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.)

[Suzan Stamper]

My first TESOL was 1983 in Toronto, but I didn't have a clue about CALL then.

My next TESOL was Long Beach (1995). I remember tagging along with Carolyn Heacock to help copy files in the EV and then going out for dinner with other CALL-IS members. My first tapas were with CALL-IS.

From 1983 to 1998 is a little fuzzy. I volunteered in the EV, led pre-convention institutes for newbies, presented in the Software Fair, organized Internet Fairs, and took meeting minutes.

In Seattle in 1998, I was elected to the Steering Committee. This year - 2009 - makes 11 continuous years on the Steering Committee as a regular member, an incoming chair, chair, past chair, and newsletter editor.

My memories from my year as Chair in Baltimore - 2003 - focus more on what was happening outside of the convention center.

TESOL 2003 was from March 25-29. The Iraq War start on March 20. My flight from Hong Kong to the US was probably on March 21. I remember watching the news reports on TV after arriving the weekend before the conference. In the same week, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was making headlines in Asia. On the last day of the conference, I learned that my university, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, had suspended all classes because of SARS. My flight back to Hong Kong was eerily empty. I had about six rows all to myself. After returning to Hong Kong, I did not go back to class until April 13 - two weeks later. When the university finally reopened, everyone had to wear masks on campus until June 10. . . . TESOL 2003: my year as Chair and SARS

[Elizabeth Hanson-Smith]

I always loved hanging with the "big kids" like Deborah, Vance, Norm Johnson (where is he?), Macey, and all the gang. TESOL has always been fun because of CALL IS.
--Elizabeth

[Mark Algren]

Second everything Elizabeth said. I remember hanging out in the EV until the wee hours - setting everything up, loading software, copying discs to give away, the software library (which lived under my desk at KU for a year I think at some point in the 1990s - late) - all that stuff. What great camaraderie working so crazy - so late at night in the convention center to have everything up and running by the opening bell.....

[Vance Stevens]

Those were the days of sneaker net before all those tedious but bonding tasks were outsourced so CALL-IS people could actually attend the conference. We used to keep guitars under the table in case we finished early enough at night to actually play them.

[Sandy Wagner]

Now that would be a welcome addition to the EV..love to have music around and a live guitar player is even better

[Sandy Wagner]

My first experience in the Electronic Village was as the local Florida contact for TESOL 2006, Tampa. I worked with John Madden and Sookhee Plotkin and was also a part of the TESOL committee so we had easy access to the copy machine and great food. I was honored to be elected to the Steering Committee my first year of involvement. The organization and energy of the EV was contagious and I continued as Electronic Village co-organizer with Sookhee as lead the following year in Seattle.

It must have been preordained as the following year I was voted in as chair-elect and this year, 2009, I am proud to be the chair for CALL-IS.

What I remember most about these past years at TESOL is the communications and behind the scenes planning and preparation that culminates in three days of renewed wisdom of the EV raison d'etre, made possible by the originators of the CALL-IS and their vision for the important role of technology and language learning. The day I arrive at the EV whether to set up or just "be" there is filled with elation at working and playing face to face with such esteemed colleagues.

[Christine Bauer-Ramazani]

My first TESOL conference was in Baltimore, 1994, but it wasn't until 1998 that I attended the CALL-IS Business Meeting. I had checked out several other IS meetings the previous years, but this one was so different and everything that Claire (Bradin Siskin) had told me it would be. Lots of comraderie, great ideas and plans, and lots of people willing to carry them out! That really struck me as the place I would like to be.

The next year, 1999, there was some talk about doing some online programming for the CALL-IS, and having just transformed my face-to-face CALL course into a blended course, I expressed interest in working on this. Then the following year (2000), a Special Project was approved for establishing online sessions prior to, during, and post TESOL Convention. I was to lead this endeavor, together with my great helpers Tom Robb and Susan Gaer. Little did I know that this was to become a turning point in my professional development, as it was the birth of the Electronic Village Online (EVO). We designed a training program for online moderators in YahooGroups and held our first 8 sessions in 2001, using the free version of Blackboard, and so did not even use any of the money allocated for the Special Project. The following year all sessions were run through YahooGroups, which is still the main platform used for the EVO sessions. I was lead coordinator of EVO for four years and then handed over the reins to Elizabeth Hanson-Smith, who passed them on to Dafne Gonzalez. EVO started with 128 participants and now enjoys contributions from about 2000. It has become a truly global endeavor, with coordinators training and guiding new moderators from locations all over the world.
See the link to the Electronic Village Online portal, where the links to all sessions 2001-2009 can be accessed.

My other fond memory of the CALL-IS is the EV Fairs. I always enjoyed presenting there and learning so many new things from presenters all around me. These fairs have been the most fertile ground for great ideas put into practice. When I was asked to head up the EV Fair Classics, it was a natural extension for me to build in some online connections to reach out from the EV to teachers who were unable to be at the Convention. Thus, the Web Casts from the EV were born, and they have been enjoyed by Webheads from all over the world. This is only one small way that the CALL-IS can reach out, since TESOL unfortunately on the whole is not moving in the direction of connecting with online audiences from the Convention.

Although it's only been 11 years for me, I'm very happy to be part of the 25th Anniversary Celebration, and our Colloquium and reception as well as the celebrations in the EV should be really fun. Looking forward to connecting with all of my CALL-IS friends again!

[Susan Gaer]

Almost forgot this one. Doing the first EVO online with Leslie by being online during the conference. Then starting it up with Christine the year after. I can't remember what year it was.

[Susan Gaer]

oops my previous post seems to be missing. I went to my first TESOL in San Francisco in 1980 (not sure of the date but it was the one before the first one in the list.) Then in 1981, I went to teach English in South Korea, went to Jalt and met Tom Robb. In 1995, after being addicted to Schmooze U, I visited all my Schmooze friends in the Electronic Village (what was it called then?) and became addicted to CALL. That led Elizabeth, Robert Wachman and I to start TELL for CATESOL as its first interest section. This wonderful group of mostly geeks, made the least geeky of us feel in and a part of something that has always been wonderful!

[Greg Kessler]

I first entered the EV in 1995 in Long Beach and it was so frenetic that I didn't poke my head back in for two more years in 1997 in Orlando. I soon realized this was *THE* place to be at TESOL and that frenetic energy was a good thing. In New York in 1999, I was elected to the steering committee.

I have many favorite moments. Many involve setting up and maintaining the EV with Colin, Jeff & Dawn when I was EV coordinator, Shadow, Ghost and whatever other roles we improvised. In St. Louis I remember warming juice boxes of Sake on the iMacs as we used them to copy software across the local network and wait all night for the lab to be ready. Of course we had to move all things in one at a time....Very slowly...or deal with the even slower union approach. They insisted that the ethernet cables had to be plugged in by a different union group from the ones who had to lay the ethernet cables and the one that plugged the computers in (no Kidding!). We had installed the old collection of software on a few machines in Ohio and drove in a university panel van 13 hours to get to St. Louis. It was not long after this that the software collection was significantly culled.

[Dawn Bikowski]

My first EV experience was also my first TESOL experience, in St. Louis helping Greg with all those computers and driving in the panel van. Amazingly, I kept coming back! Maybe it was the sake--what kind of group does such a thing!?! I also remember the night the steering committee, which I was on, went out for the meeting in San Antonio (great conference!) at some seeminlgy respectable place. And there was that belly dancer. And she had all those people come up and dance with her on stage. Does anyone remember--did she succeed in getting Chris Sauer up there to dance? or just try to get him up there? I think she succeeded! Either way, it was too much.

[JoAnn Miller]

I was EVO before I was CALL. I was logically involved in EFL much before CALL (I live in Mexico). One year I talked to Tom Robb about doing something online and he suggested the EVO (I think it must have been its second year)...then little by little I became more CALL and less EFL.