Webinar!

WEBINAR

What is a webinar?

A Webinar is a type of conference or workshop transmitted via the Internet. The main characteristic that makes the difference from the Webcast is that the speaker is directed towards the participants and participants can interact between them, so, all the participants (including the presenter) develop the ability to give, receive, and discuss information.

How many people can interact in a webinar?

The participants of a Webinar can be from 2 to 20 people interacting, sharing documents or applications.

When you can make or interact in a webinar?

The Webinars are given in real time, date and in a specific time.

How you can interact in a webinar?

You can participate from any computer connected to the Internet and in which the specific software has been loaded. Most web conferences are held according to the following principles: meeting organizer sends an invitation email that contains a link to a URL and a user ID to access the meeting. At the time of starting it, each participant enters his user identification (ID) for the online meeting. Once logged in, participants can see the desktop of the presenter of the meeting and share with him documents and applications.

Which are the advantages of a webinar?

·    Shared Applications: all participants can interact with the host of the conference.

·    Transfer of control of the keyboard and mouse to a particular person or all participants (allowing them to manipulate the document that is open on the desktop of the presenter).

·    Changing the presenter during the meeting.

·    Tools for notes and drawings.

·    White board.

·   Chat. All the participants can chat between them during the conference.

More about a webinar:

A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, while pointing out information being presented onscreen, and the audience can respond over their own telephones, speaker phones allowing the greatest comfort and convenience. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a completely web-based communication. Depending upon the provider, webinars may provide hidden or anonymous participant functionality, making participants unaware of other participants in the same meeting.

I give you a page which contains tips for an excellent conference; those tips are going to help you to make a good Webinar:

  http://wsuccess.typepad.com/webinarblog/2010/12/qa-from-uk-webinar-on-presentation-skills.html

Webinar to teach English as a Second Language (ESL):

There are thousands of techniques to teach English, but, the most successful are the web’s techniques because the students love surf on the internet, and is easier for them to understand a new language just surfing on. So, the webinar is a successful technique to teach English as a Second Language. You can develop the four skills of a language in the students, just using this technique. With a webinar conference we can make the students interested to learn about a second language.

Finally, I invited you to create a webinar to make more interesting your class for your students! Try it!

Here I give you a page that has a lot of links about ESL webinar:

http://info.readinghorizons.com/reading-horizons-free-webinars-reading-teachers/

There is a video of a webinar, enjoy it!

By: Elienai Ferrer!

English Club Evaluation

Name of the site: English Club “the world´s premiere FREE website for learners and teachers of English”.

Site's URL: http://www.englishclub.com/

Author (s): Josef Essberger.

Objective of the site: this web page has as main objective to give English students and teacher resources to make the educative process effective.

Skills the site builds: English Club tries its viewers develop the four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing; as well as vocabulary and grammar.

Objective: This site offers to their viewers, links to resources as on line activities.

Scope of audience: Worldwide

Target level: We could say that the target audiences of this web page are from intermediate to advanced level students, as well as teachers that want to find fun activities for any level, so we could say that it is focus in Multiple Levels

Sensory input: Poorly

Feedback: No feedback

Interactivity: None

Communicativeness: None

Context: Some

Content: 30 seconds. (There's a little bit of somewhat worthwhile stuff here.)

Appearance: Hideous. (Extremely poor choices of graphics or color either make the site unreadable or nauseating.)

Navigation: Easy (Very clear navigational aids and easy and quick to find specific pages.)

Load speed: Fast (The site loads faster than most pages, or it may load surprisingly fast despite having several prominent graphics.)

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Brief description of the site: English Club comes to you from England. It is written mainly in British English. But they have pages about other varieties of English such as American or Canadian. English Club is free. And English Club is totally independent - unaffiliated to any other language organization.

What we liked about the site: it was that this web page offers to teachers useful activities to carry them out in classes, in order to make of teaching a fun way to learn for students. It contains a lot of relevant information to be applied by teachers, besides of some activities for English learners.

What we don´t like about the site:  the things that we don´t like about this web page, are the amount of sponsors include on each window of this page and the amount of links that sometimes makes it hideous if you want to find an specific information.

ESL/EFL Pedagogical implications of the site: EnglishClub.com is a free website designed to help you learn English online through fun activities and make the students reinforce what they have learnt or have been learning.

Technical (HTML) quality: Problem-free (no noticeable errors)

Evaluation score for 
Content usefulness:  4/6
Interface design:  1/4
Our overall evaluation grade: 5/10