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Webheads chat logs are posted on the Internet to assist language learners with comprehension of our conversations and to strengthen our sense of community through shared familiarity with one another. All are welcome to join us, but your participation in our activities implies that you approve of our posting on the Internet interactions in which you take part. Please address any comments or concerns to Vance Stevens.

Webheads chat logs from December 11, 2001

Meet the people in the chat today

Vance Yaodong Michael Rif
UAE Liuzhou, PRC Australia Turkey
and nine students from the MLI in Abu Dhabi

Yaodong in Liuzhou China has been very active / energetic in exploring online synchronous multimedia tools for bringing his English language students in contact with others in the English-speaking world. On Dec 11 he announced to the Webheads list that he planned to demonstrate his skills in online connectivity to an audience of peers in China, 6:30 a.m. GMT.

He asked me if I would like to appear online at that time. Since it would be during work hours, I replied yes, if I could involve our students at the MLI, http://www.mli.ac.ae. Meanwhile I spoke to teachers here who thought it would make an appropriate activity for their classes. A class of nine students was thus chosen to appear in my office 3 at a time during the time of the event. The interesting thing from the point of view of these students is that the three groups each ended up getting completely different experiences.

Abdullah, Mohammed, and Ahmed in Vance's office, and as seen on web cam, below

The first group arrived when I was trying to connect with Yaodong in PRC. Yaodong had his web cam up and was able to broadcast voice a bit, but we had poor service through the Yahoo voice server, which kept cutting in and out. The MLI students tried to keep up a conversation, but much of it was not heard at the other end. When Yaodong's web cam stopped broadcasting, we decided to shift to Netmeeting. Again, we were able to broadcast but there was no video signal from China and a lot of static on the voice line. We decided to return to Yahoo, but Yaodong told us that by then he had established a good connection on Netmeeting with David Scondudo in Los Angeles and he turned his attention there for the remainder of his demonstration.

The second group arrived in my office at about that time, but also fortunately, just as Yaodong became unavailable, Michael had arrived on Yahoo and was willing to engage us in voice chat. Here the connection was much better. Michael didn't have a web cam, but he did have his guitar and he played a bit for us (No Momma No Cry, Bob Marley, at the request of the students), and the students asked him a lot of questions (I was showing them pictures of Michael from his web site on another computer). After a while, I suggested they get the last three students, but they took a long time, and Michael decided he couldn't wait any longer and went offline.

Meanwhile, another Rif had appeared on MSN Messenger, so when the next three guys showed up I was able to get them talking to Rif in Turkey, who talked to them in Netmeeting about travelling in Turkey and the places they could speak Arabic there. Rif didn't have his web cam running, but we could hear him fairly well and he could hear and see us. At the end of the interview, Rif asked the students several questions about studying English in the UAE.

Feedback from the three groups comparing the three experiences suggests that if you want to really get the attention of students online, get a guitar :-))).

So, this turned out to be a typical Webheads event in several respects ...

  1. It was organized on the invitation of one of our members
  2. We used our skills in ICN (Intuitive Choas Navigation) to move into and out of whatever application was working best
  3. Webheads appeared online as needed and pitched in to help make the experience beneficial and interesting for all concerned.

It would be interesting to hear more about the event from Yaodong's perspective.

Thanks to all who participated,

Vance

Yaodong replies, Dec 13, 2001

My gratitude for support from the webheads community is beyond description. I owe to webheads my latest success in e-class on Dec.11. Without it, i could not have been able to contact David from Los Angeles, who was an expert in netmeeting.

Vance has been very kind and helpful in my online research. All my colleagues saw him on Dec. 11 and so did my students. Though the Yahoo connection was bad and we eventually lost the connection after repeated attempts, we made it with MSN's netmeeting.

Our online lecture began at about 3:30 p.m. here and lasted till 6:00 p.m. All went well except that my 20 colleagues left the class when they found the web-based EFL class just so-so due to poor yahoo connection. I lost the chance to show off. ^o^. Now my main worry is that I will have even fewer followers among my colleagues, not to mention the support for my efforts in using online resources from the director of our department.

But the feedback from students sounds encouraging. One student whispered to me before he stepped out of lab: "Now I know how english should be taught and learned."

I am sending the post-course survey to Vance so that you all can have a better idea of what we had been doing with David in Los Angeles. But I should warn you that no errors in students' writing have been checked so that you can read authentic writing in English from Chinese college students, who are, by the way, all freshmen enrolled from all parts of China.

I wish to have more e-classes in the near future with any of you. Thank you for your support.

Kind regards,

Yaodong

Arthur's reaction, Dec 14, 2001

I have found this to be very valuable, gentlemen!

We have a growing number of Chinese students in the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and this encourages me in the design of pre-sessional courses for them.

Best wishes and congratulations!

Arthur McKeown
University of Ulster

Yaodong's reply:

Hello, Arthur,

I visited your homepage last week and I like it very much. I wish to meet your students one day.

Best wishes,

Yaodong

Yaodong has since sent us the results of a survey he made after this event:

<It appears that these results are those from Yadong's students' conversations with David Scunduto, not from the students at the MLI, where the connection was very poor. Also, it appears that Yaodong has added annotations in parentheses - Vance>

Yaodong writes, Dec 24:

I am attaching the survey from my students (saved as html file) to you. I will be grateful if you will take the trouble to put them up on the page you made for me. I have asked students for permission.

The survey results start from question 20. For Questions 1 to 19, students made choices from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree' or ' No idea/I don't know/unsure'. I am happy to say the feedback was quite positive. Over 90 students chose 'strongly agree' to all the questions ( 1--19). Let's work harder to make Webheads community known by more ESL/EFL teachers in 2002.

Question Responses from S1, S2 ... S10

20. What were you hoping to get out of the teleconference, and did you get it?
  1. I wanted to practise my English and wanted to know how to pronounce. No, i did not get . ( this student mean he did not get the chance to come to the teacher's desk to speak to you as others.)
  2. I found the English very interesting.
  3. I want to know what english which i felt very hard is. Yes , the result I had get.
  4. I was hoping to get some kinds of information about study and I get it.
  5. I wanted to pick up my pronounciation. and so I did.
  6. I hope to get out when we can talk. { Like this students, quite a few of them misunderstood' get (sth) out of (sth else)}
  7. I hope every student should speak in teleconference.
  8. I was hoping to get some kinds of information about study and I get it.
  9. Knowledge. Yes, i got it.
  10. I want to improve my English. I think what i got from it is beyond my expectation. I like it very much. I think it is a good way to learn english. ( David, this is the only student who disagreed with question No. one)

21. What did you like about using the technology?
  1. Yes, I am glad to use it. It helps me a lot. It is convenient.
  2. It is a good and useful idea.
  3. I think It is a good way to learn english.
  4. It is a very good way to learn English.
  5. I liked the vedioconference about using the technology.
  6. I think it is good for learning spoken English.
  7. We can listen to real English.
  8. It is a very good way to learn English.
  9. Everything.
  10. I like it very much.

22. What were the benefits of using this technology?
  1. It can bring me lots of information and the right pronunciation.
  2. we can talk with a real English-speaking man.
  3. It let me know the really language of foreign.
  4. We can get some information from it.
  5. I have some more chance to speak English.
  6. It will improve our listening and speaking.
  7. We can know more about English words.
  8. We can get information quickly and conveniently.
  9. Learning English.
  10. Using this technology can let us learn the real English and it can make us know each other about the customs and knowledge.

23. What did you not like about the technology?
  1. Sometimes it is very bad. For example, it don't work for a few minutes (this student hates lagging in my end)
  2. The video is not clear. ( He meant the monitor on his desk is not clear)
  3. The chances which we could talk to the teacher were not many. (this student did not get the chance to speak to you. only braver ones got the chance. One of the came to my desk 3 times though i had encouraged them to come. I could have selected some timid ones but time was running out then. :-)
  4. some bad information. ( I guess this student meant porn material from the Network he came across)
  5. I thought the sound is not quite clear.
  6. nothing.
  7. many students, less computers. ( the lab we communicated with you has only one computer as you can see from the webcam )
  8. sometimes it lags , and so we can't hear very well.
  9. Nothing.
  10. I think it is a difficult technology to master and I don't like bad computer.

24. What suggestions do you have for the presenter to make the videoconference better?
  1. I have no idea.
  2. we should make a more wild web live ( David, i did not quite understand him. world web live?)
  3. I feel it is ok.
  4. I don't know now. I will tell you after I think of it. ( Isn't this student an honest student? David ?:-)
  5. I think it is slower on Internet than making it face-to-face.
  6. I suggest it do many effect in video. ( did he mean video quality ? David, most of us believed video quality was superb that day)
  7. Many students could not speak to the teacher abroad. (David, now you know how they were eager to communicate with you. A boy named Dai yong who gave you a hard time as his pronunciation was bad promised to learn how to pronounce correctly so that you will understand him next time. He was persistent that day,though).
  8. ( blank)
  9. I don't know.
  10. I think it is very good videoconference except the bad computer. ( David , he mentioned 'bad computer' twice. I guess he was not satisfied with the computer on the teacher's desk.)

25. how did learning new information in this fashion compared to in-person, in-class presentation?
  1. Learning information is very interesting and helpful.
  2. In this fashion is better than other.
  3. In-person is better.
  4. It is better than in-person,in-class presentation. We can learn more new things.
  5. I will go to the Internet cafe to learn it.
  6. In the class. ( again, misunderstanding of the question)
  7. I learned how to deal with when i or someone angry. ( I don't understand him, do you ,David?)
  8. It is better than learning in-person , in-class presentation. We can learn more new things.
  9. Using computer.
  10. It is a good way.

26. Will you join again another videoconference ESL course if available?
  1. yes.
  2. Yes, I will.
  3. Yes, I will if I have another chance.
  4. No, I will not. ( David, I doubt if this student had followed the question.today, i asked them in class about question No.26, and I found many seemed doubtful about the meaning of the question. I could have explained it before they did the survey )
  5. Yes, i will do my best.
  6. Yes, i will.
  7. Yes.
  8. Yes, I will.
  9. sure.
  10. Yes!

27. General comments?
  1. Learning English in this way is very interesting. Not it can bring a lot of information, but also it make us know how to speak English. When the native speaker tell me something I also follow him. Oh, it is very helpful. By it, I can know how foreigner to speak english, especially he speak in American accent. In a word, it is very helpful.
  2. If want to learn English well, it is a good idea.
  3. I like to learn English and using the technology.
  4. This way of learning English is very efficient.
  5. ( blank)
  6. No opinion.
  7. I think the class was a success.
  8. This way of learning english is very effective.
  9. It is good for learning English.
  10. I think that you are the man who is easy to get along with.I like to speak to you though my oral English is poor. You can reduce my shyness to zero for you are such a good man. I believe that you must be a very good teacher in your college. If possible, I would write emails to you. I also want to get friends with you and your students. I know a little about your hometown but I know a famous basketball team "Lakers of Los Angeles" in your hometown. It is a good team. One is very fat and the other is very thin. I cannot write their names. Well, that is all. I am eager to hear your voice later.

Vance writes, Dec 28, 2001

Yaodong and all,

Thanks very much for sharing with us the results of your survey, taken after our event of December 11, in which Michael and Rif also participated. Thanks for taking the trouble to organize this event. Although we encountered some technical glitches, we achieved postive outcomes in that Webheads pitched in to provide the students involved with interesting and productive experiences online, there were benefits to Arthur, who gained insights on how to treat his Chinese students, and now the survey which has been added to this page

Vance


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Last updated: December 29, 2001 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0