My personal Review of the E-Teachers Conference

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Kirsten Winkler

Although I am the initiator of the E-Teachers Conference I would like to share  my personal point of view of the evening mixed up with some comments I got in chats and via email.

Let me start with a general overview.

I opened the ETCon with my provocative theme “Lesson Slides and Virtual Classrooms. Do we really need them?”. The presentation had three parts: thoughts about slides, thoughts about webmeetings and thoughts about users.

Basically I explained that both slides and webmeetings are not “education natives” meaning they were developed for the corporate world for a whole different use. I also mentioned the problems involved using lesson slides like boredom and information overload and with webmeetings like weak internet connections and overstrained users.

In the part about the users I mentioned the different kind of user types today, the digital natives, settlers and immigrants and that most of the potential customers today belong to one of the last two groups.

My conclusion was that on Monday I did not really need a virtual classroom to teach but that I see potential for the future when the majority of potential users won’t have infrastructural problems to use them anymore.

The second presentation of the eveving was held by Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager of Dimdim.com.

Kevin’s main point was in today’s teaching we need to offer more than classic text slides especially to young learners. There must be more interaction going on because this is what they are used to in everyday life.

Next to present was Harman Singh, Founder and CEO of WiZiQ.com.

Harman shared the same philosophy like Kevin but even went a step further. For him it is clear that sooner or later the virtual classroom environment will be better than the offline classroom. He made his point by comparing static pictures or drawings we use today to the possibility to embed a video of scheme from a moving heart in the lesson slide.

The fourth presenter was Heike Philp, Founder and Managing Director of LANCELOT School. She did one of her famous PRESTO Presentations, 10 slides autoadvancing every 20 seconds and as she recorded a version before the ETCon, you can watch her presentation below.

Heike managed to collect 17 reasons why Skype is simply not enough from the audience that evening and the list grew to over 20 by now. You can see the list on Heike’s personal blog and still contribute to it.

The next presenter of the panel was Elisa Delaini, Education Manager from Myngle.com.

She brought two chapters of the Myngle courses with her, one in English and one in Spanish to present possibilities of the use and development of lesson slides for virtual classrooms. Unfortunately the Webmeeting Server froze during her presentation and she was not able to finish it.

After Koichi Ko from eduFire.com set up a back up meeting room for the event and the attendees informed each other in just a couple of minutes about the new room via Twitter, Skype and Email it was his turn to present.

Koichi said he does not necessarily need lesson slides but a webmeeting or virtual classroom empowers teachers to teach on a global scale and of course it enables “poor little Jimmy” to get the best Japanese teacher even outside of his limited radius of travelling and webmeetings are also the place where teacher rockstars are born.

After the presentations we had a panel discussion with the audience. The panel agreed on the fact that virtual classrooms have a big potential in the future. But still there seem to be two camps especially on the teacher side. In one camp those who want to use the virtual classrooms and their potential today and there are obvious reasons to use those to some extend at least. The ETCon couldn’t have taken place without a webmeeting aka Virtual Classroom and the whole edufire Superpass system is also based on the idea of teaching mass classes via the their classroom. Same is true for WiZiQ and the public sessions. The other camp  want to play save and use the technologies that work properly at the moment. More about that towards the end of this post.

Before I will give you my conclusion on the first ETCon, here are two comments I want to share.

[...]
The conference was run with a group of people who understand this evolving field. However:
* Dimdim irrecoverably crashed
* People had to constantly adjust their microphones and sound settings
* Sound and video was constantly freezing up
* People would have to drop out and reload
* Uploaded presentations were flipping uncontrollably
* I had sound delays, and garbled speech
* Just a lot of time spent dealing with the technology, and not on the content — the exact opposite of what the experience is supposed to be (seamless)

Also, for language teaching in particular, I believe clarity of speech and lack of sound distortion is critical.
Students and teachers come from around the world, and will have an even wider range of technology hardware and technology ability. (I cannot run second life on my own laptop, and I don’t know why people would assume that installing a 3D world to get language classes is the best solution for students. And I’ll be honest, I was actually very impressed with both Dimdim and Edufire’s Adobe Connect Pro — enough that I’m planning to contact them to talk about maybe what would be involved in integrating it.)

I don’t wish to be critical at all of the other participants. I think (and I believe most everybody would agree) the most important resource is the teacher and that person’s talent and knowledge. My feeling is that the technology is there just to support the teacher in his/her communication. It’s nice to have a whiteboard and be able to force a student to look at the same PPT page, but if the base technology foundation is not stable or comes at a prohibitive cost, I’m not sure the student’s best interests are being served.
[...]

[...]
It was particularly interesting to see the difficulties DimDim were having with their own classroom and then, later, how the DimDim rep. (among others) apparently couldn’t work out how to work the Adobe room. There is an important lesson to be learnt here: If the experts can’t figure out the “technicalities”, how can students be expected to?
[...]

After this conference I am still not convinced that teachers really need virtual classrooms today. And I think this has nothing to do with being conservative, old fashioned or attached to the way it always has been. It is a simple business reason.

Why should and independent online teacher take the risk to lose a safe sale by bringing their students into a virtual classroom with still a high risk of technical problems or to overstrain himself and the students with all the shiny features when the teacher knows that he can make that sale easily by using Skype and email?

Plus, if you are offering language lessons which I think most independent online teachers do these days the most important thing is audio quality. Languages are about voice, intonation etc. And even if you are teaching other topics you want to offer a seamless experience, a discussion without delays or voice doubling. A feature that none of the virtual classrooms can offer today.

I set up a survey on this issue. If you are an online teacher and have a couple of minutes time I would be happy, if you would take it. Also, please feel free to use the comment section below. Are you feeling comfortable using virtual classrooms or do you “live in fear” that the classroom could crash every minute or doubtful about your problem solving skills. Are you using the classroom at all or is it just a mean to register your lesson on the platform to get paid etc. Are your students demanding the use of the classroom or do they care at all?

Would love to read your thoughts!

Related Posts:

  1. Virtual Classroom vs Skype / VoIP only – Round #1
  2. ETCon 03 – The Future of Teachers in a Global and Digital World
  3. Personal Review of the second E-Teachers Conference
  4. E-Teachers Conference 02 – Communities and the Power of Crowdsourcing
  5. E-Teachers Conference – ETCon

About Kirsten Winkler

Education 2.0 Blogger at KirstenWinkler.com, Interviewer at EDUKWEST.com, Consultant at WinklerMedia.com.
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  • heikephilp
    Thank you Kirsten for the ETCon and your efforts in getting a discussion about this important subject going and with the right people too. What a great panel that was, I thoroughly enjoyed this company.

    You are right in saying that virtual classroom needs to get a lot more stable in order to become main stream.

    We are all still very much pioneers in this field and you are certainly one of those pioneers with a lot of guts. What impressed me most was your stoic response to all of the technical challenges.

    When the VC crashed the first time, you came back online and continued with your presentation in a very calm and controlled manner. At no time did you lose you temper, neither did you swear at the technology.

    Prior to the meeting you took great care in preparation and organisation and you diligently uploaded all of the slides. You were well prepared and then you had to do the upload all over again after the crash. At no time did we hear you sigh nor groan and you simply got on with it.

    After the second major crash you immediately used Twitter as Plan B and accepted Koichi’s help. Koichi himself was showing himself hospitable and then again, you showed your great strength of staying fully in control although by then you must have been thoroughly exhausted because what you staged there was a marvel in multi-tasking, a live online marathon and you were still able to run the sprint with the panel discussion to the finish.

    The next day you were not overly apologetic. The opposite, a wonderfully positive tweet after the supergau with a cheerful “Morning all! I'm happy to see that some have stayed late for #etcon and are already up discussing again. Have a great #teachertuesday :)”.

    Yes, you are certainly right in saying that virtual classrooms still need to become a lot more stable in order to be usable and yet I am glad that you did not wait to stage the ETCon until the technology is out of beta. (Personally I think it never fully will be :-)

    Like somebody said: “I don’t mind my computer crashing every now and again. I just thank God, that Bill Gates never went into the airlines industry.”

    In your case, the failing technology showed your greatest strength.

    My compliments.
  • Oh, thank you so much Heike, that is really nice of you. Makes me blush ;).

    And sorry for the late answer but I was wrestling with my PC about the new show that is finally online now: http://www.edukwest.com

    Your post reminded me of one of my favourite Cartoon series in the 80ies: Galaxy Rangers. In the title song it says: "No guts, no glory. No pain, no gain". I think this is very true for eteaching these days. Maybe I should make it the theme song of the ETCon :).

    To be honest I did expect most of the problems, not the server crash but being knocked out of the meeting I was quite sure about. And as I am still teaching online every day I got kind of "numb" to those problems. If you cannot change it, accept, adapt or die.

    But it is great to hear from someone with so much experience like you have that it was not a complete desaster :).

    See you on the next ETCon,
    Kirsten
  • chinamike
    To those of you that are looking for the "mistakes" in the Myngle ppts. I am happy to report that the mistakes have been removed from the ppt. Hmm, seems that someone is picking up the telephone over there.
  • Very good article and interview related to this topic:

    http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort...
  • Thanks for the link to this excellent article and its comments. I will just quote one of them (by wbrought - July 22, 2009 at 11:57 pm) "...Successful teaching is fact, entertainment and the expression of the teacher's passion. PPt can be an incredible tool when used correctly and ruinous if not. Meaningful teacher-student dialogue ALWAYS follows an excellent lecture - whether PPt or bare-bones educated improv. How does it go?: It's a poor workman that blames his tools."
  • "...Successful teaching is fact, entertainment and the expression of the teacher's passion. PPt can be an incredible tool when used correctly and ruinous if not. Meaningful teacher-student dialogue ALWAYS follows an excellent lecture - whether PPt or bare-bones educated improv. How does it go?: It's a poor workman that blames his tools."
    I absolutely agree with this point Marina. The importance of content, the material which is used in the class and the way the teacher uses it makes excellent lessons or not.
  • Content is King. Maybe the real problem is the teacher these days. Maybe the core competence changed...
  • chinamike
    Abortion is a non-starter as a topic in China where a huge number of abortions are performed. If I was a woman and I had aborted a child, I certainly want to discuss it casually with some English teacher who might consider it to be an act of murder.

    I find it abhorrent that we can so casually put conversation topics like this in our textbooks. It shows a real lack of sensitivity in my opinion.

    It took a woman running out of a class in tears for me to realize this by the way.
  • chinamike
    And it is a foolish workman that neglects to critique his tools looking for something even better.
  • Thank you for organizing the conference Kirsten.

    Some comments on the topic, as you know I focused more on the use of lessons slides in the classroom.

    Slides online = books offline. Do we really need them?
    My opinion is yes, we need them, they are very welcome unless a student would like to take only conversation classes. In that case a whole variety of tools can substitute the slides, as a variety of tools can substitute books.

    But what about combining everything that technology offers, and allowing the teachers to decide what to make with it? It all depends on how these slides are built. Lessons slides are not a presentation given by a lecturer (the teacher) but a base on which a program is built and developed.

    A lot of students need a learning path in front of them, that is why we developed programs focused on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. As you can see, during the lesson the interaction between teacher and student is stressed. There is plenty of room to personalize the class. About the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Fr...
    At level B2, students have the following competencies:
    Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

    That's why there are lessons which, touching different controversial topics, such as abortion, death penalty, homosexuality, etc., bring the students to acquire these competencies. If a student wants to get ready for any reason (work, tests, university, etc.) for level B2, this 'learning path' will help him and guide him.

    So let's keep the two topics separated, or else we end up saying that language programs are useless - we would not make good educators or even language professionals if this is the objective. A good syllabus is vital in every course, for me the biggest challenge is how to share it in the best possible way online - with all the tools/constrictions that technology is offering.

    regards,

    Elisa
  • I think you are right. We should stop teaching :).

    That's the tricky part in conversational classes, choosing the right topics. As you know, I am very focussed on this type of teaching and from my experience these are topics that are absolute killers.
    Most american students don't even want to talk about politics, not even the theory about political systems without going into parties etc. So if you (I) could lose a student with a relatively harmless topic like this I don't even want to imagine what happens if I'd say "Today's topic: Abortion".

    But of course, you are right that if a student wants to take one of the european tests like DELF, TestDAF etc he needs to know about it. But for a "leisure" course, which most courses are, I would strictly leave them out.

    Ok, back to the main topic, but we should discuss this in another thread.

    The problems for platforms is that they cannot offer all the tools out on the market. And on the other hand not all tools that might be interesting are compatible with a platform system.

    Take Prezi as an example. Like Koichi said: Prezi blows PowerPoint out of the water. That's true but you cannot use it in a virtual classroom.

    VoiceThread is a great tool for discussions after the class. But there is no way to embed it on the platforms.

    The list goes on. I think Myngle did a great job offering slides to their teachers. If they don't use them they are at least a good inspiration to do something similar on your own or something completely different.

    And I am still a big lover of text books, so are my students. They love the fact to have a real book at home that works without electricity and they can take notes with a pen in.

    We are still in a transition phase and noone really knows how long this phase will take. But I do think it is long enough to come up with solutions that might die out in a couple of years but right now do still work.
  • "But for a "leisure" course, which most courses are, I would strictly leave them out."

    Levels A1, A2 and B1 do not include such topics, the focus is 'all leisure,' so to say. starting from B2, the student should be able to discuss a whole variety of topics and delicate matters, as in any advanced program, to master the language from all points of view.
  • But I cannot use an A1 level course for a B2 student who does not want to speak about those topics.

    With "leisure" I meant a normal conversation course that does not lead to a certification. Because besides the content, the client is king and I cannot say: "We have to talk about this, because it is your level!" Well, I could but then this would be the last I'd say to this client ;).
  • chinamike
    Here is a simple system that would improve on most slide systems. This is especially suitable for 1 to 1 classes.

    Step One: Test students on a range of content that might be covered in today's lesson.
    Step Two: based on the test the system determines what the student needs to learn.
    Step Three: The system dynamically assembles a number of slides using learning objects in the database. These slides only address what the student needs to learn as determined by the test.

    Let's call this slide system 2.0. And because it is a dynamically compiled system, the teacher who uses this system would have to be REALLY GOOD and would in the best of worlds be paid accordingly.
  • This is basically what a good teacher should do anyway. One of the parts that take the most time when done correctly.
    But an application like this would be a great help.
  • chinamike
    Your article is a good one and could be used to illustrate many points. It does illustrate one of mine. That when using tools we adapt (student and teacher) to the tools we use (a kind of social evolution). My point is that in the majority of cases teachers (especially new teachers) will tend to adapt to slide based teaching by seeing teaching as a kind of presentation (plus interaction) as opposed to seeing teaching from the paradigm of coaching (with all the emotional variables).

    I see the role of a coach as being harder for artificial intelligence to duplicate-- more "human" as it were.
  • Hi Kristen,
    Thank you for organizing this event and inviting such prominent guests. I was present until the virtual classroom 'froze', and I was really interested what happened afterwards. So, many thanks again for sending all the links, chats, presentations and follow-up. As for your main question 'Do we need slides?', my answer (in 2009) is: yes. When I have my lessons in a park (rarely though ;o), I take the opportunity to point at trees, grass, flowers, birds, passers-by, or simply make most of the outdoor space. When I am in a classroom, I have a cupboard full of useful materials and 'goodies', as well as textbooks and a whiteboard. When I am teaching online, I use slides with links to great sites, Youtube, online games, latest news etc. Simply put, slides provide structure and focus. As I mentioned in the chat during the conference, I can make do without them, just by using Skype and Teamviewer. A student shares my desktop and I can avoid slides. Then I have to use my site, where I upload/link materials I need, prior to the lesson, which is more or less very similar to slides. Kochi mentioned Prezi presentations, which are very attractive, but basically, the concept is the same. To my view, the current problem is that whichever tool we choose to use, it takes a lot of time, as Panos mentioned. I guess there is a great opportunity for developers + TEACHERS to work on 'CEF based Lesson Templates' (Myngle was the first to offer such slides and I am sorry I couldn't follow Elisa's presentation about them). I am afraid I don't agree with Mike's opinion about slides - great teachers will always make their lessons circular (as opposed to linear LOL) and learner-centered, whichever tool they use. Heike's question "why not use Skype" still makes me think... and at this point of time, Skype helps me feel more secure as an online teacher - whatever may happen to the virtual classroom, I know I can rely on it... but that's just my two cents.
  • Hi Marina,
    thanks for your comment. I think you made a good point saying you have the feeling you can rely on Skype. This is something most teachers seem to share. Which also means that all the other tools don't offer the same "feeling". Sometimes it might be just a feeling but often it is a fact.

    I think PowerPoint or Impress are a very complex tools but most teachers are not aware of this fact because it is rather simple to create a "slide". Creating useful slides that deliver value and are used in the right way are a whole different game.

    Mike, I think I see the old D&D player in this concept ;). A social "game" were the reactions of the NPCs are based on the behaviour of the player is indeed very interesting. Cultural teaching is very important to me and I like the approach.

    What are the main points that make you think webmeetings + slides are a dead end technology?
  • chinamike
    Just off the top of my head:
    1. They are non-branching.
    2. They don't embody any intelligence.
    3. Their flexibility to make use of embedded learning objects is primitive at best. Basically they can't dynamically draw from a database and put things together on the fly.

    Expect the future of language learning to include these features.
  • Well, if there is a teacher in the classroom there should be at least one kind of intelligence embodied. ;)

    So you expect that the learning environment of the future will take the teacher's place, if I get it right?

    About the slides I am more concerned about the topic itself. I can say that I won't teach it. And I don't correct material. My English is not good enough and it is too boring ;).
  • chinamike
    I was just reading a story about an actor hired to give a presentation to a roomful of distinguished economists. After the presentation the "actor" was rated very highly in terms of his professionalism as an Economist.

    Intelligence, especially professional intelligence, can be faked during presentations. A well crafted presentation can create the appearance of intelligence (or competence) where none exists.

    BTW what is the difference between the appearance of intelligence and true intelligence? This is a fine line, and computers are growing better able to mimic what we call intelligence (Turing test).

    No, I do not expect that the learning environment of the future will entirely take the place of teachers. I do expect that teachers are going to have to become even more sophisticated tool users, evaluators, and learning coaches as opposed to glorified presenters.
  • First of all: the keyword is presentation in this case. Presenting a topic and teaching a topic are two different things. A presentation does not necessarily lead into questions or discussions, teaching does. So if the so called distinguished economists had asked him some questions it would have been obvious that he faked.

    You will never build up a personal relationship to a software, personal bindings only excist between human beeings. And this will stay again a long time like this.

    And teachers need to be both, tool users AND glorious presenters (teacher rockstars).
  • chinamike
    By the way, someone should point out to the people at Myngle that when they write teaching materials that they should be proofed. They have a big problem with slide 10 of English. Who can find the mistake? Why don't you offer a prize Kirsten?

    On page 11 of the slide the student is asked to read aloud. In general this is a bad practice for solitary students because it slows a student's reading speed. Asking students to read aloud as a habit is the same as asking them to practice becoming lifelong slow readers.
  • chinamike
    I am not big on the second life environments YET. But here is one Virtual reality platform that could work--- http://www.alelo.com/social_communication.html. These things need more work but we will be there soon.

    Slide based lessons (linear- not branching, presentations- not explorations, fixed- not constantly changing, teacher centered- not student centered) are impoverished in comparison to what is available above.

    Slide based lessons I fear are training teachers in skills that will be made obsolete by branching, exploratory, ever changing, radically student-centered curriculum. Slide based platforms increase our geographic reach but little else. Certainly there is nothing powerful about the technology and because of all the technical restrictions slide based language teaching does little to SIGNIFICANTLY enhance creativity in teachers beyond what is currently the norm in a lecture style classroom.

    Slide based teaching is lecture-style teaching repositioned to the Internet. Kudos to the teachers that have really worked to make it fresh and interesting like Marina above. Still, in the end, it looks to me like a dead end technology.
  • Hey guys,
    thanks for your comments.

    @Mike glad to have you back ;). There are more posts in this blog which await your comment! Panos, feel free to join ;)

    Virtual Reality based Platforms: do you think this is for young learners / digital natives or for everybody. I myself am not attracted at all and it has no effect on my learning.

    It seems I am very black or white on this issue. Either I am in to it or not. I tried SL a several times but I simply don't get it. I understand there is at least some business potential but learning wise, not my cup of tea.

    @Panos That's a great point. Everything is just a tool. Sometimes it seems to go into a direction where the tool is promoted to be more important than the teacher.

    So to bring your comments together: there will always be room for blood and flesh teachers. But I think we have to redefine the teacher into a guide. I read an interesting article about the teacher being a sensei, just showing the way and accompanying the student on his travel (I think you posted it, Panos). Most of the learning will be done by the student alone. The teacher is just coming into "the game" when the student reached a dead end.
  • chinamike
    Wow, sorry I missed this conference and missed the opportunity to vent on the subject of slide-based instruction. I can't think of anything in e-learning that forces us to take a step backwards more than slides. They embody the worst of teacher-centered, linear, the-lesson-as-a-presentation type of instruction. They are a intermediate "just for now" technology that will, if they don't change, be made obsolete by game based, immersive, virtual reality based platforms.

    If I was a teacher I would not be putting too much stock in these technological straight jackets which currently freeze frame some of the worst aspects of class room instruction.

    Slide based virtual classrooms will eventually die off. The writing is already on the wall. The question is will the next form of on-line language training have/make room for flesh and blood teachers?

    Skype at least has the advantage of keeping teachers on their toes, close to their students, and ready for the next abrupt change in language learning technologies.

    China_Mike
  • PanosAnagn
    Hello Kirsten,
    That's a great overview of that day! I tend to agree with you on the slides. They are not "education natives". Slides can be a very powerful and useful tool for a teacher but it remains just that - a tool. Its power shouldn't be overestimated. The moment a teacher spends more time preparing the slides than preparing the material for the class, there is something to be worried about!
  • LilithTeacher
    Thank you, Kirsten for the excellent overview and insightful comments!
    I tend to agree with you, that teachers do not need slides and online classrooms, because language instruction can be instructive and vibrant using language itself, without aids. Further, I often find the virtual classroom to be counterproductive for precisely these reasons you mention: "weak internet connections and overstrained users."
  • Hi Lilith, thank you for taking the survey and your comment. I'll add it to my list :).
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