Web 2.0

According to the University ofMelbourne (2008), “Web 2.0 is the term used to describe a variety of web sites and applications that allow anyone to create and share online information or material they have created”.[1] There are different types of web 2.0 applications including wikis, blogs, social networking, folksonomies, podcasting & content hosting services such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr. Since students become more entrenched in technology, teachers need these tools to create virtual extensions of their classrooms, promote new avenues of communication and “offer learners a more participatory experience of learning in which individuals have increased opportunities to interact with more learners and with more learning resources.”[2]

Build your wild self

After trying some resources we found two interesting webpages you can use to teach English. If you are teaching the parts of the body for example, this web site is a good resource to make it funnier and easy going. There you can create your own monster including parts of the body of humans and animals. It would be profitable if you ask your students to describe the monster they have created.

Make beliefs comix

But if you are teaching routines for example, this web page is great since it allows your students to make comics and share them or even print them. The comic would go together with a script explaining what the characters usually do on a common day. It works as an illustration and it can be shared using a projector and the student reading aloud the script.

In short, since students are active on the Internet, teachers need to open their minds and try to include web 2.0 resources in their teaching for many reasons. For instance, to make learning relevant, to provide them with opportunities to develop communication skills that are appropriate and authentic, to expand the classroom, to foster creativeness among others.

Giuli and Virgi :)

Comment: while we were looking for information about web 2.0 we realized that we are using many of those resources all the time. But there are also thousands of other resources we are not acquainted with or we don't even know that they exist and that they could be really helpful when designing materials for teaching and learning. Now we can profit from them and keep on searching new ways of improving our lessons with technology.

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[1] Wikis, Blogs & Web 2.0 technology, V.1-21/05/08

www.unimelb.edu.au/copyright 03 8344 6647

[2] Technology Enhanced Learning. Education 2.0? Designing the web forteaching and learning. (2007). Page 10.

Let's get to work!

Considering what we mentioned in our previous post, we want to share our experience about the designing of materials for teaching. We had to create a didactic sequence in which by the use of a Power Point presentation and any other technological resource we can teach the “love/hate/like+ing” construction in relation with free time activities. We thought of a presentation showing a trip to Mendoza, Argentina together with a script describing every activity we like/love/hate doing there in our spare time. In order to demonstrate how far every destination was from our point of departure, we used the Google Earth program. As a final task, students had to make a similar presentation (they could choose their destination).

Following the TPACK model, we needed to know the content very well. We tried to represent it in an innovative way using information technology and adapting the materials to the students’ prior knowledge (we assumed they already knew how to use Power Point and in this case Google Earth; if they didn’t, we would have shown them how to deal with those devices). We think we could adapt the contents to the technological devices we had. So far, we consider we included a representation of concepts using technology, pedagogical techniques using technology, knowledge of the content and the use of technological devices to facilitate the learning process, and we took into account students’ prior knowledge about content and technology.

As regards the SAMR model, we have substituted the use of pictures alone in a PP presentation with short videos taken from Google Earth showing the places we will visit. Students should have to use Microsoft Word instead of paper and pencil to write their scripts and will have to make use of any technological device or resource to present their trip to the class instead of a poster.

Why using technology? Well, we think that this kind of presentation would lose the purpose of showing exactly the distance between the destinations and the possibility of perceiving the places from a 3D perspective. Using Google Earth we are providing students with authentic and up-to-date images from different places of the world. It is true that instead of using that program we could have used only the images taken from the Internet or books, but in that case it would have been just another common PP presentation with no modification in the use of technologies and consequently no transformation in the learning process.

To sum up, students have to use technology to create a task based on a previous model.

The experience was a challenge for us considering that we are not used to this kind of activities including technology. It was really hard work since we were four peolple trying to understand how to use those digital devices. It took long hours to finish our presentation but we finally could manage the programs. Now that it is done, we think it was really interesting because we are learning something that we'll profit from when teaching and it's not that hard as it seems. Try it out!

Virgi and Giuli :D