Avatar Languages Blog

At Avatar Languages we are using many web 2.0 tools in online language lessons. This “teaching 2.0” approach leads to very different kinds of lessons from normal textbook based ones. When looking for some guidance on how to use the internet in place of a textbook, the Dogme ELT movement has been a real inspiration. But perhaps using 2.0 applications can take the Dogme ELT principles further than technology free teaching does.

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EUROCALL
For those of us who missed the EUROCALL conference in Ireland and online last month, we can catch up with recordings of the presentations that are located on the University of Ulster website. I have just watched an especially engaging talk by Bernd Rüschoff about the use of web 2.0 in language learning.

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Last week saw the publishing of an article I wrote about the opportunities Second Life offers for teaching English. The article appeared in “English Teaching Professional“. There are some other education 2.0 topics also covered in the same issue, such as teaching with podcasts and wikis, as is blogged about by Language Learning Resources.

This week sees the writing of a follow up article, focusing more on teaching methods using Second Life…

Hoy he comprado un libro chileno sobre la educación2.0 y la educación tradicional. Se llama “Generación.net: Choque cultural en la sala de clases” y es escrito por Andrés Guiloff y Daniel Farcas. Tengo muchas ganas de realmente empezar el libro y escribir aquí unos pensamientos. Por el momento les dejo con un video YouTube sobre el lanzamiento del libro.

Google Docs (essentially word and excel presented as a wiki) are an excellent tool for working with students on their compositions. I was doing this yesterday with one of my students and we were able to edit the same document at the same time. Admittedly there are times when there is a conflict of who is editing, but if you are discussing what you are doing (which given that it is a classroom situation, is the most probable way to work), then it goes smoothly.

In the screenshot below I am about to highlight in yellow the text “Take good shoes because Berlin…”

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