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Vance's: Papers / Cyprus 2001 Conference page / Plenary / Workshop main page

Welcome all participants in the Workshops held this weekend at the University of Cyprus. In order to model community building aspects of Internet use, we have started a workshop list(serv) and web page for the group.

Other models of similar Internet communities can be found at:

How we formed the Cyprus2001workshop Community:

• Visit http://www.yahoogroups.com/ and start a cyprus2001workshop 'yahoogroup' (used to be called egroups)
• Obtain email addresses of workshop participants and invite them to join the list
• Invite those who accepted invitations to send introductions
• Start this website
• Encourage its enhancement through use of pictures and other community-building features

Who responded to the call for introductions?

Thumbnail	Name	Affiliation	Introduction	Web page and Contact Info
	Vance	CALL Coordinator and consultant, Amideast UAE/MLI Project in Abu Dhabi, UAE	I'm Vance. I'll be leading or facilitating the workshop. . Probably the first people to join this list are the ones with the best Internet skills. And there are many who enrolled in the workshops who listed themselves as Internet beginners. So realizing that I might be addressing this to the more sophisticated who will be joining us in Nicosia, we can start talking about it anyway ... What do you expect to get out of a workshop of this nature? You can get a peek at what I have in mind for it at http://www.geocities.com/vancestevens/.com/papers/cyprus2001/workshop/ Write the list. Tell us a bit about yourself. Let's get to know each other and discuss what we'd like to accomplish at the workshop.	You can meet me at http://www.vancestevens.com
	Andreas Kasoulides	ICT - ComInEuS Coordinator Cyprus	Hi everybody. My name is Andreas Kasoulides, I am a primary school teacher and the ICT Coordinator for Primary Schools in the district of Larnaca. Even though I am not an ESL teacher I really would love to hear what is to be said at the CALL Conference and look forward to meeting all of you at Vance's workshop on Saturday! I would also like to take this opportunity and introduce you to a site I have made few days ago, called The Storyland, and is about children from various countries making stories, either their own unique stories or through using email and collaborating with one another. It was designed as a part of an EU Project I am coordinating called ComInEuS (Communication In European Schools). Even though the site is not ESL oriented, I think it can turn as an initiative for improvement of English as children's second language, therefore, plese visit the site and send me your comments on how this site can benefit children best. Views on the site design are also welcomed!	The site is at http://www.dreamwater.org/storymakers
	Costas Costantinou		Hello everyone,my name is Costas Constantinou I'm an ESL teacher working as a private tutor. I'm interested in using the internet in my classroom and expect that the workshop would give me the opportunity to experience some practical aspects of CALL,exchange ideas with other teachers and improve my skills. I'm using computers in my classes but only with multimedia cd-roms especially with primary school students.
	Julia Teschner	lecturer in German from the University of Bath, UK	I am Julia Teschner, a lecturer in German from the University of Bath, UK, and I will be accompanied to this conference by my colleague, Tim Francis, who teaches EFL. Both of us have been working with CALL for a couple of years now and we are now hoping to move on from our initial forays into these media as language learning tools. I currently have a grant for investigating the possibility of setting up an interactive website for language learners in our department, and I am hoping to get some useful pointers and advice from the presenters and other participants.	The model which we want to base this project on (and I must say that it seems very ambitious and quite daunting to us!) is run by the Goethe Institut and can be found at http://www.goethe.de/z/jetzt/deindex.htm (you would need some German to use this website, so apologies to non-German-speakers considering that this is addressed to an ESL/EFL discussion group!).
	Lev Abramov	Center for Distance Education, Achva College, Israel	I'm Lev, and it's an honor for me to be on Vance's list. Here in Israel where I live I teach English and CALL-related courses. In January I offered several presentations to the Committee of this conference, and two of them were luckily accepted, so you are invited to drop in and listen to me 'preach' on the importance of being lazy in order to succeed in CALL applications. (:-) One of the presentations has already been posted online; in fact, I can hardly see any real reason for coming to Cyprus for a face-to-face event now that everything can be done online, except for the sheer pleasure of seeing new faces and having some more of the great Keo beer. (:-) (:-)

What now?

It is normal for online communities to start slowly. At the workshop, we'll try to get as many people involved who want to participate. If you DO want to join us, send or bring a photo, and we'll add you to the list above.

If you want contact information included then let me know.

See you in Cyprus,

Vance

And a month later ...

The workshop was given in labs packed with 20-30 delegates in three sessions over the two-day workshop. All participants had been encouraged in email sent prior to the workshop, and at the workshop itself, to enroll in the model Cyprus2001workshop community. Of all enrolled and attending the workshop, only a few besides those listed here responded to the call. After the workshop itself, I sent some messages to the list but there were only a couple of responses from list members. It is clear therefore that this list has not brought the participants of this workshop together in a community of practitioners. However, this model has worked well in other settings, and it is presented here as a means by which communities which already have some cohesiveness might facilitate their goals through use of listservs as a means of communication between community members.

Vance, June 4, 2001