Friday

My second and last day at TESOL. Up early, here breakfast at the hotel, then went to a session by Ellen Rosenfield of UC/Berkeley on "Teaching ITAs to Use Lexical Bundles," where I found myself sitting next to Colleen Meyers, who co-authored by 006 textbook! Then to the EV to volunteer for 2 hours. Next Jennifer Lebedev and I went to the Exhibitors Hall to check out the publishers. I had lunch with Jennifer courtesy of Pearson, and I had the chance to meet Beatrice Mikulecky, author of the ReadingPower series, which I love. So that was really nice. After that a few more sessions ("Decoding What Students Say" and "Functional Tone Choice in Office Hour Simulations") and by then I was feeling sick again and came back to the hotel to rest (and blog). I returned to the CC for one last session on "Exploring Pronunciation CALL Products for Advanced Speakers" and then back to the EV to find Vance, Jeff Nelson (whom I had not met before), Veronica and Tom Leverett.  Vance and Jeff had a reception to attend, so Tom, Veronica and I walked along the river side (there is a big mall-like thing called River Walk that stretches along the banks) to the ferry terminal.  We were going to take the ferry across the river and back, but when we realized we would not be back in time to meet at the restaurant we had chosen, we just walked slowly back and waited for them to return. Aiden joined us. It was a long wait for a table at Mulaté's, a Cajun restaurant across from the CC, and then a long wait for our food, but the Cajun band, La Touché, played wonderful zydeco music while many customers danced, and we were with friends, so the time passed pleasantly. We were almost ready to go when Evelyn caught up with us, so we stayed a while longer, but around 11:00 we finally called it a night (except Evelyn, who was meeting some friends for salsa dancing!).  It's after midnight now. I am being picked up at 7:30 to leave for the airport. Another convention over. See you next year!

Dennis' roses look fabulous at the entrance to the EV!

Nina, Vance, and roses. Thank you, dear Dennis!

Colleen Meyers, co-author of English Communication for ITAs!

Nina, Ibrahamjon and roses

On the elevator: Vance, Jeff Nelson, Veronica...

... and Tom Leverett

Tom, Veronica, River Walk

The Mississippi River!

River boat

Oyster bar with music, skyscrapers

Walking along the river bank

Moored river boat

Dinner venue: Mulaté's

Dancing to zydeco music

La Touché zydeco band

Evelyn finally found us!

Evelyn, Aiden and Veronica at Mulaté's

Nina, Evelyn, Veronica, Vance, Keith, Aiden, Tom

Aiden looking at the almost-full moon

Thursday afternoon and evening

Evelyn Izquierdo and Nina

Jazz band sculpture

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Vance at the Mini Workshop

Aiden Yeh, Convention Center

Claire and Laine, Cochon

Laine, Mary and Dorinda

Jane and gumbo

Dorinda and alligator (yes, really)

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 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 (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