[MUSIC] Welcome to 21st Century Skills: Communication Tools. In the two videos you watched in the getting started section, you saw that before choosing a tool to fix a problem, you need to know the details of the problem itself. So understanding the type and nature of an instructional task or issue is the first step toward choosing the right Web 2.0 tool. We have categorized Web 2.0 tools into 8 types using the 21st century skills framework. In this module, we will focus on Communication tools, one of the main categories. Have you identified what type of instructional issue you are having or an instructional task you want to accomplish? If you have identified your instructional task or issue as communication, then the next step is to understand the nature of the communication problem. We communicate for a range of purposes and in many ways. The communication continuum shown here, as a way to understand the nature of a communication task. The continuum shows three ways of communication, 1 Way, 2 Ways and Multiple Ways. This continuum is also a way to group and arrange your Web 2.0 communication tools, but this is just 1 way. You can group and arrange Web to 2.0 communication tools and other ways, based on your skills. What do you think is the nature of the communication issue you are having in your classroom? Let's look at this continuum with some examples. When a user wants to only present or share information and not receive replies, it is one-way communication. For example, a teacher may use Google Sites to create a website of student science projects for a science course to share with her students and their parents. Web 2.0 tools, like Google Sites, help teachers present and share information, mostly, in text and pictures, by creating websites. Podomatic is another Web 2.0 tool that allows presentation and sharing of audio information. Vaguely as an RSS tool that curates content based on suggested interest and field areas. These Web 2.0 tools provide one way communication, where information is provided by the creator, and there is no specific interaction with users. In two-way communication, a user can share information as well as receive responses from others. There is an interaction that is two-way in this type of communication. For example, a teacher may use a poll, or a survey that's embedded in her class presentation, using the Web 2.0 tool poll everywhere. Students in class can respond individually, using their mobile devices like cell phones. The poll can be displayed directly in the presentation so the teacher and the students can view immediate feedback. Other Web 2.0 tools that provide two-way communication are blogger, a blogging tool. And email tools like Yahoo Mail or Gmail. When more than two people want to establish communication back and forth, it's said to be multiple way communication. The communication could be in real time or asynchronous. For example, students communicating on an issue might use an online discussion board like BoardHost or an audio conferencing system on Skype so they can discuss a project at the same time. Some of the other Web 2.0 tools that support multiple people communicating together are Google Hangout and Google Docs. These tools provide interaction between multiple parties that could be synchronous or asynchronous. You must be wondering, wow, so many tools. Well, initially you may start with just 1 Web 2.0 communication tool in your toolbox, just like I did. But as you explore more tools and use them in your class instruction, you will sift through many. And gradually add the valuable ones to your toolbox. You can arrange them the way you think will work the best with your set of skills and tools. There are hundreds of Web 2.0 communication tools today, with lots of different features. Therefore, it's increasingly important to emphasize the need to understand the type and nature of an instructional issue or task, in order to be able to choose a specific tool with just the right features that can help solve the instructional issue you're having. Let's look at a short example. There's a problem in your class. Most of your students aren't raising hands or responding to the questions you've posed about political cartoons in your presentation. You want all of your students to be able to share their thoughts and to see and learn from each other. In addition, some students in your class need a little extra time to think about their answer before they respond. But there's just not enough time during class to let everyone get involved in the discussion. Since the students are not communicating their ideas, you know that the type of problem is communication. The next step is to find out the nature of the communication problem. You want all your students to present their ideas, their thoughts, and comment on the political cartoons. And you also want all the students to be able to read each other's comments. In other words, all students are sharing and viewing and they may respond to each other's comments, so this is a multiple way communication task. Now that you figured out the nature of the communication problem, you need to find a Web 2.0 communication tool that supports multiple way communication. And has features that closely matched the things you want your students to do. VoiceThread, a Web 2.0 tool, allows commenting on pictures, videos and PowerPoint presentations. Students can post text, video or audio comments and everyone can view or listen to the comments others posted. Padlet is another Web 2.0 tool that allows text commenting, pictures, videos and presentations, everyone can view the comments that are posted on the Padlet wall In this presentation, I hope you learned a little about how to choose the right Web 2.0 communication tool for your task. In the next section, we will guide you through various teaching scenarios to help you understand this concept a little bit better. [MUSIC]
