This is the message that was sent to the Webheads in Spring 2005 to request their participation in the interviews with ESL students.

Hi, Webheads,

I again have a class of 16 ESL students who are learning about the Internet. These are adult college students of various ages. All have set up Yahoo IDs, and we've practiced a couple times in class using YM. Each student will be sitting at a computer with a headset. I'm hoping to find up to 8 of you available to VOICE CHAT with them next Tuesday, April 26, from 15:00 to 16:15 GMT. That's 8 a.m. for us in Arizona.

Depending on how many Webheads are available, I'm planning to put 2-3 students with each Webhead. The students have made up a list of 15-20 questions to ask you, including such things as your name, where you are, what the weather's like, what time it is, what you do for a living, why you like to/ are willing to talk to us on the Internet. It's mainly to get a conversation going, but they do need to write down the answers. When they finish their questions, you could ask them some of the same questions in return during whatever time we have left. Of course, they are excited to speak to someone outside our classroom!

Let me know if you are available at that time, and I'll get back to you by the weekend with the Yahoo ID's of the students you'll be talking to.

Some of you have participated in a similar exercise with my students the last 2 semesters. By the way, I got the director of the lab to set up my webcam, so you should be able to see us this time. The "interviews" worked out very well before, so I'm looking forward to doing this again.

Chris Jones

(Note: You can learn more about the Webheads by going to http://webheads.info or their Yahoo group site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/)