Laura Loves Languages

folks are talking about languages. I had a very nice conversation with my colleague and new friend, Bee Dieu yesterday on skype. I knew her first by her work on the web four years ago when MERLOT peer-reviewed her  excellent Navegar webquest.  It resonated with me, because of my Brazilian background and also because, in addition to the same three languages- Portuguese, French and English, Bee and I share the same passion for making a difference with  instructional technology.  Bee teaches English at a French lycee in Brazil, but connects with language professionals all over the world through an organization called Webheads in Action. The Webheads are enormously generous in their willingness to share  their ICT expertise and strategies, even organizing free online conferences with world-renowned keynoters and concurrent presenters. (The next such event will take place online later this month; register, if you can at http://wiaoc.org/) 

Anyway, where I really connected with Bee was when she gave an online presentation called Networking on the Net at a BRAZTESOL conference,  virtually ”accompanied” by many WiA colleagues who she had invited to talk about  technologies that they used in instruction. I was blown AWAY by the ability to hear Bee talking, from my living room, to a live audience in Brazil while connecting with colleagues in Australia, Japan and other places.  I was very comforted by her confidence that the technology would work and that all these creative language people would share  their opinions of what is really possible for our students. Cause that’s the bottom line- when we are talking teacher to teacher, our students can also be talking to each other via skype or meebo or whatever else. All this makes the flat world very cool…