Thursday, January 22, 2009

Live Session - Yahoo Messenger

Yahoo Messenger has been part of the Webheads communication tradition since 2002, and is still used frequently by its members to interact with each other and also to involve students in real communication scenarios with people from all over the globe.

Screen grabs from today's presentation

Today, participants from 5 continent gathered for Michael Coghan's presentation 'Online voice tools for language and literacy'. For those that missed it, or would like to re-live it, the presentation slides, recording and chatlog from this amazing session are available at: http://baw09.pbwiki.com/ymsession

A special thanks to Michael Coghlan who did a great job as always. And as always a huge thanks to Dafne and Teresa.

Kat

11 comments:

Larissa Olesova said...

Michael, Teresa and Dafne,
You did a great job - I am more and more invovled into this online community which is new to me. I only took the online courses or trainings but never participated in this kind of activities. That's all great. Even it was 7AM in the USA, I tried to wake up at 6.30 to login 15 earlier but I felt asleep until 7:00am exactly - shame on me. That's why I missed the beginning of the presentation. But I am glad I stayed on a right track for the whole presentation. I saved all new tools from presentation. They are amazing and I agree that free tools can make difference to our teaching and learning. I am going to incorporate them next week with my students and I will try to post my first experience to the wiki - I would like to use voices for the students' presentations. My online course will start next week on Monday - I can imagine how amazing it will be for my students in Siberia. I am teaching from Indiana and my students are in Siberia. Thanks again!!!

Daf said...

Dear Larissa,

Your message means a lot to us, the BaW team. Our main goal is to motivate participants to try these tools and to use them in their teaching practice.

Keep us posted on your experience :-)

hugs,

Daf

Anonymous said...

Dear Daf, Teresa and Michael,
I'm so grateful for this fantastic opportunity, I repeat this again and again but it's what I'm really feeling. Today's session was the first I was able to attend, everything was new for me and you were so helpful! As regards the session itself, I can't find words to describe. It was so clear and fun!! The singing was incredible. I hope I can incorporate these tools little by little to my teaching and engage my students in a new world for learning. I've created so many folders and files these last days that I can't believe it. Thank you very much for so much effort Hugs, Cristina

Anonymous said...

Today I could join the session in mere textual format only for a couple of minutes. However I could feel the liveliness and vitality. I hope I will get the chance to attend one live session toward the end of the workshop.

kat Urbaniak said...

Medhi, I hope you do manage to join us for a live session. They can be a great experience.

Cristina, I am so glad you are gather lots of potential tools. I think you are really spot on when you say 'incorporate little by little'. It is easy to get overwhelmed with so many great tools, but taking step by step to introduce them to your classroom is a really manageable way of doing it. I am sure your students are in for some great stuff. :-)

Larissa, I agree that free tools can make such a difference to teaching and learning. I look forward to hearing about your experiences.

Kat in chilly Montreal

Unknown said...

Michael, Teresa and Dafne,
Excellent job! The virtual presentation was very practical and useful for ELT.

As a great believer of online voice communications, Michael has given us wonderful online voice-audio tools to use in the classroom . Wimba, Voicethread, Chinswing, Vaestro, Audacity among others. It really was a virtual trip around some elearning tools.

I agree with Cristina, it is convinient for beginners using these tools to start using them one at time, according to the students' needs and to your teaching practice.

I was very pleased to be with you all!

Cheers,
Maria

Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto said...

I loved the presentation, and thought we all showed technical improvement compared to the skype session--we're getting better at mixing voice and chat. Maybe.

I use skype constantly, but had never considered the teaching potential of it or Yahoo Messenger. Very exciting.

I'm just sorry I missed the song at the end, and hope that someone will put a copy of it somewhere...or perhaps those who heard the song could begin our next session with a repeat performance?

Michael said...

Hi Barbara - you can listen to a recording of the song at http://webheadstheme.wikispaces.com/

hala nur said...

Dear Michael
I feel real sad for missing the live session on yahoo. But I listened and watched it yesterday. I felt that the digital divide is really growing between countries. To use online tools the issue of ubiquity is very important for us teachers living in developing countries.
Hala S

webgina said...

Hi Guys,
(better late than never)...
I liked what Michael said about sometimes it is better to have just the voice (and not all the "razzle dazzle" of all the media at once.
I think that listening to just voice requires a different set of skills (than when we have picture or other visuals to help us), and also we are engaged differently with the material when we don't have so much other (potentially) distracting stuff going on.
Great session--sorry I missed it "live."
Gina

ligia said...

As Michael said: ".. all is about creating..." The voice discussion is also more interesting than written messages becuse both the learner and the teacher feels in a real contact and allows a more dinamic and productive comunication. I was surprised with the use of asynchronous voice boards, because they stablish a real contact thta make students feel the teacher is there among a low anxiety environment