Dave Sperling - Featured Presentation - KOTESOL IC 2003

Activity workbook. So please give a warm welcome to Mr. Dave's ESL Cafe himself, Dave.

All right, good afternoon everybody. Hello, hello, hello. How many of you were in my presentation yesterday? All right, well look what we have here: internet. In fact, I'm so thrown off, I don't know how to give today's presentation now that I have actually internet. For those who didn't come yesterday, unfortunately we were in a room that didn't have internet access. So today's presentation will be a little bit different because I'll be able to actually visually show you some of the things. It also makes things a little bit different because I probably will change my presentation just a little bit to kind of show some of the things yesterday that I wasn't able to show you. Also bear with me, I'm a little jet lagged today. I didn't feel it yesterday but I feel it today. I feel a little punch drunk, my speech is a little bit slurry. And part of that was drinking a little bit last night. Korean EFL teachers do it to me every time.

All right, well let's see where shall I begin. I think I'm going to start things off by trying to learn a little bit about you, to learn about the audience. I'm assuming that most of you are teachers. Put your hands up, teachers. All right. And how many of you are actually using internet in your classes? All right, well that's good. And how many of you plan to use internet in your classes? All right. And how many of you are just here just to see Dave, what does this guy look like in person? All right.

I think I'm going to show you. Forget Dave's ESL Cafe. I think I'm going to... Oops, let's see if I can do this without Korean coming up. No, we've got Korean coming up here. The key, I'm not used to these right here. All right, that stops it. Okay, going English now. Yeah, it does it. Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, that's it. All right, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and... What is this? Okay, all right, well never mind. Never mind. I tell you, I had to give a different kind, I had to go into a new profession because I'm having a heck of a time with technology these last couple of days. Not only are we having problems yesterday and today, but my email stopped working this morning. I went ahead and tried to access my email and over 14 hours I only received three messages, and I knew something was wrong. I sent test messages and I had to call Los Angeles and talk to the tech people there. I spent two and a half hours this morning on the telephone talking to tech people in Los Angeles trying to get my email up and running. So I'm probably not in the best mood to give a high-tech presentation.

But let's start things off with giving you a little bit of advice. This is from the days when I used to work with ESL/EFL students in the lab. I don't do that so much anymore, but I have seven tips that I want to give you. The first one is: don't be afraid of knowing less than your students. Sometimes it's hard. Some teachers go into a class or into the lab a little bit insecure, and you have to remember that a lot of the students, and probably especially here in Korea, they're very high tech, very tech-savvy. So you kind of have to take your ego and leave it at the door. This is something that I learned a long time ago, and I would think that over the last five or six years, a lot of the things that I have learned have been from teenagers. So don't mind knowing less than your students. Number two: try not to get frustrated. Some of the things that I'm going to talk about today, sometimes they don't work, sometimes they will work. Sometimes email goes down, sometimes you can't access a web page. It's not perfect. So as soon as you get online and you start doing internet-based activities, there are bound to be problems, so try not to get too frustrated. Number three: I always tell teachers and students, don't abandon pen and paper. One thing that I like to do is actually have my students keep a notebook with them when they're going online and actually copy down information that they're learning. I do this with my son as well. When he gets online, it's a time for him to learn and to be able to actually get it down into a notebook. Number four: make it social, not antisocial. I told you a story yesterday about my students in the computer lab. When they worked individually, one person per computer, they were very quiet and very uptight. But as soon as I paired them up and I had two in front of a computer, the dynamics completely changed. My students were very communicative and the class was fun. So remember that it's not an antisocial activity, it's something that's social. Number five: get your students away from the computer sometimes. Just because it's an internet-based activity doesn't mean that you have to spend the whole time in front of the computer. There are times where you want to actually get away from the computer and talk with your students about what they've learned, whether it's an idiom or some kind of specialized vocabulary or just about what they've been discussing with their key pal. Number six: don't be afraid to experiment. All of this is new. What I'm going to talk about today is just a very small part of the potential of what you as teachers can do with the internet with your students. So there are a lot of ideas out there that you can just brainstorm and try. But don't be afraid to experiment. And don't forget that what works with one group or what doesn't work with one group doesn't necessarily mean it won't work with another group. I've had activities that just seemed like disasters, and then I'll try it with another class and I might make a small change or I might not, and it'll work out really well. And finally, number seven: try to integrate the activities that you're doing into what you're teaching in class. So what are some of the textbooks that you're using in your classes? Let's go ahead and scream them out. Interchange, what else did I hear? Headway English, what was that? Viva English? I won't even ask about that. Is it good? It's a video? Okay, well, most of these books you'll find that they're theme-based, is that right? I used to teach New Interchange, which I liked. Some people don't, but I liked it a lot. You'll notice that each chapter has some kind of a theme. When I was teaching, my favorite chapter was the food chapter because I would make my students cook and then I would eat. But the truth is that you have these themes, and so what I did in my book and what I did with my students, I would go and integrate. If that particular theme was food, for example, I would have my students get online and search for recipes or discuss food with their key pal. So I tried to make it actually meaningful to what I was teaching in the class. All right, so those are just kind of seven quick tips for you.

Let me see if this is working now. All right. Wow. All right, this is what I wanted to show you. I never had an applause for pulling up a web page before. Maybe I'm going to do it again. All right, about the easiest applause I've ever had. This is what I wanted to show you yesterday. For those of you that weren't here yesterday, the URL is eslcafe.com. And this is just a list of some of the links. Before I actually go into some of the things in my book, I'm just going to kind of scroll through this because we missed it yesterday. We have links for online publishing, meeting and communication, online learning, online tools for exploration, and online jobs, as well as the tips that I told you today which are written at the bottom. So for those of you that would like to get to this page, it's very easy and you can actually go through these links on your own when you get home or at your school.

Well, I'm going to talk a little bit about this book. Is there a link on the front page? No, no, this is a private page nobody knows about. This is just something privately that I set up when I gave a presentation in Thailand over the summer. Yesterday's presentation had the same content, so I just went ahead and made a few modifications. But no, you just go to the main page and you're right into this page with all the links. And the links are quite good, if I should say so myself, and I think very helpful for you.

Now, getting into this book. This book was written because I was working with students and I was very frustrated by the fact that there really wasn't much material or much of a guide on really what to do in the classroom when I would bring my students into the lab and I would get them online. So as I wrote this book, I used my students as guinea pigs. And I'm going to talk to you now just really about the structure of some of the internet activities. The first step that I used in this book was a key pal section. I talked a little bit about this yesterday. So the first step when I would bring my students into the lab, I would set up email accounts for them and then I would try to get them to meet a key pal. Now this sounds easier than it actually is. When you set up a key pal project, here's one of the problems: if you just tell your students to go out there and get a key pal, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So I'm not a big fan of just telling my students to get a key pal. What I like to do is I like to actually arrange it myself with another teacher. So you actually are working with another class, perhaps in another part of the world or perhaps another class in Korea, and that way it's more coordinated and there's less chance that the whole thing is going to fall apart. A good case in point is my son. Somebody emailed me and they knew that I had a 12-year-old son, and they asked if he could be the key pal to this person's daughter who was also 11 or 12. And it worked out for a while, but the problem was my son was starting to have some problems in school, so he was then not allowed to have internet Monday through Friday, and he was only allowed online Saturdays and Sundays. But then we were busy and we had to do some things during the weekend, and before you knew it, I started getting email from the parents saying, 'Why isn't your son emailing my daughter?' It just eventually fell apart. They exchanged some messages, but it just wasn't very well coordinated. And this is something that's common when you just let your students onto a key pal site and you leave it up to them. So one of the first things to do is to try to coordinate this yourself. There are many places to do this. Dave's ESL Cafe is a case in point. One of the best areas is called the Message Exchange, which I'll show you really quickly.

The Message Exchange is really just a bulletin board. 'I want to make friends from all over the world.' 'Are there any English-speaking people in...' Zhongan? Is that correct? Oh, Korea. Thank you. 'To share ideas about teaching English.' 'Looking for a pen pal from India.' 'Key pals from English as a first language background.' It's a whole bulletin board of mostly key pal related items. And that's one place where teachers can go and you can put a notice up there that would say something like 'Classroom key pal project.' This book too, I believe that Prentice Hall, or actually now it's Longman, I believe that they have an area where you can actually coordinate a key pal project with another teacher that's using this book. That's what I've been told, because this book actually has a companion website, which I guess I could show you. I haven't been on it in a long time.

Hold on. Let me try it in English. Actually, I know how to get to it. Hold on. I know the URL. Okay, here we go. I was on this site this morning. So this is actually the website. This is a companion website that goes along with this book. So it's possible for teachers, I believe that there's a teacher area as well and a bulletin board where you can coordinate with other teachers that are using the book. So there's a higher success rate that you're actually able to get the activities to work. But the truth is that even if you're not using this book and you're just coming up with internet activities on your own, it's still possible to arrange a key pal project by using, for example, my Message Exchange or some of the other forums that are specifically designed for key pals. So that's the first step: to go ahead and get that to work, to meet and to communicate with a key pal.

Step number two: what I used for this book is to have the students exchange information and questions about specific topics. For example, in this book, which pretty much follows themes from the major ESL textbooks, I have themes of animals, architecture, art, culture, family and marriage, food, games, health, holidays, movies, sports, weather, work, and some others as well. So what I did with my students and what I did with this book is to actually come up with some questions about the specific theme and have students communicate that with their key pal to find that information out. Then they would come to class and share that information with the class. So that way you have them actually reading the questions, writing it out, sending it to their key pal, reading the answers, summarizing the answers in their notebooks, coming to class, and actually speaking and communicating about what they found. Just to give you an idea, does anybody... I'll read the chapters again and you choose one, and I'll give you some idea of what the questions are. We've got amusement parks, animals, architecture, art, astrology, cities, countries, crime, culture, education, family and marriage, food, games, geography, health, history, holidays, literature, money, movies, music, news, people, science, sports, transportation, travel, weather, work. Choose one. It's like a game show here. Health? All right, let's see what we have for health.

All right, health. So let's pretend now that you are one of my key pals. Who said health? I'm going to nail you. All right, do you exercise? Yes, you do. And if so, what kind of exercise do you do? Walk? Walk, okay, just like me. All right, so if she was my key pal, I would go ahead and write that down. And of course I would know her name. What is your name? Moy. Where are you from? New Zealand. Okay, all right. So Moy from New Zealand does exercise every day and she walks. Second question: what foods do you think are healthy and why? Fruits and vegetables? Okay. I've been told that kimchi is very healthy too. Is that true? Someone said that kimchi is a reason... I heard it's also anti-SARS. Is that true? That's what I heard. That's what my friend said. Okay, the Korean... We Koreans believe... Are you Korean? Yeah, she is. Almost. Okay, see how much we're learning from our key pal here? Native American to Korean. Number three: what foods do you think are unhealthy? Chocolate? Okay, well chocolate... They say actually dark chocolate is supposed to be healthy a little bit. They say it has antioxidants. White sugar? Anything else? Potato chips, McDonald's, butter, hamburger. Yeah, all the stuff that I like. Right, it's a problem. So these are things that you're actually communicating with a key pal. And then as well as questions, I usually have students write their own questions as well. So the three or four or five questions that I give them are kind of a guideline, and it also depends on the level. The questions I usually vary according to the level. So if I'm teaching an intermediate or an advanced class, often times I won't even give questions. I just say, 'Okay, I want you to communicate, ask some questions about health to your key pal.' If it's lower level students, then I'll actually give them the questions. But almost always I'll make them create two or three questions of their own.

Well, moving on. What are a couple of health-related questions that you can ask me if you were my key pal? Ask me a health question that I haven't asked. How much soju do I drink? Or did I drink? Well, that's private information. But I don't think it was so much how much soju I drank, but it was the fact that I drank some beer as well that was making today difficult. Do I smoke? No, I do not smoke. Thank you. I hope so. How frequently do you walk? Well, I walk one to two hours every day. I have a dog and I live up in the Santa Monica Mountains, so I usually take my dog off leash and we hike up through the Santa Monica Mountains off leash every day, almost every day. So that's what I do, that keeps me healthy. And I jog with him too, he likes to jog. So those are some things that I do.

Just to give you one idea about one other chapter, let's have one more theme. Choose one more theme. Astrology? Let's try astrology. Astrology is page 23. Okay, and questions would be like: number one, do you know your astrological sign? If so, what is it? Scorpio? Taurus? Number two, do you believe in astrology? No, why not? It's just... All right, good. So these are things that the key pal would communicate and your students would actually write. And then the next step would be to again break away from the computer sometimes. Oftentimes the key pal component is given as a homework assignment. Sometimes, depending on how often you meet, you can't expect that you're going to get answers back the next day. So if you're actually in the lab every day, you can assign this on Monday and hope that everybody will have answers by Tuesday. So this would be something that I would normally get the feedback maybe by the end of the week, by Friday, or perhaps the next session, depending on how often you're actually in the lab. And then what I do is again I would break away from the computer and I would have the students communicate, actually speak about what they had discovered from their key pal. And from that, often even have a conversation as well on this particular theme. So that's the email component of the book, where you're actually communicating about the theme. And the students love it. You've got a good opportunity to teach your children as students about time. That's right, 14 to 16 years between New Zealand and America. That's right, you have different time zones. And it's also great for students, of course, to learn about different cultures as well. With the internet, you're able to do that because it's so global.

Okay, and the next component is actually a web-based search. These types of things you can make up yourself. Depending on what the theme is, you can come up with your own ideas on searching the web for these theme-based ideas. Just to give you one idea, I have students in the culture section do a proverb search. How many different countries do we have here? It seems like we have a lot of countries. We have New Zealand, we have Korea. What other countries do we have here? Canada. How many of you are Canadian? I've met so many Canadians. Oh my gosh, wow. Why are so many Canadians here? To get away from the US? No jobs in Canada? Isn't it supposed to be your Thanksgiving last week? Oh, last week, okay. All right, so we have Canadians. What other countries do we have? Any other countries? Australia, America. Okay, all right. Let's find out. Let's start off with an American proverb. Somebody from the US, know of an American proverb? 'Early to bed, early to rise, your girl goes out with other guys.' Boy, are you from the US or Canada? America. Okay, well I haven't heard that one before. 'Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.' All right, you're a wealth of information. I appreciate that. Okay, so we got a nice US proverb about girlfriends and money. Do we have a Canadian proverb that's different from a US proverb? 'If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.' 'If you can't laugh, you might as well cry.' Didn't Benjamin Franklin say that? He said a lot of things, but maybe not that one. All right, well let's go fuddle duddle. I don't think that's a proverb, I think that's an idiom or slang. But you know what, let's quickly cross the Pacific and get away from North America before this presentation completely deteriorates. Let's go now to South Korea, and I'd like a South Korean to actually teach me a South Korean proverb, because I don't know any South Korean proverbs.

All right, moving on. See a hand up back there. Yes. 'Fix the stable after you lose a cow.' Oh, I like that one. Okay, fix the stable after you lose the cow. Interesting. 'Well begun is half done.' 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.' Sounds good. Okay, all right. So this is to get an idea when you're communicating to actually go and get a proverb. And again, you can see here that the great thing about being on the internet is that it's so global. And of course, if you have a Korean class and they're communicating with an ESL class in the United States, which is so culturally diverse, you have... I remember one time I had a class of about 18 students from about 14 different countries teaching ESL. So you're actually able to get these diverse proverbs from different countries to share.

Another thing that I love to do with web searching, and again this has to do with culture, is gestures. In fact, gestures can be very dangerous. When I was teaching ESL in the United States, this is absolutely true. We had a Japanese student at my ESL program, and they were at a stoplight. I don't know how exactly this happened, but the Japanese person, I think somebody said something in the car next to them, and the Japanese person went like this, and the American actually went over to the car and hit the person. It turned into a huge incident. And the Japanese student said, 'Yeah, I didn't think that this was so bad. I see it in movies all the time.' Honestly, he didn't know the impact. It was like, 'Oh, this is cool.' Oh no, it's not so cool, it's dangerous. So yeah, anyways, gestures. President Bush the first went to Japan and he was in his limousine. He meant to be giving the peace sign, but he was doing it the wrong way. That means... Wow, Australia, Japan. Okay, wow. Well, there you go. Well now that we're on to gestures, let's see whether we can actually come up with... Of course we all know the North American gestures, but let me, you can teach me about South Korea. There must be some gestures in South Korea that are different from what I'm used to. What do we have over here? I don't even know if I can do that. What have I done? Have I done something bad? Oh, this is money. But what was this? Oh gosh, you know what, I'm going to kick you out of here. That's what I get. Is it true? Is that what it means? Beckoning somebody like this, like we would? Yeah. Oh, so to get somebody over you would go like this? Interesting. I use American Sign Language in the classroom. This letter is T in ASL, and I had to change it to this to avoid problems. Okay, well there are actually sites out there if you go online.

Come on. All right, hold on one moment. Need two hands. Here, do this to me? You need a... That would be nice. That wouldn't be bad. Let's see what we get over here. Hold on. All right, if you just do a search for 'gestures' and let's see what we got here. Let's see if we get lucky. All right, there we go. All right, here we go. So just doing a quick search at Google, we come up with a 'Nonverbal Dictionary: Gestures, Signs, Body Language Cues.' And then you can go over here to entries in the dictionary. This is the first time I've actually found this. Wow. Anger. Let's see what we're going to get here. Wow. That could be interesting. Yeah, let me see. And we have here usage: 'Shows in jaws tense to a biting position.' Then you can click on 'biting.' Let's see what we're going to get here. Okay, 'bite.' And then it goes on to here. But anyways, there are even others as well. But I'm not going to waste my time doing too much searching where you can actually find, you know, like with the hands and so on. Sometimes I think I have found one site that actually had video as well of various gestures. So you can get your students online. Google is my favorite search engine. Are there any other favorite search sites that you use? Yahoo? Yeah, Yahoo's good, still really good. Google's my favorite. I almost always find what I want to find with Google. And so I get students actually on there finding particular sites, or I'll do the research beforehand. Just like I'm doing now, what I would do is the night before actually get online and do the search. One thing to remember too is that sites change quickly. So again, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. It's not uncommon for you to have a correct URL of a website on Monday and by Friday it's gone, it's dead. So one of the things you want to do is to check your links. Like even the link page that I showed you for AUA, I mean the... now there are a couple links on there that didn't work. Yeah, I went ahead and tested them all out, but I just had those links up in August and now it's just October. So in a few months, already a couple of those links went bad. So that's one of the things that you have to consider.

All right, another thing that I do as well is when students are actually going online, I have them learn new vocabulary as well. Again, I told you that it's important for them to go ahead and keep a notebook or keep some paper with them so that when they get online, it's not a waste of time, that they're actually learning something. One thing you have to be careful is not to use the internet as a babysitting tool. I can't believe how many times I've seen this with ESL/EFL teachers, but especially in the mainstream schools in the US, where teachers are just letting their students into the computer lab and then there's no supervision. The teachers just kind of let them loose and then the teachers are grading papers or reading a book. So you do actually want to put some work into this and see that the students are getting use out of this. So I have students go and actually learn new vocabulary. Sometimes the vocabulary will actually be kind of assigned. As an example, here's an example. I have one activity: 'Search the web to find the following information about each discovery or invention.' This kind of has to do with vocabulary: aspirin, bacteria, chewing gum, DNA, the match, microscope, nuclear fission, ozone. And they'll have to find the scientific inventor, country, and year. And then as a follow-up, I'll actually have new vocabulary from that activity. They'll have to write five new words that they actually learned and the definitions. And one thing that I really like about the internet is the fact that there are wonderful online dictionaries. Dictionary.com is one where students can, if they don't have their own portable dictionary, they're able to actually use the internet as a quick way to find the meaning of the word. One thing that's even better than that is that some of the sites now offer the pronunciation, which is equally important. My wife is now a full-time student studying psychology, and she uses an internet-based dictionary to actually learn the vocabulary in her textbooks, and she loves it because of the pronunciation.

Okay, then I have a writing assignment that's based on the activity. So let's say we did... what are some of the themes that we did today? From the themes today, what's a writing activity that you could assign as an example? Dictation? Yeah, you can. Write a horoscope? That's right, yeah. You can have somebody write a horoscope. Anything else? Make up an exercise plan? Yeah, that'll work. The five food groups? Yeah, things like that. So normally from this, I'll actually assign a writing assignment. Or sometimes what I'll do is I'll also have the students email me. For example, if it's vocabulary that they've learned, they'll have to send me an email message using the vocabulary words that they actually discovered. Or sometimes instead of actually handing it in, some of the assignments will be email-based. Other things that I'll do will be ways we talked yesterday to be able to expand students' vocabulary and idioms and slang, to actually get online and be able to learn that as well.

Let me get back over there. I can't read the... No, now it's okay. All right, hold on. Let me get back to that page. I should have bookmarked it. There we are. All right, let me go down here and just show you other things that you can do. Oops. Where students can actually work on their vocabulary would be, for example, let's see. Let me show you the slang. Well, let's do idioms real quick. This is a wonderful idiom dictionary that Wayne Magnuson put together. And you can see we've got an alphabetical... So if we did 'S' for example, it's going to take us to the index for 'S'. 'Baby blues'? I never heard of that. 'Baby blues: feeling sad when you are pregnant.' Oh, I have the baby blues. Huh, I don't have the baby blues myself. But so you know what I will do is actually if I want to do an idiom section, I'll have my students go to an idiom page. It could be the idioms that I help create, or it could be Wayne's page or another page. And they'll actually go, and I might give them a particular theme. Maybe they'll have to find food idioms or color idioms, maybe based on the book or maybe not, depending on my mood. They'll find idioms. And again, one of the things I like to do is to be able to have them use the vocabulary that they're learning. So students would email me not just the idioms, but use them in a sentence. I don't know how my students would use 'baby blues'. And then when we get into the class, the students would actually share the idioms or share the slang, and again using them in a sentence.

Okay, one of the things I want to show you too, and this kind of goes along with yesterday, was that the internet... A lot of the stuff that I'm showing you today has been text-based. And some of the activities that you can also do with the internet is to take advantage now that most people have broadband. I'm assuming that everybody here has high-speed internet. Is that true? Everybody? What do you have? DSL, cable? Not slow? Slow? You have slow internet? Okay, well internet is getting faster, and the faster it gets, the more potential for being able to use audio and video and so on. One of my favorite sites, this is actually a site where you don't really have to do anything because Randall has done it all. I told you about it yesterday, but I'd like to show you. I don't think audio is hooked up here, but I'm not sure. He has his quizzes, listening quizzes, categorized by easy, medium, difficult. And then he has listening quizzes for academic purposes. So for example: doctor's appointment, business meeting, first day of class, airport announcement, long conversation with real video. I don't know if this is working. I'm going to click on it and just see, because I'm not sure how this PC is set up. Just for the heck of it... Is it set up? No? You sure? Not that sound? You can put your mic? Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Let's see, let's just see what happens. Play audio. Hold on here. Okay, here we go. Watch slideshow. Let's see what we're going to get. And what do we have here? What do I click? This? And now what do I click? Left this one? What would I do without you? All right, then in your language view the English. All right, so 'Getting Places as a Group.' What do we have here? Well, moving right along. I don't think we're going to get this to work, but that's okay. Oops, let's get back to Randall's page here. All right, there we go. But again, this is one place where you can go where it's all there for you. It's similar to some of the stuff that I've been teaching you today, which is key pal and text-based, but here you're moving on to audio and to video, and students are actually able to work on their listening comprehension as well.

Let me see, I wanted to talk about one more thing. I just wanted to talk about video conferencing real quick. This again would go along with an internet activity. I want to mention this again today because students get really, really excited when they do video conferencing. I've seen examples of this, not myself because when I was teaching the speeds were slow, but I've seen examples at TESOL conferences and visiting schools. You can't believe, like if you have a key pal project and then that goes into a video conferencing project, you can't believe how excited the students are when after communicating with a particular key pal or class for a number of days, to actually do a video conference and see these students and communicate with these students live. It's absolutely exciting. One site that I want to just mention is a site called Classroom Conferencing. And again, the link is on the AUA page. And here they're using CU-SeeMe and other programs to connect communities, cultures, and classrooms together. And they have literally... I don't know if they have the number. Let me see the list here quickly. School directory. And here's the listing. Oops, where are you going? Here. Okay, so we have countries like American Samoa, Argentina, Australia, China, Czech Republic, and South Korea is there. If we click on South Korea, we have a list of schools. Tongyeong High School. And actually, the website run by... Know County government? Yeah, we are offering live classes from Monday through Thursday. A live, we call it live class, but that is a video conferencing. And kids love it. Everybody comes in with camera and microphone, right? And it's worked out really well. And what countries have actually conferenced together through the... Yeah, it's really powerful. It is powerful. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to mention it today. Sometimes you can do it locally, like what you're doing. It's also possible using a site like this to link another class in a different part of the world. This makes it a little... bless you... this makes it a little bit easier because sometimes it is hard to coordinate. And this does make it easier. You can also coordinate it if you do a key pal project with another class. But again, it's really powerful and the students get really, really excited.

Well, today I can really only touch the very basics. And the truth is that I also feel that I learn from the teachers. There are other people that can come here and do a much better job than I can because truly I have not worked with students with internet for a while. And so I tend now to learn a lot about what's happening from teachers like you, that kind of give me ideas about what they're doing in the classroom. But I hope I was able to kind of wet your appetite. One of the things is that if you do get online and you do these type of things, you have to remember that you are a pioneer. Truly, this is all so new. There aren't many books on this. I know that when I published my book, it was like that was it. There are other books that have come, but right now it really still is the early days for online learning and online education. So whatever you do online with your class, you can consider yourself a pioneer. You're kind of paving the road for all the other teachers and students that are going to be using this on a daily basis for the rest of their lives. So I don't know if we have time for questions. Do we have time for questions? No? Oh, that's right. Do we have time for soju? Just kidding. Craig, just kidding. 5:00. Okay. Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you've been wonderful. You've been a great audience. I have to say that this has been one of the best conferences I've been to. The teachers, I know that from my Korean forums, I've had some very crazy teachers based here in Korea, and I was a little bit apprehensive about meeting some of you. But the people that I've met over the last couple of days have been just some of the nicest people I've met during all the conferences I've done over the last six or seven years. So I want to thank you for just being so nice. So I'll be around for the rest of the afternoon. Don't be shy, come on up to me. I'd be happy to talk. Okay, thank you very much.