Report on activities

When the Executive Board met in Indore, India at our last ASIACALL conference in November 2007, we set ourselves a goal to increase ASIACALL's professional visibility.

We planned to work on strategies to re-acquaint our members and the friends of the Association with the goals and activities of ASIACALL past, present and future. We also pledged to find ways to make the Association work, grow and have an impact on attracting educators, professionals, researchers, and learners interested in using tech supported environments to enhance their work endeavors.

As the current President of ASIACALL, I feel it is important to advocate and uphold the goals set by ASIACALL when it was first founded. I remember attending the first ASIACALL conference in 2002 and meeting Dr. Larry Chong and hearing about his efforts to try and bring together, on one platform, interested professionals in technology and education to dialogue. Having heard this, and moved by my own conviction to create CAL awareness, I became an active body in the Association.

Today, this continues to be the main focus of the Association. Our call to you is to join in our ASIACALL platform is to attract professionals, researchers, academicians, and students to come together-to think, to share, to integrate, to interact, to work-on all levels and across disciplines to voice and support the power technology has to enhance the educational settings.

To date, we have been working on a number of projects in parallel: The ASIACALL Logo, the On-line Journal, the past Paper Publications, the 2008 Conference, and the Website.

The AsiaCALL website

We are re-designing the ASIACALL logo to give it a more befitting identity that upholds the mission of the Association. We are doing the same to the website. The ASIACALL website is at present being re-designed to include a number of new features to better serve the members, the friends and those who locate us based on interest in the topic of technology and education. The site, which is still under construction, will offer what most user-friendly education-prone sites offer; however, it will also feature unique areas and make it even more user-friendly.

Apart from features such as Association Information, Conference News, Photo albums, an On-line Journal, a Contact Us form, and Discussion Forums, one new feature is a Rich Resource section that will enable readers to view diverse resources contributed by ASIACALL members, and it will invite those interested in CAL issues to think, brainstorm, share, collaborate, and implement and strengthen the position of CALL across "ASIA" and the physical and virtual world.

A second new feature is an Interesting Links section created to provide links to related sites, resources, institutions, materials, forums, discussion platforms, research platforms, and experts.

A third new feature is designed to address Workshops: it will provide opportunities to learn about workshops, to request workshop focus possibilities, and to discuss ideas or dilemmas with a panel of workshop experts. The set up is such that the whole site will be felt to be user-friendly, informative and interactive, as we want to depict our Association is.

AsiaCALL 2008 International Conference

We have been working out the final details for the ASIACALL 2008 International Conference. It is scheduled to take place from 21 to 23 November 2008 and will be hosted by the School of English in the Institute of Social Technology at Suranaree University of Technology in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand. Our heartfelt thanks to Associate Professor Dr Prasad Suebka, Rector of Suranaree University of Technology, Assistant Professor Dr Siriluck Usaha, Chair of the School of English and Assistant Professor Dr Pannathon Sangarun also of the School of English for making this possible.

The Theme, Call for Papers, Posters, Panel Discussions and Workshop topics has already been announced and is available on this site under Conferences in the site menu. In due course, we will publish the tentative Cultural Program, plus the registration procedure, expenses, and accommodation possibilities. So, mark your calendars and spread the news....

Our conferences always leave me with fond memories of the time we spent together intellectually and socially (yes, yes.... and shopping !!!!!).

This has been a short update-just to let you know what we are doing behind the scenes. We think of you often, and we would love to hear from you - send us your comments, suggestions, recommendations or ideas - anything that you feel will help us make ASIACALL nothing more than "a local call from home".

Christine Sabieh, PhD
AsiaCALL President

Upload: The Future of CALL

Keynote presentation by Andrew Lian, AsiaCALL 2005, Sorabol College, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
Submitted by Andrew Lian
The Future of CALL

  Read/Post Comment: 0

Posted by Andrew Lian on Monday 21 January 2008 - 07:12:12