8. Social Networking and AVEALMEC

AVEALMEC stands for Asociación Venezolana para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje de Lenguas Mediados por (el) Computador, which is Venezuelan Association of Computer Mediated Language Learning and Teaching. The purpose of this association is mainly to group teachers, students and researchers from all over the world, who share the field of education and ICT learning. It was founded in 2007 by a group of English teachers interested in integrating new technologies to their language classrooms and in creating a community of ICT in ELT.

A year after the creation of AVEALMEC, ARCALL (Argentinian Computer-Assisted Language Learning Association) was founded in Argentina. They both share the same goals and, in fact, they organized together the Social Networking 2009 Conference event in November in order to promote the use of information and communication technologies in English classrooms, and also to encourage teachers to join communities of practice in their field. In this event, speakers from all over the world –including Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, USA, UK, Spain, Israel, United Arabic Emirates and Cyprus– shared their experience on social networking and language teaching.

I have to say that these virtual conferences were very interesting, and I learned many new ways of integrating technology into my language classroom. They were twelve conferences on different topics such as Personal Learning Environments, Social Networking for Professional Development, Communities of Educators, Creating Your Own Network, among others. My favorite one was Webheads in Action, which joined three experienced English teachers to describe this online community and their work. I will definitely become a member in January!

This event brought to us English teachers many concepts and ideas to apply in our own communities and especially in our classrooms. It is important to mention that hundreds of participants were joined together by a common purpose: exchange information, learn and share knowledge with their peers in the same field.

The recordings of these virtual conferences are still available on AVEALMEC's blog. A WiZiQ account is needed to watch them. If you do not have one yet, click here.

I will be summarizing the content of some of the conferences for you to get an idea, watch the ones that you find interesting and leave your comments here.

Before and After Twitter: Personal Learning Environments
By Graham Stanley from British Council

"The rise of Twitter and other Web 2.0/social networking tools has made it easier for teachers to manage their own learning and professional development, and communicate with others in the process" Graham Stanley

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system that helps people take control of and manage their own learning. In this e-conference, Professor Stanley states that Twitter is one of these new personal learning environments. According to him, Twitter has replaced blogging since it connects you with other people on a regular basis: “Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you are doing”.

By using Twitter as a learning tool, you can connect to your community, ask questions and receive answers, which for language teachers, for instance, is very difficult to do otherwise. Twitter is not a chat; nevertheless it can be used for:

- receiving information,

-getting useful links,

-announcing events,

-self-promotion,

-conversations, and

-pointless chats, which compose 40% of all tweets.

If you want to enjoy Twitter and try it as your personal learning environment, create your account at Twitter.com. However, Professor Stanley warns that it has to be turned off from time to time, since “it sucks time away from other things.” So be careful and don’t get too excited with it!

Flickr-Design that Connects
By Carla Arena

"It's a hub for educational experiments, networking and visually appealing inspiration to any educator" Carla Arena

Flickr is not just a photo sharing space. An image can say more than a thousand words, thus, it shows who you are. It is a technological platform to connect people. Professor Arenas states that if you share a photo a day, you are creating a story and showing others who you are, since you learn a lot through pictures.

Flickr also provides a space to connect through mail and conversations, which many others can join. Once you enter the platform, you can create your own group and see pictures from all over the world, create galleries and exhibitions, talk to others about your and their images, building in this way an intercultural mosaic.

Flickr is a substitute for old flashcards. You can enhance your students’ learning by creating a gallery, and encourage students to label things in pictures or make photo show notes and write about their images. They can share, send or embed slide shows; create pop art posts, mosaics, magazine covers, party invitations, calendars, short videos, and many more. Professor Arenas proposes that you may even help your students to develop critical thinking through pictures.

Create your account at Flickr.com today and start connecting with other educators to find new ways of enhancing your students’ learning.

Webheads in Action
By Verschoor, Izquierdo and Cruvinel

Webheads in Action is a community of practice online. The purpose of this community is “to help learning professionals understand the potential benefits of the appropriate integration of available Internet technologies into their teaching practice, by first experimenting and learning in a hands-on, low-risk online environment before engaging their own learners.” It was created in 1997/1998 by Vance Stevens in Abu Dhabi, Maggi Doty in Germany and Michael Coghlan in Australia, for ESL learners and facilitators as a student-teacher community. It has 808 members, mostly English teachers who use ICT in ELT. They “explore the Web communication tools and share the best ways of using them in their teaching practice, engage with students in virtual classes, collaborate on projects and participate in conferences as audience and presenters”. It is also worth mentioning that they are all geographically apart.

Webheads are people in different fields that like technology and to share. They are people from all over the world (which implies diviersity –people from Ukraine, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Germany, Sudan, Indonesia, among others are members) who are always willing to help you. They are dedicated, willing to learn/help, cooperative, collaborative, e-literates, willing to lead, and many, many more other features that make them sort of “online heroes”. They even have their own song called “A Webheads Anthem”.

Once you are part of this community, you can practice Web tools and teaching resources, you will have continuous feedback, you can join collaborative and multi-cultural projects, you will have appreciation, respect, friendship… The benefits of joining this community seem to be endless:

-learning from different countries

-discussing relevant topics to the ELT field

-making new friends

-developing thinking skills

-exploring ICT on ELT

-increasing vocabulary

-promoting cooperative learning

-practicing English as a second/foreign language

-strengthening peer interaction

-doing research

-discovering new Web tools

-improving reading and writing skills

Here you have two examples of their work: international project, learning about different education communities

This Webinar is just an invitation to join the community and benefit from all the features it offers. So, if you want to have friends around the world, bring new things to your classroom and enjoy much more than a meaningful experience, do not hesitate and visit the Community Website, their Yahoo Group or the Electronic Village Online.

If you are interested in watching these video conferences, just click on the following link (remember that you will have to create a WiZiQ accont, if you do not have one already)
http://avealmec.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html