Video Conference in the ESL Classroom

Until this week, I had never used a webcam. I can definitely see how they can be used in an ESL classroom (i.e. if students have access to computers and the Internet).

Now that I am somewhat acquainted with Tokbox and Meebo, I think that such tools would be useful for one-on-one ESL lessons, as well as for extra practice for students outside of the classroom setting. This would be great in an EFL context, where students may be limited in the types of authentic practice environments that are available to them.

One of the advantages of video-conferencing over just voice-chatting is the ability to see gestures and facial expressions. In my own experience as a language instructor and a language learner, it seems that telephone skills are diffucult due to the absence of inputs that can be made available via video-chatting.