So far it is limited to just one user (not both sharing at the same time). However, it is a very simple way to show the other what is happening – especially useful for using Google Street View.

More information on the Skype website.

Thanks to Alexei for keeping me up to date on this!

This is the first time that I had used Twitter in class, although I had encouraged another student to sign up for twitter and to follow the Swedish tourism office, because he is shortly going on holiday to Sweden.

Although this wasn’t a planned activity with twitter, it did lead to some interesting observations about the potential of twitter for the language classroom.

Twitter English – The Differences
The English used in microblogging services such as Twitter seems different from that used in ordinary blogging or elsewhere on the web.

• Twitter English (TwEnglish / Twitterese) is different from normal English and different even from text messaging. As such, reading TwEnglish is a skill in itself.
  • Spelling: The spelling may be different – although it doesn’t seem to be vastly different from emails or note taking (with a pen). An example is “ya” in one of Nicole Lapin’s tweets
  • SMS style contractions: Twitter does not seem to lead to the abbreviations used in texting (see Txting: The Gr8 Db8 by David Crystal)
  • @ & #: use of @ for intended recipients and # for tags
  • Grammar: There are changes in grammar that can be found in tweets (probably because of the need to be concise). David Crystal’s blog mentions how the progressive passive is used in Twitter.
• Tweets are anyhow different from longer writing because of the lack of context and above all the brevity of the communication.
  • Conversations: Twitter is clearly all about the conversation and so the lesson naturally led to following the original tweets that Nicole Lapin was responding to.
  • Context: there is usually very little context (within the tweet itself) from which to work out the meaning of tweets. However, there are ways to gain a context, such as following the links within the tweets and tracing back through the conversations.

Some Observations

• Culturally specific terms: There were several times when culturally specific terms came up – such as simply the use of “Staples Center”, which follows a North American pattern of sponsorship for public arenas (eg Pepsi, Verizon, Wachovia, United, American Airlines)
• Relevance and timeliness: CNN tweets are certainly very timely and also relevant to those who naturally follow the news.
• Twitter conversations: Although this activity was a passive use of Twitter (ie not writing tweets), the reading did offer constant opportunity for conversation and for the student to relate his life and views to the tweets. It was a kind of lurking and therefore this particular activity did not lead to an engagement in the conversation with other Twitter users. However, Twitter can be used in a more proactive way by encouraging students to write tweets and to maintain conversations with others. I think what this shows is that a web 2.0 tool such as twitter can be both used as a stimulus for classroom based discussion and also to expand the classroom to include conversations with non-members of the class.
• Narrow Reading: In some sense, reading tweets is a form of narrow reading, because the style used is so concise as to be similar to other tweets. However, in a more general sense, this is not at all narrow reading. The student is in fact reading multiple conversations, which probably have very little relationship to one another. So the contexts vary greatly and therefore the vocabulary.
• New Reading Skills: Scott Thornbury points out that students don’t need to be taught to develop reading skills in their L2 lessons: if they already know how to read, then the translation of that skill (such as skimming) to a target language is something they can do naturally on their own. This makes sense for most situations, but I wonder whether students and teachers may now be facing new reading skills (such as reading twitter); it could well be that some students are meeting Twitterature for the first time when reading it in L2 and perhaps the lesson should be consciously guiding the student with this new skill.

The above YouTube video is worth watching, even though it is over one hour long. It very nicely sets out both what the tool can do and starts to look at how it will change how we work in the future. Of course, there is always the question of whether it will catch on, but given that it is an open source, there is a good chance that this or something similar will become the norm in the forthcoming years.

What is a wave?
The following is how Google sums up Wave …

• A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

• A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

• A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Enterprise 2.0 –> Learning 2.0
Google have clearly designed wave with the business team user in mind (rather than the individual/private internet user as noted by ZDNet). And it seems likely that it will enable a flatter (less hierarchical) way of team-work within and between organizations. And so if it is going to change the way we work, it is likely that it gives us some indication of changes in learning approaches we can expect with languages. A few initial thoughts below…

Real-time collaboration
The collaborative editing of waves is faster and more continuous than currently possible with Google Docs. It has very much a document layout (in the same way as Word or email does), and so does not seem to combine the freedom of a whiteboard into the wave work-surface. However, it is as responsive as any online whiteboard and allows editing tools that enable participants (students/teacher) to collaboratively create and edit texts and include multimedia.

Playback
Playback is a video style version of a wiki history. It lets you slide through the history of the wave to see how it has changed over its history. This can even be done for one particular participant and so could be used to see how a certain student has interacted with the document.

Commenting / Editing
Wave makes a distinction between editing a document and commenting on it and so a teacher (or student) can comment on the text. For example, this could allow a teacher to highlight areas for correction and give a hint of what the issue is.

Games and Widgets
There is a games function that has been used to create Sudoku and chess games that you can see in the demo film above. I can see potential for interactive quizzes and ‘exercises’ with this tool.

Opinion Polls seem very easy to create within Wave and so it adds some interactivity for students to quiz each other and for teachers to create checks for comprehension.

Spell Check & Automatic Translation
There is an automatic spell check and even an automatic translator for simultaneously communicating with speakers of another language. This raises the question of what skills we need to teach language learners so that they can draw on these tools to improve their communication skills. There may be scope for language education to move further away from accuracy and more into communicative approaches. In fact, if translation bots become more widespread (through the integration into conventional communication tools such as Wave), will the use of English (and other languages) change in an equivalent way to how English is changing as it becomes increasingly a global language with decreasing influence from native speakers.

Conversations rather than Publications
Google Wave certainly appears to be taking us further into the process of information and away from the publication of knowledge. Email and Microsoft Word are still very much focused on the completion and publication of information (with a clear time and date stamp) – even if shuttled to and fro in email conversations or as edited attachments. Wave, however, reflects the continuity of a conversation. The playback function allows us to look at how the wave changed over time, but there is no sense of finishing, publishing and archiving a particular document. This must surely take is in a different direction with knowledge construction and therefore learning approaches. Will language teaching become more obviously the management of conversations that run through various different lessons? Could language lessons become much more interactive with participants beyond the classroom? The very term “conversation” suggests that there may be some synergies to explore between Dogme and Google Wave in the language classroom.

What is Screen-Sharing?

Screen-sharing lets other people see your screen – so they can see exactly what you can see on your computer. This could be really useful for using Google Maps Street View or other applications in online lessons.

Twiddla already allows you to surf websites together with others online, so depending on what you want to do, it may be better to use Twiddla (quicker and easier). However, there are certain times when Twiddla won’t work and Mikogo fills this gap nicely.

I. Google Maps

Google Maps can’t easily be combined with Twiddla (you have to embed it as a widget) and so it is difficult to share all the functions in Google Maps. However, with Mikogo the teacher can allow the student to see the map s/he is looking at. This means that they can work together to plan journeys, give directions and create Google maps.

II. Google Maps Street View

Although Google Maps Street View is immersive, it is not really a social place in the way that a 3D virtual world is. This means that students and teachers can’t actually meet each other in Google Maps the way they can in Second Life.

However, a screen-sharing application such as Mikogo allows the student to see where the teacher is in Street View. So if the teacher invites the student to share the screen (or at least share the browser) then the student can guide the teacher around a city (eg “turn left at the lights” etc).

This makes Street View a much more interactive tool and one where the student and teacher can virtually visit places together.

IIl. Surfing a Website Together: Watching YouTubes and Completing Online Forms

Twiddla works fine for most websites, but if the teacher and student want to watch a YouTube video together or fill out a form (perhaps for getting train times or finding property), then Mikogo will be needed.

· YouTube videos can be given to a student to watch by sending the page address (URL). However often a teacher will want to control when to stop and start the video (perhaps to be able to ask questions at certain times). In this case, a screen-sharing tool like Mikogo works best.

· Although the teacher may want to take information from a website (for use in lesson) without necessarily giving the student the web address, there are other times when the student will be choosing the information. In this case it can be better if the teacher and student surf the same page at the same time.

Whiteboard Function

The whiteboard function allows the meeting host to use different colours to highlight parts of the screen (perhaps pointing to a part of a website or to a building in Street View)

Allowing Someone Else to Take Control

Mikogo allows you to offer the controls to the other participant and this means that they can guide your computer (or the applications that you have allowed access to). It is probably best to limit the collaborator’s access to only those programs (eg the browser) that he/she needs to be able to use.

Limitations

Mikogo has a couple of limitations compared to Twiddla…

• No saving of scribbles – You can’t save any scribbling you do using the built in whiteboard (unless you take a screenshot and save as an image file using a program like Paint)
• Small download – users need to download and install a small application, although this is extremely small and very quick and easy to do

Further Information

Website: http://www.mikogo.com

Tutorial Video: http://www.mikogo.com/tutorials/flash_voa/voa.html

Real-Life Activities Online – with a Social Element

The internet now has an enormous range of content (audio, video, images, text and applications) and is also becoming increasingly interactive and social. Under the general title of “web 2.0”, the new internet allows us to do more and more tasks online and engage with others in the process. A few examples…

• Shopping (for almost anything) and reviewing the products on the store’s website
• Planning (for travel, holidays and events) and sharing our plans and experiences
• Researching (for background information, daily news, opinions) and giving feedback comments
• Socializing and meeting others: chat-rooms, conferences (in virtual worlds), video-conferencing
• Creating and sharing content: uploading YouTube videos, slideshare presentations, podcasts, writing blogs and editing Wikipedia

With such a huge range of real-life, social activities that are now carried out online, there is an infinite quantity of language learning material available on the web. This material is up-to-date, interactive and very real. It is therefore especially relevant to language learners who do many of these tasks online in their own language and therefore would like to feel more confident doing them in another language.

Example Lessons with Web 2.0

Over the next few weeks this blog will look at some 2.0 tools and discuss how they can be used in language lessons. Some offer more social experiences, such as using Second Life for language learning and others draw on the practical uses of the internet such as using Google Maps Street View in a language lesson. Our students are also producing presentations that are hosted on Slideshare.net (a YouTube service for PowerPoint presentations) and have created podcasts which are hosted on Blip.tv. Others have written and edited Wikipedia articles, while some preparing talks for conferences in virtual worlds. All these examples demonstrate how the web 2.0 can offer a more relevant, real-life focused way to learn a language.

Dogme ELT: Inspiration for Web 2.0 Teaching

Using the internet in this way leads to a very different kind of learning from that offered in a textbook-based lesson. And so the ideas of the Dogme ELT movement (of educators who prefer not to use coursebooks) are particularly relevant to language teaching with Web 2.0 tools. Dogme ELT started in the mid 1990s and took its inspiration and its name from the Dogma 95 film movement. Dogme ELT promoted the use of real content in the language classroom in place of the artificially created materials from coursebooks. This real content serves to create real discussions within lessons and these discussions become the basis of language learning. Language then emerges from the communication in a more organic way than the structured and ordered approach of coursebooks.

Dogme ELT Principles

Scott Thornbury, one of the founders of the Dogme ELT movement, has highlighted several key principles of the Dogme approach. Here is a quick summary…

• Learning happens most directly through interactivity (eg between teachers and learners) and so knowledge is co-constructed in learning rather than transmitted by the teacher.
• Learning takes place through communication and conversation, through which language emerges. The learner’s voice (beliefs, knowledge, experiences) are valid content in lesson.
• Content should engage learners to enable learning – the learners themselves should supply this to ensure relevance. The teacher enables the emergence of language and guides the students toward it

* all emphasis my own

Dogme 2.0

These principles fit well with the teaching opportunities of web 2.0. In fact web 2.0 applications strengthen some of the most important aspects of Dogme ELT approaches: learning is more interactive, knowledge is co-constructed between many more people and materials are re-edited by students to reflect their voice.

• Knowledge is co-constructed amongst a far wider pool of players when using the internet. Communication is not just between teachers and students, but also with other web surfers, who watch slideshare presentations, read lonelyplanet.com reviews and attend (virtual) conference presentations.
• The distinction between consuming content and producing content is now blurred. For example, in a paper-based lesson, a newspaper article remains unchanged by the class activities (at most a letter to the editor could result). In a web 2.0 lesson the texts can be from a Wikipedia article and are therefore editable by the student, or from a blog post, which can then be commented upon by the student.

So perhaps we are looking here at an opportunity for the Dogme ELT approach to evolve into a “Dogme 2.0”, where the “2.0” tag represents the ability for students to engage, interact and create online.

A Street View of Madrid is embedded below, so you can click on it and drag the image around to take a look.

View Larger Map

In today’s lesson with a student from Madrid, he showed me around parts of the city using this Street View function. Ruben gave me directions to guide me and then described the locations.

Because the photos were taken with a camera fitted in a Google car, there are set routes along which you can “walk” along the city. The white arrows and line (marked with red circle in the picture below) show where you can walk along. In most cities this is almost any street you can get a car down. The arrow keys take you along these lines and allow you to spin around on the spot. There is also a zoom function to get a closer look.

At Avatar Languages we are making more use of this in lessons – there are a lot of ways it can be used and it makes an interesting alternative to a 3D virtual world such as Second Life. There are no avatars, so you can’t actually meet anyone using Google Maps Street View, but you can share your exact location and even your exact view using the link function (as marked with a red rectangle in the above image).

In other lessons the students have done matching tasks using information from real websites (such as matching restaurant descriptions from Lonely Planet’s site and pictures from Google Image searches) and then done some analytical work with the short texts. The below screenshot shows this matching exercise using the online whiteboard Dabbleboard.

Students then go and visit the locations using Google Maps Street View and are able to describe the surroundings of the restaurant. A similar task is to use property descriptions and photos from online property agents and then visit the neighborhoods to discuss the location and talk about what the student thinks about it.

Street View is very easy to use – go to the map of a city in the countries with Street View (not all country maps have this function – currently it’s USA, Japan, Spain, Italy, France; UK to follow soon). Then drag the yellow avatar (see top left corner of map above) to where you want to visit on the map. Alternatively the balloons offer Street View by clicking on the little photo. The map then shrinks to the bottom right corner.

Although it seems right to say that it’s “almost as good as being there”, from a language lesson’s perspective it is better! We can now “visit” places while taking lots of supporting resources (namely, the internet!) – all from the comfort of your home, office or wherever you are.

Btw, Google has created an explanatory video…

One Window
Skype now only has one window – gone are the separate windows for a text chat and for the list of contacts. This is a nice addition

No Pop-Ups
Although pop-ups can be annoying, in Skype I found them useful as they actually showed the text sent by someone. The new system is to change the colour (to yellow) of the Skype icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Call Quality
The voice quality is clearer – something that students using the new version have already commented upon. This is very welcome ?

Call Buttons
The call button seems to be slower in switching from “Call” to “End Call”, which means that it is less likely for the second person to click the button to unintentionally start a new call again.  The video button is also easier to find.

Generally some nice improvements

Twiddla is an odd concept, but one that is proving useful in language lessons.  It is a free website that combines a whiteboard with other webpages.  The result is that the teacher and student can look at a live website and then joinlty draw all over the site at the same time.

Of course, the changes to the website (scribbles, drawings, adding shapes, even erasing it) are only seen by those using Twiddla – and of course, only those sharing the exact “Twiddla room” (shared surface).

This tools is very useful when one person wants to highlight a part of a website (perhaps a part of text or to be able to draw over a map – see example below).

It also has a text and audio chat system built in (which we don’t use as we are anyhow using Skype at Avatar Languages), but this will be very useful for some. There is an embed function that allows you to add videos to the surface.

It certainly doesn’t replace Dabbleboard or Google Docs, but it is useful for certain situations in the language class.

• Accessible on any computer – I have downloaded it to my Acer Aspire One netbook, which would not cope with a full blown virtual world such as Second Life or Twinity.
• Rich content: this is unusual for virtual worlds, which are great for truly immersive learning and for social interaction, but have little text, audio or video content of their own
• Easy to use: the learning curve with the Virtual Forbidden City is pretty shallow, in part because the avatars are not able to do what would be possible in SL (build, use voice, fly, etc) – that said, there are some activities to do within the 3D environment

You can find some more information about this virtual museum at Tim Wang’s blog.

These are some initial thoughts – We’ll see if any students are interested and what can be done with this.