dani lyra's List: web 2.o in efl classroom

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  Some language educators are turning to Web-based social networks in an effort to motivate their students beyond the carrot-and-stick methods of the traditional classroom. Social networks bring people together who share common interests and give those participants the tools to produce, collect, share, and re-mix artifacts (Dieu and Stevens, 2007).
• As long as educators give learners the freedom to choose the content and direction of their online activities, participation in social networks can tap into the bubbling fountain of intrinsic motivation that each learner carries within
• • an insight for edublogging
• This is ideal for beginning and intermediate level learners, who can receive a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction seeing their photos commented on in positive ways by other people.
• feature of Flickr is its four privacy levels: users can mark photos private, family only, friends only, and public. It is important that students understand the implications of sharing personal information in a public space. Teachers should deal with this privacy issue before embarking on a Flickr project with their students, particularly with younger learners; they should be encouraged to use pseudonyms whenever possible. Teachers need to monitor learner activity and be ready to advise when necessary.

  • young learners
• Searching for Photos
• Show and tell, using descriptive adjectives.
• Giving opinions, making recommendations, or making comparisons
• ploading Photos:
• itle, caption (called a ‘description’ in Flickr), and a set of tags that describe the content of the photo. Students using a computer can even leave notes on their photos for people who want to take a closer look.
• Commenting: Leaving comments on photos is a great way to practice sentence formation. Teachers can have students integrate grammar and vocab being learned in class into the comments students leave on Flickr photos. Furthermore, teachers can teach students common techniques of conversation starting in their comments, such as making complements and criticisms, and asking questions. A student’s record of “comments left” can be viewed for evaluation purposes if desired. Always remind students to answer all comments left by others on their own photos. They should see comments as conversation starters, not merely as one-liners.
• Joining Groups
• Students can send their own relevant photos to the group pool, thus increasing exposure to their own work and making receiving comments more likely. Students should always try to comment on photos of other group members.
• Exploring Geotags
• ith Yahoo! Maps, allows users to tag their photos with a specific geographic coordinate. This allows students to both tag their own photos by selecting the exact location on a map, and to explore the world map by finding photos from a geographic location of their choice. This is an excellent way to learn geography while associating the maps with images. Teachers could have students practice speaking about directions, geographic features, distance, area, countries, cities, etc.
• f Kenji is into baseball, he can put together 12 photos that best capture the spirit of his interest. He can then prepare descriptions for each of the photos and then present these to the class, or to small groups of other students using the slideshow feature. Having students prepare a peer and tutor edited script can be a part of this as well.

  • as course openers about me
• Voicethread, which integrates with Flickr
• For example, students can use photos to create a calendar, a magazine cover, a billboard, a CD or DVD cove
• Photo Sets: Teacher can create slideshows and/or photo sets of images related to the lesson and use them in class to stimulate conversation
• Picture Dictionary: Instead of having students break out their dictionaries, the teacher can do a tag search to show a photo of the vocabulary word in question – “worth a thousand words.
• Teachers can set up a ‘class account’ where students can use it to post photos. This can be coordinated to complement textbook content. For example, if the theme of the week is ‘food’, students can post photos of a “the most delicious dish they ate during the week.” The resulting slideshow can be projected on the main screen and students could vote on which was the most delicious. If this were done weekly, the winning photo could be “favorited” by the teacher’s personal account, and then the student with the most ‘favorites’ at the end of the semester would win some kind of prize
• Homework photos: Teachers can have students take photos of their choice with their cell phones to be used in conversation activities. Students should prepare to explain the five Ws of their photos to other students - a great warm-up activity

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