Friday, March 18, 2011

Thursday photos

Tom Robb and Steve Sharp at the EV

Nina and Rock Rosenberg at the EV

EV Fair

EV Fair

With Jennifer Lebedev at EV

Vance Stevens, Mary Hillis, Jane Petring and Nina Liakos

Looking down at the Exhibitors' Hall

Warehouse District street art

Greeters and visitors at the EV

Thursday (written on Friday)

I actually did try to post yesterday, but there was an error #!&*# and everything was lost. :-(

I started out the day with a 2-hour stint at the EV as a greeter, my favorite role there because it puts me right in the path of webheads and others entering the room.  I get to reconnect with a lot of people that way. After that I came back to the hotel (happily just 3 minutes' walk from the Convention Center) to pick up Dennis' beautiful red roses.  I took the roses, in their box, back to the CC just in time for Evelyn Izquierdo's presentation on "Powerful Web 2.0 Tools for the ELT Classroom"--only Evelyn was not there! Jane Petring and I waited for a while and then went down the hall to see fellow webhead Laine Marshall present "Designing Successful Projects for ELLS with Limited/Interrupted Education". When that was finished I checked back at Evelyn's room to find that she had arrived and was giving her presentation as best she could with a frozen computer (Murphy's Law)! It was the first time for me to meet Evelyn f2f and it was a special pleasure because I learned so much from her in this year's EVO session, "Podcasting for the ESL-EFL Classroom".

After the presentation, Evelyn and I went with Vance looking for a sandwich shop. It turned out to be a kind of serial lunch. Vance got his sandwich and had to race back to the CC for a 1:00 session. I got my sandwich (grilled cheese on white--New Orleans is NOT a good town for vegetarians!) and ate it while Evelyn waited for her sandwich, which finally arrived when I had finished mine.

The weather is just beautiful, in the low eighties F and sunny, so it was lovely to be outside.

At 2:00 Veronica and I went to Claire's session on "Building the Right Scaffolding for Writing", which was really more on her project for an ESL online writing lab, ESLWOW (handout at http://edvista.com/claire/pres/scaffolding.html ).

Following that at 3:00 we both had tickets to Vance Stevens' Mini-Workshop at the EV, "Collaborative Writing Using Google Docs and Tagging in Delicious."  This was very useful because I learned how to publish a google doc and how to search Delicious for other people's bookmarks, features I was unaware of although I have been using both applications for several years.

I was not feeling well, so I came back to the room to rest a bit before dinner but made the mistake of turning on my computer, so I did not rest, blogged instead but as I mentioned above lost the post anyway. Went back to the CALL-IS business meeting and then a group of webhead women (Claire, Veronica, Jane, Laine, Mary and I) and 1 friend (Dorinda) made use of a reservation at Cochon, a Cajun restaurant around the corner from the Springhill Suites. Again, not a stellar choice for a vegetarian (LOTS of pork, some seafood) but the atmosphere was great, the service attentive if slow, and the food delicious (I had a baked potato and a salad and shared a decadent double chocolate pudding cake). At ten, straight back to the hotel and slept nine hours.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Thursday and Ladies' Night

This was my first full day in New Orleans.It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day--particularly appreciated by someone from the frozen north;-)
It started with the plenary from Alistair Pennycook who reminded us that there are many varieties of English, and that there are some particularly interesting local variations on English, some of them originating in Australia, and that English is really a "bastard" language. It all makes it very difficult to define what English is and emphasizes the need for context in understanding the local variations that occur.
Volunteering at the Electronic Village is always interesting and a good way to meet up with old friends and meeting new ones.
In the afternoon, Claire Braden-Sisken presented on her project--putting writing assignments online--and the discussion revolved around what can and cannot realistically be accomplished with computers. The concensus is that human tutors are needed to provide appropriate feedback for some, particularly higher order, assignments.
After that came a workshop with Vance Stevens; we worked on developing google docs and putting them on the web. It was a very useful, hands-on demonstration. By the way, Vance looks good in a suit!
Vance during his presentation

We were lucky to get a reservation for La Cochon--it is St. Patrick's Day and New Orleans is in a party mood.  Claire, Nina, Laine, Mary, Dorinda, Jane and I were the ones who turned up for dinner--it turned out to be a ladies' night apart from a cameo appearance by Tom Robb who saw us in the restaurant.
Laine, Mary and Dorinda--red-eyed devils!     

Claire studying the menu.

Jane, Veronica, & Nina.


I'm off to read the program booklet to see what's on offer for tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Wednesday (Nina)

I'm in New Orleans!

After teaching my pronunciation class this morning from 10 - 11:30, I headed for BWI Airport with my colleague Ray. Our flight left at 2:29 p.m., and we actually landed in New Orleans early (about 3:50 pm local time, which is an hour behind our home time of Eastern Daylight Savings Time).  There were many TESOLers on the flight, including four of us from the Maryland English Institute (MEI) and several others whom I know from the DC area.

I took the airport shuttle van to the Springhill Suites on St. Joseph Street, where I am sharing a very nice room with webhead Veronica Baig from Alberta CA.  Veronica was already there when I checked in, so as soon as I threw my things in a drawer we walked (about 3 minutes) to the Convention Center. I registered and collected my program book, convention bag and EV schedule. Then we went in to hear the rest of the opening plenary session, Thelma Melendez, but she was talking about the new K-12 law in the U.S., so neither of us was that interested. Instead, we went looking for the Electronic Village (EV). We finally found it on the second floor, far, far away! We found Andy Bowman and Christine Bauer-Ramazani and some other people whom I did not know. Everything looked ready to go. Andy said they had been there three days, setting it all up.

Vance, Veronica, and me outside the Convention Center



It was colder than I had anticipated. 
Veronica and Vance


Aiden and me
No one else had signed up to go to dinner with us, so we were about to go with two friends of mine when we ran into Aiden and Vance, and the four of us ended up walking to the French Quarter (in a very circuitous way, checking various restaurants' menus and wait times), where we finally ate at Pierre Maspero's restaurant (at least I think that was the name of it). The food (mine, at least) was delicious.  I ordered crabcakes, which were very different from Maryland crabcakes but really tasty, and shared a bread pudding with Aiden. Yum! We had a lovely time, and then Vance walked Veronica and me back to the Springhill Suites.
Veronica and Vance in duplicate

Now it's after 11 pm and I am volunteering at the EV at 8 tomorrow morning, so I think I had better get some sleep. Blogger has changed its image procedures and I can't seem to get the pictures where and how I want them, but frankly, I am too tired to fool with them anymore!  Goodnight.

Waiting to be seated at the restaurant

Sunday, March 6, 2011

How to participate virtually

Reposted from our Yahoo Group (courtesy of Chris Sauer):


Hey folks!

We'll be webcasting several sessions from the Electronic Village and Academic sessions in New Orleans. Visit http://www.call-is.org/info/course/view.php?id=22 to view the calendar of webcasts and instructions on how to attend. Please pass the link on to others who might be interested in participating.

Chris

CALL-IS Webcast lead

Creating the Blog

Creating this blog has been on my to-do list for a while. I am not sure how I became the de facto wiki-and-blog-creator for webheads at TESOL Conventions, but somehow I did.  You can check out previous versions:

There is also a kind of "planning wiki" for this year's Convention. That site is designed for attendees and includes contact information, webheads' presentations information, a roommate search page and webheads dinners.  If you are going to New Orleans, please join the wiki and the blog. If you are staying home, then the blog is for you.