training .pbwiki.com/

I presented at GLD X - Global Learn Day 10 - Sunday October 8 - for the program of the Gulf Region http://tinyurl.com/gszbs The GLD timetable is here http://www.bfranklin.edu/gldten/. My page is here http://ben300.com/GLDTEN/?p=39. My presentation is here:http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/2006antwerp/gld10_vance.htm and I made a recording and posted it on my podblog at: http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com

September 11-October 8, 2006 - I taught my third annual rendition of PP 107: Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments, description at http://snipurl.com/ppt107_2006 and Moodle portal at http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23. The course is described on the TESOL website at http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=664&DID=2642. Major changes in the newly revised course include greater reliance on blogged and podcast materials for examination of evolving literacies, with participants sharing artifacts they create such as summaries of recordings, their personally aggregated rss feeds, and their own blogs and podcasts. I am articulating the focus of the revised course in my presentation given virtually via recorded video at the 12th International CALL Research Conference: How are we doing? CALL & monitoring the learner, DIDASCALIA, University of Antwerp Language Institute 20-22 August 2006: http://snipurl.com/vance2006antwerp. I prepared a print-literacy wrap-up in my On the Internet column in TESL-EJ (Electric Online Journal) here: http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej38/int.html

August 22, 2006 - I presented virtually via recorded video at the 12th International CALL Research Conference How are we doing? CALL & monitoring the learner, DIDASCALIA, University of Antwerp Language Institute 20-22 August 2006, more information at DIDASCALIA Research Centre: http://www.didascalia.be. The annotated text of my presentation can be found here: http://snipurl.com/vance2006antwerp. The video of the presentation can be seen here (55 kbps) and at better quality here: http://blip.tv/file/62861 (521 kbps). I received this feedback from Jozef Colpaert: "Your presentation was shown to some 15 people and was well received. We had a discussion afterwards on learner freedom versus teacher guidance in Web 2.0-based learning environments and associated constructivist approaches."

On July 6, I presented in French (from my mom's home in Houston) as part of a presentation hosted by Jean Michel Chaupart from France in conjunction with a congres in Paraguay. The event was la conférence internationale pour professeurs de francais latinoaméricains – XIVe.SEDIFRALE que a eu lieu le JEUDI 6 JUILLET, entre 20 heures et 21heures 30 GMT, sur la plate-forme de conférence : http://www.portafolio.org/conference.htm qui supporte la voix + image webcam + présentation de pages web. Les diapositives sont disponibles pour consultation à l'adresse suivante: http://www.cimted.org/carrusel/sedifrale/. For the text of my presentation in French, click here

June 23, 2006 - I was interviewed via podcasting on my views on various aspects of consulting. The interview was conducted by ElderBob Brannan and posted on one of his blogs, Rebuilding Indianola, at: http://rebuildingindianola.blogspot.com/2006_06_23_rebuildingindianola_archive.html. The original recordings were those posted June 21 at http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com/.

April 20 I presented on Effective Strategies toward Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning at The Language Centre 6th Annual ELT Conference, Language Learning in the Cyber Age: Innovations and Challenges 19 – 20 April 2006 Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman http://www.squ.edu.om/lan/index.html. I used Learning Times / Elluminate at http://tinyurl.com/y3eh to webcast it, and I placed the handout with links to the PowerPoint slide show, URL playlist of the presentation, and webcast recording from here: http://tinyurl.com/m4ow6.

On March 30, 2006 at 3:30 PM in Dubai (11:30 a.m. GMT) I gave a talk entitled Effective Strategies toward Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning at the12th International TESOL Arabia Conference March 29-31, 2006 in Dubai, UAE http://tesolarabia.org/conf2006/. 50 word abstract: This presentation deals with the topic of multiliteracy, the importance of including multiliteracy skills in designing almost any modern curriculum, and how teachers can develop strategies to become more multiliterate themselves and thus be better equipped to pass on these skills to their students through multiliteracy components in curricula. My handout is here: http://tinyurl.com/m4ow6. The conference schedule is here: http://tesolarabia.org/conf2006/speakers/ta2006schedule.pdf. My talk was listed as being at 3:30 a.m in Dubai on this document: http://tesolarabia.org/conf2006/speakers/2006ConcurrentSpeakers.pdf

I webcast at Learning Times http://tinyurl.com/y3eh from the METSMaC 2006 “Making Connections” at 9:30 a.m. in Abu Dhabi, 16 March 2006 at the Beach Rotana & Towers Hotel Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates on Effective strategies for applying multiliteracies in collaborative learning environments by Vance Stevens Foundation Computing, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. http://tinyurl.com/m4ow6

Abstract: Multiliteracy is an important aspect of almost any curriculum nowadays. Teachers and students with good multiliteracy skills have a workable grasp of the many ways that technology intertwines with academic life, and are in position to actively gain control over those aspects directly impacting the learning environment and their professional development. Multiliterate individuals are aware of the pitfalls inherent in technology while striving for empowerment through effective strategies for first discerning and then taking advantage of fast-changing technologies by adapting those most appropriate to their situations. These strategies begin with managing, processing, and interpreting a constant influx of information, filtering what is useful, and then enhancing the learning environment with the most appropriate applications.

This presentation discusses effective approaches and strategies for responding to technology issues in the academic environment. It overviews tools and skills that help cope with information overload and discusses means of communication and interaction in Internet 2.0 environments, including using social networking, RSS, video, web cam, image, and voice technologies to gain familiarity with these tools and their applications in teaching through communities of practice which in turn model collaborative, constructivist learning settings.

It is hoped that teachers will leave this presentation with a greater awareness of the potentials of Internet 2.0 in the enhancement of optimal learning environments, and with some idea of a strategy that they might pursue to learn more about the topic, thus enhancing their own awareness of multiliteracy skills and how they might include these in curricula they develop for students

Robert "Elderbob" Brannan, Buthaina Al Othman, and I conducted a session for the TESOL / Electronic Village Online (EVO2006) sessions Monday, January 16 - Sunday, February 26, 2006 entitled Establishing and maintaining 'Web presence' Part 2: The Moodle. The proposal is here: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/evo2006/gvs2006proposal.htm. The link for the sessions is http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/announce.html and the link from there to this session is http://webpages.csus.edu/%7Ehansonsm/WebPresence.html

Tuesday February 14th I present from a distance at the invitation of Gavin Dudeney a talk entitled "Webheads: Communiities of practice in action" at a conference entitled ICT in ELT: putting the 'Learning' back into 'E-Learning' held face to face at the Manchester Conference Centre, 12-17 February 2006: http://www.britishcouncil.org/seminars-english-0563.htm. I gave a presentations at 10:00 GMT to the following specs: "Participants are all interested in ICT in ELT, on a teacher, traner and a ministry level and come from a wide variety of countries around the world. They will have seen a bit of group CoP theory, and looked extensively at Yahoo Groups beforehand. They will also have discussed, a little, what makes a good group. What I'd like you to do is present Webheads, a bit of history, what it does, how it has evolved and why they should probably think about joining it. Some nice anecdotes, practical experiences or whatever, and a look at the kind of courses you do, the Convergence, etc." Prior to the presentation there was lively interaction at the remote conference Moodle: http://www.britishcouncilinteractive.tv/moodle/course/view.php?id=5 . My presentation was recorded at Learning Times http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=1122376 and can be accessed directly here: https://www.elluminate.com/site/pmtg.jnlp?psid=d2006213181.397826 ; Powerpoint slides here

Presentations: 2005 - Navigate to other areas of this page

I organized and coordinated the WiAOC 2005: Webheads in Action Online Conference: Bridges across Cyberspace Friday and Saturday, November 18 - 19, 2005 and Convergence wrap-up Sunday November 20 http://www.wiaoc.org/; Moodle: http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=20. I was on a panel and gave a stand-alone presentation at this conference; replay here: http://schedule.wiaoc.org

TESOL Arabia Abu Dhabi Chapter, IL SIG & Al Hosn University Present 4 Computer Workshops & Presentations At Al Hosn University, Abu Dhabi Thursday 17th November, 2005 10.00am - 12:30pm . My presentation discusses the WiAOC 2005: Webheads in Action Online Convergence that features guest speakers Curt Bonk, David Nunan, Dave Sperling, Randall Davis, and Joy Egbert. The conference is free and entirely online from November 18-20. Vance is coordinating on behalf of Webheads. He will explain what goes into putting on a conference like this, and suggest how students might organize their own conferences along similar lines. If you are interested in this event, come to Vance’s presentation and find out more here: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/convergence2005.htm and the Moodle: http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=20

Oct. 31 - Nov. 7, 2005 - I am involved as Coordinator and TESOL Professional Development Liaison in the (TESOL) Electronic Village Online 2006 Sessions http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/How_EVO_differs.html; http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/What_is_EVO.html. Buthaina Alothman, Nicolas Gromik, and I are conducting the training during Week 4 of the moderator training sessions taking place Monday, October 10 - Sunday, November 14, 2005. The scope of our segment is to help moderators Refine their YG & syllabus based on readings - Explore advanced features of YG (or their own CMS) as described in Buthaina.s message here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EVO_Moderators/message/1830. My own contrbution is in helping moderators learn about voice presentation tools. Buth has created a portal for this effort here: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/evonline_voicechat_tools.htm

September 12 to October 9, 2005 (and again September 11-October 8, 2006): My online course, PP 107 Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2005.htm, was scheduled for the TESOL Principles and Practices of Online Teaching Certificate Program, http://www.tesol.org/edprg/olw/ppcp/index.html. The abstract is somewhat changed from the course I taught in 2004; e.g. addition of required textbook: Course-specific requirements: Internet Explorer 6.0, sound card, some means of reading/accessing and composing/sending e-mail, course text: Selber, Stuart. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Another addition is the course Moodle: http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23

A multiliterate teacher understands the many ways that technology interacts and intertwines with academic life, and actively learns how to gain control over those aspects impacting teaching and professional development. Multiliterate individuals are aware of the pitfalls inherent in technology while striving for empowerment through effective strategies for first discerning and then taking advantage of those aspects of changing technologies most appropriate to their situations. These strategies include managing, processing, and interpreting a constant influx of information, filtering what is useful, and then enhancing the learning environment with the most appropriate applications. This course

Topics covered include:

Sat April 30 at 07:00 a.m. GMT I was invited to address an audience virtually at the Qatar Teachers English Network Conference (QTEN) conference in Doha, Qatar and was listed in the conference program as appearing Saturday, in room C107 in the Liberal Arts Building in the Qatar Foundation though physically present in Abu Dhabi: Blogging in online communities of practice: Impact on language learning and teacher professional development abstract: "Blogging is an Internet phenomenon with significant impact on both language learning and teacher professional development, It is now possible for students AND teachers to create their own web pages in minutes and, with minimal guidance, extend these to more elaborate web sites. This workshop will guide participants in creating and developing their own blog sites, and illustrate and discuss ways that blogs can be configured to create authentic, interactive, communicative, reflective, creative, and motivating learning environments that engage students and provide a means for teachers to further their ongoing professional development." http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/papers/qten2005/vancestevens2005qten.htm The session was recorded and is here: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=805285. Incidentally, the slide presentation explaining how to create a blog in Blogger was updated in April 2007 and is available here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/blogger_tutorial.htm

At right, in my capcity as Amideast consultant in one of the classroms at the MLI, with furniture which we ourselves designed, January 2000

On Wednesday April 27 at 07:20 GMT (11:20 in Abu Dhabi) I presented on "Online Webcast: Computer mediated communications tools used with teachers and students in virtual communities of practice" at METSMaC–I The First Annual Middle East Teachers of Science, Mathematics and Computing Conference “Strategies for Effective Learning in the Middle East” 26 to 28 April 2005 at the Armed Forces Officers' Club and The Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE http://metsmac.org. Further information on the presentation can be found here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/arabia/metsmac2005gvs.htm

I gave an online 2-part workshop at The Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi UAE Tactile Tasks and Technical Tips Event for the Learner Independence and IT SIGs of TESOL Arabia April 14, 9:00 - 13:00 in Abu Dhabi. The presentation is at: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/arabia/tttt2005/blogging_now.htm or http://tinyurl.com/3jc5o. The workshop was in two 1 hour blocks starting around 05:00 GMT . The two parts were on starting blogs, and the second hour got into what to do with them (e.g. how to use them as portals to learning communities such as that at http://webpres2005.buzznet.com . (More info about the past TTTT events can be found at http://ilearn.20m.com/pasteventsb.html#tttt)

At the TESOL 2005: The 39th Annual TESOL Convention and Exhibition March 30-April 2, 2005 San Antonio, Texas, USA - http://www.tesol.org. Online participants were encouraged to participate in these events at http://www.tappedin.org, http://www.alado.com/webheads, http://www.tinyurl.com/y3eh, and at Yahoo Messenger for web cams of multiple participants.

  • Wed evening March 30 there was a webheads party event on-site in San Antonio at the The Houston Street Bistro organized by ElderBob Brannon and open virtually via wi-fi from 1800 San Antonio time (midnight GMT Thu).

For more information including where to post on other blogs: http://elderboblog.typepad.com/fiesta/2005/03/post.html
http://elderboblog.typepad.com/fiesta/2005/03/on_march_30_i_w.html
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/chat2005/chat2005.htm#elderparty

Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 17:00:00 GMT: I was invited to give a voice-enabled virtual presentation for the Horizon Wimba Desktop Lecture Series, an entirely free, online presentation series in which experts in the field of higher education give hour-long interactive presentations, live over the internet via the Horizon Wimba OpenCampus virtual classroom. The bi-line on the session from the HWDLS website was: "Building Community Among Educators: Webheads is an ongoing 'experiment in world friendship through online language learning' whose participants have been meeting weekly online since 1998. During that time, Webheads have experimented with numerous synchronous and web-based multimedia communications formats, and presented at several live and online conference venues." The text and graphics of the talk are here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/horizonlive/2005mar15vance.htm. As of March 16 the talk is still listed as an upcoming one: http://www.horizonwimba.com/community/upcoming.php, but a recording should soon appear in the archives here: http://www.horizonwimba.com/community/archived.php; or here: http://lecture.horizonwimba.com/launcher.cgi?channel=stevens_2005_0315_1202_45

I conducted an online training session on Web presence for the Electronic Village Online 2005 Sessions, Monday, January 17 - Sunday, February 27, 2005 [6 weeks]

Friday Feb 25, 2005 15:00 to 16:00 GMT: At the Knowtips Conference http://knowtips.ca I was part of an online panel presentation entitled: Webheads – Intuitive chaos management in online collaborative interaction http://wiaknowtips.buzznet.com/. Presentation description: "Webheads in Action With Susanne Nyrop, Vance Stevens, Dafne Gonzalez, Sergei Gridushko. Webheads in Action (WiA) is a robust community of educators worldwide. Active WIA participants bring evidence of strong bonds of online collegiality and loyalty, while questioning and reflecting critically upon our experiments, tinkering with free communication tools and environments. During the Knowtips conference, we'll engage in storytelling and discussion about such shared experiences. Join our narrative inquiry on how to help each other, moving from novice to practitioner to domain experts by inclusive participation, peer scaffolding and inspiration." My part of the presentation is entitled: The intuitive chaos manager as cat herder: Helping others to have F.U.N. navigating simplexity while developing cohesion in communities of practice online and the presentation itself can be found here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/horizonlive/2005feb25whjam.htm or via its link in the presentation blog http://wiaknowtips.buzznet.com/user/?id=983482

This was scheduled for Feb 14, 2005, at 8:00 GMT but has been postponed due to technical problems. I was invited to participate in a presentation Buthaina Alothman was delivering before executive managers and employees of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, (KPC) http://www.kpc.com.kw/index2.htm, in conjunction with her work as technology consultant with HRD, Int. specialising in training programs for workers at both the private and public sectors. Presentation title: E-Learning in the Age of Information Technology: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/hrd_kpc_wia_mvpresentation.htm.The presentations were to be held here: https://www.virtexc3.com/clients/kuwaituni/. I was to elaborate on the concept of e-learning & successful/effective learning environments for e-learning from his perspective and experience as the founder/leader of several online communities, (for ESL/EFL educators, teachers, and learners), like Webheads in Action, with focus on Managing at a distance and The role of collaborative e-learning to enhance performance and to increase productivity of groups and sub-groups; (e.g. the Webheads in Action and Writing for Weheads CoPs for teachers and students from his perspective as the founder and owner/moderator). The text of my presentation can be seen here.

Tuesday, February 8, 14:00-15:00 GMT, at Learning Times http://www.tinyurl.com/3yeh: Teresa Almeda d'Eca and Vance Stevens gave a joint session as guest speakers in the TESOL sponsored EVOnline 2005 course entitled, The Use of Blogs in ESL/EFL http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblogging/. The topic was: Blogging Beyond Text and is now listed as "Jam session: Adding Sounds and Photos" http://www.beewebhead.net/Evo05/week.htm. My presentation is here: http://webpres2005.buzznet.com/user/?id=871727. It explains how the links are achieved in your blogs, through postings and comments to each other's postings.

Presentations: 2004 - Navigate to other areas of this page

Thursday, Dec 16, 2004 - At an event sponsored by the TESOL Arabia - Teacher Education SIG, held at the British Council, Abu Dhabi, 9:30 to 12:30 (05:30 to 08:30 GMT), Vance Stevens gave a workshop Communities of Practice for Ongoing Online Teacher Professional Development for Teacher Educators and K-16 teachers interested in collaborative networking in Teacher Education. Handout: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/evo2005/webpresence.htm and abstract:

Students and teachers are increasingly meeting online to explore ways of using the latest free communications technologies that promote language learning and teacher training. These technologies include synchronous text, voice, and web cam -enabled chat services that are educational in nature as well as asynchronous tools such as blogs, groupware, and open source applications like Moodle. Accordingly it is becoming important for teachers to establish a Web presence in order to participate in robust online communities which often influence how these teachers interact with their students. The presenter will show numerous ways that an online presence can be maintained using free online tools, and give examples of how these tools are used to achieve pedagogical goals.

Thursday, November 3, 2004 at 11:00 - 12:20 GMT, Dafne Gonzales, Susanne Nyrop, and I were asked to give the lead presentation online, entitled "Intro To Asynchronous Communication Tools", during the Belarusian Association of Teachers of English (BelNATE) and Minsk State Linguistics University 6th International BelNATE-IATEFL Conference 'Teaching English as a World Language in the Information Age' (November 3 - 5, 2004). The aim of the on-line workshop was to bring together EFL teachers and specialists in an online session to demonstrate a number of synch/asynch tools available on the web.

URLs for the conference are:

Our Abstract: Why educators would want to get themselves online (and once that is established, then how?). This will be an overview of the tools available on the web, with references to further information to get participants started with any or all of them.

We intend to demonstrate to participants how they can establish their online presence and be empowered to upload photos they can link to, create simple web pages, etc. Our presentation put these in a perspective of WHY educators would want to put files and web pages online (and once that was established, then HOW?). In other words, this was an overview of the tools available and enough of an explanation with reference to further information to get participants started on any or all of them. A PDF of the PowerPoint slides is here (2.15 Mbytes): http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/belnate2004/belnate041103.pdf

Some of the tools are:

Friday, October 29, 2004 20:30 to 21:30 GMT, I agreed to conduct session 7 on Learning From Others - Learning in a Social Context at http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/theenglishworkshop;

September 13-October 10, 2004 - I gave an online course as part of the TESOL Principles and Practices of Online Teaching Certificate Program, http://www.tesol.org/edprg/olw/ppcp/index.html. My course is listed as PP 107: Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments - Instructor: Vance Stevens. Its description: A multiliterate online language teacher creates learning environments interweaving sound and image with text over networked media. This course provides experiential training in the technological skills required to develop effective strategies for utilizing video, web cam, image, and voice technologies in communities of practice as enhancements to collaborative learning settings. Course-specific requirements: Internet Explorer 6.0, sound card, and some means of reading/accessing and composing/sending e-mail. http://www.tesol.org/edprg/olw/ppcp/courses-1.html#pp107. The course was run through the CMS Desire to Learn at http://uwec.courses.wisconsin.edu but I created an alternative portal whose purpose was to bring knowledgeable others into contact with participants in this course and thereby enrich the learning experience for all: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2004.htm

Wednesday Aug 25, 12:00 to 14:00 GMT, at a Cyberlangues http://cyberlangues.online.fr/ atelier (workshop) on blogging - Barbara Dieu made an online presentation on blogs at http://www.alado.net/webheads. I was invited to join this presentation and present (in French) my work on building communities through photoblogs at http://mahdia2004.buzznet.com and show as an example of blog journalism my travel photoblog at http://vancestevens.buzznet.com. The text of my presentation appears here: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/chat2004/chat2004.htm#040825

July 19 - 31, 2004, I gave a series of workshops in an English Language Specialist Program http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/ Tunisian Summer English Institute for secondary school teachers - "New Information Technologies in ELT - IT Networks in ELT" in Mahdia, Tunisia. The request was to combine lectures and demonstrations with hands-on workshops and activities with a view to giving participants ideas, methods and materials they would be able to put to immediate use in their own classrooms. The course objectives were to introduce concepts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects in preparatory and secondary schools, digital content, production and exploitation, online tutoring, management and optimization of ICT spaces and networks and ICT quality control.

The courses started with a look at a number of sites which explain the principles of good online tutoring. During the course of these workshops I created a blended learning environment working face to face with the participants to help them explore a set of community building tools for interacting with each other online. The progress of the workshops and the syllabus evolved was recorded at http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tunisia2004/mahdia.htm. At the top of these pages, there are links to our YahooGroup, the pictures we took and placed at Ofoto, the blogs created at Blogger and Buzznet, and web sites created using Tripod. The most developed of the two syllabi is here: http://tinyurl.com/47snq. The workshops were meant to establish:

  1. that in order to use online tools effectively with students, teachers need to familiarize themselves with the tools in benign collaborative settings (that is, with each other first; not use them without practice with students straight away).
  2. the importance of encouraging what I call F.U.N. or Frivolous Unanticipated Nonsense ...
  3. the benefits of taking advantage of the spontaneous and sometimes unexpected or serendipitous aspects of the medium, which sometimes involves a teacher making a paradigm shift in attitudes toward the nature of learning, rather than hold to less flexible teaching styles that might not apply to multiliterate learning.

Participants formulated a set of principles that applied to the group, learned to use various tools for interacting in constructivist learning environments such as the one created in the workshops, and learned just enough HTML to let participants fine tune (really use) some of these tools. It was challenging to make it all fit together and make sense and be effective by the end of the workshop, and also to put in place a mechanism by which activities started at the workshop would continue after the workshop ended on July 31.

Sunday, May 23, 2004 at 12:15 GMT- An M.A. TEFL Conference entitled Developing Teacher Practices for Turkey was held at Bilkent University. The audience and speakers were alumni of the M.A. Bilkent program. reunion at Bilkent University MA TEFL program. The program URL is at http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~matefl/. This reunion was celebrated with a conference, where William Grabe, Bill Snyder, Fredricka L. Stoller and Kimberly Trimble were invited speakers. They expected approx. 150 EFL instructors all around Turkey. A joint proposal was accepted: "Sustaining an online community: Webheads experience" for an online presentation with Arif Altun (Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu Turkey) physically present at the Bilkent MA TEFL Reunion Conference (with Vance Stevens connecting online from The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE). The online venue for the presentation will be http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=27366. Our abstract:

Language learning is an ongoing engagement, which requires learners to experience authentic use of language. Webheads, which is the name of an online community promoting just that, comprises a number of communities of practice of language students and teachers who meet regularly online to explore ways of using the latest free communications technologies that work over the Internet for language learning and teacher training (for more information see, http://www.webheads.info). Webheads use emerging and existing technologies both in their weekly synchronous meetings and in asynchronous messaging within the group. One part of the Webheads mission is to introduce teachers and students to CMC environments despite many of those involved being novice computer users.

This presentation will be a demonstration of the tools used to sustain such online communities of learners and teacher-collaborators. The on-site participants will have the chance to meet the initiator of this group, Vance Stevens, and interact with a remote audience of Webheads, who will tune in live and online for the occasion using the tools being demonstrated to allow us to hear their voices and view their web cams. The participants will also have the opportunity to discuss with the online guests the advantages and disadvantages of using these tools with students and other teachers. Consequently, the opportunities, limitations and strengths of joining an online community will be examined together with Turkish participants.

On Tuesday, May 18, 14:30 - 16:00 GMT (9:30 am - 11:00 am, CST) Vance Stevens (Webhead's Leader, Abu Dhabi, UAE) and Teresa Almeida d'Eça (Lisbon, Portugal) were scheduled to present "Building Online Communities for Professional Development" at the First Tutor/Mentor Leadership e-Conference Overlay to the face-to-face Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference being held at Richard J. Daley College in Chicago on May 17 and 18, 2004.