Vance Stevens's Comments (A chatlog at YM on Dec 28th, 2003)

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Teresa's Feedback Message: (Dec 27, 2003)

Dear Buth, Shaima'a, Amal, Anwar, Noura and Dana,

Congratulations on an excellent job! :-)

I believe the merit starts the moment that you, Buth, had this fantastic
idea of online presentations of final projects, and it comes all the way to
the final moment this morning (and tomorrow morning, I'm sure!).

No doubt that many hours of work for both the teacher and the students are
involved in such a task: planning the project, coaching students on the
technologies involved, guiding, coordinating everything (some of Buth's
tasks, I imagine), researching, blogging research data, preparing the
presentations, and. . . presenting the final product online "for the first
time" (students' tasks). We all know from experience that "presenting
online" isn't easy, especially those first few times.

Well, girls, all I can say is that you did a wonderful job and your English
is very good. For something like this to come out so well, I repeat, there
is naturally much work 'behind the scene'.

This morning you were launched into this fascinating 'online world'. Take
advantage of it and try to take others along. Your teacher is a great
example of what can be accomplished in such a short time.

Buth, your coordination was excellent. The timing of each presentation and
question time were carefully and correctly planned. Six minutes is time
enough to say quite a lot, but also leave room curiosity. I enjoyed the
discussions. Though there may not have been as many questions as the
students might have expected, I think there were interesting comments. And
it is a great idea to have extra time at the end for a general discussion.

Finally, as I listened to you, girls, I kept thinking of how 'brave' you
were to have volunteered to come online and face an unknown audience of
Webheads. Congratulations! Bravo!!! You are certainly very special students!

For those of you presenting tomorrow, good luck! I'm sure you will do as
good a job as your colleagues-friends this morning.

My recording of the session seems to have come out in perfect condition,
though I have only listened to the first few minutes. I will try to create a
Web page and have it uploaded by this evening!

Best wishes for tomorrow and for the New Year,

Teresa (in Portugal) Dec 27, 2003

Dear Buth,

I've just uploaded a very simple page with today's voice file of your students' presentations.

http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/sessions/27dec03-buth-pres.htm

I'm not able to open the zip file at the moment, because traffic is intense and it takes too long. Please let me know if anything is not working properly.

BTW, I heard most of the file this afternoon and it was fine.

Hugs,

Teresa

Buthaina's Reply Message

Dear Teresa,
Thank you so much for this lovely,caring,and supportive message. You
have always been one of my best role models from whom I learned a
great deal since I joined Webheads in Action.
Your prompt responses and assistance to messages and members of our
communities are evidences of your great work and effort. No matter
what I say in this message won't be enough to express my admiration
and respect to you.

I will print out your message and make 23 copies to give to my
students, tomorrow. They are really anxious and eager to know what
the Webheads think of their performance.I'm positive that they will
be very, very happy, once they read your message.

Thank you again, Tere, and hope to meet with you face to face one
day!
Best regards,
Buth

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Sir Van's Feedback Message:

Hi, Buth--

It was still dark here in Brazil when I woke up and
turned on my laptop to join Buth's students at Alado.
It was my first time using that interface and after all
I would say that it was a very good start.

We had some technical problems but I could follow
around 99% of the presentations. That was pretty nice
to listen to some Webheads for the first time and
very pleasant to meet many students from Midle East
just like Dana´and others.

Congratulations! Your students' presentations went very well!
They sounded very confident and answered the questions
promptly. Their English was very clear and they seemed to have
no problem in understanding us. Michael and Sus' questions really
contributed to make the interaction richer and at the same time
friendly. By the way, Michael showed us his Martian face :)

As someone has told before there is much hidden work on
the backstage, so, Buth and all the people involved in the
organization, accept my congratulations on the very nice job!
I hope to join other brilliant sessions like that.

Regards,

Van (Dec 27, 2003)

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Dear Buth and all,

Congratulations on the successful students' online project that you've administered. I've read your messages and other webheads' feedback, too. Tere's review was certainly very informative and the webpage you've created was a good tribute to Buth's students. I'm now trying to download the voice file and I'm hoping that I'd be able to listen to it without any technical problems.
. . .
Anyway, I don't want you to feel that I've lost touch or not concerned with our recent collaborative projects. You have my best wishes, Buth, and to Tere- thanks again for documenting the event/s and putting them online for us, and to Sus, your emails always put a smile on face-

in a nutshell, webheads, I miss being online and I miss chatting with you folks.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope that all your wishes for 2004 will come true. Peace and happiness to you all!

Love,

Aiden

Susanne Nyrop's Evaluation, (Jan 5th, 2004)

The EFL students from Kuwait University of Science had prepared their online presentations carefully with a good understanding of how to balance text and images, and were able to let these pages accompany their oral presentations in Alado loud and clear enough to be understood by a foreigner like myself. One thing is the prepared work; another is how the students were ready to cope with unexpected questions and remarks from the audience. The group that worked with the drug problem were ready to explain how the Iraqi Occupation of Kuwait in 1991 had led to worsen the drug situation, because of unemployment and social misery, as well as more drugs being smuggled into the country. And the group that focused on space travels and the exploration of Mars were ready to explain their own fascination of new horizons for future space adventures, but also willing to discuss the dilemma between huge expenses spent on this kind of research, while there are still so many unsolved social and economical inequalities on planet Earth.

This occasion to participate in the final project presentation of Buthaina Alothman's classes has been a tremendous experience and a great example on how to create an authentic situation for foreign language students to express themselves before an unknown online audience with a globally distributed presence!

Not even the fact that there were a few technical obstacles for the onliners could disturb the presentations (or their teacher's supportive attention), and the final recording that I was able to make of the session, has a good playback quality that transforms the one hour presentation into an exemplary documentation of this kind of student work.

Susanne Nyrop, Denmark
Exam.ed, communication & multimedia in education

Buthaina Al Othman's "Thank You" Message to all Participants

Dear Webheads,

This message is to express gratitude and appreciation to all fellow
Webheads who helped in the two live sessions of my students final
project online presentations, on Sat. and Sun., Dec. 27-28, 2003,
whether directly through their collaboration with my students and
cooperation with me, or indirectly by providing tips, support, and
encouragement.

I am especially grateful to Vance for the "behind the scene"
support. His encouraging messages worked like magic, providing me
with all the energy and determination to continue and complete the
project.
Unfortunately, he couldn't attend the second session, as he
promised, due to some technical problems that prevented him from
accessing Webheads vRoom at alado.net/webheads.

Moreover, I am also grateful to Teresa for creating such a wonderful
web page on the project and for recording and sending the recording
of the first session.

Furthermore, I am thankful and so appreciative to Susanne, Michael,
Teresa, Damian, Eman, Maria, Ismael, Maggie, Van, Dot, and Andy for
their time, assistance and great interaction with my students.
Without their help and effort the webcast project would have never
seen the light and succeeded.
It is, really, an unforgettable experience, and congratulations to
all of us students and Webheads.

Finally, I am composing a web page, including messages from
Webheads, students, and new pictures of my students. Once it's ready
I will post you the URL.

Thank you again and I wish you all a happy new year.
Best wishes,
Buth

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