Meebo and Videoconferencing

I think that videoconferencing is a potentially useful tool in the ESL classroom. Particularly, it could be useful in EFL contexts where the students generally don't have access to speaking with a native speaker in their everyday lives. Meebo could, with enough planning, allow students to even have a conversation with native speakers from different regions of the U.S. or from different countries where English is spoken (obviously the U.K., Australia/New Zealand, but also places like India or Scandanavia where a large number of people speak it fluently) so that they can get exposure to different accents. There could be a ton of applications for this kind of thing and I know from my own experience that students in EFL contexts are often hungry for that kind of opportunity.

There are a couple of things that are potential pitfalls for Meebo and videoconferencing in general. The first is something that I experience firsthand on Tuesday in that Meebo or any videoconferencing tool might be frustrating in getting it set up. While I got it to work in some cases, I'm still baffled as to why it didn't work in certain instances. If students were doing this remotely, helping them troubleshoot their problems might be difficult. Another potential pitfall in using Meebo in the way I've suggested above is that it could expose some cultural differences that might cause social rifts such as the ones that we read about in this week's reading ("Toward an Intercultural Stance: Teaching German and English through Telecollaboration" by Ware and Kramsch). It might be useful to have very specific tasks for students to work on and also be available to monitor these conversations to help steer students away from "trouble spots."