50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story

Another link, suggested by Ana Falcon, that came to my mailbox in the ELTECS Latin America news list -- 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story.

I think storytelling -- getting your learners to write stories, to tell multimedia stories -- is one of the most interesting things you can do in a language class. Apart from the obvious opportunities for learning and using language that such a project provides, it's the creating things aspect of it that attracts me -- and it's one of the best possible uses we can make of technology, as it takes much fuller advantage of the potential of technology than, say, seeing and using the Internet as a bank of images for use in class.

You want good group dynamics in your class? Get your learners to create and share something together.

The article (or wiki, to give it its proper term), contains lots of useful ideas and links, including links to audio, images and video available under Creative Commons licences -- ie. that you can use without infringing copyright.

The author, Alan Levine, has the commendable rule that "the media files you use in your story have to be ones that are licensed or shared with permission to re-use". However, my suggestion would always be that your learners create their own images, audio files, etc.

The more they create themselves, the less they steal from other websites, the prouder they will be of their work; the "pride in creation" is wonderful for motivation, for wanting to learn...

>> ELTECS news lists
>> More good stuff in your mailbox
>> Creative Commons
>> More on digital storytelling
>> Er... What's Web 2.0?

Will new technology get adopted?

One of my favourite technology blogs is Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog.

From my Blue Skunk RSS feed [explanation] this morning, this chart enabling you to work out the probability that technology will get adopted large scale.

Doug asks, "What are the chances of large scale adoption of (...) Second Life?"

I make that low...!

Web 2.0, Web 3.0...

The term "Web 2.0" gets bandied around a lot these days. It refers to things like blogs and wikis... For a fuller definition, this article on oreillynet.com explains What is web 2.0?

But Web 2.0 isn't in fact so cool any longer, as we now have Web 3.0 as well. PC Mag explains What is web 3.0?

Web 3.0 would include things like Second Life (a virtual world). On the Second Life Educators List, Gary Hayes had a neat explanation of it:

To me, evolution of the web order can be defined in single sentences:

1.0 the pushed, one way only web
2.0 the two-way shared web
3.0 the real time collaborative web (3D, isometric or just 2D)

3D is probably actually a better term for it. 3D might well be what the web becomes; 3.0 looks like a clever-clever way of saying "I'm even more up-to-the-minute than all those people (still) talking about Web 2.0".

Even when we get to Web 4.0, however, or Web 14.0 for that matter, don't forget that to you as the teacher what's important is not the technology, but the learning.