CALICO

I have been learning lots of great things at CALICO. It is always a lot of fun to see what's new and catch up with people. The most inspiring was probably a session conducted on the intersect of SLA Theoery and CALL by Scott Payne, Bryan Smith, Steve Thorne, and Leo Van Lier. The presentation and the discussion were very interesting, once again showed how much more we have to learn. There have also been some great practical session such as he one conducted by Nike Arnold, Lara Ducate, and Gillian Lord, because it gave a great list of links. Unfortunately I missed seeing more details about the projects by Jonathan Reinhard, Julie Sykes, and Steve Thorne. There work on gaming is very innovative. In addition to the presentations, I also found a cool program at the Showcase that helps CALL students to evaluate software by Claire Bradin Siskin. As always I appreciated hearing the ICALL work by Mat Schulze and Trude Heift, even though it is way above my head. But I think it is very important work and I am gald to see that this year's winner of the Outstanding Graduate Student Award was a ICALLer, Peter Wood. Of course I was also super excited that Paula Winke and I received the Outstanding Article of the Year Award. The workshops, the board meeting, the conference, and the venue were excellent. It was nice to be in the sun and with great people.