[EFL Bringing Web 2.0 into the classroom

What does Web 2.0 offer the language teacher? Your first thoughts will probably be of sites like YouTube (http://youtube.com) and Flickr (http://flickr.com), but Web 2.0 is much more than that. Using Web 2.0 applications and websites will allow you to e

xtend your lesson beyond the walls of the classroom and give learners the tools they need to continue learning on their own.

"Virtual world" site Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) is receiving a lot of attention from language teachers due to the high level of interaction between participants. There are several groups of teachers involved in promoting Second Life in language teaching. One of these is Second Life English (http://www.esl-secondlife.blogspot.com/). Using Second Life you could bring classroom role play to a whole new level. This may be difficult for some teachers to implement due to resource requirements such

as computer labs, but it is worth a look.

Chinswing (http://www.chinswing.com/) offers more structure than Second Life and provides learners with an opportunity for listening and speaking that is a little more controlled. Essentially Chinswing is a message board where you record your voice and listen to other people talk. Instead of reading threads you listen to them. The site is organized into channels allowing learners to more easily find discussions of interest to them. With this site, you could have a thread devoted to your class where students talk about an assigned topic and respond to each other.

Another simple assignment would be to have students choose their own discussion and participate in it using a shared link for homework.

I have used Bubbleply (http://www.bubbleply.com) with students. This a great way for students to interact with a video on YouTube. Last September I introduced Bubbleply on my blog (http://eflgeek.com/index.php/eflgeek/comments/bubbleply-revisited/)

Bubbleply takes a YouTube video and allows you to add a variety of speech, thought, narration, or subtitle bubbles to it. Clearly this gives the teacher opportunities to annotate a video, add English subtitles to aid in listening comprehension, add thought bubbles for comedy, or even have students find a video of their own to Bubblply for task-based English use. My students will be finding their own YouTube video to Bubbleply and then adding it to their class blogs.

Kantalk (http://kantalk.com/) requires the use of Skype (http://www.skype.com) for voice recording or live chatting. One feature that I think is useful is the "transcribe a YouTube video" option. Simply add a link to a YouTube video and the video will be embedded on the page with a place to transcribe the video. More than one person may transcribe the video and other users are able to comment as well as rate the transcription. This is definitely a good listening exercise for learners.

Last semester I used BitStrips (http://www.bitstrips.com/create/comic/) as a homework assignment (http://eflgeek.com/index.php/eflgeek/comments/bitstrips/) for one student who was catching up, and will probably use it with all students this semester.

FaceYourManga (http://www.faceyourmanga.com) is an avatar generator. Using this site you could have learners create avatars of themselves, print them up and bring them to class. You can then redistribute the avatars so that learners have to find the per

son whose picture they have using language learned in class. This is also useful if your students are blogging or using Moodle and you want them to have avatars.

There are too many Web 2.0 sites to use with classes to be able to fully introduce all of them here, but others to consider include: Voice Thread (http://voicethread.com), Flickr (http://flickr.com), Chuala (http://www.chuala.com/), Thinkmap Visual Th

esaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/), and Word Learner (http://www.wordlearner.com/).

Two excellent blogs that will keep you informed of useful websites for the classroom are Larry Ferlazzos Websites of the Day (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/) in particular check out The "Next Best ..." list (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/08

/25/the-next-the-best-list/). The second site to watch is Langwitches (http://langwitches.org/blog/).

If you have other sites to share, please leave a comment on my blog (http://eflgeek.com).



By Sean Smith



(eslteacher@gmail.com)