Proposed chapter on Online Distance Training for ESL/EFL teachers: Case Study of a Community of Practice and its Distributed Learning Network

Have you ever submitted a proposal for something and sent it off and then forgot where you'd put it, so when your proposal was accepted and it came time to act on it, you couldn't retrieve it or remember exactly what you had proposed?

I have just submitted a proposal for a chapter which might appear in a book on teaching ESL online, assuming the book proposal itself is accepted.

In writing the proposal I realized that it answers succinctly in 300 words what people frequently ask me, how did Webheads come about, and what is Webheads anyway, and how does it fit into a framework of professional development? I have referred to this 'fit' as 'teacher autonomy' in this post here, for example, and also in the Slideshare presentation embedded below.

So here's the proposal. It would be useful if it attracted feedback, but apart from that, since it's here, I'll be able to retrieve and remember it later, and in case anyone asks me again about Webheads, this will be a convenient place to point them.

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Webheads started in 1998 as an online community of EFL students and teachers learning together how technology facilitates language learning through computer-mediated communication. By around the turn of the century it was being dominated by teaching practitioners who in 2002 came to see themselves as a community of practice (CoP) known as Webheads in Action (WiA). As communication over the Internet expanded rapidly into voice and video, and with Web 2.0 making it possible for many users to create content online and share it in cyberspaces promoting social networking, many such communities arose and began overlapping in multiple memberships. This paper explores the concepts of groups, communities, and networks, and relates how WiA evolved from a group to a community (specifically, a CoP), and how this CoP developed contacts with others to function as part of a much wider distributed learning network (DLN) of teachers training one another.

The case of WiA models professional development through connectivism. At each node in the DLN, there is a person who is passionate and knowledgeable (and wants to learn more) about some aspect of teaching through technology. Collectively the nodes comprise the knowledge-base to which each member in each overlapping community has access. Connectivism provides a framework by which the development of pathways of access to that information is of primary importance to the information itself. Professional development then becomes a matter of educators blazing pathways to create channels through which each other's knowledge can be shared and made to flow in all directions, creating a dynamic system conducive to informal, just-in-time learning.

This paper describes how members of WiA utilize such connections to maintain conversations that enable everyone to learn about and practice with latest innovations in educational technology, and contribute to innovative and transformative teaching practices.

Let's start with teacher autonomy: Multiliteracies and Lifelong Learning

View more presentations from vances.

SpeedLifing

Webheads in action have once again invented an online phenomenon. SpeedLifing is an offshoot of SpeedGeeking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Geeking, which Kim Cofino and Jeff Utecht mentioned in their excellent presentation at WiAOC http://webheadsinaction.org/node/364, and in this blog post: http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2009/04/05/take-your-faculty-speedgeeking/

This got Webheads thinking we could try the technique, so we decided to do it in Elluminate http://tinyurl.com/y3eh starting at 13:00 GMT June 14, 2009. There's more information at our wiki http://wiaoc09.pbworks.com/SpeedGeeking

SpeedGeeking is where a lot of participants show up and move at a signal from one presentation to another. The presenters keep repeating their presentations. In Online SpeedGeeking as Webheads will attempt it we will rotate presentations through our Elluminate presentation room at http://tinyurl.com/y3eh. Elluminate has a countdown timer. We'll set it to countdown 5 minutes. The SpeedGeeker's task is to present cogently and concisely on a topic of choice (non-commercial of course :-) in just 5 minutes. Anyone can present. Scope of topic is up to individual presenters, as long as the topic is covered in 5 min. Anyone interested can sign up at the wiki.

At our usual Webheads Sunday noon GMT chat on May 31 , someone had some questions about Second Life, so we decided to meet in SL the following week June 7

It gradually dawned on us, why not try a similar format in SL? We put the event down on our wiki page and invited people to show us their favorite places there, with the caveat that each tour would last 5 or ten minutes. We thought we could get people into SL, exchange friendships, and teleport each other from place to place. And guess what? It worked, and it was F.U.N.

On the day of the event, we had only two presenters who had signed up.

• 13:00 GMT, Webhead Link (Vance),
  Landmark to be visited: Webheads in Action, EduNation III (72, 36, 21)
• Next up: Ruta Maya, Mexico, Nina Liakos/Zaytsev

But it turned out that a lot of webheads appeared at http://tappedin.org/ between noon and 13:00 expecting the event to take place.

Doris Molero had come online for another reason and wanted take some pictures of me in Second Life to accompany an interview that she had conducted (and which I blogged here: http://tinyurl.com/090522molero). I said fine but in return she had to show us her favorite places in Second Life.

She took us to the Great Wall of Mao (85, 85, 36) and then to a Japanese village with the name Kansai in it (looking for it now, can't seem to relocate it, one of many builds containing the name Kansai). In Kansai Doris found a lovely kimono but the guys in the group could find no clothes, so we went off in search of men's clothing elsewhere, and ended up at Amity Island (116, 95, 23).

By then we had attracted a crowd, including Nina who conducted us to Ruta Maya, Mexico 2 (187, 25, 21). This turned out to be a charming place where we could 'rent' horses (for free) by touching them and then 'wearing' them. So we rode horses around the build, the beach, and the old ruins there.

The charm was somewhat compromised by a villain who appeared by name of Lucianopt Vita. This character first disrupted our outing with a confusing holodeck which scattered our avatars. He followed us to the ruins where he created storms and grey-outs, and then wrought a tornado that blew trees and telephone poles crashing around us. He can be seen in the picture above conjuring up his next episode. (I wonder if it was he who killed Mike Marzio's horse?)

Fortunately no one got hurt and we all escaped to Webheads Headquarters at EduNation III (72, 36, 21). There the tour ended. But it was interesting, all aboard enjoyed it, and we must do it again sometime.

Vance is interviewed by Doris Molero

On May 22 at the start of the recent Webheads in Action Online Convergence, I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Doris Molero, who had requested an interview as a part of a project for her degree program. Doris was under close time constraints, but with WiAOC09 close on our heels, I was too. The constraints appeared so insurmountable that I suggested Doris conduct the interview as a session of WiAOC. She agreed and set up an event at http://wiaoc09.pbworks.com/May22. It happened to be the second event in the 74 hour online conference, and it was recorded here: http://worldbridges.info/wiaoc09/audio/WiAOC09-May22-0200GMT.mp3 (link updated Aug 2009)

A minor hiccup however was that Doris had connectivity problems right at that time and did not appear for the interview. Jeff Lebow was there as were some stragglers from Doug Symington's EdTech brainstorm just ended. Afterwards Jeff remarked that I had done a good job at interviewing myself. I can only assume he was being complimentary.

Meanwhile, Doris sent me a pared-down version of her original 30 questions and on a car journey between Abu Dhabi and the dive spots on the east coast of the UAE I managed to address them in writing. Here then is the somewhat delayed interview between me and Doris Molero, a glimpse at how it might have gone on May 22 :-)


Doris: What’s your opinion about teaching English as a foreign language in the university?

Vance: It’s been a great career for me. Lots of travel opportunities and good vacations, pays the bills while allowing me to interact with a great community of online educators. I like working with language learners.

2. What do you think about teaching a second language with the help of the Internet and computers?

Language is about communication. For most people, there is no purpose to learning a language apart from a desire to communicate in it (not counting theoretical linguists who might wish to study a language for other purposes). Since this is most people's goal, it is awkward and inefficient to study a language in a context where communication is not done purposefully. By purposeful, I do not include exercises that a student might do on instructions of a teacher which put the student in communication only with the teacher. Communication with others in the class is also possible but I have been a language learner in classrooms where the teachers did not exploit this potential, dominated the class with student to teacher interaction, and spent class time on exercises with printed materials which were not at all communicative.

Properly used, the internet opens a world of communication to language learners. They can blog and get comments, they can collaborate with others worldwide, they can engage in live voice conversations, and do constructive language play with real people behind avatars in Second Life (just as a few examples). No student needs to study language in isolation any longer. Teachers who have developed skills in productive use of Web 2.0 can model use of appropriate tools with their students and put them in touch with language learners in collaborative projects. Teachers who reflect on the results of such projects report remarkable gains in motivation to write and hone ideas for peer critique. Most importantly language learning becomes FUN and meaningful for all concerned. Communication is clearly restored as the true purpose of learning the language in the first place.

3. How have your students changed compared to the ones you used to have when you first started teaching?

I started teaching in the mid 1970’s and everyone has changed. I would say that the most significant recent changes, apart from going from questioning the efficacy of using computers in language learning to general acceptance of technology in all aspects of life, have to do with the ubiquity of mobile technologies, especially with younger people including students down to the K-12 level, and the integration of social networking into transactions ranging from making purchases on Amazon and eBay through to so many people, especially students, congregating on Facebook and in other socially networked spaces. These developments are poised to make even more significant impacts on our profession. I have suggested that CALL is becoming an outmoded acronym. These days I encourage people to think SMALL (social media assisted language learning).

4. What does it take to be multiliterate? Are you multiliterate? Why do you think so?

Multiliterate means to be conversant with media as it develops in conjunction with technology. It means to be able to communicate appropriately in these media, that is to know what multimedia tools are available and how to use them, as well as to be able to search and access the communications of others in their various forms of technological enhancement. I teach courses in multiliteracies so I feel that I am moderately multiliterate myself and generally aware of the issues (see http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/ for a last rendition of the course, and http://multiliteracies.ning.com/ for the Ning).

5. In your opinion, do you think that just using a textbook, a workbook and an audio program is enough to teach a second language at university level these days?

It could be enough depending on the motivation of the students to learn. I have met many people while traveling in foreign countries who had used such materials to achieve some competence in English and were grateful for the opportunity to meet a foreigner and have the chance to put their skills to use. However, as noted in question 2, the ability to learn a language well through communication with other learners and native speakers online increases the scope for language learning.

6. What do you do to teach the following skills: listening, reading, writing, critical thinking and speaking to your EFL students?

I taught EFL for 20 years but switched to computing and software development in 1995, so I can’t speak first hand about teaching EFL in the past decade. I have been working in teacher training since that time (online through webheads and other communities and networks) so I am aware of what others are doing. These people are blogging their experiences so my answer here would be to review their blogs and recorded experiences, but as the question relates to my personal experiences in EFL, I am not currently working specifically in that area.

7. What differences do you find between the traditional paper and pencil class and the class that integrated Web 2.0 tools?

These differences are those noted in my response to question 2.

8. What kind of text do you and your students use in your classes?

We use texts teaching computing written in-house by computing faculty.

9. How does participating in a community of learning help to learn more?

Peers in the community model the most productive behaviors to one another toward reaching the shared goals. They scaffold one another, support one another in collaborative projects, feed back to one another, provide encouragement, answer questions on a just-in-time basis, and provide a context for informal, social learning to take place. More importantly each ‘node’ in the network is connected with its own locus of other nodes, with the result that the knowledge contained in any one node is accessible throughout the connected networks to all the other nodes. In connectivist terms, knowledge can be defined not as what one possesses within one’s mind or the walls of one’s library, but in terms of ‘the pipes’ or how successfully one is able to nurture and access the nodes in the extended network. The knowledge contained in the network is the sum of its parts, and to be knowledgeable in multiliterate terms means to be able to incorporate this knowledge into one’s own Personal Learning Environment or Network.

10. How should we evaluate when we integrate web tools into the class?

This is a very good question, and my instinct is to say NOT how we evaluate traditional learning. To examine how we might evaluate alternatively, I refer to my answer in question 3, think SMALL. Techniques are evolving for measuring trust on the Internet. Examples are found in Google’s predominant algorithm for search, whereby trust is measured by calculating links from other trusted sites. E-bay, Amazon, and Couch Surfing all have trust systems set up whereby users rank each other according to expected performance. A system has been proposed for enhancing internet security whereby users might have a way of seeing who else has installed software that’s about to install on their machines as a means to helping them decide if they should authorize it (the information would come from tracking choices made by users as each made the choice individually). I think that these techniques could be adapted to pedagogical evaluation systems, whereby users were ranked on the quantity and quality of comments on their blog postings, for example, on measures relating to download and feedback on their podcasts, how viral their uploads to YouTube were, and other peer measures utilizing features of these so-called ‘trust’ systems.

11. What do you think about using project based approach as a learning tool to validate what has been learned in class?

Projects are the only valid thing to evaluate in a system described above. There would be little of this kind of feedback generated by user responses to a multiple choice test, these tests being designed solely for student-teacher interactions, nothing more. In a world where we are all connected to one another, peer evaluation, both by peers who knew and those who did not know the student in question, could become part of the evaluation matrix. Project based learning also lends itself to students' creating digital portfolios of inter-related artifacts which could be evaluated as yet another measure. These methods might produce a mindset whereby the answer to a question on history might not necessarily be 1492 (though a student could look that up if the exact date were required; as opposed to having memorized it) but something along the lines of, let’s see, Columbus was sent on a voyage of discovery by Ferdinand and Isabella, who at about that time ejected the Moors from Spain, so this would have been toward the end of the 15^th century …

12. What do you think should be the role of the teacher that integrates web 2.0 tools into his or her classes?

I like what I hear from teachers who successfully integrate interactive whiteboards in their classes. What works, I understand, is for the teacher to move to the back of the room and guide the students in turn taking at the IWB. Similarly with Web 2.0 the paradigm of learning has to change. In writing that last sentence I changed what I had originally written to replace ‘teaching' with ‘learning’. The role of the teacher is to not teach, but to become a master learner who is simply the model for how everyone in that class learns. With regard to language teaching, the ‘teacher’ is a language informant in that the teacher ‘knows’ what is accepted as correct language, and the teacher can facilitate the learning process. But the idea that anyone can ‘teach’ a language is a spurious one beyond the most rudimentary levels. Language has to be learned; it can’t be taught. What we still call a teacher is actually someone who is more experienced in learning and who can model tricks and tips for students to apply to their own learning. This is where web 2. 0 fits perfectly with this conception of the role of guide on the side facilitator of learning in a classroom. Web 2.0 tools put control in the power of learners, or anyone who uses them. They enable users to communicate online, to record to online spaces, and to tag their artifacts so that others can find or stumble on them. They are ideal tools for constructivist, connectivist learning environments. The role of the teacher in such an environment is to introduce them to students, model appropriate uses, suggest or help learners conceive of ways the tools might be used in collaborative language development, and then step to the back of the room and let the learners get on with it.

13. What do you think should be added or changed in the EFL class in the university?

What is generally needed is for teachers steeped in traditional ways of learning, who have never had the new tools modeled for them, to become first aware of the tools available, and then to form communities where they can see and experience the tools modeled so that they can learn which ones are effective with each other. Only then will they be tentatively in a position to try some of the tools out on their own students.

The fact that this process is not a straightforward one is its biggest drawback. Some awareness of a number of fundamental paradigm shifts is required. I have elsewhere set out ten or 12 of these and many have been covered here (see http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2009/03/celebrating-25-years-of-call-forging.html). Essentially they revolved around a fundamental underpinning of multiliteracies, that the way that people communicate online is becoming less arbitrated and more populist. It comes down to how readily people can accept that people on the Internet will regulate one another, so that it becomes possible for example to produce an encyclopedia (for free!) that anyone can write on that is more comprehensive, more current, and arguably of better quality than a very expensive and ecologically unfriendly one produced through the tradition publishing process. Not until this essential concept is grasped, accepted, and understood, can one make sense of the rest of it.

So the people who need to be reached are those who have not yet grasped a functional conception of the socializing and interconnectivist forces at play in an appropriately configured learning network. This is where the concept of change agency becomes crucial. Teachers already attuned to the role of multiliteracies in 21^st century learning have crossed a rubicon and must build bridges to those still on the other side. This is difficult. Those on the left bank, as in the one left behind, are not convinced that there is anything better on the right bank, and think they are being talked down to when those on the right try and explain why this is the ‘right’ place to be. It makes little sense to someone who feels the left bank has been perfectly fine for their entire teaching careers to go to the trouble to move off that spot for something that might be just a passing fad.

There are still people whom I work with who tell me they will never blog, and wonder how anyone could be so self-absorbed. Many (sometimes the same people) will tell you that the blogs they’ve read are just nonsensical journals, not for serious readers. I came upon a post on a mailing list the other day that argued that we should carefully consider how we use computers in teaching because learning is social and computers are isolating. Clearly the author of that post is broadcasting ‘knowingly’ from the ‘left’ bank.

There is also an interesting bit of research that suggests that people who are incompetent are blithely unaware of how incompetent they are (not meaning to question anyone's competence in the present instance, concerning colleagues I don't even know - just that this is an interesting bit of research: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/011800hth-behavior-incompetents.html).

But what I have just written is anathema to change agency. Successful change agents do not belittle the shortcomings of others or, more importantly, appear to (I didn’t mean to just then; I might have appeared to - anyway the incompetent could be me, or any reader of this blog, blissfully unaware of course :-). Change agents need to start by forming cooperative partnerships with peers who want to learn. The change that’s needed in teaching programs is that these partnerships need to be somehow encouraged.

Thank you to Doris Molero for giving me the opportunity to post this interview here and link it from WiAOC09. The tiny url for this post is http://tinyurl.com/090522molero

Countdown to 3rd bi-annual WiAOC May 22-24, 2009

Webheads have been busy piling on the web artifacts for the upcoming 3rd biannual Webheads in Action Online (un)Convergence. The WiAOC site since 2005 has been http://wiaoc.org but links point to our current social network portals:

• http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/
• http://wiaoc09.pbwiki.com/
• and the schedule of events at: http://wiaoc09.pbwiki.com/schedule
• text chat: http://webheadsinaction.org/chat
  

Planning under way ...
From WiAOC planning session April 26, 2009 hosted by Jeff Lebow at Worldbridges on http://webheadsinaction.org/



Community pitching in ...
From Minhaaj http://www.archive.org/details/WiaocPromo, almost ready for prime time, needs a few additional keynote speakers added ...

LearnTrends in Earth Day April 22, 2009

I needed a place to send people so I could explain what's going on here, and this was it. I was feeling like I had a lot of virtual balls in the air, like silicon sparklers being juggled in a holodeck in Second Life.

I agreed to participate in the LearnTrends conversation being sustained online for 24 hours April 21-22 by Jay Cross and friends. Jay is known for his Internet Time blog http://www.internettime.com/ and books/writings on social and informal learning. The event is based at the Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation Ning: http://learntrends.ning.com/page/april-2009-event or http://bit.ly/46G1Om. Jay said he wanted to feature webheads in this program so he gave us three hours, 1000 to 1300 GMT on April 22nd.
Meanwhile adjustments and tweaks were being made impacting plans I was making for use of this time, but when I saw that happening I managed to lock down 10:30 GMT to 11:30 GMT on the schedule here: http://learntrends.ning.com/page/april-2009-event.

The conversations were held in Elluminate: http://bit.ly/WPKGi. The idea was to stimulate conversations by pulling together voices, with a chorus joining in from around the world. It was hyped to be informal, no slides, or maybe just a few. One of Jay's ideas was to have a web tour up showing a Twitter feed aggregated on #learntrends. That could be F.U.N. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=@learntrends

The times I selected coincided with a second 24 hour conversation about Earth Day, being celebrated by the webcasters at Earthbridges all day April 22nd and streamed out on http://earthbridges.net/live. I managed to get Webheads down on the schedule here http://earthbridges.wikispaces.com/Earth+Day+2009 from 10:00 to noon GMT.

Meanwhile a third element was put in juggling motion when I informed student groups at Petroleum Institute where I work, that they could join in as part of their own Earthday celebrations. So a conversation with students at the PI about our environment has become a recorded part of the LearnTrends event, and was streamed worldwide live, as it happened.

And here's what was expected to happen ... this is what I wrote prior to the event, to help with planning ...

By 10:00 GMT I will go to a classroom at PI where I will likely be all alone at first, and and I will log on to Elluminate at http://bit.ly/WPKGi. There is no Skype at PI so I will be in the Elluminate chat and voice room, and in the chat room at http://earthbridges.net/live. I will also be checking Twitter, which you can follow at http://twitter.com/vances.

Jose Rodriguez and/or Doug Symington have agreed that at least one of them would be there to stream on http://earthbridges.net/live (thanks guys!! indefatigable!)

At 10:30 GMT, Sanja Bozinovic intends to bring 5 high school students (not sure from where in the world) to Elluminate.

At around 11:00 GMT some students from the PI might appear. We'll continue the conversation and stream. Michael Coghlan has also promised to be in the area.

Meanwhile in the real world, Dr. Nadia Al Hasani, director of the women's campus at Petroleum Institute dropped by to see what was going on and had an online conversation with Doris Molero, who showed her a social networking site she had created for engineering students in Venezuela. Of course, Dr. Nadia brought along a photographer:

The event was also mentioned afterward at the Petroleum Institute website. I'm not sure how long these links will remain valid, but for what they're worth:

• Latest News: http://www.pi.ac.ae/arzanah/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=1&Itemid=58
• PDF: http://www.pi.ac.ae/arzanah/index.php?view=article&catid=1%3Alatest-news&id=126%3Awatch-your-step-earth-day-2009&format=pdf&option=com_content&Itemid=58
  

At 11:30 we go to the next item in the program at LearnTrends, whose schedule is here: http://learntrends.ning.com/page/april-2009-event

I will continue as moderator of LearnTrends events until 13:00 GMT.

I'll report how it came out here. However it comes out, it should be F.U.N. All are welcome.

Recordings of the sessions from both LearnTrends and Earthcast09 will be linked from here when recordings are available (audio being edited, renderings forthcoming)

• Earthbridges audio starts at minute 23 at this URL (I am told): http://samlab.com/earthcast09/earthcast09.unconf05_Vance23.mp3
  
• LearnTrends audio is here http://learntrends.ning.com/page/april-2009-video-page - scroll down to "Earthday webcasters with Webhead Vance Stevens" or directly download from http://www.skillcasts.com/learntrends/LT14-webheads.mp4
  
• Learntrends is no longer being supported with money paid over to Ning Corp. in 2012, so on Jan 1, 2012 I uploaded the MP4 to  http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com/entry/index/2012-01-01T02_26_35-08_00

Prensky on Interactive Whiteboards, should teachers be 'allowed' to use them?

A comment I made on Twitter raised a small flurry of tweets recently. I had been watching the interview of Marc Prensky by Gavin Dudeney here: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009/sessions/62/q-marc-prensky following Prensky's plenary at the 2009 IATEFL conference. I was multitasking at the time but I came alert when Prensky said that we shouldn't let teachers use interactive whiteboards, they should be the province of the students. Wishing to share the link to this interesting interview with my network (in only 140 characters :-), I tweeted:

#iatefl from Prensky interview: http://tinyurl.com/iatefl-p... - Teachers should NOT use interactive whiteboards, their students should!4:04 PM Apr 3rd from web

To which this reply appeared

carolrainbow@VanceS #iatefl IMHO An IWB being used well is an excellent teaching tool! Children should use as well but not have sole use :-)7:50 PM Apr 3rd from TweetDeck in reply to VanceS

To which I replied

@carolrainbow #iatefl I agree, but think value in Prensky's remark in reminding us to maximize active role of students in learning with IWBs9:15 AM Apr 4th from web

To which a flurry of tweeting followed:


So what did Prensky actually say? This took me back to the original interview at the URL above. Prensky was saying that pedagogy needs to change in order for technology to be effective. He pointed out that technology tends to hinder the sage on the stage, whereas it facilitates the guide on the side. Therefore, he thought we need to focus more on the pedagogy in order to bring technology into classrooms. As long as teaching is rooted in the old paradigms, then technology will make slow inroads, but once the teaching changes, then technology will start to appear quickly. As it is, he said, if you have a teacher in front of a class all on laptops, and the teacher isn't engaging the students via their laptops, then the students will all be on Facebook.

At time: 16:15 in the video ...
Gavin asked him how he saw interactive whiteboards, as a help or hindrance, because they tend to push people into a certain pedagogy which is teacher fronted ...

Prensky replied:
"Personally I don't think we should let the teachers use the interactive whiteboards. I'm not saying we shouldn't have them, but if we have them, they should be the province of the students. The students should use them, the students should present with them, the students should figure out the most engaging and important ways to use them." He went on to say (and keeping in mind the context of his remarks) until their pedagogy changes, teachers will use them in the old paradigm, like a blackboard (e.g. show pictures, show videos from YouTube, make a PowerPoint).

This got me thinking of another time I was multi-tasking on my feet, back in 1985, when I wandered into a plenary at the TESOL conference in New York city, just in time to hear Stephen Kraschen suggest to the thousands of listeners present in the huge hall that "teachers erase all their current language teaching software disks and use them instead for wordprocessing" (my memory was jogged by a Google search which led me to Richard Young's CALICO Journal article Vol 5, No. 3 (March 1988), Computer-Assisted Language Learning Conversations: Negotiating an Outcome, p.65: https://www.calico.org/a-380-ComputerAssisted%20Language%20Learning%20Conversations%20Negotiating%20an%20Outcome.html). As you can imagine, this remark was taken way too literally, with some jumping to the extreme conclusion that no CALL software was worth the mylar it was written on.

Kraschen has since been understood to have over-reached himself with his notions of comprehensible input, the idea of i+1, which was an excellent idea, and one that makes a lot of practical sense, but which was on examination found to have no actual research base (so?? it favorably guided the practice of quite a lot of teachers nevertheless!). Another such notion that had also got its author in difficulties was Chomsky's suggestion that there was a black box in our brains where language processing took place. Many autopsies later, when no such box could be found, this notion was raised by Chomsky's detractors, who had already carried the great man's ideas into transformational grammars and down essentially non-communicative garden paths.

Prensky too could fall victim to the great success of his notion of digital natives and digital immigrants. Some are now questioning whether people actually break down into such groups, leading Gavin to suggest in his interview that the native/immigrant distinction might be reaching its 'shelf-life'.

But here again, these are all marvelous notions, and whether or not they stand to scrutiny under close inspection, they all get us thinking. Whether they were literally correct or not is beside the point, I think. Prensky's role as a change agent is to move us all along the path of paradigm shift. For that to happen, for the pedagogy to change as he says it needs to, teachers have to change their practice, and for this to happen they have to reflect and internalize the many discreet shifts that will lead them toward some major revelation that invokes the change.

This then is one great affordance of our blog and Twitter network, a medium through which we can keep these ideas percolating, and move more and more of us over the chasm that will allow all teachers to become effective interactive whiteboard users, with fully engaged students.

Are you there yet? Are we there yet? What is holding us back? Let's think about it ...

Global and local visions: Webheads and Distributed Communities of Practice (Denver TESOL 2009)

Updated May 11, 2021

This posting encapsulates, but in May 2021 updates, my remarks at a colloquium entitled: Global and local visions: Evolving communities of practice Panelists: Vance Stevens, Suresh Canagarajah, Jane Hoelker, Yuko Goto-Butler, Takako Nishino, Perin Jusara, Golge Seferoglu, and Toni Hull, presented March 27 at the annual international in TESOL conference in Denver (Stevens, 2020)

The abstract for the colloquium was: Whether learning or teaching English in the EFL context, the model of Communities of Practice moves individuals and groups forward in their development. Examples of shared practices implemented in elementary, secondary and tertiary institutions as well as in programs of teacher professional development conducted on worldwide communication networks are discussed.

My contribution was entitled "The Webheads and Distributed Communities of Practice" 

Abstract for my presentation: In these times of globalization and worldwide communication networks, distributed communities of practice (e.g. any CoP that cannot rely on face-to-face meetings and interactions as its primary vehicle for connecting members) are becoming more common. The concept of distributed CoPs has been addressed by Etienne Wenger. This presentation discusses CoPs implemented for educational technology specialists, many particularly concerned with language learning, in ongoing teacher professional development, foremost through Webheads in Action and in various other communities and offshoots from these, such as TESOL-sponsored EVO (Electronic Village Online). How Wenger’s concept of CoPs has evolved after his encounter with the Webheads online will also be discussed. 

In my talk I didn’t rehash a definition of communities of practice except to mention that they are most frequently understood, as defined by Etienne Wenger, to:

• promote knowledge of a domain 
• revolve around a practice
• form spontaneously, voluntarily, in communities

Wenger further characterizes distributed CoPs as, among other things, having a particular space to interact in. Not many of Wenger’s writings are available (for free) online, but these include: 

• Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice Learning as a social system. Retrieved May 12, 2021, from https://thesystemsthinker.com/communities-of-practice-learning-as-a-social-system/ 
• Wenger, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. Retrieved May 12, 2021 from https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

The ostensible purpose of my talk was to explore where Webheads intersects with these characteristics of communities of practice. Webheads in Action, http://webheads.info, was formed as a 2002 session of EVO (TESOL sponsored 6-week courses given free each year via Electronic Village Online, http://evosessions.pbwiki.com/). Webheads membership has since increased to many hundreds of educators who engage in helping each other pursue lifelong, just-in-time, informal learning through experimentation in use of social-media and computer mediated communications tools. Among its accomplishments, the Webheads community has already mounted two free international online conferences, the Webheads in Action Online Convergences (WiAOC 2005 and 2007) with a third coming up this May 22-24, 2009 - see http://vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/wiaoc_index.htm and http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/ (free no longer supported but content from 2009 ported to Wordpress and stumbled on unawares May 12, 2021 :-)

• here https://webheadsinaction.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/looking-ahead-to-wiaoc2009/ 
• and https://webheadsinaction.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/all-over-but-the-shouting/ 
• and in related posts at the bottom of those pages

The question I addressed in my talk was, is Webheads a group, a community, or a network? In formulating my arguments I made a distinction between groups, communities, communities of practice, and networks, as illustrated on the diagrams in slides 6 through 10 in my slide show: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/the-webheads-and-distributed-communities-of-practice 

(To see these effectively, go directly to https://www.slideshare.net/vances/the-webheads-and-distributed-communities-of-practice/6 in the slide show above and then scroll through to https://www.slideshare.net/vances/the-webheads-and-distributed-communities-of-practice/10)

Groups 

A group is a gathering of people. It could be a mob or a friendly gathering at a pub. The impetus for its formation is chance or convenience; e.g. people walking near one another in a park, people who come together to observe a sporting event, or students who are grouped in furtherance of class logistics. Downes makes further distinctions in a presentation anticipating my progression here of configurations from groups --> communities --> communities of practice --> and then to networks.

From Stephen Downes’s slide show “Groups vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues” at https://www.downes.ca/presentation/53
(This is an image; the buttons are not clickable here, though clicking will enlarge the image)

The slide cites his posting “Sudden Thoughts And Second Thoughts” from Stephen’s Web, September 21, 2006, http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=35839, where these points are contextualized. Downes's slide show covers each of these dichotomies in more detail. 

Communities 

Communities have more cohesion and permanence than groups. A community could form around a place where people live, or other groupings might consider themselves communities as they develop social bonds and identity to distinguish themselves from groups. 

When Webheads in Action was started in 2002 it coalesced around a Yahoo Group. As people started to join the group they identified themselves as such until they started taking on characteristics that made them think of themselves more as a community than a mere group of teachers. What would some of these characteristics be? 

• Photographs and voice/webcam communications enable group members to see the human behind the text message and enhance bonds leading to a sense of community 
• Not only helping one another’s practice by answering each other’s questions, but also showing evidence of caring, such as interest in personal vignettes, individual accomplishments and setbacks
• Developing and defining a group culture through various forms and modalities of communications

Communities of Practice 

Shortly after its formation as an EVO session in 2002, participants in Webheads in Action were exploring their interactions and sense of cohesion in the framework of communities of practice, leading to two subsequent presentations at the 2003 TESOL conference examining the community in that light 

• EVOnline workshop: Reflection through experience and experiment with a communities of practice online: http://vancestevens.com/papers/tesol/baltimore2003/copractice.html#workshop 
• Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice": http://vancestevens.com/papers/tesol/baltimore2003/copractice.html#colloquium 

More rigorous examinations were conducted by several PhD candidates who sometimes joined Webheads in order to study our dynamics. Chris Johnson, who joined Webheads in order to study the community as a possible example of a distributed CoP, tested WiA rigorously against nine of Etienne Wenger's precepts. Johnson found that Webheads fit (all) nine characteristics unique to distributed CoPs except on one independent variable associated with “emergence with respect to boundary practices;” meaning, Webheads tended to neglect boundary members and expected them to bring knowledge into the community on their own (Johnson, 2005)

Meanwhile Etienne Wenger agreed to be a keynote speaker at our 2007 WiAOC (Webheads in Action Online Convergence http://vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/wiaoc2007keynotes.htm). His keynote took the form of a conversation moderated by Susanne Nyrop. When Cristina Costa entered the conversation, Etienne asked her when she felt that she was a member of a CoP. Cristina replied that she realized this when her practice began to change. 

Etienne referred back to this later when, during the question period, I asked him whether his concept of CoPs had evolved after his encounter with the Webheads online. He said indeed it had. He said that the fact that Webheads met in so many spaces while clearly being a CoP was a revelation to him. He now realized he could relax his previous thinking on constraints on SPACE occupied by a distributed CoP. We took this to mean that since Wenger's own thinking on CoPs was in flux, and he was thinking of us as an example of a CoP, this might have nudged us over that 9th hurdle.

Networks 

Meanwhile I’ve moved in my own thinking beyond the CoP model, following on the work of Stephen Downes (2001-2008) and George Siemens (many of whose writings on connectivism are cited in Downes, 2001-2008). Downes has written and presented much on the concept of diffusion of knowledge within distributed learning networks, and Siemens of course has long espoused the notion of connectivism, famously summarized as “The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe.” Siemens (2004). Here, Siemens means that it is more important to nurture a system of connections between knowledgeable people (the pipe) than to be concerned with what these knowledgeable people know (the content within the pipe) since this content can be directed to anyone with appropriate connections with the pipe. 

Distributing knowledge is what communities and networks are all about. Downes has a simple illustration of what it means to ‘know’: Where’s Waldo? Once you know where Waldo is, you can’t not know. 

But these days it seems, there is too much information available, and it seems we need increasingly to get our minds around more of it in order to keep up with and ‘know’ how to perform competently in our work. Wenger et al. (2002:6) promotes the CoP model as an anecdote to the fact, as he puts it, that “increasing complexity of knowledge requires greater … collaboration; whereas … the half life of knowledge is getting shorter.” Dave Cormier (2008) suggests a rhizomatic model of learning to deal with increasingly rapid obsolescence of knowledge. In this model, knowledge is seen as springing up wherever the tendrils, given its rhizomatic nature, are able to reach. 

Downes often expresses himself in analogies, and one oft repeated is that no one knows how to get a plane from London to Paris. Engineers must design the plane, someone has to build it, pilots are trained to fly it, but they in turn need an infrastructure of crew working in the plane as crew and outside as mechanics, and all those who work in airports and weather and navigation, etc. No one can actually on his or her own take a plane full of passengers from one place to another; this requires a network and all the knowledge within that network. What these notions, theories if you will, suggest is that connection with others in a network is of prime importance in having access to a repository of knowledge. 

On a personal level we experience this when we turn to Google or Wikipedia to answer in minutes if not seconds a question that in the past might have sent us to a library, but more often than not would have remained unanswered due to the logistics involved. Of even greater importance in this day and age, another available resource is direct (and indirect) contact with many people in one’s network, each possessing a reservoir of knowledge which contributes to the entire pool of knowledge residing in the network. This can be accessed through listservs or sometimes almost instantaneously through Twitter or RSS feeds, or instant messaging. Thus the knowledge possessed by any individual, or node, in the network, is the sum total of all aggregated knowledge within that network. It is to this that we ascribe the incredible power inherent in distributed learning networks which often comprise to some extent communities of practice. (Downes, 2005; Siemens, 2006)

I conceive CoPs as bubbles overlapping in a Venn diagram. The total of all the bubbles would be the network as conceived in connectivist terms. The CoPs are themselves important to sharing of information within a community, but the fact that nodes within the CoP are connected with nodes outside the CoP in essence brings infinitely more knowledge into the community. I think it is something along these lines that Wenger is trying to accommodate in re-envisaging the notion of space in which distributed communities of practice work. This has tremendous implications for professional development. 

Just before we held our colloquium in 2009 in Denver, Jack Richards delivered a video plenary address at a distance at a plenary in which he touched on what teachers need to know in order to practice effectively. He said research indicates that teachers often tend to revert to traditional methods rather than activate what they are exposed to in training curricula. Derick Wenmoth (also from NZ) mentioned similar research findings in his keynote at the K-12 Online Conference in 2008: 

Wenmoth (2008) implies that the key to success in keeping current is in expanding productive contacts within a network. One problem is that teacher-trainers without sufficient experience with technology and who are rooted in old-school methodologies are simply not modeling new age learning behaviors for the trainees. The increasingly inadequate model of reliance on face-to-face exchange of knowledge is apparent in the way that many annual conferences are organized and structured. Many such gatherings do little to encourage connectivity for either presenters or participants. 

There was just recently a very interesting online conference, AACE's Spaces of Interaction: (perhaps here, https://www.aace.org/review/getting-ready-for-ed-media-2009/), which suggested that face to face conferences were falling ‘unacceptably’ short on utilizing networking potentials for participants. This was acceptable in the past because participants who relied on having the opportunity to touch base with each other once a year traditionally might have only been able to exchange letters or emails during the intervening months between conferences. But the new dynamic suggests that connectivity where contacts only meet face to face falls far short of interacting with them in online environments as well.

Fortunately there are many venues for doing just that, and for many practitioners these are taking on greater importance in professional development than interaction in face to face environments. At the very least, one could say that interaction in online spaces facilitates greater productivity when the interactants eventually do meet face to face. The bottom line is that it does not hurt and most likely maximizes productivity to interact with colleagues as frequently as possible in online spaces, and this is where distributed communities of practice interacting with each other through greater networks is key to practitioners’ keeping current and confident in their level of competency at work. 

Some means for keeping current (at the time this was originally written) were participation in: 

• Social networks: Ning, TappedIn, EVO, WiAOC 
• Social bookmarking: Delicious, Diigo 
• Groups: YahooGroups and GoogleGroups
• Microblogging: Twitter, Plurk 
• Instant messaging: Yahoo Messenger, Skype
• Blogging and podcasting: keeping currect via RSS 
• Wikis: PBWiki, Wikispaces 
• Aggregation: Pageflakes, Netvibes, Protopages \\

An example PLN diagram from Jane Hart (2009), Slide 25 here: 
https://www.slideshare.net/janehart/ilta-keynote/24-ExamplePLEPLN_Social_Social_File_networking 

I finished my talk by asking which construct of knowledge distribution was more productive, communities or networks? I answered rhetorically that perhaps this was a matter of scale, where networks can handle an almost infinite number of participants. The evolution of Webheads is instructive. Seen as a community, members interact within the domain of practice. Networks imply more widespread, perhaps opportunistic, contacts, with looser characterization of domains and practices. So which is more productive? Given the spontaneous and voluntary nature of such constructs, the answer is ‘whatever works’ and therefore probably moot. 

References

Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum. This paper in another one for the lost and found. When Innovate: Journal of Online Education went 'out of print' Dave moved it to his blog: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/06/03/rhizomatic-education-community-as-curriculum/. If can also be found on Research Gate with forthright  coda regarding what Graham Davies used to call 'link rot': https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234577448_Rhizomatic_Education_Community_as_Curriculum (both articles retrieved as indicated on May 11, 2021).

Downes, S. 2001-2008. E-learning 2.0. eLearn Magazine, retrieved May 11, 2021 from https://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=1104968

Downes, S. (2005). An Introduction to Connective Knowledge. Stephen’s Web, http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=33034 Johnson, C. 2005. Establishing an Online Community of Practice for Instructors of English as a Foreign Language. Doctoral dissertation. Nova Southeastern University. Retrieved from NSUWorks, Graduate School of Computer and Information (614). Sciences. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/gscis_etd/614.   Retrieved May 10, 2021

Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. This paper disappeared temporarily when Elearnspace did, but it is easily found on online. Here's a version with a 2005 update of an accompanying website, https://www.academia.edu/2857071/Connectivism, retrieved May 11, 2021. You can use ctrl-F to find the 'pipes' quote; to hard to track in-text as the papers move about).

Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing Knowledge. Ebook available via Creative Commons license, but no longer on eLearnspace. On May 11, 2021, you can try here, https://amysmooc.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/knowingknowledge_lowres-1.pdf, or the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/KnowingKnowledge/page/n127/mode/2up

Stevens, V. (2009). Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities, and Networks. TESL-EJ, 13(3). http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/past-issues/volume13/ej51/ej51int/

It received positive feedback from Russell Stannard who commented

This blog post was an precursor version of the article that appeared in the Dec 2009 issue of TESL-EJ, above. The TESL-EJ article is more refined in prose, though for obvious reasons, not updated in links as has been possible in May 2021, in the blog post you are reading here 

Stevens, V. (2010). Webheads and Distributed Communities of Practice. In Canagarajah, S., Stevens, V., Nishino, T., & Hoelker, J. (EFLIS Academic Session 2010). Global and Local Perspectives: Evolving Communities of Practice in EFL. EFLIS News, 9(1). https://www.tesol.org/news-landing-page/2011/11/08/eflis-news-volume-9-1-(march-2010) 

Update: This article was updated at the invitation of Jane Hoelker on behalf of the editors of the EFL IS Newsletter, who published a summary of the EFL Academic Session from Denver TESOL 2009. The article is at this link (on May 11, 2021) https://www.tesol.org/news-landing-page/2011/11/08/eflis-news-volume-9-1-(march-2010), though the bookmark to "Articles: EFLIS Academic Session 2009. Global and Local Perspectives: Evolving Communities of Practice in EFL"  does not work.

My part of the article (October 2009) resides online at http://tinyurl.com/vance2009denver

Wenger, E. Richard McDermott, R., & Snyder, W.M.. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 284 pages. 

Wenmoth, Derek. (2008). Holding a Mirror to our Professional Practice. Keynote address given at the K12 Online Conference 2008, http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=181

Further update May 11, 2021 - links checked and updated as indicated