What is web 2.0?

We talked about web 2.0 tools in our ECO II lessons and how the use of them in our classroom can make learning EFL much more interesting and motivating, especially for those students who don't like the subject.
For those who don't know, web 2.0 tools are  new ways of producing content on-line. People who use them can create and edit content in a vast variety of innovative ways . You don't need to download them, and you and your students can learn to use them easily and rapidly. All people can have access to them.
Some of the tools we worked with in ECO II are Wordle, Popplet, Voki. Here I write a brief description of what you can do with them.

WORDLE!
If you are going to work with a text in one of your lessons and want your students to know and remember the most important words that appear in it, you can use wordle. With this tool you can generate word clouds, highlighting the most relevant words or those which appear in the text more frequently. you can use different fonts, colours and layouts to give emphasis to words. It is an interesting instrument to get the most important ideas in a text. Once you produce it, you can share it with friends, students, colleagues digitally, or you can print copies of it.






POPPLET!
This tool is very helpful for students as a learning technique as well as for studying any topic of any subject. With popplet they can create a type of mind-map where the organise ideas in a really clear way for them. They can use images, videos or texts, and each popplet represents an idea or concept, that can be related to other popplet, that is to say, to another idea. I think popplet is a very practical tool for students whose predominant learning style is visual.

VOKI!

With Voki you can create speaking characters and use them in the classroom as an original way of presenting new content or topics. With this tool you can play with your creativity. After you choose a character, you can select its hair and eyes colour, its clothes, and the place where it is. Then, you can type what you want your character to say, or just record yourself. I think this is a very fun tool and students would love to see and hear someone else talking, especially if your character is unusual and weird.

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

For me, it's great having so many interesting and motivating tools available for teachers and learners, since nowadays it's very difficult to keep students engaged with something. Many young students can't see the importance or don't understand the purpose of learning another language, and have really negative attitudes toward learning English, so the implementation in your lessons of tools and resources they are familiar with, would be a great advantage for keeping students motivated.

I'd like to incorporate all these new things in my lessons, but, unfortunately, I don't count with the necessary resources and facilities to work with them in my workplace.