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Many recent studies show the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies on collaborative writing for L2(ESL/EFL) students. Web 2.0 tools such as Wiki, Facebook, and Forum have been adopted in an L2 class to enhance students' motivation and achievement. Peer review and collaborative writing are drawing more attention and support from L2 instructors because of the collaborative potential of the latest CMC tools such as Wikis. With this latest technology, students can work more easily and simultaneously in groups of three or more than with previous technology. Check this article for the recent studies about using technologies in ESL/EFL writing classes for peer feedback projects.

This is good information! AI has really opened up a lot of opportunities and resources, but it has also presented a lot of questions!

This is good information regarding the use of generative AI. I concur with the author that AI-created information should be used as a starting point for developing instructional materials. It should not remove the instructional designer from the process. After all, they would be most knowledgeable about the instructional needs of their learners and the delivery methods available to them.

Thanks for sharing this resource. It's super helpful for a project I'm working on right now.

Makes you wonder if we really should be using Facebook in education. I've no problem with folks choosing to use it, but if classes pressure students into using it? That can be a real problem.

This does pose a problem because even if you were to use it in education (but not forcing everyone to use it) Facebook could still collect data from non-users by other students in the class who are connected to Facebook, use the find friends feature, and have non-Facebook using student's information in their smart phones. I would like to know more about why Facebook collects this data of non-users, what purpose does it serve them? It also made me realize how Facebook can get my personal information when I post my new address to a friends wall, or share a new cell phone number. I may not have manually uploaded the information on the Facebook account, but writing it on my friends wall may be all the information Facebook needs from me.

This does pose a problem, especially for users like me that are infrequent with posts. I feel like I should be in there everyday "watching" for some weird activity. But I just don't have that kind of time. I am a smart phone user of all of 2 months now and already I have deleted my facebook app from my phone. I am certain I never opted to remain signed in, yet somehow I was. Then, while searching for a phone number in my contacts, I realized that the FB app had attached itself to all of my phone contacts. Too invasive. I like the idea of sharing information over platforms like Collaborate. There is a little more oversight and transparency.

Hangouts let you video chat with up to 9 people, face-to-face-to-face. You can watch YouTube videos, wear pirate hats, or even doodle together.

I did not write the original comment. Google hangouts is a new communication tool that is free. It is like Facetime except that you can have up to 9 people on your call. It is suppose to be better then Skype because there is a screen sharing tool that you can use during the call. I just discovered this last night! I plan on trying it out when my hubby leaves for South Africa in a couple of weeks.

It is better than Skype, great quality and an interactive screen. I love it, and use it a lot to communicate with my family (I wrote a post about that!).

This takes the popular Inspiration concept/mind mapping one step further : Designed for professionals and college students, WebspirationPRO™ is a visual thinking and cloud-computing productivity tool, dedicated to promoting success in a knowledge-based society. WebspirationPRO gives you everything you need to brainstorm ideas, organize information, solve problems, plan projects, write, study and communicate more effectively. With WebspirationPRO, work is always available and securely stored online.

I don't know much about Second Life, and while it might have some elements that I could do without, I was thinking that this could tie nicely into a formal or informal Web 2.0 learning platform, game based learning, and Produsage. What do you think?

Second Life creeps me out too. I've tried exploring what it is, but I think it just boils down to me thinking that I would have to be dissatisfied with my first life to indulge in a second one. There was a season of The Office devoted to this, I think. It also doesn't help that the only Second Life example I have ever seen was the one that shares the thoughts and visuals of a schizophrenic and that the graphics look like the Grand Theft Auto video game (one that my little brother played WAY too much). I know all of what I just typed is silly (although true for me) because some really great things are coming out of Second Life. I have a friend who is working on her doctorate in ISD at the University of Southern Alabama, and she put a lot of work into a research on using Second Life to rehabilitate long-term prison inmates, prior to their release. She ultimately chose another topic for her thesis, but her work showed astounding results. Before learning about her work, I assumed Second Life was nothing more than a glorified Sims game.

To some degree, I agree Denise that its a little creepy. Especially since there are a lot of undesireable elements (at least to me) that seem to permeate the S.L. landscape. However, I am fascinated with using a virtual world setting to encourage learning because people tend to "get in to it" better when its in an environment that they can relate too.

Tagging because I want to read it, but thought some of you might be interested as well.

Interesting piece. I've heard lots about the debate over scholarship versus service, and thought that Bessette's analogy to blogging as service was fascinating. Knowledge sharing may not be scholarship in the traditional sense, but it certainly plays an important role in pushing higher education forward, so maybe it should be considered a real part of a scholar's contributions to the field.

I know some bloggers who are actively lobbying to consider their blogs as scholarship. Some have submitted archives as part of promotion dossiers. Generally, they're not at R1 universities -- although there are plenty of R1 scholars who see how blogging and other social media interactions can enhance their scholarship via promoting their work and building their networks. And many have also talked about the effect it has had on their writing. I think I'll blog about that sometime in the next week.

This article describes a high school teacher's yearslong journey in introducing and managing Twitter in her classroom. She begins with this observation, "Students participated more readily when the tools they already used outside school were acceptable in the classroom," and then goes on to describe how she made school constituents comfortable with her adoption of the platform. This is followed by the actual ways in which she used it (announcements - sharing articles blogs - classtags - extension of class discussion- digital citizenship - Tweetdeck). She addressed one of my questions about her choice to use Twitter, sharing that it was the unreliability of the LMS that led her to use Twitter from sharing information at first, but over time, she observed many benefits such as clarity in writing through the mandatory economy. Even after the expansion to 280 characters, only 5% of tweets were longer than 140 words! One powerful takeaway was the experience of a long haired male student who had the experience of being listened to without judgment. Twitter in her experience allowed for marginalized voices to be heard.