Webinar

I attended a webinar which was on a learning session made with Elluminate. Some students were from Chinese universities (Sichuan, Liaoning and Henan universities) and some others were from Australia (Victoria University). I found it quite interesting.

The presenter was Carolyn Woodley. She explains how the project went on. Students were attending to Elluminate sessions. She tells us that students had four times one-hour Global English Corner sessions. They discussed about many subjects such as food and culture. Food was their favourite topic. Moreover, Chinese students had to get involved into a blog project. This was the following of the weekly conversation they had with Australian students. I liked the idea of holding this blog. With it, students can share what they learned during their talking session with Australian students. They can comment their friends’ posts and add things related to their experience.

A survey was conducted at the end of this project and students seem to be pleased with what they’ve done. Their level of English improved a lot (listening and speaking skills) and they made friends abroad. Furthermore, they learned a lot of things about a new culture. For a lot of them, working with this type of technology and sharing with someone coming from another country was new.

I think that this was a good project. As a future English teacher, I would like to try to make one like this with my students. What makes me hesitated to try it is that, even though students learn a lot from it and enjoy it, technology is not always a 100% reliable. In the webinar that Carolyn Woodley did, she said that some problems encountered were linked to technology. The Internet connection was very slow for Chinese students; it was too slow to be able to use videos. Furthermore, setting up audio was difficult for students. Moreover, having students from two different countries to communicate together at the same time was difficult because of the time difference. To avoid this, I would probably try to put my students in touch with English students from a close country (e.g. Ontario). I would also make sure that I can have a good Internet connection to be able to have students make a video conversation with their correspondent.

This project is fun to do and kids learn a lot from all, all you need is patience and a lot of planning and testing to make sure that everything will work properly.

This is where I found the webinar https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2011-08-11.1535.M.24C65BB208C5945D22D62D8826C430.vcr&sid=45