What are Web 2.0 Tools?
P.K.Jayaraj. RIESL, Bangalore
pkjayarajs@gmail.com
“Don’t limit a child to your own learning as he was born in another time”-Albert Einstein.
The Internet has changed the nature of our language and life. Whenever I think about the Internet, what comes to mind is a line from W B Yeats’ poem “Easter 1916” - “All changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born”. Same is the case with the Internet. It revolutionized our lives in many ways. It changed the concept of communication and entertainment. Now we can text, video chat and send E-mails (instead of letters) instantly.
Have you ever blogged, podcasted, wikied or commented online? If you say ‘yes’, you are among the 50 million people who have tried these new tools. Today’s children are “growing up digital”. They use web 2.0 tools; they blog, use wikis and listen to podcasts. Web 2.0 is a fashionable expression that describes a new generation of websites. Why do we need Web 2.0 tools? They can support the development of 21st century skills since they provide a unique way for students to collaborate, innovate and imagine with others. The Web 2.0 tools... blogs, wikis, social networking sites, etc are the current communication tools available through the web. Communication is no longer focused on face-to-face, auditory and writing skills. This issue of The Second Language discusses the importance of Web 2.0 tools in learning English.
Web 2.0 Tools
The current Web is referred to as Web 2.0. The term 2.0 is attributed to Tim O’ Reilly of O’Reilly Media. The original Web was Web 1.0. What’s the difference? Web 1.0 was a read only web. Web 2.0 is Read-Write-Publish web. The term Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 tools include social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, and web applications. Web 2.0 sites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. These tools are changing how people, including students interact with the world.
What was so bad about Web 1.0 tools? With Web 1.0, students could find information online and use it to write reports using a word processor or power point. Now you can write directly online in a blog and get immediate feedback from peers and others who could be anywhere. You can collaborate with peers near and far- in a wiki, also directly online. You can post photos, videos, podcasts, and other items online. The difference is that even you can do the posting. You can control the tools of production and publication. With these tools, people are changing the way the real world works-business practices as well as social activities. Why not use them to change schools? All the Web 2.0 tools-Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Podcasts, RSS etc are social media tools and allow you to share, communicate, collaborate, self publish and express yourself. Let’s go into the Web tools and you will see how they create and foster social networking and sharing, collaboration and self expression.
Blogs-Express Yourself
In the simplest terms blog is a short form for Web Log or Weblog. Blogs are online journals that are updated frequently, sometimes even daily. An update (also called an entry or a post) is usually quite short, perhaps just a few sentences and the readers can often respond to an entry online. People who write blogs are commonly called bloggers. If you have a passion or hobby that you just love to talk about, consider doing so in a blog. Cybele May runs a blog about something she loves: candy. Candy blog is her personal labour of love and a great excuse to buy lot of candy. Sometimes, a blog is all about sharing information. The popular blog Boing Boing is a great example of information sharing blog. Many people think that blogs are poorly written, mispelt and full of grammatical errors. Many bloggers do write their blogs casually, paying only cursory attention to spelling and grammar. For many, this informality is a part of the charm of the format. Readers find blogs colloquial, conversational and easy to read.
Do you have a Class or School Blog?
A blog can be created at no cost. There are great blog hosts available that will let you create a blog and keep it on the host server (or computer network). Do you have a class or school blog? Having a class blog is a great way to share your views, ideas and materials like photos, videos and more. Here are a few suggestions you can use to develop your own voice and style for your blog. First, remember that a blog is a conversation. Try to write the way you speak. Avoid jargons and clichés. Second, write your blog with a specific friend or family member in mind. Always consider your audience. Thirdly, before you start blogging, spend some time visiting other blogs that are like the one you are thinking to start. Read one or two for a few weeks and pay attention to things like the length of posts, frequency, writing style, and subject material. Finally, update your blog. The blogs that attract the most readers are the ones with frequent updates.
What is Podcasting?
Sometimes the invention that makes the biggest impact on your daily lives isn’t an invention at all, but the convergence of existing technologies, processes and ideas. Podcasting may be the perfect example of that principle, and it is changing the relationship people have with their radios, music collections, books, and more. The term podcasting was coined by combining the words ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’. Podcasting is creating audio content that is uploaded to an internet site. It provides a means of publishing audio programs via the Internet. Users can automatically download podcasts (usually mp3 files) onto their computers and transfer these recordings automatically to portable music players such as Apple’s extremely popular iPods. Podcasting is especially interesting for English learners as it provides a means for students to get access to ‘authentic’ listening sources.
Grammar Girl
I am sure most of you have heard about ‘Grammar Girl-Quick and Dirty Tips’. In case you haven’t, Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogarty) talks about grammar as part of the podcast projects ‘Quick and Dirty Tips’. Grammar Girl is an Internet success story. Created by Mignon Fogarty in 2006, the podcasts have been downloaded over 13 million times. Grammar Girl provides short, useful tips on grammar that are easy to remember and easy to put into practice. The information is available in audio format as a podcast, and it is also available in writing. So if you don’t like listening to podcasts, you can visit the Grammar Girl blog and read the tips instead. ‘English Feed’ and ‘The Word Nerds’ are also popular podcasts. ‘English Feed’ is a weekly podcast including review and listening exercises on important grammar and vocabulary subjects. The Word Nerds is a podcast about language and language change. In this podcast three language teachers share their ideas about the roots of everyday English. ‘English Teacher John Show Podcast’ focuses on understandable English speaking in an extremely clear voice and provides useful English lesson - ideal for intermediate level learners.
Understanding Wikis
The first Wiki, with the name Wiki Wiki Web, was developed in 1995 by Ward Cunningham. Perhaps the most famous wiki, Wikipedia, is a good example of what wiki technology can allow users to do. Wikipedia-an online encyclopedia is a collection of two and a half million articles on topics ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. The entries have been written and rewritten by experts and non experts alike. What makes Wikipedia--and wikis in general--work is its ability to allow for open and transparent collaboration. Since there are so many people around the world who contribute to Wikipedia, there are a lot of vigilant editors who don’t like to see erroneous information included in their entries. They remove and rewrite information faster than any publishing house could ever revise and publish. For this reason Wikipedia is the most up to date source and perhaps the best research source for students.
Teachers and students often mistrust Wikipedia because most of it is written by laymen rather than experts. However, it can be an excellent place to begin a research assignment. With millions of vigilant editors working 24 hours a day to keep information current and correct, users are likely to find the information they need quickly. A wiki is effectively a class website, but easier to design. You do not have to be a web expert to set-up a wiki. Wiki platforms provide you with several options to embed various web 2.0 tools, links and more. The Simple English Wikipedia is an easy-to-read online encyclopedia for people who are learning English. The Simple English Wikipedia is for everyone! That includes children and adults who are learning English.
All the World is a Twitter!
You may have heard of Twitter but have no idea what it actually is. Twitter is basically a powerful mobile social network that allows you to stay in touch with the people you are interested in. It also lets you share what you are doing with the world-everyone from your family and friends to complete strangers. Professor Andrew MacAfee describes Twitter this way: “With Twitter, my friends are never far away”. Twitter has one central feature: It lets users instantly post entries of 140 characters or less known as ‘Tweets’, through ‘www.twitter.com’site or your cell phone. Like blogging your tweets are generally published to the world at large where everyone can read them on Twitter.com.
Twitter seems to be a perfect tool to support learning English, for the following reasons. First, Twitter is easily accessible from almost everywhere, so you can practice it at any time by sending and receiving messages either on the computer or the mobile phone. Second, Twitter is suitable for any level of English because in writing the messages, the students can chose a topic and grammatical structure fitting their level. Third, the use of Twitter as an online learning community can help to integrate students in the community who could not attend classroom. Anyone can sign up for a Twitter account. You can begin using it to practice your English immediately!
Touring the Tube
Do you have a video you want to share with a few friends, or perhaps the world? Or perhaps are you in search of a weird, interesting video? Either way, you can get what you want at You Tube.YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In YouTube you can find lots of educational video lessons with English grammar materials or lessons on English pronunciation or just some funny videos with slang and colloquial English. When you are fed up with English video lessons you can listen to English songs and sing them with singers if you have their lyrics. And it is very easy to find the lyrics, just Google the title of the song you will get it instantly. Now that a growing majority of the Internet users have broadband, YouTube and other video clip sites (Google Video, Revver, etc.) have become very popular - especially with English language learners. The real advantage with these sites is that they offer authentic examples of everyday English used by common people.
People who favour traditional education usually want schools to focus on ‘the three Rs’- reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. Being literate in 21st century requires more than knowing how to read, write and compute. Students no longer need to be confined to classroom walls as the doors to social learning are already open. You can learn any subject including English using Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools.
Reference:
Hauser Judy (2009): The Web and Parents: are you tech savvy? ISBN, California.
Ramirez Lori Langer (2010) Empower English Language Learner with tools from the web, Corwin, SAGE, California.
Solomon Gwen and Schrum Lynne (2007) Web 2.0, new tools, new schools, ISTE, Washington, DC.
