Sadly, Graham Davies who was Emeritus Professor of CALL and in many ways the godfather of Computer-Aided Language Learning, has passed away today after a heroic battle with cancer. Many tributes have been going out over the CALL related mailing lists.
For my part I am going to dedicate my session on 27th of July at Sophia University CALL seminar to Graham and his memory.
I met Graham many times on the EUROCALL Second Life Island as Groovy Winkler, and also once in person at the EUROCALL 2010 conference in Bordeaux. Graham’s wiki has some information about the man in person (http://grahamdavies.wikispaces.com/) and his great website for ICT for Language Teaching is here which has been online and providing great resources for over ten years http://www.ict4lt.org/en/.
This was the email which had a nice tribute from EUROCALL president Françoise Blin
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:20:49 +0100
From: Francoise Blin
Subject: Graham DaviesDear colleagues and friends,
I have just heard the sad news that Graham Davies, the founder President of EUROCALL, passed away yesterday, after a courageous battle against cancer. Graham has touched so many lives, was a dear friend to so many of us, and he will be terribly missed by the CALL community.
EUROCALL will honour him in due course, but for now, our thoughts and
prayers are with his wife Sally, his daughters, and family.Françoise Blin
President EUROCALL
Dear Colleagues,
Whenever we want to write a piece of paper on CALL or any related topic, first we refer to Graham Davies, the Godfather of Call.
I am going to tribute my book “Technology in Contemporary Pedagogy” to his memory.
It would be my honor that any colleagues, friends or students of Professor, writing a paper in memory of him and I publish it in my book.
Regards 🙁
Dara Tafazoli