I honestly have to say that I still feel that Wikis and blogs need to improve technically or “formally”. It is often awkward that there is only a limited space (e.g. for uploading videos), it is often difficult to layout the content nicely in the wiki (it’s not all about design, but I think it makes it more attractive for the audience), as well as in the blog. The “diary system” in our blogs is sometimes nice, but if you want to structure something again it is almost impossible or needs a lot of time. In my opinion a blog is only neat for special occasions, e.g. to inform friends when you’re abroad or for publishing homework like we did it in the seminar. 

Still when I take our project into consideration I see many advantages of a Wiki. The planning is finished and I am definitely feeling like trying it once in a real class. It would be exciting to see if it worked out the way we planned it!

What is my personal experience in collaborating with Wikis?

What shall I say more than that I haven’t worked with Wikis at all. In the course of the seminar I started to work with it for the first time. My problem with the Wiki is, that, in my opinion, it is not structured enough. Every time I visit our class Wiki I have to search for everything. There is so much information on one page that makes it difficult to overlook everything. I would like it better if everyone would mark his or her comment correct and open a new page for the comment. I don’t like scrolling the whole page up and down until I’ve read everything.

How would I use Wikis for language teaching?

I would use Wikis as we do it in another seminar called Current American issues, where our teacher gives us a short text. The text includes several questions and there are several words linked. We have to answer the questions and fill the blank links to the words. This is quite useful. Still there is too much information to get a good overview over a topic.

A better way for working with Wikis in the classroom would be the idea of writing a sort of history or a text. The teacher could write a short introduction and the students have to try to finish it. One could split the class up in groups of 3. Then they can finish the story together and discuss about grammar later on. In the end every group has a product that they can be proud of

Some sort of specific-subject-Wiki would be a good idea as well. The idea is to build up a big source for every student to look things up. (some sort of class wikipedia) A good example is the maths or history class. The students can try to contribute something to the Wiki to every topic in class. In the end of the class every student can print everything  and has then an understandable maths,history(…) guide. This works for the language learning classroom as well. The students could create a Wiki related to the topic Great Britain or Australia or a grammar guide. There are so many possibilities.

structural perspective:

The structural perspective puts emphasis on the formal analysis of the system of structures that make up a given language.  This means that language learning is mainly about memorizing verb paradigms and analyzing or translating sentences. It is strongly influenced by behavioral psychologist who claim that language learning is to be seen as a habit formation.

cognitive perspective:

The cognitive perspective is a “problem-solving” approach. The behavioral approach is being rejected and emphasis is put on learning strategies (e.g. reading stragies: top-down or bottom-up).

sociocognitive perspective:

In the sociocognitive perspective language is seen as a socially constructed phenomenon. Therefore communicative processes became as important as linguistic product and instruction became more learner-centered and less structurally driven. Emphasis is put on socio-cultural contexts and not only on individual learning strategies.(e.g.reading : not only  learning strategies but also extensive discussion of readings)

2) What is the role of the computer in each of these approaches?

structural perspective:

The computer is in the role of a tutor. Exemplary are simple drill programs for vocabulary learning that emphasize the repeated drilling.

cognitive perspective:

The computer is in the role of a pupil. “The computer provides tools and resources, but it is up to the learner to do something with these in a stimulated evironment.”

sociocognitive perspective:

The computer is in the role of a tool. The sociocognitive perspective moves on from learners’ interaction with computers to interaction with other humans via the computer.

3) Which of these approaches in your opinion can be best used with the web 2.0?

In my opinion the sociocognitive approach can be best used with the web 2.0. What is actually web 2.0?: It is the interaction with other humans via the computer, real communication with real humans.

It shows a page of a personal diary. It was a diary that a girl wrote for herself. Additionally her friends wrote something in it.

(image taken from flickr.com by Jill)

The discussion below the picture was about the “limited creative possibilities” that you have with weblogs. Everybody can write, and everybody can design their page to a certain degree with their style, but characteristics like personal handwriting or drawings will very rarely occur on a webpage. This is a big disadvantage for the weblog.

Of course it is possible to insert personal drawings to your weblog, but it takes time and is certainly not the same as the page of a book. There are disadvantages and advantages on both sides, the image just made me feel a little bit sad. It seems to be made with more love. This is certainly not true, because there are many people investing the same effort and love into their blogs. The good thing is that blogs exist to reach as many people as possible- this is what a non-virtual diary can’t achieve. I just wanted to post it because I never thought about this point of view.

Have fuuuun!

There are so many online dictionaries. Why LEO? Because of the user contributions. The discussions have helped me so many times.

It’s similar with vokker. I registrated there and immediately tried it. I think it’s fun for youths to use the platform because they can create their own lists for the preparation of vocabulary tests or something similar.

What I’ve learned in general is that I like the idea of web 2.0. It’s great that all of us created their own blog and that the idea of wikis became clear. What I don’t like is the structure of many web 2.0 tools. It’s often unstructured and confusing. If I’m just thinking of our course where we’re working with 3 different websites….

(image taken from flickr.com by Eric Kilby)

What I’ve learned so far helps me as a language teacher because I got to know different websites which could be helpful later on. And I learned to try to keep up-to-date with everything and that is what counts in my future life as a teacher.