The Web, my browser and me

Melanie Leggatt IT and CALL Officer

Modern and Medieval Languages

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658181994/

What you can achieve with a computer, a network connection and your inspiration

And no money

A bit of a gallop so lots of supporting links available online after the session

Some assumptions

Primarily – that this isn't you

Quite the opposite – that you're bubbling over with ideas

You just need the tools to make it happen

Introducing you to these tools, where to find them and the possibilities is the focus of this session

Caveat emptor

First rule of web design - start with pencil and paperThe appropriate use of technology

Only when you've successfully defined your goals should you start using digital tools

Otherwise you risk going round and round in circles

Getting the basic building blocks right will make using and creating cool stuff later on much easier

Traditional language labs were very expensive and often left students bored and unenthused

With Web 2.0 things have changed! Today there are too many excellent resources to list

Before we go any further, an aside about Web 2.0 – just what is it?

Initially with Web 1.0 we all tooled up and went shopping, then something changed. . .We stopped being merely consumers and started creating instead. Web2.0 meant write access for all!

Lots of people posted their own resources and made them freely available for sharing

Writing for the Web became accessible and easier – no longer the sole domain of geeks

Today, the challenge lies in developing the skills to find what you want

So, we have whole world of digital creativity to explore

Creating

Sharing

Publishing andCurating

Chargeable proprietary, proprietary at no cost vs freely distributed

Free offerings from commercial companies, or are they?If it seems to good to be true, is it? An informed choice

1. Creating and storing

Writing online. Offerings from e.g. Google and Microsoft

Sharing online. With colleagues, friends or students

Downloading free office suites and then storing your files onlineat no cost

Photo storage and editing and sharingFlickr now offer 1 terabyte of storage

And video storage and editing too!

Services like Jolidrive provide a one-stop portal for you to access your documents and storage

They can even tell you how much storage you can amassOver 20 gigabytes of storage are on offer here

But there is no excuse for not keeping a local backup of your files

1. Creating and storing

REVIEW

CreatingStoringEditing

All at no cost

2. Sharing

Collecting other people's resources – legitimatelysharing your own

Using other people's materials legitimately means you can relax about posting your work online

And you can chill out knowing you've reciprocally shared back

So how do we find all this stuff?

One-stop shopThe Creative Commons 1,000s images, sound and video files

Listings of online radio stations Or newspapers

cultural and educational media sites

And guides to television channel listings

Reviewed listings of the best sites

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel

So you've created or found lots of contentHow do you take it to the next level?

GETTING SOCIAL

One of the best potted definitions of social media around

Clearly, some aspects of social media are more relevant to your professional life than others

Places to be seen. . .

Sharing resources, discovering new ones, joining groups, making contacts

Lots of very active groups out there

Follow the most productive blogs

Use the review sites to make the most of the specialist social media sites

Which neatly takes us back to systems like diigo to help us manage all this information

Other social media sites probably aren't so useful. What of FB?

Too much leakage. Keep your personal and professional profiles separate

2. Sharing

REVIEW

SearchingGetting social

Being seen

All at no cost

3. Publishing and curating

3. Publishing and curating

So you've acquired all this great stuff

LEARNINGYou want to organise it for yourself

TEACHINGYou want to share it with students

IDENTITYYou want to include it in your site to establish your online profile

Thankfully for us, publishing is now as easy as falling off the proverbial log

Achieving it with style and elegance still takes some skill though

The best of the best publishing tools

Scoop.it – curating and displaying your favourite contentcreated by you and others

User-friendly content systems like Wordpress (or Blogger) make creative publishing easy

If you can insert an image in a Word document you CAN drive Wordpress

Excellent support, customisation and content integration

Full multilingual support

Ernesto Priego's Wordpress site is a good example of what an individual can achieve on their own

More examples

a superior film criticism website with post-doctoral contributors Why not invite contributors to your site?

Catherine Grant’s http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Page’s http://www.digitalnarratives.blogspot.co.uk/

Benny Lewis' Over 500,000 readers

Bab.la – check out what other people have done

for pure interdisciplinary inspiration http://ted.com

Some advanced inspiration for teaching. . .

Forums and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs)

Get hands-on and interactive with your students

Moodle is free and can run on a very modest computerThe Computing Service can host it, or you can pay for a commercial site

The OU system is based on (an albeit very customised version of)Moodle

Fluency practice

Writing development

Managing and mashing together content

Quizzes

Grading

Student interaction with and without your input

All possible in VLEs like Moodle

All these tools can be fully integrated – do as much or as little as you like

What next?

All these tools can be fully integrated – do as much or as little as you like

Explore the links on the page we'll supply you with

What next. . .

www-chucol.mml.cam.ac.uk

Email with ideas