Friday (continued)

Also on Friday, I re-connected with Patricia Dyer, a dear friend whom I had lost touch with--we served together on the NAFSA Region 8 team back in the 1980s! I saw her name on a Mini-Workshop about using the State Dept.'s game "Trace Effects" to foster writing skills, so I signed up to see if it was the same Pat Dyer--and it was! It was wonderful seeing Pat again after almost 30 years, thanks to the TESOL convention and the EV.

Webhead Rick Rosenberg, one of the developers of "Trace Effects," attended with me, which was a big surprise for the presenters, two lovely women from Tegucigalpa, Honduras! You can see one of them, Grazzia, in the second photo.

During the hands-on portion, Rick helped me navigate the game (my first time, and I am no gamer!). He kindly told me that five-year-olds figure it out in minutes. Not so for me! But it was fun, and maybe I will introduce it to my students.

Elizabeth's and my Classics Fair session was up next, and we were webcasting it, but due to some miscommunication, we made a hash out of the webcast (no audio!). Fortunately only two webheads, Elizabeth Anne and Marijana Smolcec, were in our online audience, and they did not get too mad at us. Our f2f audience was also disappointingly small.

Afterwards I sat in on Evelyn and Miguel's presentation on flipping the classroom, which was excellent. Towards the beginning of the presentation, somehow the plug for the 4 computers at that area was pulled (I think), and all screens went dark. It's a credit to Eve and Mike that they carried on without their powerpoints as if nothing had happened, and soon power and connectivity were restored.

Following that, we found a critical mass of webheads in the room--a fantastic photo op! How many can you recognize?

Also on Friday, Ray and I attended my only non-EV/non-Technology Showcase presentation of the week: Shirley Thompson and Karen Taylor's session on using the Color Vowel Chart to integrate the curriculum. It was a great presentation! They are such seasoned presenters, they captivated the entire audience for the entire time. If any ESL/EFL teacher reading this doesn't know about the chart, you should take the time to visit their website and find out about it. It's an incredible tool for teaching pronunciation with advantages for spelling and listening too.