Memories

[Suzan Stamper]

Share a favorite memory or story about CALL.

(Excerpts from postings may be used in a PowerPoint presentation during the Celebration Open Hours or in the post-convention newsletter. Please let me - Suzan Stamper at [e-mail] - know if I do not have your permission to share postings about memories/stories.)

[Susan Gaer]

Here is a video made when Christine started web casting the Classics. TESOL 2007
Click here to watch

[Greg Kessler]

Here is a page of photos I put together for the Ohio TESOL website ...

[Greg Kessler]

A QTVR Panorama of the 2001 St Louis EV

[Greg Kessler]

A QTVR Panorama of the Vancouver Convention. See if you can navigate your way to the EV!

[Marianne Phinney]

Rather miscellaneous musings....memory isn't what it used to be!

The first TESOL I remember attending was 1987 in Miami. I think the next one was in San Antonio in 1989, and I remember connecting with Macey Taylor at that one. Skipped 1990 because I had a three month old. I came back to present at New York in 1991 on grammar checkers, the first step that led me down the road to a software startup. For 1992 in Vancouver, I recall dragging a very expensive VHS videotape player that read and printed a time code onto VHS tapes. Of course, I picked the year I would have to go through customs! I gave a demonstration on how to access those codes to create a multimedia lesson. Using an Amiga, of course. The machine was neat but short-lived; DVDs and larger hard drives basically killed it. I was in four sessions at the Vancouver conference, a feat I have never since equaled...nor want to.

Video was a bit of a sideline. Most of my work was in computers and writing. Including the years that I was associate chair and chair, I attended 1993-1995. In 1995 I was a "vendor" and giving presentations on NativeEnglish in its early incarnation. I do remember that Long Beach was very heavily attended and that there weren't enough hotel rooms near the convention center. I also recall walking off about 5 pounds just going from my hotel to the convention hall to the EV!

Missed 1996. Not sure why. Hit 1997 and 1998; my last TESOL presentation was in 2000. By then focusing more on software development for math (the 800 lb gorilla in publishing) but still have a spot in my heart for CALL.

The CALL group was always a great team of collaborators and innovators. Hope you have a great convention and go strong for another 25 years!

[Susanne McLaughlin]

Like everyone else, I think of all the great people I've met through the CALL-IS and the wonderful camaraderie and chaos of the EV.

My first CALL-IS experience was a planning meeting in Seattle in 1998. I went to the meeting because I was a new, inexperienced CALL coordinator. I had noticed that a lot of the people who were publishing practical, pedagogically-based CALL activities were in the CALL-IS. I wanted to meet those people. Now they're friends.

I was a real newbie when I started in the IS. I remember one of those frantic 'get the machines set up' nights before the Convention when Greg Kessler patiently explained to me (a mono-platform Mac user at the time) that to shut down a PC, you have to go to the Start menu. I still don't get that.

[Claire Bradin Siskin]

Since it started, for me CALL-IS has always been the most important part of TESOL. What a great group of people!

One of my most poignant memories happened in about 1989. An ESL teacher from a small Texas town called me up late at night to talk about CALL. I had no idea who he was, but we were soon deep in conversation. He said, "No one that i work with understands about CALL. I feel so isolated!" I said, "You have to come to the TESOL Conference in San Antonio, even if you have to hitchhike!" He did attend and was soon a busy volunteer in the CALL room -- happy as could be. As a result of this experience, he went back to school and became a CALL practitioner.