Web 2.0 as an Educational Tool

To begin with, we would like to explain what we refer to when talking about web 2.0. The term was coined by DiNucci at the end of the nineties and it was made popular by O'Reilly at the beginning of the millennium.Web 2.0 as opposed to Web 1.0, refers to a more interactive type of web. It allows users to interact with each other through the internet by means of different tools/platforms such as wikis, blogs, socialnetworks, among many others. 

Web 2.0 and English Language Teaching

The advent of Web 2.0 tools should be seen as innovative resources that could potentially enhance the learning experience in terms of communication, connectivity and engagement .For this reason, we would like to share two Web 2.0 tools to exploit in the EFL classroom: Word Cloud and Voki.

On the first place,Word Clouds can be used to display a piece of written text in an interactive way making readers, or in our case students, figure out and construct the meaning/idea of the text inserted in the word cloud. As a teacher, you can make certain words stand out by bigging their size and also reduce or omit those you may consider less relevant. Below, you will find an example of a Word Cloud.

    
This tool can be used in teaching to help students reinforce their grammatical knowledge of word order in sentences as well as their reading comprehension. 

On the second place, there is also another practical tool called Voki which can be used to clarify the message provided in the word cloud or even as short listening practice. Such tool, allows users to create an avatar able to say what the user may wish to. An interesting feature is that you (the teacher) or your students can record their voices allowing then the opportunity to practise spoken language and any aspect of pronunciation you may consider appropriate.
By clicking on Voki you can listen to the one we created.

The teaching resources offered in this post are intended to provide EFL educators with suggestions as to the use of Web 2.0 in English Language Teaching. Needless to say there are thousands more to discover, explore and integrate to your lessons. Is there any you have tried and used with your students you would like to comment on or suggest?Please, share it with us!