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Voice for the Earth (VOTE)

Here's an event well in tune with WAOE's commitment to providing social opportunities among its multicultural membership.  A couple of weeks ago, Arun Tripathi posted a notice to WAOE-Views about VOTE, a global participation initiative for children 7 to 18, inviting their comments on the immediate past and future of their own countries and the world.  For those who may not have seen the notice already, or as a reminder if you are able to get involved ...

We are now planning the project "Voice for the Earth (VOTE)" as a component of the "Okinawa Information Initiative" project held in advance of the year 2000 G8 summit at Okinawa, Japan.  These projects are supported by Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

Vote will be a globally based World Wide Web project, and will seek participation from as wide a geographic distribution of children and schools as possible.  Participants from a broad range of nations will be given the opportunity to express their opinions on the most impressive event or person of the 20th century, what they desire looking towards the 21st century and introduction of their countries.

Discussions will take the form of a World Wide Web chain relay, which will start from Japan and end in Australia, by way of Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania. Children aged 7 to 18 from each participating country will have an assigned period of time to add their input to the correspondence chain before passing the "baton" to the next country.

The VOTE project will afford children the opportunity to interact with one another, with the intention of fostering communication skills and
multi-cultural understanding.

We would appreciate if you could find the Vote project interesting and introduce this to as many teachers as possible. Especially, teachers and children in a developing country are welcome to participate in the VOTE.

The detailed information on the VOTE and entry form are available on the Website: http://www.wnn.or.jp/wnn-s/vote/index.html.

If you have something to ask about VOTE, please don't hesitate to contact Mr.Shinohara, the Project Director,  <m-shino@mm.bch.east.ntt.co.jp> or Yoko Tagaki, Director of Teleclass International Japan <teleclas@mbd.sphere.ne.jp>.

During the past fall semester, Lynn Shafer has been engaged in evaluating WAOE as a doctoral course project.  Following more recent postings to WAOE-Views, Lyn has had a lot of discussion with various members, leading to online publication of a paper, at http://mason.gmu.edu/~lshafer.  The issues and choices facing WAOE and its members that Lynn raises in her recent thankyou letter to WAOE-Views, reproduced below, and in her paper, deserve greater prominence and consideration than they have so far received.   She gives a lively and fascinating account of her own transition from lurker to poster to active participant and committed member.  Along the way, it is often insightful, and sometimes disturbing, to see the formative stage of Association so faithfully depicted, with all its enthusiasms and awkwardness and bombast and hesitance honestly reflected back.  Thoroughly recommended reading for everyone, especially the Coordinating Ring!  Please post feedback to Your Say.

Also, Lynn invites your participation in discussing two other topics directly linked to WAOE's agenda for professionalising online education and for recognising multicultural diversity.  To get involved in these initiatives, or otherwise respond, contact Lyn direct at lshafer@gmu.edu.

Dear WAOE colleagues,

I have been very interested in the recent debate over the the membership fee/service option.  In many ways, it seems symptomatic of the difficulty
involved in maintaining an organization mainly via asynchronous discussions.  How might newer members be drawn into the WAOE community?

This topic (and others) are mentioned in my doctoral course project on the WAOE. I look at WAOE from the perspective of a newer member. The paper can be found at http://mason.gmu.edu/~lshafer.

For my own part, what keeps me involved are the benefits I've found in posting to this listserv: I've begun very enjoyable discussions on the side with Mihkel Pilv, Gordon Jolly and others.

What kinds of structures exist within WAOE, that are there not just to assign people to fill pre-existing jobs, but to connect people with each other?  It seems to me, that in the long run, if members focus on cultivating relationships among a group of people, greater participation and concrete results will come.

I am not looking to WAOE to act as an informational listserv (at one extreme - which requires only passive involvement) and I don't want over-bureaucratic structures (at the other extreme - that require me to get involved before I'm committed to the people in the group).  What I am most interested in is the chance to hear analytical perspectives from people within my community.

On that note, I am very interested in locating people who want to talk about the following:

1. The difference between using authentic assessment in the face-to-face classroom and the online classroom.  Some of the face-to-face assessment techniques I like to use can be found at http://gse.gmu.edu/ell-ld (How to assess English language learners for Learning Disabilities).  Next semester I might be doing a research project on this new topic.

2. Whether people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds  interact--possibly differently or the same--in an online course.  I think this feeds into the topic of the coming worldwide virtual university.  Do people from non-Anglo-American/European backgrounds have to conform to the Anglo-American/European web protocols or are there specific teaching techniques for accomodating different cultural and linguistic styles?

Best regards to you all and thanks for the great discussions you've held.