About Worldchat Education
We believe in authentic learning experiences that support deep, meaningful learning.
Meet our team!
Anne-Marie Lafortune, M. Ed.
Worldchat Education founder, Anne-Marie is an ESL professor, certified yoga teacher as well as green committee, zen space and intercultural center coordinator at the Cégep de la Gaspésie et des Îles in Canada.
She has taught in South Korea, in France as well as in Australia, and she did professional development in New York and Helsinki. Her research focuses primarily on active learning, learner autonomy, distance education and the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al., 2000).
In 2018, she received from Université de Sherbrooke the Award for the Quality of Production and Pedagogical Intervention in College Teaching and, in 2019, the Canadian Association for Teacher Education Award.
Anne-Marie's research interests include: interdisciplinarity, scaffolding, metacognition, self-regulated learning, autonomous learning modules, and more!
Her pedagogical articles have been published on various platforms and in academic journals, including:
Eric Waldman, B.Eng.
https://ericwaldman.ca/
Eric Waldman is a Canadian open source programmer and web developer.
His company, Waldman Web Development, specializes in pushing the limits of modern web development. He uses state-of-the-art open source technologies and programming languages in order to create software that captivates users.
Worldchat is his first foray into the delightful world of realtime video communication. It was an excellent opportunity to explore recent trends in web development including the TypeScript Programming Language, as well at the Janus WebRTC server.
Our philosophy
Authentic learning activities and material in second language learning environments help maintain a high level of motivation (Edge, 1996; Krashen, 1982; Willis, 1996) while supporting deep and long-term learning objectives (Fink, 2003; Chastain, 1998).
Worldchat Education is a pedagogical tool that fosters such meaningful learning experiences. As students from around the globe verbally communicate on various topics of interest in their second language, they benefit from:
- Authentic manipulation of their second/foreign language;
- Exposure to various international accents;
- Authentic opportunities to practice their communication skills.
Moreover, they get to:
- Negotiate meaning as they use the skills learned in class;
- Enrich their vocabulary and expressions as they communicate in real-time;
- Learn about various cultures around the world;
- Improve their flow, pronunciation as well as overall communication skills.
Worldchat Education offers several tools to support:
Teacher experience
- Match with colleagues from around the world;
- Unique classroom identification code;
- Chat and video communication with fellow teachers;
- Access to student video recordings - for evaluation purposes.
Student experience & Consolidation of learning
- Chat and live video conversation between paired students;
- Unique, authentic speaking opportunities;
- Cross-cultural logs;
- Access to own video recordings for self-reflection purposes to support metacognitive skills.
A safe learning environment
- Verified teachers and authentication process;
- Terms of service and privacy policy;
- A zero tolerance policy for inappropriate content and behavior;
- The possibility to report users;
- The recording of all video conversations on the platform (participants need to agree prior to the beginning of the video chat recording)