Web 2.0 Tools to Enhance Language Learning
A presentation for the one-day Workshop "Strategies for Optimizing the Quality Standard
in Higher Education ESP" taking place in Targu Mures, Romania
Teresa Almeida d'Eça
Online Keynote Plenary Speaker
8 May 2009
I'm Teresa Almeida d'Eça from the greater Lisbon area, in Portugal. I'm a recently retired EFL teacher, but... once a teacher, always a teacher! :-) I'm also an online and f2f teacher trainer.
Today, 8 May 2009, I'm speaking to you, a group of 40+ Romanian peers, for the first time in my life. Below is the distance that separates us. We're also two time zones apart, but, in fact, we're all "just a click away"! No doubt, it's a "connected world" we live in.
How did my participation today come about? The answer goes back a few years, to January 2002, when I joined the Webheads in Action, an online-group-turned community of practice, for an 8-week teacher training online workshop.Two years later I was co-moderating and co-coordinating my own 6-week teacher training online workshop, Becoming a Webhead, with my dear friend, Dafne Gonzalez.
This year, Dafne and I were very pleased to have Anisoara Pop as our participant. At the end of the workshop, she sent out an invitation to the group to participate in this workshop and I replied late... but, fortunately, in time to be here with you today to share a few of the things I've learned in all these years and some of the work I've done with students.
Being part of an online community is the most enriching thing that happened to me in my 33-year career. We meet like-minded people worldwide. We share ideas, experiences and knowledge. We explore tools together. We help one another. We collaborate in projects with real people from the real world. We socialize. And we make strong bonds and very special friendships. (Meeting face-to-face isn't a pre-requisite for bonds and friendships to grow. But when we do meet f2f, it's an extraordinary feeling and bonds and friendships are strengthened even more.) And we practice what we preach. Since we span the five continents, there's always someone up and ready to help and collaborate with us and our students
This short introduction was important to give you all a sense of how relevant, productive and beneficial it is for our classroom work and our students to belong to an online community. It explains how I was able to accomplish the work I did with my young learners (5th and 6th graders, 1st and 2nd year EFLers) through hands-on learning and collaboration.
It's now time to get to the core of my presentation. Though I used these tools for EFL, they can be adapted to any setting, including ESP, and to any age and learning level.
My aim in the next 30 minutes is to show you some of the Web 2.0 tools my students - young learners - and I used and some of the work we produced with them.
What are Web 2.0 tools? They're dynamic and interactive tools that enable the user to create, participate, collaborate and share in the production and publishing process. They're also known as social media or social tools. There are many different Web 2.0 tools. Let's start with voice.