ACE Power English Web 2.

0 Series 2 Teachers Guide

by Mike JC Smith “ACE Power English Web 2.0 Series 2 Teachers Guide”
Download from here: http://www.esnips.com/web/ACE-Web2/

Overview
This teachers’ guide is provided to help teachers present the 4x2 hour sessions of ACE
Power English Web 2.0 Series 2. This series supplements Series 1 in ACE Power
English Web 2.0. Each series is designed as a standalone and neither has any pre-
requisites.

Feel free to contact the author by email or phone if you need more help. We are very
aware that the teachers’ (initial) level of knowledge in these areas may be quite low.
We recommend the teacher work through the student handouts carefully to ensure
their on familiarity and confidence (and to iron out bugs). A teachers’ professional
development session is also available (Tour of Web 2.0).
http://del.icio.us/mikejcsmith/web2tour
or here
http://www.esnips.com/web/ACE-Web2/
The Wikipedia gives a comprehensive account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
The content of ACE Power English Web 2.0 Series 2 covers semi-technical areas of
the ‘new’ Internet phenomenon known as Web 2.0. The objective is for ESL students
to use their English language skills for a specific purpose – that being to utilise some
of the very useful (and often entertaining) Web 2.0 sites.

One very common use to which Web 2.0 is being put is “social networking” and this
provides an excellent opportunity for ESL students to practice all their language skills.
Skills practised include:
• reading (very authentic material in a wide variety of genres and registers),
• writing (by way of blogs, email, commenting, and possibly Wikis)
• listening (audio/video podcasts)
• speaking (discussion within class groups, online chatting, creating audio/video
podcasts)

Higher level social skills are also practised such as collaboration, invitation,
networking, forming interest groups, and discussion (written/verbal) adopting
appropriate genre and register.

For the calendars and collaboration (Session 2) all necessary materials can be
downloaded from the AirSet ACE group area, the homepage of which is publicly
available here.
http://www.airset.com/Group/Home.jsp?gi=VzChwXHOCpwP

Mike Smith has also set up also two guest accounts for access to Airset member only
areas such as files and calendar:
username/email: teacher@mjcsmith.net
username/email: student@mjcsmith.net
These passwords are issued during presentations and may change from time to time.
Contact the author if you need the latest password.

ACE Power English Web 2.0 Supplement 3 – Social Networking by Mike Smith on 21 March 2007
Page 1 of 6
Session 1 – Introduction to Series 2 and Social Networks

Blog
Students are introduced to the concept of a weblog (blog) and asked to access the
lesson document from the teachers blog site:
http://mike-lesson.blogspot.com/
As more lessons are added they may need to navigate to the particular lesson:
http://mike-lesson.blogspot.com/2007/03/ace-power-english-web-2.html

Introduction to the Series of Sessions

Firstly an introduction to Web 2.0 and this Series 2 of sessions is given. This
introduction is not as comprehensive as that given in Series 1, however that should
not be a major problem for new students.

Students must download the introduction document from:

http://www.esnips.com/web/ACE-Web2/
The direct document link is:
http://www.esnips.com/doc/8e9911f0-800f-4a59-ad72-675b002ec348/ACE-Web-2-Intro-to-Series-2
or here
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddhsxgkg_2d4zzvq

Printed handouts for the students of these documents is highly recommended, but the
reason these documents being downloaded is that they may then easily click on the
embedded hyperlinks, rather than having to type them in.

This is then read aloud by the teacher (or in student pairs if time permits). Questions
are invited, students personal experiences elicited and discussion encouraged. For
example students may already have MySpace or Flickr accounts, and they may
already know about Google Maps, Blogger or YouTube etc.

Tour of Web 2.0

If time permits the teacher may give a quick tour of typical Web 2.0 websites. The
Web 2.0 Tour may be used for this purpose.
http://del.icio.us/mikejcsmith/web2tour
or here:
http://www.esnips.com/web/ACE-Web2/
direct link:
http://www.esnips.com/doc/cffc4692-0298-4c9b-93f4-58c4419b44fa/Web-2-Tour-v3-1

Social Networking

Students are asked to describe their hobbies and interests, comparing them with their
partner. The online lesson giudes them in this.

They are then encouraged to find a particular social networking web 2.0 site which
caters for that interest. Wikipedia has a categorised list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

ACE Power English Web 2.0 Supplement 3 – Social Networking by Mike Smith on 21 March 2007
Page 2 of 6
Session 2 – Business, Family and Community Calendar
Sharing

Overview
This session looks at some of the impressive Web 2.0 sites that offer collaboration
tools – whether for business, families, or in fact any organisations. Until quite
recently, tools providing these functions were designed for large corporations and
were therefore quite expensive. Now there are many options for smaller and social
organisations, most of them in-expensive and some of them free.

Well-known websites such as Yahoo and Google offer calendars and contacts as part
of their personal pages areas. However these are possibly not the best tools for
business people because they don’t easily connect with existing software they already
use (eg MS Outlook). If a person is happy for their data to be accessible solely online
then these sites are fine. However if they need to synchronise with home or work
calendars on a computer, then this is more difficult (at present). A free and
comprehensive alternative is explored in this session.

Calendar and Collaboration

Students are directed to the Airset website

http://www.airset.com/
and asked to view the demonstration tutorial
http://www.airenainc.com/Home_Page_Demo/Home_Page_Demo.html
You will need the latest Flash player for your web browser. The demo audio
sometimes starts before the video is ready to play. Just re-start the demo once you can
see the picture. TEST THE PCs BEFOREHAND!!

Students are invited to join Airset and then to join the ACE Group. Joining Airset is
free and offers students a number of advantages beyond these lessons, such as online
storage space for files, a personal blog, as well as sharing files, contacts and diaries
with friends and families.

However if students (or teachers) don’t wish to join then they can use the following
general accounts. Mike Smith has set up also two guest accounts for access to Airset
member only areas such as files and calendar:
username/email: teacher@mjcsmith.net
username/email: student@mjcsmith.net
The passwords are used during presentations and may change from time to time.
Contact the author if you need the latest password.

The ACE Group page has links to files for this session
http://www.airset.com/Group/Home.jsp?gi=VzChwXHOCpwP

Follow the student instructions to create and share

• online calendar entries and contacts in the ACE Group
• initiate posts on the ACE group blog and comment on other posts
• upload and share files and weblinks

ACE Power English Web 2.0 Supplement 3 – Social Networking by Mike Smith on 21 March 2007
Page 3 of 6
Mashups – Combination sites

Overview
A Mashup is a site which combines the capabilities of other Web 2.0 sites into a new
user interface. An example might be the online telephone directory which links with
Yahoo maps or Google Earth so you can find someone’s telephone number and also
see where someone actually lives. Photosharing sites like Flickr are also adding a
map function so you can see where photos were taken. (this is called geo-tagging).
Wikipedia describes Mashups here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
A current list of Mashups is given here (over 1700 at last count):
http://www.programmableweb.com/mashuplist

Interesting examples are

• http://www.jotle.com/
• http://www.digg.com/
• http://www.drivl.com/
• Technorati http://www.technorati.com/
• The 7 Wonders of the World http://coolmaps.7wonders.googlepages.com/
• Actor Tracker http://www.actortracker.com/
• Bikely http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Brisbane-the-River-Ride
• Beam me up hottie http://beammeuphottie.com/

Most news sites are now mashups:

• BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/
• SMH http://www.smh.com.au/
• ABC Australia http://www.abc.net.au/

Mashups Presentation Task

Follow the student instructions to explore some typical mashups. Then students
(perhaps in pairs) are tasked to create and deliver a short presentation on one Mashup
site.

Session 3 - Bookmarking Sites

Shared online bookmarks are the next evolution of having favourite weblinks on a
personal website. We look at online bookmarking, tagging and sharing. All browsers
all you to save bookmarks (favourites) but these are difficult to carry with you if you
travel. Some websites allow you to bookmark but these might only work on
particular sites. Online specialist bookmarking sites have now evolved using Web 2.0
and these offer additional features such as tagging (categorising) and sharing.
Delicous http://del.icio.us/ is one of the originals.
Digg is another http://www.digg.com/ very popular site.

Follow the student instructions to

• intially explore some online bookmarking sites
• revise the idea of ‘tagging’ as this is a key concept to effective sharing
• use an online bookmarking service to create a personal, shared collection.

ACE Power English Web 2.0 Supplement 3 – Social Networking by Mike Smith on 21 March 2007
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Online Storage Sites and Document Processing
Overview
Many people carry their documents around on USB keys, but if you intend sharing
your documents online you could use the many online services for document creation
and storage.

Typically people might store documents online so they can work on them from
different places (work and home, college and home, different business premises). In
these cases, sites offer tools to edit and revise documents, perhaps allowing multiple
people to add comments and revisions all being tracked to their authors. Another use
of online storage is bulk sharing of file such as photos and videos which are
impractical to send via email. Bulk storage is also used by business for off-premises
storage of critical files, as an alternative to tape backups of servers.
Online storage and sharing of general files:
Esnips http://www.esnips.com (5Gb of space)
Airset http://www.airset.com (1Gb of space)

Online Storage, Word-processing, Spreadsheets etc:

Google Docs http://docs.google.com/
Mofile http://www.mofile.com/en
Zoho Writer http://www.zoho.com/
Ajax Write http://www.ajaxwrite.com/

Blog-like online word-processing but with privacy and sharing features:

E-Blogger (now Blogspot owned by Google and accessible via Google Docs)
http://blogspot.com/ and http://www.blogger.com/
http://mikejcsmith.blogspot.com/ (my blog)
Word Press http://www.wordpress.com/
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/

A review of “Top 5 Free Online Word Processors by Lee Seats http://freebies.about.com/od/freesoftware/tp/freeonlinewp.htm

Online Storage and Sharing Task

Follow the student instructions to
• demonstrate Esnips and Airset
• explore public Esnips folders
• open an Esnips account
• upload files of various types
• control file sharing on private, group, and public basis
Esnips http://www.esnips.com (5Gb of space)

Online Document Storage and Processing Task

Follow the student instructions to
• demonstrate Google Docs and Scribd
• create a word document on Google Docs
• share a Google Docs document for group editing
• create and publish a document on Scribd

Scribd http://www.scribd.com/
Google Docs http://docs.google.com/

ACE Power English Web 2.0 Supplement 3 – Social Networking by Mike Smith on 21 March 2007
Page 5 of 6
 Produced by Mike JC Smith
On behalf of Australian College of English Brisbane, Australia
Updated 18/10/2008 4:17 a10/p10
Document Name “ACE Power English Web 2.0 Series 2 Teachers Guide”
Tags “ACEweb2 ACE mjcs lesson mikejcsmith web2”