An Overview of Web 2.0 Tools for Collaborative Language Learning
by
David L. Brooks
Associate Professor of English, Foreign Language Department
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS)
Kitasato University, Sagamihara, Japan
by
David L. Brooks
Associate Professor of English, Foreign Language Department
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS)
Kitasato University, Sagamihara, Japan
Presentation to be made on 11 September, 2009
at 5:30-6:15 in Room A-32 at
EuroCALL 2009 Conference - New trends in CALL: Working together
University Polytechnica Valencia (UPV Gandia Campus)
at Gandia, Spain September 9-12, 2009
at 5:30-6:15 in Room A-32 at
EuroCALL 2009 Conference - New trends in CALL: Working together
University Polytechnica Valencia (UPV Gandia Campus)
at Gandia, Spain September 9-12, 2009
Key words: web 2.0, collaboration, tools, overview, intercultural, projects
Presentation Abstract:
The Internet is now providing a new set of Web 2.0 tools that can foster increasingly sophisticated collaborative social-based learning. These new and robust tools have even greater potential for enhancing student learning and for providing extensive real-time opportunities to communicate in the target language. They form vehicles in online environments for creating relevant and pragmatic task-based, collaborative projects. These new genre of tools can be characterized as possessing the following basic attributes: immediacy, ubiquity, portability, connectivity, self-focused intensity, information aggregation, and actionable multi-user collaborative involvement.
The purpose of this session is to explore the general nature, efficacy, and instructional applicability of these tools by investigating their types, their current usage, and how they can be used to integrate collaborative tasks into the language-learning classroom. The aim of this session is to give an overview of collaborative learning through computer, web-based applications, and information communication technology as it is now evolving.
Each of the useful new categories of web applications for collaboration in language learning will be illustrated by examples. In certain cases, an evaluation of the merits of one particular type of collaborative site or set of tools in comparison will be given. Guidance in the form of annotated web links will make it helpful for language teachers and technology coordinators to find, learn about, explore, and develop both teacher and learner skills with these tools. In what ways language teachers can integrate web collaboration activities into second and foreign language classrooms will be explored by showcasing exemplary cases. From such, we can derive what the requisites for effective collaboration might be, see what effects such collaboration has on learners, and gain principles for ways that collaborative learning can be structured.
As Kerns (2006) and Felix (2005) have proposed, research into collaboration – in all of its aspects, particularly in its intercultural ramifications – necessitates an approach that is rigorous, long-term, cross-cultural, and, most definitely, qualitative in nature. The emerging opportunities provided by the Web 2.0 tools for ethnographically observing and documenting collaborative online learning offers clear support for the types of research projects suggested by Lamy and Hampel (2007). The intercultural communication aspect will be emphasized in synthesizing from the assortment of representative tools and projects.
About the presenter:
David L. Brooks has been teaching in Japan at international schools and private universities for 30 years. His instruction focuses on listening and speaking, making use of communication technology to actualize learners' self-efficacy. His research interests center on how intercultural aspects impact teaching and learner acquisition of a second language.
