Disqus - Latest Comments for heikephilp

Re: Language Geek Teacher shoes (a bit ruffled but presentable)

heikephilp — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 03:26:27 -0000

Hi Brad,

Thank you for this blog post. It is creative, direct and challenges a discussion.

I loved meeting you and so many others in Brighton. I think it must have been more than 20 or 25 people whom I met face to face for the first time after having been in contact via the VRT, EVO, webheads, Second Life or other online plattform.

It was a delight to meet Dennis Newson and Carol Rainbow with whom I have been working looooong hours in Second Life. Dennis and myself ran the EVO session VILLAGE workshop and Carol, Randall and myself run EduNation, so we spent looooong hours building the islands.

Then I met Delwen or DeeSnow in Brighton. She was a participant at our EVO session Village.

The list goes on: Carla Arena and Aiden Ye (@motherchina) who are both EVO moderators and all the twitterers @tarabenwell @CeciELT @vickysaumell @theteacherjames @HerbertPuchta @willycard @nutrich @Shaunwilden @Marisa_C @esolcourses @ShellTerrell @harrisonmike @rliberni @brad5patterson @janetbianchini @bcnpaul1 @garymotteram @grahamstanley @dudeneyge @patjack67 @ann_f @DavidWarr @kenwilsonlondon @russell1955 @ozge @burcuakyol @annie_fox @vale360 @kalinagoenglish @irishmikeh @ericbarber @bethcagnol @dompates @teflpet @amandalanguages @nikpeachey ... cool, very cool.

I missed meeting Kalyan Chattopadhyay, with whom I am working lots in Second Life, who was scheduled to fly with his wife and daughter Olivia but could not make it because of some governmental ban on visa which had to do with the local ballotts but at least he was allowed to present at a distance.

It was wonderful to meet so many for real and I could give them a big hug. It was very special.

You challenge the costs and contrast this with sometimes better learning value online. Right you are but I would still want to see both a 'Real Life' and a 'Second Life'. I love them both. More so, I believe that those who only have one life are to be pittied as could have been seen last year already with what I call the 'Harrogate effect', that a real conference life is greatly enriched by and active online life. We love Twitter.

Personally I would have wanted to have more contact during the breaks, a lunch arrangement where many could meet and socialise, but I think the Brighton venue did not quite allow for this. Also I was suprised to see a small scale catering service with egg sandwiches for 3 or 4 GBPs. But this is England, it is rather expensive.

Another thing that I find sad is that there are so many parallel sessions. I hate to miss out on things and if there is one session and I miss another 17 because they take place in parallel sessions, then this really gets to me.

However, this is great that I attended IATEFL, because I am happy to invite those who have to do with language learning and tech to present at the Virtual Round Table conference. So, I am hereby inviting all those techies to submit their papers to the VRT.

Thank you Brad, for joining the ranks of the bloggers. You are a very, very valuable addition and I am thrilled to have met you in person.

Heike

Re: Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

heikephilp — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:45:24 -0000

May I ask again, ChinaMike, to be able to talk to you via Skype?

Rgds Heike

Re: Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

heikephilp — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:12:39 -0000

Hi ChinaMike,

I appreciate that you don't want to discuss this in public. May I ask you to contact me via Skype? I would value it very much to talk to you. (ID letstalkonline)

Rgds Heike

Re: Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

heikephilp — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:34:57 -0000

Hi ChinaMike,

I don't understand. Can you explain?

Heike

Re: Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

heikephilp — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:57:03 -0000

Great and where? Live online or face-to-face?

I am asking because I don't seem to find you on the Myngle site. I am not so familiar with the search functions but chinamike was not there.

Could you give me the URL to your offering?

Rgds Heike

Re: Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

heikephilp — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:26:23 -0000

Hi Mike,

You raise an interesting point and I thank you for asking.

Can a knowledgeable and experienced live online trainer take the LANCELOT Assessment Test without taking the course?

Yes, he or she can. Taking the course is not a pre-requisite for taking the 'exam'.

The fee for the LANCELOT Assessment test is 390 EUR and with this price we just about cover the costs involved. It involves 2 trainers evaluating the portfolio, which essentially is a collection of work you already have done. Also some evidence of the peer-to-peer work needs to be added and we pair up those who just want to take the assessment so they can work together (40%). Then there is an observed live online teaching practice which will be evaluated and assessed (60%). This is a bit like a driving license test. One can fail the test, but you can retake it.

As regards your questions about whether qualification may foster competition amongst Mynglers, I am the wrong person to ask because I am not an insider myself. So I don’t know how competitive the spirit is. As a learner of languages however I must admit that I would chose a teacher based upon the ratings. If 100 students were satisfied before, well, what better reputation can you have than this?

Mike, may I ask what you teach?

Rgds Heike

Re: Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

heikephilp — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:15:06 -0000

Hi Kirsten,

Thank you for your summary. You are very accurately relating all the input I provided and this shows that you are a great interviewer who listens carefully.

This might not have been all so easy in this case because you too took the LANCELOT training together with the other Mynglers last year. You too were one of the 10 Mynglers who applied for the scholarship and who stayed to the end of the 10 week course.

May I ask whether you felt it added value to your teaching? Did you benefit from the training? How does this compare to the 'free' training you received from Edufire, WizIQ or TeachStreet?

You paid 95 EUR for that course because it was a scholarship offer. Would you have paid the myngle prize of 390 EUR for it? If not, how much do you think it is worth?

We are continually asking to find out whether it truly adds value to the professional and want to find a price which is just right. It is not an easy course to teach and we have to adhere to EU standards, but we are not bound to any financial guidelines.

There were many a times when we offered training for free. Either by those who took the EU offers when we piloted this training or when we felt we had enough paying participants in a course, then we sponsored s.b. who could not afford it.

Unfortunately of all of those who received for free hardly anybody is left.

Those who paid for their training are the ones that are the busiest now and they certainly saw a return on their investment.

When Myngle asked us whether they should offer the training for free, we recommended them not to do it because of this past experience. So, don’t blame myngle, blame us. We recommended myngle, which has shown itself to be utmost generous not to offer this course for free because of the aforesaid reasons.

But perhaps you can help us find a good price. Just imagine that the Myngle Certified Course is a third of the LANCELOT Training. Is 60 EUR justified?

Rgds Heike

Re: A Fundamental Shift In How We Communicate: George Siemens, Twitter And The Real-Time Web

heikephilp — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:13:21 -0000

Robin,

You are unbelievable and unbeatable.

You truly understand the market.

Thank you for this info on Dave Winer's efforts.

Rgds Heike

Re: A Fundamental Shift In How We Communicate: George Siemens, Twitter And The Real-Time Web

heikephilp — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:30:03 -0000

Yes, I checked this out when I saw your link on twitter. If this isn't real-time ...hehe.

The web is awesome and I like the expression 'Real-Time' Web a lot because it allows for search and news.

However, my question remains: is RSS real-time or 'Just in time'?

Rgds Heike

Re: A Fundamental Shift In How We Communicate: George Siemens, Twitter And The Real-Time Web

heikephilp — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:31:21 -0000

If Web 1.0 is 'Read only', Web 2.0 is 'Read,Write' then I believe we are just about starting to see Web 3.0 emerge as 'Read, write and speak'.

What are the main tools for communicating in real-time on the web?
Instant Messaging, Twitter, webconferencing, live-chat buttons on websites, virtual classroom, Second Life etc.

Heike

Re: Back to 16th Century Teaching!

heikephilp — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:51:33 -0000

:-) Smile.

You tend to find articles that seem to fit your business model.

I do believe though that group tuition will be the real 'driver' for live online learning because we learn from others even more than from a tutor.

Just think of joining a class with other learners from other parts of the country, how enriching and inspiring this is as opposed to just 'one coach'.

I believe the future of live online is in group tuition - once the numbers of students versus the number of teachers go up. Right now there is an over-supply of teachers, this is why the prices are so low too.

Once this balances out, we will see great group tuition forming

Take for example employees of one global company with many branches worldwide decides that their employees need to learn German and they are put together in small groups with similar levels.
What a great way to get employees to collaborate live online.

Rgds Heike

Re: My personal Review of the E-Teachers Conference

heikephilp — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:27:42 -0000

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.

Re: Heike Philp of LancelotSchool.com

heikephilp — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:51:12 -0000

Hi all,

Enjoy the following brief presentation about what
we will be talking about at the ETCon and what we
are looking forward to doing with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

This presentation is with 10 slides auto-advancing every
20sec. (Presto10x20 technique) and in order to get this
auto-advancing in DimDim, I had my second computer
join the virtual classroom, started screen-sharing the slide
show by MS PowerPoint which allows the slides transition
to be set to 20sec per slide.

Re: The Future Of Conferences And Events: Critical Viewpoints From Gerd Leonhard, George Siemens And Nancy White

heikephilp — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:32:02 -0000

Mmh, I can see that it is not that easy to suggest experts on the future of conferences and events, so let me give it a start.

I am suggesting three indivuals, not sure how well-known or less-known they are but they deserve my respect.

a) Steve Hargadon for staging the NECC Unplugged unconference. It was a simulcast because the Elluminate conference room was put on a beamer in the exhibition area at NECC and some presenters at NECC also gave a presentation live online and vice versa, online presenters were screencasted at NECC locally.
www.neccunplugged.com

b) Vance Stevens for staging a 3-day online unconference. I believe he started preparing for it some 2 weeks prior to the event, had a whole host of volunteers who assisted and had thousands of participants. This conference was very well organised, encouraging and truly inspiring. Everybody contributed recording, twittering, presenting and sharing their know-how.
wiaoc09.pbwiki.com

c) Jonathan Finkelstein who likes to sit on the moderator seat but unjustly so, because he is an online conference expert who has spent more time in a virtual classroom than anyone I know of. Author of the book "Learning in Real Time" by Jossey-Bass, Harvard graduate and moderator of countless online sessions. Interestingly he presents all over the country all the time but is rarely invited online for an interview. I would looove to hear his insight on things.
www.learningtimes.com

Whom else do you (all of you out there) know of who knows about this subject?

Re: The Future Of Conferences And Events: Critical Viewpoints From Gerd Leonhard, George Siemens And Nancy White

heikephilp — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:37:41 -0000

Conferences are knowledge exchange stock markets and because we expect much (and so often pay much), we are disappointed at lengthy presentations and little time to interact.

This is why I am intrigued and enthralled by speedy presentation technique like the Japanese Pecha Kucha (20slide auto-advancing every 20sec) or O'Reilly's Ignite version (20x15) and their popularity shows which way to go forward.

Also I believe that online conferences spell yet another unexplored opportunity, namely guest speakers "on demand" and I don't mean that the conference organisers request a guest speaker but the participants. Guest-speaker by popular vote. If nobody needs to travel this is easily possible.

I just wonder whether we would hear the same 'experts' over and over again or whether less known guest speakers would also be requested.

Robin, allow me to ask to be experimental, permit me to post to your readers a challenging question.

If you (all of you out there) could pick and choose, whom you would like Robin to interview on the future of conferences, whom would you request?