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Lesson 5




Lesson 5
Learning English with the Web 2.0

Adapted from http://www.ict4lt.org/en/index.htm 

You can download this text here
Contents:
  1. Introduction to learning English with the Web 2.0
  2. Image sharing
  3. Blogs
  4. Podcasting
  5. Video sharing
  6. Document sharing
  7. Creating your own Web pages
  8. Working with partner schools: e-twinning
  9. Teacher’s stuff


  1. Introduction to learning English with the Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is not a new version of the World Wide Web, as one might think,  but an attempt to redefine what the Web is all about and how it is used. Web 2.0 implies a more democratic approach to the use of the Web, in which traffic is less likely to be one-way from the website to the user. With Web 2.0 applications the internet surfer will be able to interact with other people and to use or distribute the contents as he wishes. More and more websites are emerging that are the result of sharing and collaboration between closed groups of users, e.g. students in a university or college, or by the general public. Wikipedia is a typical example of collaborative publishing by the public at large. To most newcomers to the Web, Web 2.0 is the Web.

Web 2.0 provides you with a variety of online tools that enable you to produce documents, communicate via email, set up lists of your favourite websites and organise and store your digital photographs, making it possible for you to work away from home and also share what you create with other people, anywhere in the world.

The Web can assist with teaching languages in several ways, because it contains huge amounts of authentic materials consisting of texts, pictures, audio and video recordings. Authentic materials can easily be downloaded from the Web and converted into activities and resources for word-processed handouts, for PowerPoint presentations, etc., and students can also find resources on their own or use materials at websites specified by the teacher. Besides, teachers can create their own Web pages.

The Web provides students with authentic language, not the adulterated language of text books, and, while establishing the  grounds of real communication, is at the same time highly motivating for the students.

However, as with any lesson, a lesson using Web-based material needs to be carefully planned. Before using the Web with students the materials must be carefully evaluated in order to have a suitable insertion in the general syllabus plan.
  1. Image sharing

The materials created both by teachers and students can be easily enhanced by the use of pictures, which can also be used as prompts for speaking/writing activities. These are some websites where users upload their images.


  • Tag Galaxy: http://taggalaxy.de/  A tool that enables you to find Flickr photographs by entering a keyword - also known as a tag. You enter a tag and set of planets appears on the screen. Each planet contains pictures relating to your tag, and when you click on them the images are placed on a 3D rotating globe. You click on any image to enlarge it.

  1. Blogs

A blog is a type of website. The word is a contraction of web + log.
Blogs enable users to post regular entries (or blog posts) and these can include news, comments, descriptions of events, photos or videos. In a blog, entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent at the top. There are many free blog services, and blogs are very easy to use and have a clean, professional look that makes them very attractive to use. To blog is also a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and or messages and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites and what makes them particularly attractive in teaching and learning.

Blogs often take the form of a journal or a collection of an individual's or group's ideas and thoughts, and they offer an easy facility for uploading new material to the Web. The most popular tool for making a blog is Blogger.

For  teachers, the use of blogs can be of great help because we can place lessons, assignments, and announcements online. They can also expand students' access to relevant materials by incorporating links to them, with the possibility of maintaining communication even with absent students. Blogs can also challenge students by placing quizzes and tests online and can be a means of communication in order to get parents more involved by giving them access to the events that are happening in their children’s class or simply to their children's assignments.


Educational uses of blogs include:

  • Journals of school excursions abroad. The students may be encouraged to put together an electronic scrapbook in the foreign language, consisting of texts that they have written, photographs, video recordings and links to podcasts.

  • Online courses in which the teacher sets the tasks and receives the coursework from the students.

  • Webquests; these are task-oriented activities in which the learner draws on material from different websites in order to achieve a specific goal, e.g. researching a topic and answering a series of questions posed by the teacher, and then create a presentation or write an essay, etc. The skills that are required in a webquest mainly involve reading and listening, but there may also be communicative speaking exercises.

  • School and college newsletters.

Most blogging services, including Blogger, have templates that enable you to select a design, and then customise it by changing the colours, fonts and layout. This enables users to create attractive looking blogs very easily. Page elements (posts, archives, etc) can be dragged and dropped into different parts of the page to suit your preferences.

One of the most important features to think about when you start a blog is to decide who can write on your blog  and who can read it (you might want to restrict this just to your class, or open the blog up so that it can be read by anyone). You can also allow anyone to give feedback on your posts, or make the feedback visible only after you have checked it out yourself. You can delete any comments you don’t like.

If you find a teacher of the same level and language with similar interests, you can also decide to set up a shared class-blog for your two classes. This will add an external “audience” for your students without the risk of fully opening the blog to the entire world.

In general, it is wise to be cautious when using a social website, so remind your students not to give out any personal information, such as addresses, telephone numbers, emails or their date of birth in their profile. You might also suggest they use a user name that does not identify exactly who they are, such as a nickname, or their name (or part of it) followed by a combination of numbers.
  1. Podcasting

A podcast is a digital audio recording that is made available on the Web, enabling the recording to be played or downloaded for listening at the user's convenience. The term podcast takes its name from a combination of iPod (Apple's portable digital media player) and broadcasting, but podcasts do not necessarily require the use of an iPod or similar device.

You can use podcasts as a source of listening material for your classes, create a class podcast with your students, or  even podcast yourself.

You can use podcasting to find interesting and up to date resources for your classes, to encourage learners to listen to audio materials on topics they are interested in, and you can even make your own podcasts, or ask your class to make them.

Podcasting offers many potential benefits: for instance, the materials are delivered in a format that is portable, convenient and easy to use, and easy to access. The user can control the pace at which the information is delivered to them - using the pause button, for example. The format is also motivating and attractive: short, often professionally made resources on a whole range of topics.

There are many existing resources that can be used for language learning purposes. Many broadcasters, such as the BBC, from all over the world release their materials as podcasts. Although primarily intended for native speakers of the language, these are of enormous value to language teachers and learners as resources.

There are also podcasts specifically intended for language learning. Some are produced professionally, and you might want to point them out to your learners for additional practice, while others are developed by language teachers for their own students, but also available for other teachers or individual learners to use. Some teachers also encourage their students to produce their own podcasts.


Many podcasts now appear on the websites of professional broadcasting stations, e.g. the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk, and there are some websites specialised in them:
  1. Video sharing

As with images, videos can also be shared, downloaded, uploaded and distributed  on the web, and become an inexhaustible source of leaning material for your lessons. These are some of the most popular video sharing sites:


  • YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ The best known video sharing website. It contains lots of useful videos for language teaching.

Youtube can be very useful in the classroom in many different ways:
  • You can use it in face-to-face and online teaching and learning environments. For instance, you can find a video you like and show it to your class using your  computer and an LCD projector, which are mostly the only devices that you can find in a classroom - if there are any

  • It is a relatively simple way of bringing authentic audiovisual material into the classroom:  It is just a matter of finding an appropriate video, making one yourself, or having your students make one.

  • The authenticity of the material and communicative situations presented on YouTube videos allow to work on both language and culture

  • It appeals to the students – usually it’s part of their world

  • It gives you more possibilities – it appeals to different learner cognitive styles (audio, visual, learning by doing…)

  • It allows students and teachers to bring material to the class – shared responsibility

  • It facilitates a task-based approach to learning: allows student to learn the language while creating documents and audiovisual material that they can put on YouTube.


  1. Document sharing

If you want to share or distribute your documents (not just texts, but also pictures, videos, etc.), you may find the e-mail services don’t allow you to send big files or archives. The best solution is, then, to upload them to one of the file sharing facilities (uploading them to the cloud), from where under your supervision and authorisation your students may download them. These are some of those file sharing on-line services:


These cloud storage services allow you to upload your materials and have them available in any computer, and at the same time share them with your students via email. They all have a free, though limited, service.

  1. Creating your own Web pages

Creating your own Web pages is fairly easy nowadays, as a reference site where your students may find resources or activities to improve their learning.
Furthermore, it is possible to type a document and convert it ready for the Web. Microsoft Word offers a Save as HTML option, which will create a simple Web page from a normal Word document.
It is also possible to create your own interactive exercises on the Web, using a tool such as Hot Potatoes.
There are also many different sites that offer the possibility of creating your own website. For instance: http://www.webs.com/, http://es.wix.com/

  1. Working with partner schools: e-twinning

The term eTwinning: (http://www.etwinning.net/es/pub/index.htm) refers to an initiative from the European Commission that promotes the collaboration and project development among the learning communities in the European countries. Many schools already have e-partners or are seeking partners with whom they can exchange messages via the Internet. The Portal provides online tools for teachers to find partners, set up projects, share ideas, exchange best practice and start working together, immediately using various customised tools available on the eTwinning platform.


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