Teaching with web 2.0 technologies

According to the information given in the website www.webopedia.com , Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the world wide web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information on line. Moreover, it emphasizes user-generated content, usability, and interoperability. In connection to education, web 2.0 promotes students communicate, collaborate and share work in a variety of practical ways. Though challenging, teachers and students can master many of its tools easily and creatively.(web2014.discoveryeducation.com)
If you visit edjudo.com you will find a useful list of websites that provides a variety of digital tools you can use for learning purposes. One of them is bubbl.us which allows teachers and learners to create mind-maps individually or with others. An important advantage is that the final product can be saved, shared and printed.

From bubl.us

It can be used to show students the relation among different words so that they can associate their meanings. For example, to teach vocabulary, word classes (word families, adjectives, adverbs, phrasal verbs) and processes. Learners can profit from this website because it presents a suitable way to organize their ideas, helps them to improve their study skills and to remember the concepts easily.It is a tool they can benefit from in any subject. Here is an example of what we did according to the topic we dealt with in a previous entry Using-technology-in-classroom-wisely, related to the vocabulary of house and furniture:

Another practical and entertaining website is www.bitstrips.com in which you can create your own personal avatar to use it in different social networks to communicate with others. This tool can be used in an English classroom when dealing with fixed expressions such as, greetings, agreeing, disagreeing, and expressing feelings and emotions.  The good thing about this website is that most students enjoy working with technology especially when it is related to the webs they regularly visit.
This personal “emoji” can be used to chat in famous webpages such as gmail, messenger, facebook and twitter. What is more, a Bitstrip app is now available to download in mobile phones! 
This is the avatar we created; her name is Mika and she has a sign with the slang BFF (Best Friends Forever):

To sum up, there is a variety of innovative websites available that can help teachers and students (from kindergarten to high school!) to facilitate learning and make it more entertaining. Web 2.0 could be an original way to work with students and provide them with the opportunity to design, imagine and create amazing final products. Furthermore, it encourages individual work as well as collaborative ones. Now is your turn, why don’t you give web 2.0 a try? ;) 

Moving forward

How many digital tools do you know? These days, there are plenty of useful websites that not only guide teachers to plan and organize lessons but also help students to learn, practice and study. The examples we will show below are just an advance of the topic we are going to describe in great depth in the next entry.

On the one hand, we will present Voki which is a website that allows students to create a personalized avatar and make a speech of no more than 60 seconds. They can record themselves so as to give the voki a voice, and thus improve their speaking and listening skills. It can be used to describe a word or to tell a short story, for example. Here is the voki we created (recording ourselves!) with a description of this enjoyable tool: 

On the other hand, we have a more well-known tool called word clouds. When surfing on the net you have probably seen images with a lot of colourful related words arranged in a certain way. They are known as word clouds and can be designed in websites such as tagul , wordle or tagxedo.

A word cloud makes a piece of information more visually attractive for students. It can be used to teach related vocabulary, word families, and phrasal verbs among others. Students can design their own word cloud and share it with their classmates through social networks such as facebook, twitter or Instagram. Here goes our own word cloud. Can you guess the word it describes? 

Answer: uoıʇɐɔılddɐ