Web 2.0 Tools for Teaching with Writing

by Rick Reo, Instructional Designer, DoIT/LSS

Web 2.0 or the Read/Write Web are popular terms used to describe a pattern of web technology innovation and mass adoption of free, easy-to-use tools and services that has spurred novel ways of social interaction beyond those of the 20th century “read-only” Web. Here I want to identify a few of the lesser-known Read/Write Web (R/W) web tools with interactive writing features, which can, when combined with good pedagogy, provide the potential to foster writing skills. My focus will be on R/W web tools and associated environments with strong text-based interactivity that are not explicitly designed for writing growth. Wikis and blogs are obvious examples of this kind of R/W web tool, but let’s look at some less familiar tools.

Social Media archive sites like Flickr.com (photos), YouTube. com (video), Odeo.com (audio), Slideshare.com (Powerpoint), or imeem.com (all media types) combine content management and social networking structures to provide a personal media- sharing environment that supports the merger of multimedia capabilities, especially textual communication through annotation, keyword/ tags, descriptions, comments, and group discussions. Each of these tools supports various levels of user interactivity that can be used to construct a personal or professional multimedia document. For example, Levine has collected 50+ R/W web tools that could be used to mix media to tell a story.

In addition, Flickr, which supports a feature that allows users to annotate photos, also has a slideshow feature that can easily turn a collection of annotated photos into a digital story, or a piece of technical documentation. Personal audio/video production, such as made possible through YouTube’s easy-to-use video hosting service, or Odeo, holds the potential to work with students on audio/ video script writing. The social networking aspect of these R/W web services also provide a forum for critique and commentary on people’s publicly posted audio/video creations. Students can also be taught how to develop an “idea of audience” through designing a podcast series.

Micro-blogging tools like Twitter.com or Tumblr.com are designed to enable micro-interactions in the form of brief personal updates or shared information. Tumblr supports a wide range of media types to communicate or create “Tumblelogs” as you can see in this example from the Tumblr staff.

Twitter is a real-time short messaging service that only uses text - a single Twitter text post or “tweet”, as they are called, is limited to 140 characters; however, links or attachments to other media formats are possible. Twitter can be used like Instant Messaging as real-time back channel in a live classroom or conference to share links, notes etc. among participants across multiple networks and devices. Or, Twitter can be used more asynchronously, like email, to communicate a person’s momentary thoughts or activities publicly. Micro-blogging tools may offer interesting applications for interactive writing assignments either as a text-based conversation or mobile journaling tool. See a Sci-fi story example: http://twitter.com/zombieattack

VoiceThread supports multiple media formats to create a reciprocal one-to-many interactive environment with learners. This tool allows people to leave comments using voice (mic or phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam) or combinations of all five ways. I have used it in my online teaching to embed audio comments on student assignments, and the tool enables the students to easily record an oral response back to me, or to choose one of the five other ways to comment. In addition to its affordances for faculty-student or student-student interaction, it has applications for collaborative projects and mobile learning.

In addition to facilitating collaboration and providing alternative means of communication between peers, these tools encourage students to become more conscious of the pressure that ideas like audience and genre exert on their writing.