Uses for web 2.0 tools in my classroom

I am planning on teaching German on a high school level and will be exploring the use of web 2.0 tools in my future classroom.
For my first tool I would like to consider video sharing. I believe that when learning a language the most important thing is learning to understand other people and being able to communicate with them. Therefore I think video clips from sites like youtube can be very valuable in helping people practice understanding the language. If teachers can use video materials that are also interesting to the students they will be more likely to make an effort to understand what is being said. It also works the other way around. Most people love doing interactive projects. Projects like that can make boring things fun. For instance if there is a book that has to be read but isn't all too appealing to the students, a project could be picking a scene from that book and in groups making little videos of it that can be shared on sites like youtube. Having a class where everyone gets to sit together and watch everyone else's video can be very fun! In that case technology is being practiced as well as the use of the language since the kids will have to form the dialogue.


Secondly I would like to look at the uses of RSS feeds. When learning languages it is very important to practice! I believe that RSS feeds could be very useful in this! Every student could choose a subject that interests them (in German) and subscribe to it and then during the last class of the week everyone could present on their topics. doing that would have made them practice their reading and comprehension in that language, writing down their notes will practice their spelling and presenting to the class will practice their pronunciation.

Thirdly I think Blogging could be a useful tool as well. I remember that when I was living in Germany and we only spoke English at home my English teacher always made fun of me because my English spelling was "absolutely atrocious" as he put it so kindly. He said i could talk on and on forever without any problems, but that I really needed to work on my spelling. So to practice this I started writing my diary in English. Now if I go back and look at them I can see how drastically my spelling improved, just by writing, without anyone ever going through it and correcting things. Many people also learn better by writing things down. I think it could be a fun idea to have my students start blogs in German on things that interest them. A question would still be how to control this or integrate it into class, but since I am still a few years away from teaching I will find that out then! I also think that by the time I start teaching we will have many more things available to us on the internet, and who knows, we might have web 3.0 by then.... :)