|
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Suzan Stamper, Yew Chung Community College, Hong Kong
For each newsletter, I invite members to answer a set of questions:
- What is your favorite platform?
- What is the one indispensable tool/webpage?
- What is your most unexpected source of information about CALL?
- What was your favorite CALL creation?
- What are you working on now?
- What area would you like to see developed/researched?
- What advice would you give to a newbie starting out in CALL?
- What is your funniest CALL-related incident?
I hope you enjoy this space to compare experiences, share
advice, nurture inspiration, and make connections within our
community.
Please e-mail me if you have
suggestions or contributions to "Making Connections."
Christel Broady
Christel Broady, an award-winning teacher, teacher trainer,
internationally known keynote speaker, and author/coauthor of books,
articles, and social media, has been serving the ELT profession, TESOL,
and CALL in many capacities. Christel runs an ELT Professional Learning
Community (PLC), which can be found on Facebook (Broadyesl), on her blog, LinkedIn
(Christel Broady), and Twitter. The PLC is free for anyone who would
like to join members of 179 countries.
Affiliation: Georgetown College
Years in the CALL-IS: More than 5
Q: What is your favorite platform?
A: I LOVE Google for just about everything!!! For online teaching, Canvas. For Blogs, Wordpress.
Q: For you, what is the one indispensable tool/webpage?
A: Google, hands down.
Q: What is your most unexpected source of information about CALL?
A: Colleagues from all over the world.
Q: What was your favorite CALL creation?
A: ELT Professional Learning Community…It is a resource and
place of sharing for ELT professionals worldwide, ESL and EFL
alike.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am a TESOL columnist for CALL topics [EdTech
in ELT, which appears bimonthly in TESOL
Connections].
Q: What area would you like to see developed/researched?
A: To be developed: Putting together international members in
sharing so that nobody will "reinvent the wheel" but instead build on
each other's work more effectively. Also, to be more pointed in
resources—to clearly distinguish between ESL, EFL, or both—so that
professionals can find resources for their own areas easier. To be
researched: Technology use’s effect on the brain and
neuroplasticity.
Q: What advice would you give to a newbie starting out in CALL?
A: 1)Hang out at the Electronic Village as much as possible; 2)
get to know others there and build a network; 3) attend hot CALL
sessions to see who in the field shares your interests, and connect with
them; and 4) share your name as a volunteer for the next
convention.
Q: What is your funniest CALL-related incident?
A: The incident I remember most was not as much funny (at least
for me) as it is memorable: I was supposed to present at one of CALL's
academic sessions when I had to accept an award at the same time. The
CALL academic session panel worked around my absence while I ran a LONG
distance to the award location, accepting and running right back to the
session. I was totally out of breath and barely made it back on stage.
In the end it worked out and all was good.
Vance Stevens
Vance has worn many hats in his career as an instructor of
ESOL, ranging from being a teacher to full- and part-time CALL
coordinator, consultant, and software developer. He has been practicing
CALL since 1979 and researched an aspect of it for his MA thesis in
1983, and he has since then published well over a hundred articles,
reviews, and book chapters on CALL. He has nurtured many CALL-related
projects and communities of practice, most notably as cofounder of the
CALL Interest Section in 1984, but more recently as cofounder of
Webheads in 1998, moderator of the first Webheads in Action EVO session,
coordinator of EVO and editor of the TESL-EJ On the
Internet section since 2002, founder and host of the podcast series
Learning2gether since 2010, and chief organizer of several EVO
communities such as Multiliteracies/MultiMOOC for about 10 years, and
the EVO Minecraft MOOC, now in its second year.
Affiliation: English Faculty, Higher Colleges of
Technology, CERT, KBZAC, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
Years in the CALL-IS: 32
Q: Favorite platform?
A: For serious work, PC. I like iPad for certain functionalities.
Q: For you, what is the one indispensable tool/webpage?
A: Google Docs followed closely by PBWorks.
Q: What is your most unexpected source of information about CALL?
A: Google was quite unexpected at the time, but it has become
the source of all information. Facebook and Twitter also, and in that
order.
Q: What was your favorite CALL creation?
A: That I helped create? Traci Talk.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Learning2gether has laid down almost 320 podcasts now. EVO
Minecraft MOOC is in its second year, but this is turning out to be my
new passion.
Q: What area would you like to see developed/researched?
A: Something to emulate what Technorati did in its early days,
and that is, a tool where you can type in a tag and get content
associated with that tag across the web, including tagged blog posts
created by novice bloggers (i.e., your students) and have it effectively
filter for spam.
Q: What advice would you give to a newbie starting out in CALL?
A: Long, long ago we used to debate the extent to which
computers could facilitate learning, as in CALL, and it turned out it
wasn't the computers per se but the uses to which they were put, some
appropriate and insightful, but some simply replicating educational
paradigms that had gone before and were no longer relevant.
I would advise the newbie to get beyond CALL. Almost everything
contains a computer these days, to the point that the notion of CALL is
meaningless. We have to think about how these computers in so many
devices can best serve the interests of education at the highest levels
of simulation and critical thinking. One direction I've suggested is
SMALL (social media–assisted language learning) but others are MALL
(mobile-assisted) and so on. My advice is to break with CALL and pursue
the next meaningful acronym that refines what aspects of CALL are most
useful for discrete purposes, the purpose most relevant to the
newbie.
Q: What is your funniest CALL-related incident?
A: I'll have to think about it. I have to be careful not to implicate long-time colleagues.
Suzan Stamper
Suzan is a senior lecturer and English language team leader at
Yew Chung Community College in Hong Kong. She has been an active member
of CALL-IS since 1995 and has served the interest section in various
roles: two elected 3-year terms as chair/chair-elect/past chair
(2001–2004 & 2009–2012), newsletter editor, columnist, community
manager, listserv manager, Internet Fair coordinator, and
presenter.
Affiliation: Yew Chung Community College, Hong Kong
Years in the CALL-IS: 21
Q: Favorite platform?
A: Mac.
Q: For you, what is the one indispensable tool/webpage?
A: It's hard to choose—anything Google or my iPhone.
Q: What is your most unexpected source of information about CALL?
A: I get a lot of inspiration from Facebook—from friends
posting about their interests, news articles, or educational sources
(e.g., Free Technology for Teachers).
Q: What was your favorite CALL creation?
A: In the mid-1990s, I worked in a CALL lab at the University
of Kansas and started making simple webpages that were mainly lists of
links. At the time, I felt quite isolated in my interests and enjoyed
the community of electronic listservs like NETEACH. I remember posting
URLs for some holiday webpages on NETEACH and getting quite a few
positive responses from teachers in different countries. That inspired
me to make more and more webpages. Looking back, those pages weren't my
best creations, but they encouraged me to learn more.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Mostly classroom applications of what interests me. I would
like to be involved again in a local community of practice. At Indiana
University Purdue University Indianapolis, I was in two communities. My
first was podcasting (2008–2009) and that was followed by an
interdisciplinary iPad group (2010–2012). In Hong Kong, I have been
involved with two communities: a community of practice with mobile
technologies group and a BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, group
(2013–2014).
Q: What area would you like to see developed/researched?
A: It's difficult to think of just one area. I will say that I
like to attend two to three technology conferences a year to hear more
about what others are doing and researching.
Q: What advice would you give to a newbie starting out in CALL?
A: Volunteer! Volunteer to do something with the CALL Interest
Section! Volunteer for an Electronic Village event! Volunteer to run for
the Steering Committee or write an article for the newsletter or post
something on our listserv. Come to the CALL open meeting in Baltimore to
see how you can get more involved. One of the first things I did was
volunteer in the Electronic Village and attend a CALL Interest Section
meeting. That year (1995), I made quite a few TESOL acquaintances, many
of whom are now friends, advisors, and collaborators. Over the years, I
have greatly benefited from my time in our CALL community, which is one
reason that I enjoy writing this column.
Q: What is your funniest CALL-related incident?
A: This wasn't funny at the time, but it makes me smile now. I
remember the very first time I saw a webpage loading. It might have been
the fall of 1991. I was in a graduate Educational Communications class
at the University of Kansas. The professor clicked on the mouse of one
of those old square gray Macintosh Classic computers. As we stood around
the computer waiting for the page to slowly load, the professor told us
that the information was coming from Japan. It was amazing—the other
side of the world!
Suzan is a senior lecturer and English language team leader at
Yew Chung Community College in Hong Kong. She has been a CALL-IS member
since 1995.
|